How to Craft a Great Service Flow

Creating a service flow is like putting together a 5 course dinner. You’ve got all the ingredients (songs, announcements, sermon, etc), but there is an art to crafting the flow of the service.

As you go about crafting your flow, here are 4 principles that will help.

1. The same key makes for an easy transition; however, too much of the same key is boring. When two songs in the same key work side by side, I always try to just make a seamless transition.

There’s no point to stop and then start up and create dead space. If you use a click track, one trick is to start the new BPM on the downbeat of the last measure of the previous song. That way you can jump right in to the 2nd song without a gap. However, you start loosing people when you have 3 or more songs in the same key.

Different keys (and even different time signatures) keeps things interesting. So, the principle is connect 2 songs with the same key, but not more.

2. A whole step higher is a natural switch. If you have a song in G and a song in A, start with the G song first. It will almost always feel better musically to go higher by a whole step than lower.

Singing in a higher key involves an increase of energy, and the opposite it true. If you shift down, then you’ll loose momentum. Also, most songs that have a key change within a song go one whole step higher. This is a natural switch.

Use this natural switch to your advantage, and try to go from D to E or C to D or G to A. This type of song transition will just feel right.

3. Piggy-backing off of the previous guiding principle, don’t transition to another song that is a half step away. For instance, don’t go from a song in E to a song in F. This musical shift will feel like an abrupt gear change and will distract rather than carry momentum.

If you have two songs that are that close together anyway, you may want to consider transposing one of them, so you’re in the same key for both and have a home run transition.

By the way, when you have two songs with a similar BPM, you can also have a home run transition by keeping the same BPM and pretending the two songs are one big song.

4. Remember, “singabilty” is important. If people can’t sing the song, who cares about the rest? We design flow so people can engage, and we want them to primarily engage through singing.

The average age of your room might determine what you can “get away with,” however, I try to stick with the “from C to shining C” principle. A high C is comfortable for males, and is starting to stretch for females.

Keep going up to a D, and guys feel like they’re really going for it, and women feel like they’re about out of range. Hop up to an E, and guys are at the high range, and women might as well sing melody with the guys.

The rest of the guys who can’t get that high will have to drop an octave. This one principle deserves it’s own article, but especially for a mixed generational room, keep the melody between Cs so everyone can participate.

In the 30 Day WL Challenge that you’ll start when you become a WLA Member, you’ll learn 6 ways to create a seamless service flow, including how often to incorporate new songs verses familiar songs.

Stephen