Jamie Brown

A Worship Leader’s Job Description and Pay

I recently received an email from a pastor who asked me this question:

I need some general insight as we start looking for a worship leader for our church plant. What price range should I ask for from my finance/leadership team as I seek to hire a worship leader? Assuming less than 5 years experience leading in a church… If the person is full time? What range of salary is the norm starting out? What if he is part time? And if you only had one service per week – and an odd evening event (good Friday; Christmas Eve) – how many hours a week would you need if it is part time? 15 hours? 20 hours? 25 hours? Thanks.

I wrote him back and thought it might be helpful to post here:

Here’s the best way I know how to lay something like this out. Listed in order of priority:

– Weekend worship leading: 3 hours for 1 Sunday service. 5 hours for 2 services. Additional 2 hours per service.
– Rehearsal leading: 3 hours.

Stopping here, you have a 6 – 10 hour worship leader. You can pay this person a weekly stipend of somewhere in the range of $250. He’s pretty much leading songs.

– Basic administrative duties: PowerPoint presentations (1 hour), service outlines (.5 hour), chord charts (1 hour), making copies (.5 hour), scheduling worship team members (.5 hour), equipment set up (1 hour), emails /phone calls (2 hours).

Now your worship leader is 15 hours a week and you’re looking at paying him hourly. $20 – 25 per hour, I guess. He’s leading songs and doing some admin.

– Ministry development: Recruit, audition musicians. Have monthly worship team gatherings. Spend time listening to new music. Read up on theology, music/worship theology and goings-on, etc. This can all average out to 5 hours a week.

Now your worship leader is 20 hours a week and you can still pay him hourly but you’ll probably have to throw in benefits.

The next steps take your worship leader closer to full-time and needing a salary.

– 5 hours: worship service planning. He’s reading the passages, reading your transcript, taking time to intentionally pray and mull over what songs are going to feed people most effectively and help them respond to God’s word and presence. This might not take this long some weeks. It might take more other weeks. A more full-time worship leader has the “luxury” of devoting more time to getting the set-list “right” – not just pick from a bank of songs.

– 5 hours: participate in weekly staff/pastoral/service debrief/service planning meetings.

– 5 hours: Music-centric work such as arranging, writing, practicing, recording, using the art-area of his brain. This will keep him sane, keep things creative, and benefit your gatherings.

– 5 hours: Ministry-centric work such as preparing teachings for worship team, meeting with worship team members for lunch/coffee, long-term planning and calendar management, and working in whatever area he is skilled in (this depends on the person and his passion).

– Misc. hours: Other administrative and time-eating exercises such as: more emails, finance/budget management, overseeing the AV aspects, managing liturgical aspects, special services, assignments given by the pastor, etc.

With less than 5 years worship leading experience, this person should expect to be paid $30 – 45,000, depending on the area of the country, church size, his gifting level, experience, musical skill, education, etc. If he’s good, and if the church starts growing, and he has any sort of family, that will need to get close to $45 – 60,000 really quickly, again, hugely depending on the median income of where the church is located, eventually going over.

If I can be any help to you, or your church as you think through how to structure a worship leader’s position, please feel free to contact me through this blog (contact me).

The Perseverance of the Worship Leader

A few nights ago our bathroom sink got clogged. Really badly. Some food accidentally went down the drain and nothing – I mean nothing – would unclog it. I tried, in this order: the cheap plastic “snake” you buy from the grocery store to go deep into the pipe, two bottles of Draino, a plunger (well, my Dad actually tried this one), and super-duper-high-powered drain cleaner that is “guaranteed” to break through the clog. Well, I should ask for my money back because it didn’t work. Nothing worked.

So yesterday I broke down and called the plumber. He said he’d be happy to come by today and fix it. I asked how much it would cost. He said $150.

I don’t particularly enjoy flushing $150 down the drain (literally and figuratively), so I endeavored to persevere and fix this stupid clog myself. You have to understand that I’m about as handy as a three-week-old baby, but when we’re talking $150 I’ll give it a try.

So I went to Home Depot and bought a $20 manual drain snake. And this morning I spent an hour on the bathroom floor doing everything I could to fix this problem myself and impress my wife with how handy I’ve become. An hour had passed and it wasn’t looking promising.

So I prayed: “God, you know I don’t have $150 to just give away to a plumber. I’m here on the bathroom floor, breathing in a deadly combination of three different kinds of toxic drain cleaners, wearing grocery bags and gloves over my hands to protect my flesh from melting off, I bought a manual snake drain from Home Depot, and all I need you to do is help me fix this stupid clog.”

I tried one last time to jam all fifteen feet of the manual drain snake all the way into the pipe, not allowing the resistance of the clog to sway me. Sure I was making a ton of noise and our daughter was taking her nap just one room away. I didn’t care. I had $150 on the line.

Soon the clog broke and I beheld the most glorious sight: water pouring down the sink and not backing up. I called the plumber and canceled the appointment in triumph. And yes, my wife was very impressed. After all, she’s due to have a baby any day now and it’s awfully nice to not be breathing in toxic fumes.

This all made me think about those “clogs” we face in ministry. The difficult people who never seem to change. The rut we can’t seem to get our services out of. The attendance number that just won’t budge. The congregation that doesn’t seem to ever grow in worship. Bad equipment. Low morale. Small repertoire. Repeated disappointment.

Whatever the clog is for you, the temptation for all of us is to, at some point, call the plumber. To give up. To let someone else do it. This might mean just giving up or it might mean looking for another job.

