Encouraging Your Team to Be on Time

On Monday I shared Ten Ways to Make Rehearsals More Fruitful. One way is to not tolerate persistent tardiness. It’s normal for people to be late from time to time, since people have busy lives and traffic gets in the way. But when it’s persistent and not just a problem with one person, it can be helpful to gently remind your worship team that it’s important to be on time.

I recently sent an email to the worship team at my church with the subject “a little bit of gentle prodding…” I thought you might find it helpful to read how I communicated this to my team, so here is what I wrote:

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to send a quick note in the hopes of encouraging all of us to try to make more of an effort at starting our rehearsals and pre-service huddles on time.

I know two things apply to everyone on this list: First, your lives are incredibly full and your schedules are incredibly busy. You have jobs, families, other responsibilities, and unplanned events that spring up. Second, you are at the mercy of Northern Virginia traffic. I don’t need to say any more about that last one!

But I’ve also noticed a gradual trend over recent months that if a rehearsal is scheduled for 3:00pm, we’re not actually ready until 3:20 or later. Or if a pre-service huddle is scheduled for 10:15am, it never really happens. We end up missing out on valuable rehearsal time, prayer time, and preparation time.

Because I know how busy your lives are, I always schedule a rehearsal or pre-service huddle at the latest possible time I’m comfortable with. I’d probably prefer an earlier time, but I want to give you as much time at home as possible, so I pick the latest time I can see working.

I would be incredibly grateful if we could all make a renewed effort at being ready to start rehearsals and meetings on time. This means planning on arriving 10-15 minutes early for rehearsal to set up and tune, and arriving 5 – 10 minutes early for church to park and get to the vesting room in time for us all to be ready at the same time.

This note is just as much for me as it is for anyone else! And please know I understand there are just going to be times you’re running late. I want to be full of grace. But having said that, we can all do a better job of being on time and I hope this little note provides a little bit of gentle prodding for all of us.

Gratefully,

Jamie