I recently posted at Innovate 4 Jesus (i4j) in response to a “Best Practices” prompt and thought I’d share it here as well. If you are interested in i4j, sign up and become part of the community!
You may be asking yourself, “What do you mean ‘unify your worship team’? We get along, we fellowship and pray together, we have practice every week, we’re all on the same page. We’re doing great.” And that is great; a worship team needs those elements to be successful. But who do you consider part of your worship team? Looking beyond the musicians and the worship leader, who else is a part of the team? Do you consider those serving in the sound booth a part of the team? If not, you should. It’s vital.
I’m talking about the “techies”. My church refers to them as “the sound guys”. Whatever you call them, they are an absolute integral part of worship. Think about it: every note, every voice, every song of worship and praise and prayer go through that person before it reaches the congregation. That’s an important job! If done right, they go unnoticed, if done wrong… well, that’s another topic for discussion. So often I hear about churches that have their sound guys show up on Sunday morning to run the service, they do their job and go home. No other interaction with the worship team happens. There seems to be this void between the sound booth and the stage. The result is a set of volunteers that are disconnected and unengaged from the ministry as a whole. Don’t get me wrong, nearly all sound guys I’ve met are passionate about what they do, but they lack a sense of the big picture, and of being part of a team. The result seems subtle, but has major consequences: a lack of trust exists between the stage and the sound booth and vice-versa.
So, best practice: unify your worship team. More important than having the best equipment your church can afford, and even more important than having people who know how to run the equipment is to have a truly complete worship team.
3 steps toward a unified worship team:
- Incorporate everyone into prayer times. Does the band pray before the service starts or before/after practice? Whenever it is, include the sound guys. After all, they are a part of the team. There is no better way to start building a unified ministry than to start with prayer. Make sure you are including everyone in fellowship times as well.
- Have everyone come to practices. Our sound guys are required to be at practice if they are serving on the following Sunday, just like the musicians are. This is a great time for training and fellowship; and, giving everyone the same expectations goes a long way toward building a team that trusts one another. Start this week if you aren’t already doing this. Every member of the team needs to be actively engaged in the preparation of worship.
- Open the lines of communication. Start having constructive conversations about worship, music and how it should sound. Keep that communication open during practice. Everyone should feel comfortable expressing their needs and preferences with other members of the team.
We have the awesome privilege of worshiping our God and King, our Savior and Redeemer! Our responsibility is making that worship to Him the best that it can possibly be.
I’d love to discuss this topic in the comments, if you have a take on this, please share!
