Conferences and Coaches

A pastor - who was also an author - once joked that the subtitle to every book, if it were honest should read: ‘How to be more like me.’ Truthfully, the same could be said of most conferences. And perhaps that is the point? We admire what people do, and are curious about how and why they do things in certain ways. For worship leaders, I believe there can be an amazing benefit to attending worship conferences, like observing and learning from the wisdom and experience of people who have worked, lived, learned, and led in different contexts. Ministry can feel isolating, so just being in a room with other people who do what you do can be a reminder that you are not in this alone. Worship conferences can grow strength and courage for you to persevere in leading and serving God’s people well. And there is even the opportunity to grow relationships and camaraderie that outlast the event. I have attended several worship conferences over the years and have loved and benefitted from my time. But for me, I have often been unsettled about a disconnect I experience at conferences - the aspiration verse my reality. When I have the opportunity to attend a worship conference and learn from the ‘best of the best,’ it is so easy to compare and contrast myself, my team, and my church over and against what I am seeing and learning at a conference. I have to constantly guard my heart as to not allow bitterness, resentment, or discontent to take root. Truthfully, we need to guard our hearts against these things at all times. And we can just as easily compare ourselves over and against those we view as less capable and get ourselves in the same vicious cycle of pride and vain conceit.

I believe there is a way to be trained and equipped as a worship leader, with your team, and for you church in a way that leaves you feeling more encouraged about where you are and where the team is headed. I believe that way is hiring a coach.

When I was serving in a previous church, I brought in a worship leader friend of mine to coach me, our leaders, and our team. It was enormously helpful in at least three ways:

An outside perspective. It is easy to overlook or miss people, problems, talent, and opportunity simply because of our proximity to our work, relationships, and ministry. A coach can make observations from their experience and background that bring a new perspective to your specific context.

Personally crafted. When I brought in my friend, Shelly, to coach one of the teams I led, I did so specifically because she was a female worship leader who did not lead from an instrument. Many of the worship leaders I was working with at the time were female who did not lead from instruments. I wanted our worship leaders and team to benefit from Shelly’s knowledge and expertise, but I too wanted to know how I could encourage and equip these worship leaders whose experience of leading would be different from my own. This is a massive benefit to hiring a coach rather than attending a conference. Because a good coach can craft training and development that is specific for you, your team, and your church.

Questions. Many conferences will have the opportunity for a time of Q&A. The benefit of questions with a coach is the context and relationship. A coach will be more familiar with you, your team, and your church. They will have a better understanding of the skills, gifts, and struggles you are trying to navigate and will be able to ask you questions to personally craft training and offer their outside perspective. You too will have the benefit of more than a few brief moments for questions, and hoping for a helpful response.

So should you take your team to a conference or should you hire a coach? The answer is yes. There are benefits to both. But if you are looking for a place where you can ask as many questions as you like, have a development plan crafted specifically for you, your team, and your church, and have the observations of someone outside of your context, a coach is the way to go.

If you’d like to explore what coaching with me would look like, you can sign up for a free 30-minute assessment call here.

Identifying and Developing New Leaders

I had been leading worship all of three months when my youth pastor said, ‘Your goal as a leader is to work yourself out of a job.’ Discipleship, that is the goal. As a worship leader we make disciples of those we lead in corporate sung worship, but we also make disciples of our team, and those who carry culture, responsibility, and leadership as a part of the worship team. Whether your team is made up of two, or two hundred, whether you have been leading worship for three months or thirty years, as followers of Christ we are called to make disciples (Matt 28:19).

So what does it look like to make disciples, to raise up leaders, to pass on authority, and responsibility to those under our care? I believe the first step is identifying who you already have in your team. Who are the people who are unintentionally shaping the culture of your team? Who are the people on your team who are naturally servant-hearted, who are showing up early, staying late, arriving prepared, who are teachable, and passionate about Jesus, His Church, and leading His people in worship of Him? Sometimes those individuals will raise their hand in interest of taking on greater leadership roles within the Church. Sometimes you will have to observe, learn, and invite people to step into greater responsibility. Either way, this requires discernment and wisdom. I have often found that these people are not necessarily the ones that the world would peg as the obvious choice for a leadership role. These are often people who are quiet, consensus builders, who are as happy to serve in the background. When you see consistent characteristics in an individual that you would hope to be true of the entire team, these need to be individuals who you cultivate to take on greater responsibility. Call forth these characteristics, heart, and gifting, and invite those people to do what comes naturally to them, intentionally for the service of the team.

