Be practical, purposeful, and pastoral this Easter season
By: Jesse Schaefer
As we approach the holiday seasons, we’re met with a flurry of activity and excitement. However, these seasons can also bring difficult areas in our lives to the surface.
It can be family relationships, it can be money, and it can even remind us of the weight of spiritual questions we may have unanswered.
With Easter just around the corner, we face two challenges:
How do we plan our services and communicate the gospel effectively and genuinely?
And how do we present the gospel to a congregation full of people who are experiencing a whole other world of distractions and points to focus in their individual lives?
The truth is, effectively communicating the gospel during these times will take significant effort. It will require constant reminders of why we do what we do and the hope we have.
It will also require the support and effort of those laboring alongside us in our churches.
As worship leaders, we have a unique opportunity to carry the mantle of our calling and carry it well. This is the time and place, right now, with the opportunity ready to be seized right in front of us.
Many of us may be inclined to avoid these negatives and focus solely on the positive aspects of the gospel. However, ignoring the shared human experience that we all go through would be to deny the true power of how the gospel interacts with our lives.
In fact, these hard times give us a chance for greater hope and celebration in Jesus!
As we read in Luke 7, when Jesus forgives a woman, “Impressive, isn’t it? She was forgiven many, many sins, and so she is very, very grateful. If the forgiveness is minimal, the gratitude is minimal.”
The inverse of that statement is that if the forgiveness, the solution, the good news, is massive, so will the gratitude be!
This Easter is a chance to really emphasize the width and depth of God’s love and how it can change lives.
We must recognize that the challenges we face during this time of year will require extra effort, support, and energy. The old adage that “you can’t pour from an empty cup” holds true. And just as in Luke 7, we will be the recipients of increased gratitude for our calling, our relationships, and the message we get to share.
To paraphrase Theodore Roosevelt, “Nothing worth doing is ever easy.” However, we can do it. We can work together to make this Easter season one of hope and celebration.
At MultiTracks.com, we are worship leaders ourselves, and we take the gravity of communicating the gospel very seriously. We aim to facilitate that communication, not only the resources we create, but in our local churches as well.
When we lead worship well, we can focus on the message we’re trying to communicate, instead of being mentally preoccupied with production and tech.
Being able to be fully in the moment, especially for big holiday seasons like Easter, helps us truly connect with those who enter our doors.
That’s why our mission is to create resources that save you time to focus on what matters.
It’s almost impossible to focus on what you need to focus on when you’re spending much of your time building tracks, setting up production elements, manually building lyric slides, and creating setlists in multiple places. All of our tools and resources for tracks, charts, rehearsal, and production connect to work in perfect sync with each other.
Our tracks player, Playback, is a powerful tool that can bring a whole new level to your worship services.
You can experience it with Demo Setlist, where you can access a full setlist of five songs, customize song arrangements, and set transitions between songs. You can also edit song keys, BPM, and even start and end time for each song.
With Pad Player, you can play a pad underneath and between your songs to avoid awkward moments of silence between songs or underneath spiritual directions.
But what makes Playback even more exciting is its MIDI capabilities. You can send and receive MIDI, which means you can map parameters in Playback to be controlled by a foot controller or external MIDI controller.
You don’t even have to touch the screen during your worship service.
Playback sending MIDI means you can automate lighting, control patch changes for pedals and software instruments, and even control lyric slides. You can even send MIDI Clock to control your time-based effects in guitar pedals and software instruments.
The functions of Playback were created to save you time to focus on what matters and improve the quality of your worship times. However, it's hard not to acknowledge the sheer fun of it all when things sync and work together like this. It's exciting to see how everything comes together at the push of a button!
MultiTracks.com has also partnered with ProPresenter to bring you lyric slides that perfectly match the MultiTracks.
With the Demo Setlist, you can experience Production Cues, which are pre-made MIDI cues for each song to control the corresponding ProPresenter lyric slides. Whether you choose 1, 2, or 4 line formatting, your lyric slides will follow your tracks perfectly.
Change the arrangement, or even jump around in the song on the fly, and your lyrics will follow. The all-new stage display included with each set of lyric slides includes chords and lyrics, so there's no more getting lost or blanking on a chord change.
Playback can also control your charts with Playback Sync.
Your charts will automatically scroll as the tracks play, and if you change your song arrangement or jump to a different song section on the fly, your charts will follow you. You can customize your chart with filters for chord type (chords, numbers, solfège), MD notes, chart formatting, and more.
ChartBuilder also contains RehearsalMix, which allows you to practice along to the original recording, or even with your individual instrument’s part highlighted in the mix.
And just as charts and tracks will change to reflect your song arrangement, your RehearsalMix audio will do the same.
The goal of MultiTracks.com is to give you an experience that not only provides the resources you need to equip your team and lead worship well, but to do it in a way that is a positive and enjoyable experience.
It’s important to remember that everyone enters your Easter services with their own individual sets of baggage, history, and potential hurt. That's why it's essential to create an experience that not only brings solutions to problems but also brings joy and happiness.
In conclusion, Playback from MultiTracks.com is a powerful tool that can help you bring a whole new level of experience to your worship services.
With its MIDI capabilities, you can automate lighting, control patch changes for pedals and software instruments, and even control lyric slides.
Playback Sync allows your charts to automatically scroll as the tracks play, and RehearsalMix lets you practice along to the original recording or with your individual instrument’s part highlighted in the mix.
With the goal of providing you with an enjoyable experience, MultiTracks.com hopes to help you lead worship well, connect with God, and be refreshed and encouraged by the good news of the gospel this Easter season.