Leading a worship team – Page 3

Leading Effective and Enjoyable Rehearsals

Ineffective and unenjoyable rehearsals are worship team morale killers and congregational engagement limiters. The more your team is out of sync with itself, the less your team is able to function like a healthy body, operating in the way that it should, and unable to meet its responsibility to the congregation it stands before on Sundays.

I’ve led all sorts of different kinds of rehearsals, on different days of the week, at different times of the day, in a variety of venues, and with different time constraints (or the lack thereof). I’ve made lots of mistakes in the process, and I’ve also learned some lessons that have come in handy. Learning how to lead rehearsals that are both effective and enjoyable, no matter what your setting or constraints, is crucial to your success and your team’s success at leading worship with musical skill for the purpose of exalting Jesus Christ.

Here are some pointers:

Rehearsal should start before rehearsal. Communicate with your team before rehearsal, getting them the music well in advance, and giving them links to listen to/watch any new songs. Your expectation needs to be that your team is ready when they arrive.

Start on time. If rehearsal is at 7:30am on Sunday morning, ask your team to get into the habit of setting up at 7:20am. Start at 7:30am. Of course things happen, traffic is bad, people oversleep, or a boss makes someone stay late at work. But do your best to start when you said you’ll start.

Start with a proper sound check. If you’re rehearsing in your worship space, with a sound engineer, start with a sound check. This starts with letting the sound engineer set the gain levels on each channel, and then should progress with setting monitor levels. When you begin to have your sound engineer set monitor levels, do two things: first, have your drummer start to play and keep playing. Secondly, add different instruments one-at-a-time in a certain key.

For example, after we set gain levels and we’re ready to work on monitor mixes, I’ll say to my drummer “alright, can you play a rock beat in 4/4”. Then he’ll start to play. If we’re using in-ear monitors, and everyone’s belt pack is at the normal spot, I’ll say “raise your hand if you need more drums”. Then I’ll wait until the sound engineer has addressed the requests. Then “raise your hand if you need less drums”. Same drill. Then add bass. “Raise your hand if you need more bass”. Then, “raise your hand if you need less bass”. If you have any panning requests (i.e. put the bass in my left ear) you can do it now. Then add the different instruments on top, while the already-added instruments keep playing, but not overly so. Finish with the vocals. You’re running this whole sound check, keeping it moving, talking into your mic so everyone can hear you. It shouldn’t last any more than 3 or 4 minutes.

Then you’re ready to run through the songs.

Drive the bus. Lead the rehearsal with intentionality, with order, with decisiveness, and with authority. Yes, foster a “team” atmosphere by asking for ideas, feedback, etc. when it’s appropriate. But rehearsals aren’t the time for lots of free-for-alls. And when those moments come, unless you keep them moving, they can grind rehearsal to an ineffective and unenjoyable halt. Keep your hand on the wheel, respecting people’s time, and addressing the parts that need to be addressed.

Avoid playing every song through from start to finish several times. You should only play songs from start to finish if they’re brand new, or if you’re re-arranging them, or if you’re working with new musicians, or if you’re preparing for a live recording. Most of the time, playing through a verse and chorus (and then skipping the second verse and chorus) and jumping to the bridge before cutting it off at the final chorus. Get comfortable with the phrases “you guys know this one” or “when we get to this point in the song we’ll do it this way” or “we’re fine with this one, right”? Few things are as painful during rehearsals then getting bogged down for another 4 minutes playing a song all the way through again.

Work on transitions. Transitions are huge. Smooth transitions make such a positive contribution to the cohesion of a worship service. Instead of wasting time on unnecessarily playing through entire songs again, take time to work on how you’ll finish a song, how you’ll transition to the next song, and how the team will enter that next song. You can go over things like this several times. It will help you relax, and it will help the whole team be more in sync during the transitions, as opposed to just flipping pages on a music stand and looking around like confused tourists.

Make jokes. If you’re all-business and all-serious, then you’ll be missing out on the key ingredient of laughter. People love to laugh. And musicians love to laugh at themselves. Yes, keep the train moving down the tracks. But look for strategic moments to let the train stop, to make jokes, to have some fun banter, and to foster a sense of family.

Review. Don’t get to the last song in your list and let everyone go. Go back through the set list, have your team follow along in their music, and talk through what’s going to happen and when. Talk over key parts. Play through any tricky spots. This review time is key to reminding everyone what to work on between the rehearsal and the service.

Make rehearsals about Sundays. Rehearsals for the sake of rehearsal isn’t a compelling reason for people to care about rehearsals. Rehearsals for the sake of being ready for Sunday is a reason for people to be on their game.

