Leading a worship team – Page 9

Watch Your Tone

Whether you realize it or not, when you address an instrumentalist or vocalist on your worship team, they’re listening much more to your tone than what you’re actually saying.

You have every right to point out when your drummer is playing too loudly, or your vocalist is singing the wrong melody, or your violinist is playing too much. But you have to do it carefully and lovingly. Your tone has a lot to do with this.

When I’m upset, my tone gets harsher. I might not even realize it, but it’s there. I speak more quickly and firmly. Example: “stop playing for a minute!”

When I’m impatient, my tone takes on a more bewildered quality. I speak to whomever I’m impatient with like they’re beneath me. Example: “are you ready to start yet?”

And when I’m frustrated, my tone becomes mean. Example: “I need more of myself in my monitor!”

The problem is that when you speak to members of the worship team with a less-than-gracious tone, you treat them like they work for you, not like they’re serving with you. Most people don’t take kindly to being bossed around. They’re more interested in knowing how to serve more effectively. You contribute to a boss-employee mindset or a servant-servant relationship depending on your tone.

Fundamentally, what’s important is that you display a Gospel-fueled and Spirit-enabled love for your worship team. You can try to mask frustration and impatience all you want, but it won’t work. First things first.

But even if you do love your team – from time to time you’ll need to address different members for different reasons. And in those moments, be aware that you need to watch your tone.

If you’re in a hurry and the sound engineer is struggling to get the board to cooperate, don’t add to his stress by being impatient. If your high school-aged drummer keeps speeding up, don’t add to his anxiety by declaring in front of everyone: “you’re speeding up!” Maybe take a five-minute break and talk to him one-on-one instead.

And while it’s true that they’re listening much more to your tone than what you’re actually saying – it doesn’t mean that it’s not important how you say it.

I’ve found that phrasing things more like a question can oftentimes take the hard edge off. Instead of “you’re not singing that line right”, try “could we make sure we’re singing the same thing on the chorus?” Or instead of “I don’t like how that sounds” try “can we work on that section for a minute? Here’s what I’m thinking…”

By watching your tone and addressing your team in a humble way, you will help cultivate an atmosphere of openness and creativity and joy.

The Miserable Life of the If-Only Worship Leader

It’s hard to be happy in church ministry when you keep a never-ending, never-satisfied list of “if-onlys”. This applies to people in all sorts of roles, but particularly to worship leaders.

If only I was at a bigger church with more money and more musicians.

If only I got to lead ALL the songs at a service – not just a measly four.

If only we had better equipment.

If only my pastor was more with-it.

If only people would let me do it the way I want to do it.

If only my congregation worshipped better.

If only my drummers were good.

If only I got paid a better salary and had a more impressive-sounding title.

THEN I’d be happy.

THEN my ministry would explode!

THEN my church would finally see my giftedness they’ve been missing all along!

THEN I would be satisfied.

No you wouldn’t.

The problem with jealousy is that it’s dangerous. It can’t be satisfied. It always wants more. Even if your list of if-onlys gets completely checked-off, you’ll find fifteen more things you “need”. You end up spinning your wheels in ministry – always waiting for that one missing thing – that one missing musician – that one missing pay raise – that one great worship set – and never really thrive.

Proverbs 27:4 says: “Wrath is cruel, anger is overwhelming, but who can stand before jealousy?” Jealously is uniquely destructive and paralyzing, and a never-ending list of if-onlys is a symptom of that paralysis.

It’s one thing to have God-birthed dreams and hopes and longings for your ministry and the church you serve. These are good and important and helpful. I know that I have clung to these – and prayed fervently for these dreams to finally come true. I still have dreams and still pray for needs to be met and struggle with growing in wisdom regarding how and how long to wait.

But it’s another thing altogether to either wait until every single thing is in place to finally be able to minister effectively – or to stoke prideful jealousy by always wanting more – or to mask symptoms of your real need for growth by blaming them on something you need that you don’t have.

To each and every worship leader reading this post: let me encourage you and challenge you.

You have been placed exactly where you are by God. He is faithful. He knows your needs. He knows your desires. His timing is perfect. Trust in and wait on him.

