Auditions and Applications
To lead in a kingly fashion, begin to form processes and procedures for auditioning perspective volunteers. Construct and work closely with your senior pastor on all aspects of this job, but particularly on the fine print of these applications so as to be able to draw out the necessary information from an applicant on where they could best be used in your ministry or perhaps another ministry in your church. For auditions, be sure to have another ministry leader or staff apart of the audition. This will protect you from the possibility of accusations as a response to a declination to be on the team. Never audition alone and allow the other person to provide input so as not to give the impression that you and you only run the show in pride.
Planning Tools
You should have your services planned out with plenty of time for your team to be comfortable with the music. This does not mean that you can’t make last minute changes or allow the Spirit to take you on a worship tangent. What it does mean is that you have a venue by which your team has access to recordings, charts, sheet music, etc so that they can be prepared and competent with the music. There are many different venues to choose from, but with modern technology and resources available on the Internet, I’d suggest ministries such as Planning Center Online,[1] to upload service plans and schedule volunteers in advance. As a general rule of thumb, I have found that it works best to have your volunteers planned out at least 1 month in advance and your services planned out at least 2 weeks in advance. I have used Planning Center Online for a few years with success.
Rehearsals are opportunities
If you have a worship ministry with musicians whose caliber merits a necessity for a midweek rehearsal, then there is no question that you should have one. Striving for excellence is not an idol if you do it for the purpose of bringing the Lord the most pleasing offering of praise you possibly can. Rehearsals are also perfect opportunities for you to cultivate and disciple your team! Spend the first 20 minutes of a rehearsal going through a book of the bible or the latest book on worship together. Take time during the rehearsals to have pointed discussions regarding the reason why you are doing a particular song that weekend or perhaps enlighten a newer volunteer with the process of song selection and how you order your worship set and maybe even accept suggestions. Use rehearsals as a venue to grow your team’s unity, your church’s culture of worship, and discipleship focused on the personal ways in which your team functions as worshippers outside of Sunday morning.
Train with the humble mindset of replacing yourself
Lastly involves delegation and leadership strategy. My friend Andi Rozier once told me in his British way, “Mate, your purpose in ministry is to work yourself out of a job.” Hopefully what he meant by that was not a disrespectful statement of hoping I would leave, but rather a very biblically sound and wise statement of the minister’s purpose. This concept ultimately goes back to the discussion of discipleship but now in terms of structure and leadership in the specific ministry that you oversee. Just as the goal in discipleship is to make disciples who will then ultimately make disciples, your job in ministry is to lead in a way that the people you are leading will inevitably be fully resourced and capable to lead. To put it in a simple, yet drastic way, would the ministry that you oversee significantly be hurt and fail if you were die tonight? If you answered yes to that question, you should take this as a challenge to restructure your workload and delegate and provide more responsible opportunities for your volunteers so that you are in essence leading the future leaders of the body of Christ. This means that you are constantly looking for the opportunities to train people in the specifics of what you do and how you do them and give them the opportunity to practice!
Do you allow anyone else to be the worship leader on a Sunday morning? Or do you make sure that you are the front man every Sunday and when you’re gone they have a prayer service with no music? You should be seeking out people who have the skills and abilities necessary to lead worship and pour into those people! Train them in the philosophy of your worship ministry based on the study and research you’ve done on biblical forms and functions of worship! Include them in the process of planning. Give them feedback and critique them so that they improve in this wonderful task we have as worship leaders!
Work, knowing that you could be gone tomorrow. Who knows, you might actually, in doing so, see the Lord leading you to take on a different role in the church and give you the opportunity to actually install someone you trained to take your current spot? That is a privilege! Don’t hold so tightly to your position that you fail to respond to the leading of the Lord. In all of that, make sure that you are prepared to exit that position and that your ducks are in a row so that the bride of Christ, the church, is not hurt in any way. That is called ministry leadership stewardship and it is also called effective shepherding.
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