Jamie Brown

Learn to Read a Hungry Room

Yesterday morning at my church, our 11:00am service went long. And when an 11:00am service goes long — you have a room full of hungry people to deal with.

By the time our pastor got to the end of his sermon, it was 12:40pm. That might not seem too late to you, but it seemed too late yesterday. The song I had planned for after his sermon was a long-ish one that we had spent considerable time rehearsing, but as I sat on the front row yesterday, it became increasingly clear to me that, while people were engaged with the sermon, they were hungry.

(In the past, I might not care that people were hungry and wanted to eat. “Too bad!”, old me would say. This is church, and we’re here to worship, and nothing is more important, and your belly can wait!)

But that’s immature. And it’s foolish. Learn to read a hungry room. And if the room is ready for lunch — then unless the Holy Spirit comes down in literal tongues of fire and everyone forgets for a moment how delicious Chipotle sounds — you cannot overcome the dynamic of a hungry or fidgety room. Just go with it, and be willing to adjust your plans.

So, as his sermon came to a close, and the band and I took the stage, I led us briefly in singing the doxology and then people were on their way to lunch. And it’s amazing… I didn’t get a single person who complained that we skipped the last song. They were grateful I was clued-in enough to skip it. And we all got to eat our lunch about 5 minutes quicker. And there was much rejoicing. And there always will be.

Ten Worship Leading Non-Negotiables

There is so much good and helpful advice for worship leaders out there that I thought I’d try my hand at condensing it all down into 10 non-negotiables.

You are not the center.
You make Jesus the center.
Your priority is helping the congregation sing with faith.
You support your pastor.
You choose songs that are full of truth.
You use musicians who are gifted and have soft hearts toward Jesus.
You tailor the keys and arrangements of songs to serve the people in the room.
Your family comes first.
You’re never alone with someone of the opposite sex who isn’t your spouse.
You won’t ever compromise numbers 1-9.

May we be worship leaders who, at our core, love Jesus, love our congregations, and love our families.

How to Start Off a Worship Leading Career

Yesterday I received a question over email from someone who asked:

I am helping a young friend who is just working a “job” right now and leads worship at our church every third week. He is musically talented (singer, drums, guitar, other percussions and harmonica that I know of.) He needs direction on the qualifications he might need to be useful to a church body as a part time or full time worship leader as his calling/career. He feels called but doesn’t know how to get started. I do not know where he should start or how to advise him. Can you help?

Here’s what I shared:

To be useful to a church body as a part time or full time worship leader, your friend needs to demonstrate consistent dependable leadership. He needs to find a venue, whether it’s a small Sunday morning service somewhere, or a week night thing, or a bible study, or a mid-week service where prove he can lead a worship team, choose songs, do the necessary administration, be dependable, and help people worship God.

When I was in your friend’s shoes, I began to lead weekly for our youth ministry, quarterly for church worship celebrations, sometimes for healing services, on men’s retreats, for Alpha, for weddings/funerals, and for VBS (vacation bible school). Get as much varied experience as possible to be well-rounded. Then a church will look at you and know they can trust you with responsibility.

I wrote a post several years ago with more thoughts on this called “Getting Experience Makes You Experienced“. For worship leaders who want to have more responsibility and opportunity, and even a full or part-time position, there’s no other place to start than by saying “yes” to as many offers that come your way.

Know Your Motivation

Thinker Effective worship leaders learn how to manage multiple sources of information while they’re standing on stage leading worship. What are you seeing? What are you hearing? What are you sensing? What time of day is it? Is it really hot in the room? The list goes on. At any given moment while you’re leading worship, you’re experiencing a flood of information. You have to learn how to process it all, which means knowing what 95% of it you’re going to ignore.

But while most things you have to deal with are external, the one internal source (i.e. your motivation) can be the strongest force of all. Why are you asking people to sing this particular song? What are you hoping to accomplish by having them clap on every beat like on the recording? Why are you choosing that arrangement?

You have to know your motivation well enough to discern when it’s wrong. And when you can discern that your motivation is wrong, then you’ll know to not do the thing you’re thinking about doing, until your motivation is right.

Here are some common wrong motivations for worship leaders:

This is how they do it on the recording
This is cool
This makes me sound good
This makes me look good
I can’t let the clock quench the Spirit
This song always works
This will get the place hopping
This will get the mood worshipful
This will catch my congregation up
This is my performance

Here are some right motivations for worship leaders:

This will help them sing confidently
This will help them see and magnify Jesus
This will bless them
This will make me look foolish but I’m going to do it anyway
This will honor my pastor
This is going to stretch them
This is not my preference, but it’s the best decision
This will help people hear/respond to the sermon
This isn’t the way they did it on the recording but this serves my congregation better
This isn’t something my team can pull off, so even though I’d like to do it, I will wait

Search your heart when you’re planning or leading worship, and ask yourself “why am I doing this” or “why am I asking them to do this?” The answer to those questions will give you a good deal of clarity on how to move forward.

Ten Things Worship Leaders Should Never Do

Leading worship provides so many opportunities to make mistakes and be humbled and grow in maturity. I’ve made so many mistakes I’ve lost count. The benefit of those mistakes is that I now have an idea of some things I should never do. Will I do these things again? Yes. But should I? No. Here are ten things worship leaders should never do, courtesy of mistakes I’ve made (and will keep making) in all of these areas.

Don’t Willfully Disobey Your Pastor
Willfully disobeying your pastor is one sure way to grieve the Holy Spirit and put yourself on thin ice.

Don’t Publically Correct a Worship Team Member
Praise publically. Correct privately.

Don’t Allow Yourself to Be Made Famous
Take practical steps, in small ways that add up to big ways, to resist meaningless fame in your congregation.

Don’t Make Minor Things into Major Things
Think long and hard about whether or not you want to make a big deal out of what you’re making a big deal about. Is it really a big deal? Probably not.

Don’t Make the Major Thing a Minor Thing
The major thing is that people are able to see and savor Jesus Christ. You can do that in a lot of ways. But if you can’t do that, then that’s a major thing.

Don’t Neglect Praying with Your Team
Before you rehearse. Before you lead a service. Huddle up and pray together. If you regularly neglect to do this, you send the message that you don’t need any help.

Don’t Fish for Compliments After the Service
Pity the poor soul who sits across from you at lunch after church while you not-so-subtly fish for a compliment. Just be quiet and eat your lunch!

Don’t Leave the Room During the Sermon
Think about what you’re saying if you slide off stage and eat a donut and surf Facebook during the preaching of the word. Stay in the room and listen to the sermon.

Don’t Be a Diva
Set up your own guitar stand. Coil your own cables. Get yourself a water bottle. Be a pleasant/humble personality for your other volunteers/staff to interact with.

Don’t Forget Your Family
There is such intense pressure to prove your worth by how many hours you work and how busy you are. Nonsense. Give yourself first and foremost to your family, and fit your ministry responsibilities in when you can – not at your family’s expense.