Surprisingly Easy Tips to Use Free Tools and Plan Worship Set-Lists Efficiently

Not every worship team has the financial and technical resources to sign up for worship planning tools. The reality is, outside of a few rich countries, they are pretty much beyond budget for most ministries. Probably why I’ve seen people use everything—from plain paper to word documents on a PC—to plan their set-lists! This post is for those of you who’re looking for free resources and tips to plan a worship set efficiently.1. Download my Easy Worship Set-List Planning WorksheetThis is a free download that will aid you to organize the most important elements of a worship set-list: songs, keys, transitions and more. Don’t forget to put in links to videos or MP3 files online also in the worksheet, so everyone knows which version of the songs to practice. Examples are given in the spreadsheet to help you figure out how to use it.
2. Get SongSuggestSongSuggest is more popular as an iPhone app, but the desktop program is available for free. The program has a database of 800+ of the most popular worship songs organized by theme, and musical elements like key and tempo.
3. Chord ChartsThere are so many online resources out there to find and download chords for worship songs. Ultimate Guitar Tabs, Worship Together are good places to start. You can use my free Chord template to create customized charts for your team. For a more automated solution, store your lyrics and chords in OpenSong and use the export option to download printable chord charts. It also has a quick transpose menu to change the chords to any key. And, yes OpenSong is free!
4. CommunicateYou can use Box, DropBox, Skydrive, Google Drive etc. to store your files in the cloud and send their links to your worship team. Another tool you could look at is Padlet, which will enable you to collaborate with your team and build your worship set-list together.
5. VisualsI’ve already written about many free church projection software that are available. For a simple solution, there’s OpenSong. If you want all kinds of extra bells and whistles, go for VideoPsalm.
There you have it: 5 free tools to plan and finalize your worship set-list using only free resources.
Your turn to share: What are your favorite tools that you use when planning your worship sessions?