Pray. Maybe it will work best for you to pray with your team at the end of rehearsal. Maybe at the beginning. Maybe after the sound check. Don’t worry so much about when to pray, but make sure that prayer is part of each rehearsal, no matter how tight your time constraints. Encourage the team to pray for the service, for the congregation, for the tech team (and have the tech team join you, by the way), for the pastor(s) (and have the pastor(s) join you too if they can), and for your role. Humbly ask the Holy Spirit to guide you, unify you, and empower you.

Maybe you rehearse in your worship space, with a sound engineer, and have the luxury of being able to go for 90 minutes (never go past 90 minutes even if you can!). Or maybe you’re downstairs in the choir room, gathered around a piano, with your drummer practicing on the bottom of a chair, with 15 minutes to talk through the songs before you can quickly set up for your service and launch right into it. Whatever your rehearsal situation, and however ideal or not-ideal, you can’t expect a rehearsal to run itself, or for a team to organize itself.

Lead rehearsals with clarity and strength, with good humor, with an eye on the clock and an ear tuned to the Spirit’s guiding. Your team will thank you and the congregation will ignore you and focus instead on Christ.

Lessons From the Last Decade: Leading A Worship Team Well

When I came to The Falls Church Anglican ten years ago, I inherited a worship team of about 20-30 members, made up of men and women of different ages, backgrounds, musical experiences, etc. Over the last decade there’s been almost complete (and constant) turnover in the team (Washington D.C. is a very transient area), though there are a few that have been with me the whole time, and I have really enjoyed this part of my “job”.

But I’ve not always done a great job at leading a worship team. I’ve made some mistakes (!) and learned some lessons, and I offer these suggestions for those of you who have any role in the leading, caring, and feeding of a group of volunteers/musicians in your own church.

Recruit to a vision
Don’t just fill musical slots. Recruit people who want to be involved in serving the congregation in a pastoral role, using music as a tool to point the church to Christ.

Add slowly
It’s easier to add someone to a team than it is to ask someone to step down from a team. Resist the temptation to put someone up front before you’re sure (and they’re sure) they’re ready to be a committed member of the church.

Add carefully
Don’t just audition someone musically. Ask them to tell you their story. Ask them why they want to serve. Listen to their testimony. Tell them what you’re looking for. See what questions they ask you. Let them come to a few rehearsals. Let them play on a Sunday or two before they’re officially on the team. Look for the three Cs: character, competency, and chemistry.

Build community
Your team’s effectiveness in worship leading will increase exponentially if they love each other, have fun and laugh together, pray together, worship together, go out to eat with one another, have inside jokes with one another, and enjoy each other’s company.

Don’t lose momentum
It will take years to build the kind of community I describe above. But you can torpedo it in a matter of weeks or months if you don’t keep cultivating it, through intentional time together outside of Sunday mornings.

Be a clear leader
In your musical and pastoral roles, be as clear as you can be about what your goals are, and what your expectations are. People respond well to clear leadership. They shy away from timidity.

Be organized, dependable, and consistent
A disorganized leader breeds a messy team. An undependable leader breeds a flaky team. And an inconsistent leader breeds a dysfunctional team. You set the tone.

Always pray when you’re together
No meeting, rehearsal, or service should happen without you calling your team to a time of prayer. Never give people the impression that you think you don’t need God’s help.

Keep people laughing
People love to laugh. If your times together as a team are marked by laughter, then people will want to come back, even if it means getting up early, staying out late, or spending an entire morning at church. Laughter is a powerfully magnetic tool.

Laugh at yourself
Be the first person to poke fun at yourself. This will set a tone of humility and self-forgetfulness that will permeate the whole atmosphere of your team.

Don’t ask too much of people
The members of your team are real people with lives, families, jobs, other commitments, etc. If being a member of your team has a detrimental impact on their lives, you’re asking too much of them. When the problem is that you’re asking too much, you need to reevaluate your system. But if the problem is that someone is just too busy, then you need to be quick to release people before they get burned out.

Don’t ask too little of people either
Call people to a high standard of service, musicianship, involvement, preparation, ministry, and commitment. Then expect them to step up. It’s possible to do this in a way that’s not at odds with people’s family/personal lives and careers (and it looks different depending on where your church is). People want to be challenged, they want to grow, and they want you to help them.

Performing A Role Or Performing A Show? Looking At The Fruit

Yes, we’re all performers.

The stay-at-home Mom performs her duties as well as she can on as little sleep as she gets. The mechanic performs his duties with the tools and training he’s gained through the years.

And the worship leader performs his or her Sunday duties on a platform of some kind, with musicians and vocalists of some kind, with training and (hopefully) practice of some kind. So, yes, worship leaders and their teams are performers, in one sense of the word.