And sometimes you do just have to break down and call the plumber. But most of the time, and as was the case with me this morning, I had been given all the tools I needed to do the job if I just stuck with it long enough.

God has placed you where you are. He has given you the gifts (i.e. tools) that you have. Those clogs that you’re encountering might seem impossible to break. But what’s really the problem – the clog or your commitment to persevere?

Let me paraphrase (roughly but I hope faithfully) James 1:2-3: “Count it all joy, my worship leaders, whenever you meet clogs of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.”

Too often we’ve got all the tools we need to do the job. But we don’t persevere. I think God clogged my bathroom sink for a reason: to encourage me and to encourage you. Get your hands dirty. You’ve been given good tools and God wants to use you to break through some stuff.

Using Humor to Get Your Team to Read Your Emails

I’ve lost track of how many times we’ve encountered a problem at a worship team rehearsal or a service that would have been avoided if people had read the entire email I had sent them in which those potential problems had been addressed. Maybe it’s a schedule change, a room location, an arrangement heads-up, or whatever. People either just read the beginning of the email, scan it, or don’t read it at all.

Maybe they’re not committed enough. Maybe they don’t take leading worship seriously. Maybe they don’t care.

Or maybe your emails are too long and boring.

One way to get your teams to read your whole email is to keep it short. Another way is to organize it well, using short paragraphs, headings and boldface (in moderation). Another way is use humor.

I’ve recently begun making sure the emails I’m writing to my team are as short and organized as possible. After all, many of the people on the team receive several hundred emails per hour. They don’t have time to read a missive from me. Short and clear is the main thing.

Then I’ll go back over it and add some jokes.

I’ll rib some people who are good sports. I’ll say that on the back of the worship team schedule they’ll find a hidden treasure map. I’ll tell them that if they miss our monthly meeting on March 28th that they’ll get the hives. You get the point.

There isn’t a person on your worship team who doesn’t like to laugh. Everyone loves to laugh. They’ll read your emails if they make them laugh and you’ll have accomplished your goal.

Playing the Acoustic Guitar Rhythmically and Melodically

When you lead worship from the acoustic guitar, it can oftentimes be helpful for your congregation if you accent the melody in addition to playing the rhythm. If you’re with a large band, this isn’t such a big deal. But if you’re by yourself or with a small team, and leading a song the congregation isn’t totally familiar with, it can help people sing with confidence if they can hear where the melody is. Here’s an example:

Say It Like You Mean It

A few months ago before one of our Sunday morning services, my pastor, John Yates came to me and asked me to give a little introduction to one of the songs we were singing to help the congregation understand why we were singing it.

He said something that struck me: “just say something briefly that will help people know why this song is being sung. But sometimes you sound apologetic when you speak. Just say it firmly and confidently”.

I thought about that for a long time. And I’ve thought about it a lot since then. He was right.

Rewind to seven or eight years ago. I was leading worship for a small church’s yearly retreat in a little town called Orkney Springs, Virginia, and the pastor had given me permission to offer encouragements and exhortations to help his congregation grow in worship, and so from time to time I would.

On Saturday afternoon, he came to me and (notice a theme here?) said something that struck me. With a loving gentleness he said: “you have a gift for helping people feel comfortable to worship God freely. But when you speak, you need to just look them in the eye and speak more confidently. You sound like you’re sorry you’re saying what you’re saying. Speak more boldly.”

When two totally unrelated people say the exact same thing to you eight years apart, it might be a sign that they’re onto an area in which you need to grow. For me, this area is speaking more confidently to the congregation.

I don’t usually have a problem leading worship confidently if I’m prepared and prayed up. I’ve been doing it for a relatively long time. But even though I feel confident speaking to the congregation, I (apparently) can come across as timid.

It’s a bad habit I’ve developed – and my hunch is that other worship leaders have developed it too because I’ve seen it in them and it reminds me of myself.

In our attempt to be humble and gentle, we take on a particular tone of our voice and cadence of speech that is meant to sound non-threatening but ends up sounding apologetic, a bit immature, and unconfident. We don’t sound like ourselves. We sound like the diet-version of ourselves. Our voice is higher. We add in “ums”. We fiddle with our glasses. We repeat ourselves. We stumble over ourselves. We use “just” a lot. We keep our eyes closed.

Think about the four or five speakers/preachers you really enjoy listening to. They have different styles and approaches but I guarantee you they share one attribute: they speak with confidence.

Steve Brown, the guy whose class I took a month ago, likes to ruffle feathers, but one thing he said about his advice to preachers really struck me. It applies to worship leaders too. He says that every time before you preach (or lead worship) you have to do some “self-talk”. Say to yourself: “I’ve been commissioned by the High King of Heaven… and you WILL listen to me!”

That can rub us the wrong way. But strange as it sounds, it actually helps. If we’ve been called and equipped by God to serve in a ministry capacity, then we have to believe that he’s put us on the very platforms we find ourselves and in front of the very microphones pointing at our mouths because he wants to use us.

So it’s a good idea to talk like it.

The more I think about this whole issue of not sounding apologetic when I speak, the more it seems like the key is balancing three God-centered attributes: love (1 Corinthians 13:2), humility (James 4:6), and power (2 Timothy 1:7).

Maybe you have the boldness and humility down but need to grow in loving the people who are listening to you. Maybe you’re confident and loving but you’re awfully arrogant about it and need to be more humble.

But maybe your (my) problem is that you need to feel released by God to be more confident and bold when you speak. He’ll help you do this if you ask. It’s not about you flexing your muscles – but about you leading with Gospel-centered humility and Spirit-enabled power.