Improving Your Stage Presence

Improving Your Stage Presence

Hey guys! 

If you don't know me, I'm Sadie Murbarger, an interim worship pastor at a church in Greenville, Illinois. I started serving on worship teams when I graduated high school, then I went on to get a BA in Worship Ministry from Lincoln Christian University. Since then, I've been an intern at Hope Church in Springfield, Illinois and Crossway Christian Church in Nashua, New Hampshire. This summer, I've been serving as the interim worship pastor at Greenville First Christian Church, and I will be going to seminary in the fall!

Even though I'm 22 and have only been on worship teams for five years, I still feel like I can share some knowledge and wisdom from my experiences and how I've grown myself in my stage presence and worship leading. The truth is that stage presence is so important in leading others in the music portion of worship! While a lot of people feel most connected to God through in-depth study of theology and the Bible, there are also a large group of others (including myself) who experience God's presence best through song: the melodies that tell a story, the lyrics that explain the Gospel in new ways, and the unifying act of a church body singing together. Therefore, our job is important!

It is true that the most important part of a worship leader is her/his heart, I'm going to be focusing mainly the outward expression of worship. I'm going to pretend that everyone onstage has a heart for worshipping God and a growing relationship with Christ, which should be a priority before even becoming a part of the worship team at a church. While being more expressive with your body during worship can feel uncomfortable at first, it's a learned behavior/practice, and will become more natural as you go on. 

Two Tips From a Public Speaking Class:

1. Body language is 70% of what you’re communicating. Song writers sometimes spend months perfecting the lyrics or melody of a worship song, but the way it's portrayed live changes its impact. There is power in our posture as we lead. We've probably all attended services where a member of the worship team looks unhappy to be there, and it's distracting in a way. It might even seem like what a mentor of mine calls a "lyrical lie": when the lyrics being sung don't match the demeanor the one who is singing/playing.

2. Know your "audience" i.e. the worship culture of the congregation in which you serve. While you want to challenge and allow people in the congregation to feel free to be more open and expressive, a night/day change in stage presence could be distracting, which is never the goal of worship leading. For example, one summer I worked as a Worship Coordinator for a summer camp in Colorado. The camp director specifically asked me not to raise my hands much during worship, because a lot of the elementary-age campers coming to camp weren't familiar with the type of church the counselors are, so she encouraged me to mostly create motions and encourage kids to clap along. 

Preparing Properly

When I learned to play the drums, one of the more difficult aspects of drumming was when my two hands and two feet were all doing different things. In order for me to succeed, one or two of my appendages (lol) had to become so natural and instinctual to me that I didn't need to think about four things at once. In regards to stage presence, that is when preparation comes into play. 

• If you want to focus on improving or focusing on your presence on-stage, that means that you have to know the songs that you're doing on Sunday morning. Know the song sequence (how many times am I doing the chorus, bridge, etc.). Know the lyrics and memorize them if possible. If you're singing harmony, have those parts down pat! Doing all this work ahead of time allows you to really focus on worshipping with your actions while leading.

• Watch other leaders lead, watch Youtube videos of Live Worship or any online church services. When I want to improve something in myself, I surround myself with people who are better at it than me, watch videos online, etc. I can be helpful to get even more specific
as to what songs are on the setlist for this weekend and look up live videos of those songs. It’s helpful to see those who originally wrote the song lead it. 

• Watch yourself lead. Have a friend or family member video a couple of songs and watch them back. Sometimes our face and our body language looks different than what we are trying to express. It's the worship leader equivalent of watching game film (ha). 

• This next tip is a tip from Kari Jobe: practice being engaging and expressive during rehearsal. I used to think that people were silly for doing this, but listening to Kari's reasoning behind it, I started doing this myself occasionally. It helps break down that awkward wall when you’re in the beginning steps of working on stage presence. Swaying and closing your eyes is great for a little bit, but to the person in the back of the auditorium, it looks like you’re standing still.

Being confident in your presence on stage comes from practicing and getting in a habit of doing something. It might be a process that gets you out of your comfort zone little by little e.g. extending a hand all the way up, or extending your hands forward in a “receiving” posture. 

During Service

Distracting Behavior
One of the main goals I have for myself as a worship leader is to cut down on all distractions whether it be me or anyone on my team. I reached out to a lot of my worship leader friends and asked them what they wish their team members knew about stage presence. One of the things mentioned I AM SO GUILTY OF: messing with my in-ears. I know that sometimes we can't help it, but people really do notice if you're fidgeting with your mic, your guitar strap, etc. My best advice is to just make sure everything is situated before the set begins. 