Training is ongoing for all of us. But if you are seeking to develop and train a new worship leader, whether someone has never functioned in that role, or is new to your church and team, we must be clear and intentional about explaining the why behind the what. How do you run rehearsals? How do you build teams and set lists? How do you communicate with the pastor through the week? How do you run rehearsals, set up sound, and lyrics? All of those things are important to communicate to a new leader, but just explaining what you do makes them competent to lead worship in your specific environment and culture, but does not train, develop, and equip them to know what motivates the reasons behind your specific context. What is worship? Why do you pick these specific songs, in this particular order for the Sunday gathering? Why do you not use certain songs? Why is it important to plan your liturgies in line with a sermon/series? Why do you work to build relationships with the worship team? Communicate the what, and you will train people for a specific context, communicate the why and equip them to be a leader in any context.

Once you have identified your leader/s, and have found a rhythm of investment, communicating the why, what does it look like to equip them to lead worship as a part of your team, and church? The rhythm I have seen, experienced, and led before that I have found to be the most helpful: new leader watches me (preparation, rehearsal, leading), new leader serves on the platform with me (I am still leading all of the songs), new leader serve on the platform with me, but now they lead a song or two in the service, new leader leads worship (I am on the platform but not vocally leading any songs), new leader leads on their own, I watch. This is not a quick process, but it gives time for a new leader to feel comfortable in the role, as well as the team and the congregation to feel familiar with their presence on the platform.

Be on the lookout for leaders. They are everywhere, but often the best ones need to be called forth to be trained and equipped.

Assessment and Stewardship

Assessing a team made up largely of volunteers may seem cold, formal, or too professional. These people willingly give their time, energy, and talents, shouldn’t we just let ‘em at it? Does creating some kind of expectation of excellence and growth focus our work externally when what we should really be concerned about is the heart?

As with many things we hold tensions. On one side we are commanded to play skillfully (Ps 33:3). On the other, we know that the Lord seeks true worshipers - and true worshipers live a life marked by worship (Jn 4:23, Rom 12). But I would like to suggest that these two tensions hold hands. And our responsibility as leaders of a team is to hold both tensions on behalf of those we serve.

Assessing our teams requires a shift in perspective. We can easily mistake assessment for comparison - contrasting what you see in other worship teams, and other churches, or even among the individuals serving in your team. Comparison is a perverted form of assessment. Assessing your team is about stewarding well the gifts and resources God has entrusted to your Church, your leadership, and the worship team. And as leaders, we carry the gift and responsibility of calling forth life from those we serve alongside. To name what we see. To encourage and fan the flame of beauty, goodness, and truth.

As you begin to assess the team, I suggest a grid of four categories to consider: Musical, Theological, Practical, and Leadership. These four categories help us to think holistically about the individual, not just about the way in which they fit into the team. I have a free assessment tool that gives you questions for each category, you may download the assessment tool here. And when you’re ready to move your team from assessment to actionable steps you can schedule a phone consultation with me, here.

People are not obstacles to overcome or tools to use, they are image-bearers of God, entrusted to our leadership to love, serve, and call forth life. What a sobering reality for those of us that lead teams.

Running A Rehearsal

Last week I wrote about four categories of preparation: our hearts, the music, the team, and the rehearsal. In my experience, I believe teams and leaders - at least conceptually - understand the importance of the first three categories. But teams and leaders do not invest as much time and energy into preparing for rehearsals. I think this is because we see rehearsals as a necessary evil - the purpose and point of rehearsals being exclusively musical. When we view rehearsals as only preparation for the musical aspect of our team, we miss the opportunity to disciple, grow a sense of community, cast vision, encourage and equip our team to lead and serve as worship leaders on and off the platform.

As a worship leader, I believe there are a number of ways we can prepare personally, practically, and spiritually to create a rehearsal that is more than a necessary evil:

Prepare during the week. Play through the songs, familiarize yourself with the songs, structure, and transitions. Consider the team that will be playing and leading together, think through potential dynamics, parts, and opportunities to allow others to bring their skill, creativity, and heart to the setlist.

