So, although I’ve been leading worship (in some capacity) for close to 20 years now, I’ve never really been in the position where the buck stops with me. It’s a little different now. Suddenly I have a team of people and I’m supposed to be a leader when in reality, a lot of the time I don’t see myself capable of leading anyone.
I want to though.
I want to have a positive impact on those around me.
I want to push ahead into unknown territory.
I want to make a difference.
I want to be a ‘history maker’.
Look around. Ask questions. See what other people are doing. Don’t try to do everything yourself. That’s what I have been doing. That’s what I’ll continue to do. I often worry I’m not doing enough to support our worship team. That I’m not doing what I should be to help them grow and develop. Heck, it’s me that can learn a lot from some of them. But, I think that’s just fine. Leaders need to stay teachable too, right?
I have a friend, John Wahba, who is the worship pastor over at Hope Chapel in Apex, NC. A few months back I asked him the following questions in an email. I wanted to share with you what he came back with. I’m so thankful for his input into what we’re doing at Story Church. His response was a great help to me.
My Questions…
- Do you use any materials/resources with your musicians? Devotionals/studies/etc?
- Do you pray prior to or after rehearsal?
- How much time do you spend at rehearsal?
Wahba’s Response…
Having more than one team gives us a huge advantage. We just redesigned leadership and scaled down to two teams so that each team could have THREE leaders:
Team Encourager/Communicator
Scheduling, team roster, facebook encouraging, birthday cards, etc
Band Leader
Setlists, chord charts, arrangements, rehearsals
Team “pastor”
Caring for spiritual needs on the team, bringing a short devotions time, remembering prayer requests, etc.
Another advantage to multiple teams is that we have TWO 2-hour practices. The first one, we usually split. We take about 40 minutes for devotions, prayer requests, fellowship, encouraging each other. The rest of the time is for learning new songs for that set.
On the second practice, we take maybe 15 minutes to pray & follow up with each other, then rehearse.
Unfortunately, you have to be all those leaders in one! AND you have to find a way to wrap the prayer, devotions, fellowship and rehearsal time into one practice! So here’s my unsolicited advice….
- Strongly encourage musicians to show up having learned the songs; if there’s a specific guitar lick or drum beat that you want from the CD, have them learn it before practice. Tell them why – because band practice will be for much more than playing music. Spiritual preparation is almost more important.
- Take a short “circle time” at the start of practice. Ask how everyone’s doing. Ask specifics about prayer requests from past weeks and recent changes with team members (did someone just move? start a new job? have a family member that was sick?).
- During this time, you could do simple devotions by picking a scripture related to a song you’re doing that week. Have someone else read it. Ask the team what it means to them. Connect it to the song you’ll be playing and encourage them to remember it when your team leads it on Sunday.
- Then take prayer requests – have them pray for each other (I’ve gone so far as to say “Bobby, will you pray for Whitney’s new job?”, etc); pray for rehearsal, pray for Sunday’s service.
- Best advice I can give you besides all this is to start handing off your responsibilities. Is someone really good at harmonizing? Maybe ask them to help you arrange the vocals for a song that week. Someone seem really organized? Have them be the “team scheduler” – freeing you up from making all the calls, sending the lists out to everyone, covering an empty spot on the team. Someone seem really sensitive to the Spirit and scripture? Have them bring a short devotional for the team. Start SMALL – give them little things to be successful with and grow them into that leadership role with encouragement & re-direction.
My Thoughts…
We don’t have a large enough group yet to split into separate teams, but I still like the how the responsibilities are spread between 2-3 people and think this is achievable. Thankfully, I have Jon James who handles all our team scheduling and he also contributes a lot to band arrangement. This is a great help.
We have one weekly practice at the moment that lasts around 2 hours. I expect people to have listened to the songs and have a good feel for them prior to rehearsal. We use the time together to settle on arrangements and song dynamics.
We have fun and enjoy our time together at rehearsal, but the spiritual side of things is not where it should be. I guess at the beginning, being a church plant, because we had quite a few non-Christian musicians who were helping us out. Spending time on devotionals or praying in a circle would probably have reduced our team size quite dramatically!
However, I think we now need to take small steps in this area as the team becomes more established. Tonight I started a Google Wave to enable the team to share prayer requests with each other. It’s a start and we’ll see how it goes.
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Training Your Worship Team (Resources) // Are YOU a team player? // Teaching Series on Worship (FREE) // My Favourite Team Leader // Leading Worship at a Church Plant //
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