Though worship is strictly about the heart, Worship Teams are tasked with helping the church praise, sing, and worship God. We’re leading the way and it’s a servant role. However, worship ministry is about using our gifts in excellence. We want to do our best. From the leadership side of things, we want to take what we’ve been given to work with and improve upon it.
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What can be improved? Typically, any worship leader can look around and think of a hundred things to change, fix or upgrade, although trying to do all at once can be overwhelming. Start by growing a culture in your ministry of improving things little by little. Here are some areas that might spark your thoughts – pick something and work on it for awhile.
- The music: new songs, songs to match the instrumentation, recruiting new musicians, etc.
- The flow of worship: creative components of readings, transitions, starting and stopping songs, ending the service, videos, etc.
- The systems for planning: the set time to talk with your pastor each week, how far you plan ahead, etc.
- The skill of the team: keep helping your team grow in skill and heart, what resources are available, attend a conference
- Communication: what systems need to be in place to communicate with your team – planning center online, Facebook, email lists, etc?
- The worship space: what creative things can be added to the worship space, how can you change it a bit, what will help people worship, maybe move chairs or musical components around?
- The logistics systems: do you have systems in place for scheduling the team, rehearsals, sharing chords and charts, etc?
- Team development: do you have two or three meetings a year on your calendar to meet with the team, share articles, visit another church, ask for input, etc?
- Team administration: all the details that go into making sure your team has the details and resources they need to be effective
- Team recruitment: is there a clear path for members of the church to join the worship ministry, how do you invite new people to participate in the vocals, band or tech?
- Rehearsals: are they effective, prepared, succinct, encouraging, beneficial, non-harried?
Don’t be overwhelmed! At least you have job security…
One mental shift that has helped me is that I want to strive to get the worship ministry to a place that would be easy to hand off to someone else. Not that I’m planning to go anywhere, but when I do, I want to be able to know things are functioning as well as possible and great things are happening.
Worship leaders will always have much to work on! It’s important kingdom work and worthy of our calling as we serve Jesus and the church. But pace yourself and move forward with a mission to do the very best with what and who God has given you. We’re striving for excellence so we can remove any barriers or hindrance to people being able to freely worship and connect with God.
Take time, step back and just pick one or two of these. Think about who might help you make some changes. Think about a conversation you could have to get the ball rolling. Do some research. Seek the Lord, roll up your sleeves and get to work.
I’m praying you can move forward and make some improvements in your context.
Blessings!