Communicate expectations. What time does rehearsal start? Do you want musicians to memorize music? Will music be provided, or do musicians need to come prepared with their chord charts and lyrics? Are there specific parts you’d like musicians to learn? As Brene Brown says, ‘Clear is kind.’ When we communicate expectations to the team, it avoids unnecessary frustration or unmet expectations during the rehearsal and helps solidify the culture of the team and rehearsal.

Be the first to arrive. As worship leaders part of our responsibility is to host the team. Arriving before the team gives us the opportunity to ready ourselves and the space, so we are present and able to greet and engage the team as they arrive. Get yourself warmed up, set up your instrument, finalize any small details, and quiet and prepare your own heart to host the team, and lead the rehearsal.

Lead the team spiritually, not just musically. Spend time praying together, reading Scripture, talking through the song choices, and how they are connected to the sermon and the series. Lead the team through a devotional. I put together a 52-week devotional for worship leaders and teams that you can download for free, here.

Walk the team through the setlist. Talk through not only the order of the setlist but the order of the songs. Communicate your ideas for the dynamics of each song and the setlist overall. As you start each song, go over the song structure and dynamics again. Once you’ve finished, make sure that everyone feels comfortable and is clear on parts and transitions.

Save new songs for the end of the rehearsal. This gives you the opportunity to get through songs that are more familiar, without consuming all of your rehearsal time working on a new song. You can always drop a new song that needs more preparation. But if you spend your whole rehearsal trying to ready one song without getting through the entire setlist, it can leave the team and the morning feeling a bit shaky.

Musicians hold instruments. Musicians love to play, put an instrument in their hand and it takes a great deal of self-control not to play constantly. But when someone is giving direction or vocalists are trying to work through parts, or musicians are trying to confirm chord changes, everyone needs to hold their instrument and/or tongue. This is both a show of respect to the team, but also cuts down on noise and confusion, helping the rehearsal to move efficiently.

Someone needs to make the final call. Whether the structure of a song, parts, and dynamics, or decisions about what to add or cut, someone needs to make the final call. Often this is the person responsible for leading worship that morning, but it does not have to be. But it is important that the team that morning understands who has the final say, and know-how to respectfully voice opinions, and humbly defer when a final decision has been made.

Rehearsals are necessary, but they do not have to be evil. We can steward them wisely to host our team, prepare the music, ready our hearts, and worship through song - even in our preparation.

Benefits of Co-Leading

Christians are called to make disciples. I think many worship leaders understand that part of leading worship is disciple making: training the team, and the congregation to see and respond in song to who God is and what He has done. Sadly, one area of disciple-making often overlooked is identifying, training and developing more worship leaders. Of course there many factors which contribute - a seeming lack of people willing and able to serve, a current worship leader managing just enough to serve weekly (much less training others), a fear that the quality or caliber of the music/leadership will decrease as a new leaders learn and grow, and sometimes it is just selfishness on the part of a leader unwilling share ‘their’ platform. Whatever the reason, I hope to give you a vision and a desire for the benefits of co-leading in this post.

I define co-leading as collaboration in planning, and shared responsibility for leading (the rehearsal, the team, the congregation, and the liturgy) during the service.

First and foremost, co-leading is another opportunity for disciple-making. Discipling our own hearts. In co-leading we are reminded that we have no right or entitlement to position or role, and that Christ’s Church and this ministry do not hinge on our presence or service.

We make disciples of the team and congregation when we co-lead. Our teams learn that we honor and value the heart, skill and leadership of others when we make space for leaders to serve. Our congregation learns to trust new leaders, and appreciate different perspectives and styles.

And finally, we make disciples of those we lead alongside. Co-leading is a safe space to train, develop and encourage new leaders in real time. When you co-lead it can provide a sense of familiarity, and stability as new leaders learn how to lead and serve.

Of course there are practical benefits to co-leading as well: someone who can step in and serve if you are sick or traveling, providing opportunities for men and women to lead together, training and developing others for church-plants and other ministry opportunities, and cultivating and stewarding the gifts and talents God has entrusted to our local congregation.

How have you seen discipleship and development of worship leaders done well in your context?

In a future post, I will spend time on learning to identify, train and develop new worship leaders.