Leading a worship team – Page 5

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.

Six Avoidable Mistakes When Disciplining (or Correcting) a Worship Team Member

One of the responsibilities of worship leaders is to build and cultivate a community of fellow musicians to help serve the congregation in leading worship. You can call that community a worship team, worship band, praise team, praise band, band, or whatever term you come up with. Whatever you call it, it can be a great joy to lead this kind of community of fellow-musicians. It can also be really difficult.

Musicians have the infamous artistic temperament that makes them not only opinionated, and not only comfortable sharing those opinions, but turns those opinions into “rights”. Musicians then want to protect their rights and their territories against anyone who would seek to invade. Plus, they’re sinners like everyone else.

From time to time, if you’re a worship leader attempting to lead a healthy worship team, you will be faced with difficult situations when you’ll need to bring correction to one of your fellow musicians, or in more difficult situations, bring discipline. You will lose sleep over these situations, and you will want to avoid them. But sometimes it will be clear to you that you need to address an issue with a member of your team.

Here are six mistakes I’ve made, that you shouldn’t make, when disciplining or correcting a worship team member.

1. Interact Primarily Over Email
If at all possible, avoid the use of email from beginning to end. The more difficult the type of interaction, the more healthy it is. A face to face conversation is crucial. If that’s impossible, then a phone call. Under no circumstances should you interact over email. Emails can be so much more easily misinterpreted, misread, forwarded, blind-copied, and saved forever. Pretend you’re handling this before the invention of the computer.

2. Insist On Meeting On Your Turf
Do not insist that the meeting take place on church property, or in your office. That’s your turf, not theirs, and it will immediately cause their defenses to go up. Not good. Find a neutral place, and a public place, for both of you. A coffee shop or a restaurant. This will level the playing field and increase the odds of a relaxed atmosphere.

3. Handle It All By Yourself
You have people over you. Take advantage of their covering. The single most stupid thing I’ve done when I’ve had to deal with a difficult issue is to keep it from my pastor until it had blown up. Consult him, ask him what you should do, have your pastor in the meeting with you, and keep him totally in the loop. Don’t put yourself in a position to take all the bullets or do/say something unwise. Use the covering God has put over you.

4. Let It Simmer
So a band member has a profanity-laced temper tantrum at rehearsal. The rest of the team is shocked. You’re shocked. They’re all wondering if you’re going to address it. Tension is building. Don’t let it simmer. You might not think stopping rehearsal is wise, but address it before the guy goes home. It might be easier in the short-term to let things slide, but in the long-term it will build tension and pressure in your team that will be unhealthy.

5. Don’t Know What Outcome You Want
On a scale of 1 – 5, 1 being minor correction (i.e. I can tell you didn’t practice one single bit and that’s why you ruined half of the songs) and 5 being major correction (i.e. I need to ask you to step down from the team for a while), you need to know what you want for the person. If you go into a meeting/conversation with the person without an acceptable outcome in mind, then you could very likely get trampled on.

6. Be Unwilling to Apologize
You’re not perfect. You don’t communicate with your team as well as you could. You lead a rehearsal on an empty stomach and say something mean-spirited to your drummer. You ask a singer to sing a song you know he or she can’t pull off. It could be anything. Be the first to apologize, the first to show contrition and humility, and genuinely ask forgiveness for things you’ve done wrong. Even if your apology isn’t reciprocated, you’ve done the right thing and will get a better night’s sleep even if the meeting doesn’t end the way you hoped.

It’s a great joy to lead a worship team. It’s also hard work. If you’re faithful and consistent in the hard things, then the joy, morale, and unity on your team will increase. If you avoid the hard things, then no one will be happy.

A New Year To Do Old Things

So it’s 2013. A new year, a fresh start, and a new number you have to get used to writing on your checks. That’s the hardest part for me.

We hear a lot in these first few weeks of a new year about doing new things, or making new resolutions. There’s a pressure on us, in our personal lives and in our professional lives, to do things a little bit differently.

Worship leaders aren’t immune to this pressure. We can begin feel the need to be more innovative, creative, and different than we were last year. Just this morning as I was watching the archived first session of the Passion 2013 conference I noticed feeling the pressure: teach these new songs, incorporate these new sounds, and do it this coming Sunday.

Growing and changing are not only good things, but they’re necessary things. Living things grow and change. Psalm 1 describes the man who delights in God as being like “a tree planted by streams of water…” Since when have you seen a living tree not change from year to year?