It’s distracting if you look like you're mad or sad. It’s a fun conversation starter for your pal that you attend church with, but it’s distracting nonetheless. Of course you can be distracting if you're over-the-top positive, but circling back to watching videos of yourself leading, you can pretty much discern that for yourself. Also, I love asking for feedback! If you don't want to make it seem like you're searching for compliments (which most worship pastors don't think you're doing), you can ask "what's something I can improve on in my stage presence?" 

Facial Expression
Where do I look? Should I be smiling? Sometimes I look up 45º or so as a more of a visualization of worship to focus on singing these songs to and about God; other times I glance at other worship leaders on stage and engage with them briefly; sometimes I look around at people, it's a way of engaging them. (If you're uncomfortable with that, you can cheat by looking directly over people's heads.) It's all about variety, confidence, and practicing to get better in my opinion. Where you shouldn't look is directly glued to your music stand or the confidence monitor for the entirety of the song. If you've been preparing as much as you should, you shouldn't need those tools as much. 

What do I do with my mouth? Always be singing, even/especially if it’s not in the mic. Even if you're not leading the song vocally. I think that guitarists, bassists, and drummers should be singing the lyrics too (it doesn't have to sound perfect). I can’t stress this enough; how are we supposed to expect the congregation to be singing if we aren’t?

Smiling is the easiest way to instantly improve your stage presence. The exception to this, of course, is when it doesn’t make sense lyrically. e.g. “How great the chasm, that lay between us, how high the mountain I could not climb.” Even though it might take 150% of of your willpower, don’t make a face if someone or yourself messes up. Like I mentioned before, someone is always watching.

Body Language
The motto: "Let your outward posture reflect your inward praise." The slower and more exaggerated your movements are, the better. The same rule applies to stage presence as to acting: people only perceive a fraction of what you think you’re doing. Especially the further back they are in the sanctuary/auditorium. It's important to be conscious of other worship leaders. If you both end up doing a lot of the same movements in sync, it looks and feels choreographed. This happens to me when I lead with the same person for a long period of time, you kind of pick up on each other's mannerisms, so I have to be conscious of who is beside me. 

Another simple change that will drastically improve your stage presence with the smallest amount of thinking and effort is to move your feet. Shift your weight, sway, step-touch. Step forward and backward. Honestly, this feels more natural to me is to move around. By moving my feet, it makes me more likely to be more expressive with my arms. Stepping back is especially helpful if you are playing the guitar at the same time, there's not much you can do there to provide variety. Also if you're a vocalist that uses a mic stand and you're not leading a particular section of the song, it looks really nice to take a few steps back and just sing off the mic and be expressive in that way. I've said it once and I'll say it again: we are giving others permission to be expressive in the way they worship by leading by example. 

Arms
Honestly, some of my favorite ways to be expressive with my arms happens when I’m not singing into the mic, but I can just hold the mic and lift my arms as I please. Be thoughtful of what lyrics you’ll be singing. The way you express yourself through your arms should be different whether you’re singing about God’s mercy vs his power. For example, sometimes I find myself pointing to God when the lyrics are more “you” focused, you meaning God. 
Over-exaggerating and slowing down your motions is especially important with your arms and hands. 

Whatever you’re doing has to carry to the back of the room, however many rows there are. If coming up with things to do with both hands stresses you out, hold the mic instead of putting it on a stand. Just like how everyone has a unique voice and style of leading, the same can be said with body language when leading. Sometimes it's tough to explain to people that there are better ways to have stage-presence, because the first priority of a worship team member is the heart. Yes, some of these steps might take you out of your comfort zone, but if you genuinely feel like your leading worship feels like an act, in my opinion, that could be a heart issue, not an issue with the specifics of your body language.

Review Time!

- Don’t be distracting. You can be distracting by being super over-the-top OR being straight-faced and looking like you'd rather be anywhere else than on stage.

- Be mindful of how you look while leading, because someone is always looking at you. The best way to improve is to start small and progress over time. I've heard it said that, “People leading worship are thermostats, not thermometers. We set the temperature.” What that quote means to me is that we can't rely on the congregation to set the tone of worship. Similarly, we worship leaders shouldn't just be matching what the congregation is doing. We should be challenging and inspiring church-goers to feel free to open up and respond to God in a new way during musical worship.

If we’re asking questions of “why aren’t people singing?” and “why aren’t people engaging?”, the answer begins with those who are leading them. 

Thanks for sticking with me through this post! I hope it was helpful; feel free to pass it along to worship team members, leaders, and more. Let me know if you found anything helpful, have any other tips or tricks, or flat-out disagree with me!

Best,

Sadie 

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