Feeding Your Worship Team (Literally)

A dozen bagels from Panera: $8-12.

A coffee traveler from Starbucks: $12.

One large, two-topping pizza from Papa John’s: $10-12.

A worship team that isn’t hungry: Priceless.

Sometimes taking care of your worship team isn’t so complicated or expensive. It’s as simple as picking up some bagels and coffee before a long morning of rehearsals and services or ordering a pizza for a late evening meeting when people are coming straight from work.

This shouldn’t come out of your pocket. If you oversee a budget of any kind at your church, designate some funds to be used for food for your worship team over the year. Make sure there’s enough for a nice meal for everyone who attends a worship conference, for a Christmas party and end-of-year cookout, and other things in between.

But if your church doesn’t have money for that, devote some time and energy to getting people in your congregation to cook meals and bake goodies and brew coffee for you and your volunteers on long mornings or late evenings.

You don’t always have to provide food for your worship team. Obviously, people can take care of themselves and remember to eat something before they come to church!

But I have been amazed over the last year or so at what a huge difference it makes to team morale and energy level when there is something to munch on and something to drink.

We’ve installed a little refrigerator in our back room and keep it stocked with mini-soda cans. We also have some bite-sized candy and breath mints in bowls on a counter-top. On Sunday mornings, we’ve contracted a local bakery to deliver a little tray of food on Sunday mornings at 8:30am. It changes a bit every week, but usually has an assortment of cheeses, crackers, fruit, pastries and bagels. The musicians and pastors who are serving on a Sunday morning now swarm the food tray and devour it in a matter of hours.

When we gather as a team for a mid-week meeting in the evening, I’ll do my best to make sure food (usually delivery pizza) is provided, since this will sweeten the deal for people coming straight from work.

You might be surprised by how much providing a little bit of food and drink seems to honor people and keep them fresh. Sometimes leading and feeding a worship team can be hard work. But other times it’s as easy as pie. Literally.