So get your eyes off of other churches and other worship leaders and what cool gear they have and how much farther along they are and how much more their congregation really gets it. Stop waiting for that one elusive missing thing that will make you happy.

Churches need worship leaders who will love them, stick around for the long haul, have a high tolerance for drudgery, and faithfully serve them through easy and difficult seasons. We do our congregations a disservice if we’re always waiting for one last thing to fall into place or looking for a better gig.

“Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” (Psalm 37:4)

If only we would do that more! Then we’d be happy. Then we’d be satisfied.

Giving Your Worship Team Options

I don’t like having to decide before a service exactly how I’m going to lead a song, how we should start it, how we should end it, or what (if anything) we’ll repeat. Until I’m actually leading the song, seeing and hearing how people are responding, and sensing where God is leading, I never quite know what will work best. Having the freedom to make last-minute (or second) decisions is helpful.

There are exceptions of course, like when a song is accompanied by a dance or a video, or when we’re following a specific arrangement, or when a lot of moving pieces are involved like choirs, organ, orchestra, etc. In those cases it can make a lot of sense to decide ahead of time the exact roadmap for a song.

But the worship team at my church has gotten used to me saying to them during rehearsal something along the lines of: “we’ll see what happens. We might do this, or we might do that.”

I’ve found it helpful to let my worship team know what the options are on a particular song. Take this past weekend for example:

We started with Sovereign Grace Music’s “Greater Than We Can Imagine”. On the recording, the band comes in together at the beginning at full volume. I told my team that we’d either do that, or I’d just come into verse one quietly, we’d slowly build, and then be in full by verse two. It depended on how it felt in the room. We ended up coming in slowly.
We sang Matt Redman’s “This is How We Know” which we had taught the week earlier. On Saturday night I made a last minute decision to skip the bridge, since I felt like people were just barely getting the feel of the verse and chorus. On Sunday morning I told them that we might do the bridge or we might not. We ended up not doing it.

Sometimes I’ll tell the worship team: “when we get to the end of verse three, we’ll do one of two things. Either we’ll play the intro and go back to verse one, or play the ending and sing the last line over it a few times. Just follow me at the end of verse three and I’ll let you know.”

On our chord charts sometimes I’ll even include “option A” after a chorus or bridge, or “option B”. During rehearsal I’ll tell the team to watch me for a cue. Usually option A is the default so my “cue” is doing nothing. Option B is something we might do – or only do once – and so my cue is looking back at them and nodding “like something is about to happen”. It sounds silly but after a few years the worship team knows what I mean when I say that.

It can be frustrating to be locked into a predetermined way of doing every song before the service starts. But it can be equally (or more) frustrating to have no idea what you’re going to do and expect it all to come together on the fly and your musicians to read your mind. As much as you can, let your worship team know what the different options are within a certain song, rehearse those parts, and make sure they’re comfortable. The more you do this the more natural it will become for everyone.

Communicating Modesty Standards to the Women on Your Worship Team

Every year around this time I send an email to all of the women on the worship team at my church to remind them about the importance of watching what they wear when they’re helping lead worship.

It’s awkward to say many of the things that need to be said since I’m a guy. So I had my amazing wife Catherine write the email for me. We tweak it every year, but it mostly stays the same.

Here’s what Catherine wrote. Feel free to pass this along to your worship team if you think it would be helpful:

“To all the beautiful ladies on the worship team,

Its that time of year again when temperatures no longer dictate modesty. I’ve sent out emails about this before but was reminded of the challenge this past Sunday when I showed up to church in a dress that seemed not-so-low-cut at home but was, I thought, inappropriately low with a baby tugging on it! Arg. So, here’s a quick reminder about expectations for modesty on the worship team from someone who doesn’t always succeed in following them herself. (I do try!)

A quick reminder of why this is a big deal as worship team members: Mostly because our purpose is to draw attention to the Lord, not ourselves. We all know that most men struggle with purity in the way they look at scantily clad women. Many of them are very successful in meeting this challenge, but the time to test them in their resolve is not in church. (As if we should really be testing them any time!) Yes, it’s their responsibility to guard their hearts and avert their eyes if we are just too beautiful, but we can lovingly assist them in this as their sisters by not tempting them! Our goal is to lead them into seeing Jesus, not distract them.

