We live in a world where the Internet is in our pockets and on our phones, and information is immediately accessible almost anywhere. We all know technology is getting faster, more powerful, and more portable every day—but this has implications for music technology that are beginning to drastically affect the limitations previously faced by small and medium church worship teams.

During the week, your congregation may hear the latest new worship song from Lincoln Brewster or Israel Houghton on the radio, but when they hear it on Sunday with one guitar, bass player, and drummer, for some reason, it never sounds the same.

Across the pond, U2 is setting up for a concert in Ireland, but on many songs, they only have one guitar, one bass player and drummer…so how do they get that huge sound? Is there an arsenal of guitar players with amps behind the stage doubling parts, playing to a click track and executing their parts in perfect sync with the live players? Where are those pads and organ parts coming from? Are they hiding an orchestra under the stage?  Yes, folks, they're running live tracks in sync with their live performance.

Fill in for Missing Musicians
The average congregation of 95 members with a couple of volunteer musicians has often been at a severe disadvantage in achieving the sounds you hear on a record with a full band—until now.

Now it's possible to download the actual "multi-track masters," which can allow your church to fill in for any musician you're missing with the part from the record. Imagine if you could put the recording session from the original recording on a laptop and use it from the stage. If your guitar player can't make it, un-mute Lincoln Brewster's guitar on your session and you haven't missed a beat.

This allows the small church to achieve any sound they want. Even with a limited budget, you can put together a setup with videos and tracks, allowing you to sound like Israel and New Breed in concert with the horns, the strings, and all the sounds you could ever want from the record, except the lead vocal…yes, you do have to provide a worship leader.

To run live tracks, you will need to choose a music software platform.  There are many digital audio workstations (DAWs) that are great, and all of them will play multi-tracks in a live format.

Stage Plots
Not only can your band now fit in your laptop, but the days of bulky floor monitors on your stage seems to be quickly fading and replaced with in-ear monitors, which continue to become and more affordable. Several companies are making personal monitor systems that allow you to all but eliminate your sound on stage and give the control back to the sound person at the back of the room, while allowing each person their own custom mix.

If you have a drummer with a floor monitor in a small church, you may be running into sound issues that you just don't have to face—it is 2008! Invest in a click track for your drummer, get rid of that loud floor monitor, and get a set of good headphones. You'll see a huge difference in the sound of your band. Add in a few of Lincoln's guitar parts and your congregation just may wonder what church building they walked into.

What's the Goal?
Now we all know pursuing excellent worship will not produce excellent worship; only pursuing God will produce authentic worship in our congregations. But if your team is pursuing excellence to create an atmosphere where people can worship and not encounter too many distractions, utilizing the right technologies in your worship can often leverage your time, and enhance your sound, and allow you to focus on what's most important.

The quality and polish that has become the listening standard at concerts and on the radio is not a far cry anymore for any size church. Touring artists won't compromise sound because they know their listeners expect it, and there will soon be a day where that is the norm for the church.

If we keep our hearts focus on Him and allow technologies to enhance our worship but not become the focus, we can leverage the best of what's being developed to bring a consistency that will take the sound of our teams to the next level.

Phillip Edwards is the co-founder of InteractiveWorshipLive.com, a company that provides interactive tracks for use in praise and worship, and the worship pastor at Christ Community Church in Austin, Texas.