But the word “perform” can mean two things: First, do a job. Second, put on a show. It’s the second meaning of the word that worship leaders have to avoid. We have to perform a role (which has both musical and pastoral components) focusing a congregation on Christ, without performing a show, focusing a congregation on us. It’s a fine line. And it’s a crucial distinction to make.

DISTINCTION ONE: Our role is to serve our congregation by performing our role of helping them see and savor (and sing to) Jesus Christ.

– This requires pastoral gifts and sensitivities (i.e. knowing, loving, and serving our people).

– It requires musical skill (i.e. choosing songs, directing musicians, running rehearsals, and leading music).

– It requires leadership gifts (i.e. working with volunteers, arranging a team, interacting with different kinds of people, and leading a congregation in singing).

– And finally, it requires a certain comfort level with being up front, being seen, and being heard, in order to ensure the congregation’s confidence in singing to Jesus.

– All of these pastoral, musical, leadership, and up-front gifts go into us performing our Sunday morning role as a worship leader, facilitating the corporate exaltation of Jesus Christ.

DISTINCTION TWO: Our role is not to entertain our congregation by performing a show (that they are welcome to follow along to if they can, or just observe).

– This diminishes the pastoral component of our role, since entertaining a crowd allows us to be more removed from the people.

– This disproportionately elevates musical skill to being the primary ingredient in the mix, since the demand is not so much on facilitating congregational singing, but more on keeping them entertained.

– This de-emphasizes pastoral/musical leadership, and instead demands a certain degree of star-power necessary to carry a musical performance from week to week.

– And this exalts the up-front persona, or stage presence, as being less about facilitating congregational singing, and more about performing the songs well.

– This is not the description of a worship leader performing his role. It’s the description of someone performing a show.

CRUCIAL DISTINCTION:
(1) Performing the different aspects of our role with humility, excellence, and skill, for the sake of building up of a congregation into Christ and helping them sing TO Christ, is effective worship leading. The fruit is that people focus on Jesus.

(2) Performing a sequence of songs in front of a congregation in a way that leads them to focus on the performance and the performers, is effectively performancism. The fruit is that people focus on the performers.

Of course we can’t help if someone, or let’s say a whole congregation, just happens to want to focus on us, even though our heart is absolutely in the place of performing a worship leading role. Every worship leader experiences leading a group of people who just aren’t responsive, no matter how hard they try or how much they pray.

But we can help what kind of fruit we’re planting.

If you want to grow apples, plant an apple tree. And take care of that apple tree. It might not grow apples for a long time. But eventually, if you planted it right, it will grow the right kind, and right flavor, of fruit.

Same goes for worship leaders. If we want people to look at Jesus, then plant that fruit. If we want people to look at us, then plant that fruit. We decide what kind of fruit to plant.

But God will only water one kind of fruit. The other kind will shrivel up and die.

Know Your Destination

Occasionally my wife and I will get in the car (i.e. minivan), with all three kids successfully fastened into their car seats, with the diaper bag appropriately packed with snacks, drinks, diapers, wipes, back-up clothes, etc., and the correct shoes on the correct feet, and have absolutely no idea where we’re going.

I’ll back out of the driveway and Catherine will ask me something like “where are we going?” I’ll respond “I don’t know“. And then we’ll proceed to decide if we want to go to Starbucks, or the grocery store, or the mall, or to a playground, or some other errand. We knew we wanted to get out of the house before we all went crazy, but we hadn’t quite figured out where we were going to go. Minor detail.

I think worship leaders can foolishly approach service planning like this sometimes. We get to the service with songs picked and rehearsed, a band/choir arranged and ready, a service outline printed out and ready to be followed, and the congregation coming to fill the seats. But we have absolutely no idea where we’re going.

I’ve heard preachers say that they know they’re in trouble when they can’t tell their spouse in one sentence what their sermon is going to communicate. I think the same is true for worship leaders. If we can’t articulate in one sentence what our songs (and whole service) is going to communicate, then we’re in trouble.

I’ve talked a lot about this idea in recent months. I used the example of the writers of the TV series LOST who obviously had no idea where the narrative was heading and just started throwing in nonsense. And last week I talked about how, when planning a service, you can approach it from the perspective of a core and an angle.

I just want to add that, just like on a successful trip in the car requires that you know where you’re going, how you’re going to get there, what turns to take, and what route is best, an effective worship leader will know where he or she is going, how they’re going to get there, what turns to take, and what route is best. Choosing songs without knowing how they make sense in the larger narrative of your service will result in you driving around aimlessly for a while and burning lots of gas.

Know your destination! Your passengers will thank you.

Interview with Worship Links

Worship Links is a great website with tons of good resources for worship leaders. A few weeks ago they asked me a few questions and today they’ve posted the answers here. Check it out.

(You’ll also get some chocolate chip cookie dunking advice in there as an added bonus.)