Some practical guidelines (as “modesty” can be a very vague term): Sorry if these are a little over-explicit, but I know we all come to modesty from different places, so this gets us on the same page.

No cleavage in the front or back
This was my mom’s favorite rule to tell her students when she taught science lab classes. I love it! But, just be careful that your shirt is not showing cleavage and that you can lean over to pick up fallen music without showing those front row people a little more of God’s beautiful creation than they should be seeing. I know this is hard with deep “v”s in, but tank tops underneath are always an option. (Be careful in this too, as I know I’ve been frustrated to discover that some of my tank tops are even a little low cut if I’m being careful.)

Test skirts for length
This is more of a challenge this year than it has been in the past, as short skirts are definitely in. I think a good rule of thumb for when you’re up front is that your skirt should touch your knees when you’re standing up and not show too much thigh when you’re sitting down. Also, remember that when you’re in the informal choir, you are elevated in comparison to much of the congregation. This means your skirts will look shorter since they are looking up to you.

Make sure you can be expressive in worship without showing skin between your shirt and your skirt/pants.
Again, long tanks tucked in or out can be helpful in this. Raise your hands in front of the mirror and see what you see! You don’t want to be inhibited in worship because of a shirt that might ride up. Also, check for underwear (or “cleavage”) sightings when you sit down.

Use discretion in the tightness of your attire

As summer comes use discretion about sleeve lengths
I really don’t think sleeveless shirts or dresses are an issue, but strapless is obviously out (unless you wear a sweater over the top) and I think the same could be said about strappy or tanks.

Oh, and obviously make sure that your underwear isn’t visible through your clothes (ie. no see-thru clothes)!

I know that sometimes modesty can be a touchy issue with women, so I hope I haven’t offended anyone! None of these are hard-and-fast rules. They’re just the things I try to think about as I pick clothes. And the reasons I get mad at my wardrobe so many times as my clothes shrink in the wash or I gain weight. (Ha. There’s only so long after having a baby that you can legitimately wear those nice long maternity tops!)

One more story (that I’ve told before) before I stop: My junior year in college, one guy (you don’t know him) started leading worship in chapel on a semi-regular basis. He seemed nice, Godly, and smart. But he always wore very tight shirts. It was actually kind of uncomfortable to look at. So my roommate and I dubbed him “one who causes us to stumble”. (Although I have to admit that we didn’t think he was very attractive, just dressed in such a way that it seemed he was trying to attract. He was not attractive, but he was distracting.)

Now whenever I hear about that guy, or see people he hung out with, I am reminded of his yucky tight shirts. I guess the point is that we are not the only ones who should be dressed to attract attention to the Lord, not our bodies. But this is only to the girls because its a lot easier for men to dress modestly and undistractingly. (Sheesh. Most of the time, they’re just boring… “-ly dressed”, that is.)

Love,
Catherine

When the Congregation Claps On the Wrong Beat

This past Sunday we closed our service with Tim Hughes’ song “Happy Day” celebrating the “empty cross, the empty grave” and “life eternal” that Jesus won for us.

I started the song off by playing four measures on my own, and then the rest of the band joined me. The problem? They were one beat behind.

Because my intro was just straight eighth-notes and I jumped into it after saying something to the congregation, my drummer (who is super gifted) couldn’t quite tell which beat was the downbeat. Hence the band coming in one beat behind.

I quickly realized that this meant the congregation was clapping on the wrong beat.

What should I do? Go the entire song with the congregation clapping on the wrong beat? Try to fight them and hope they figure it out? Or just stop the song and start over?

I chose the last option. I just motioned to the band to stop, told the congregation we were going to start over and why, and then we tried it again and got it right.

Here’s how it sounded:

I think this is the first time I’ve ever had to stop a song and re-start it. I don’t imagine it will happen that often. But sometimes, like this past Sunday morning, it’s the best option.

And I think it was the right call this time. It showed the congregation we don’t take ourselves too seriously, it helped the band get back on track, and allowed us to sing the rest of the song without a huge distraction. This kind of thing helps keep us humble. It’s also fun to look back on it (or listen back as the case may be) and laugh. And learn. But mostly laugh.