But the focus on the new can come at the expense of the focus on the old. Yes, it’s good to let God grow us up and change us as worship leaders as we draw from him. But don’t forget the old things that you’re called to. Year after year after year.

Love Jesus. Study his word and worship Him when no one’s looking.

Love your family. Don’t fall victim to the worldly pressure to overwork and miss out on your commitments in the home.

Love the Church. With all of its issues and problems and politics, it’s the body of Christ and you’re a part.

Love your worship team. Don’t treat your worship team like they’re just a bunch of names on a monthly schedule. Build community and foster friendship among your team.

Love your congregation. Don’t become a celebrity who only appears on a stage every Sunday. You might be a great singer, but if you don’t have love, you’re just a resounding gong (1 Corinthians 13:1).

Love to see your worship team leading your congregation in singing to Jesus. All of the above combine in a worship leader’s heart that finds no greater joy on Sunday morning than being caught up in praise to Jesus with a worship team and a congregation all singing the same song.

So, this new year with new pressures to do things in a new way, may we not forsake the old, foundational things that really matter: loving Jesus, loving our families, loving our churches, and loving to sing the unchanging song of heaven for all eternity: worthy is the Lamb.

Try Not to Act Like a Narcissist

A few months ago I was taking a seminary course on pastoral counseling through the Washington D.C. campus of RTS, or Reformed Theological Seminary. At one point the professor was making a tangential point about one of the defining characteristics of narcissists, which is that they treat the people in their lives like they’re cardboard cutouts. They can move them around, put them down, raise them up, dispose of them, and use them however it serves them.

Then he moved on, and moved back to whatever the main point was that he was making.

But I couldn’t get past what he had just said. Narcissists treat people in their lives like they’re cardboard cutouts.

I immediately started thinking about how I interact with the members of my worship team. The ones I know well. The ones I don’t know so well. The newer members. The stronger members. The weaker members. Do I value them and treat them like brothers and sisters with love and respect and honor? Or do I see them as cardboard cutouts, names on a spreadsheet, there at my disposal to be used as I deem best, with no consideration of their hearts?

Now, I think I’m a pretty sensitive guy and try to do my best to care for the musicians with whom I serve alongside. But, newsflash of the century here, I’m not perfect, and in that moment in that seminary class, I think the Holy Spirit was convicting me of a dangerous ability to be careless with people in the church and, perhaps unknowingly, act in a way that can be hurtful to them.

Maybe it’s not scheduling someone for 6 months and never explaining to them why. Maybe it’s never responding to an email from someone, deleting it, and assuming they’ll just go away. Maybe it’s not getting back to someone who asked you to call them. Who knows.

Try not to be a narcissist. Treat people with love and honor. It doesn’t mean you to have to make everyone happy and never be tough. You need to be tough in ministry sometimes. But don’t be a jerk.

As a wonderful old lady in one of my former churches once told me, ministry will (hopefully) make you tough and sweet. That’s what the Holy Spirit wants to help us be, and by God’s grace, he’ll keep helping us find the balance.

Ten Worship Leading Myths

There isn’t a worship leader in the world who doesn’t struggle with regular, persistent, frustratingly silly (but still dangerous) moments of doubt/fear/anxiety/self-consciousness/jealousy. We start to believe myths that tell us we should be different, or we aren’t talented enough, or we shouldn’t uphold certain principles. These myths weaken our ministry as worship leaders.

Here are ten common worship leading myths that come to mind:

1: Every week you have to be more creative than the last. Wrong. Every week you get to point people to Jesus again.

2: Don’t waste too much time thinking/praying about songs for Sunday. Wrong. This is your most important job.

3: You need a great voice. Wrong. If God calls you then you’re the man for the job. Sing with abandon.

4: You have to stay up-to-date with all the new stuff. Wrong. None of the stuff changes lives. Jesus does.

5: You’ve really arrived when you get famous. Wrong. The Church needs servants not celebrities.

6: if people aren’t into it then something’s wrong with your leading. Wrong. That’s the Holy Spirit’s job. Be patient.

7: Anyone with a willing heart should serve on the worship team. Wrong. Look for heart AND giftedness.

8: The Holy Spirit only shows up on the 4th song. Wrong. Don’t create formulas. Magnify Jesus in whatever time you have.

9: You’d be happier at another church. Wrong. You’d just have different challenges and different reasons to be unhappy.

10: You should speak before every song. Wrong. The more you talk, the less they hear what you’re actually saying.

I know I missed several hundred more myths that worship leaders believe. If you’ve got any to share, I’d love to hear them.