3 Tips to Help Your Worship Team Succeed

We've all been there. Sunday morning rehearsal creeps to an end, and you find yourself feeling something that you've felt many times before: You're not ready for this set. For some people, this is an experience that they feel every single week. You take the stage, say a quick prayer and trust that the Spirit will still use the time despite the inevitable crashes. I wanted to go over 3 extremely practical tips to help push you and your team out of that rut. 

Tip #1: Set Clear Expectations for Your Team

Our church is entirely volunteer based. We had a situation recently where one of our Serving Team was showing up late 10 minutes before service started (we try and be at the church with rehearsal underway 1.5 hour before service). I felt completely stuck. I knew that they had a family. I knew that they were busy. But it was getting to the point where they were almost doing more harm than good. 

I recently realized that, even though we are volunteer based, we can set some really healthy and clean boundaries. When there's a clear expectation on your team, everybody thrives. When clear and healthy expectations are in place, it gives a framework and an agreed starting point for your team to operate in. Here's the trick though: You also have to adhere to these boundaries. When everybody is on the same page, it cuts down on confusion and allows your team to operate a lot more efficiently. And if there are ever any issues, having clear set boundaries gives you a framework to work through those.

Examples:

• Show up to band practice on time knowing the set list
• Spend some time at home practicing through parts
• Reach out if there are any questions or confusion. 

Tip #2: Limit Your Set List

I think this is one of the most important things a team can do (especially a struggling team). Our tendency as musicians is to keep adding songs to our master list ad infinitum. It makes sense. We hear a song probably 30xs the average church congregant. We get bored with the more easily. We know them like the back of our hand. So we add music. 

Here's the problem: When you have an unwieldy amount of songs, you start playing all of them a little worse. If you can limit your scope, it allows you and your team to really hone in and perfect a few songs. You can play a single song better in the context of 30 songs versus 100 songs. 

My suggestion would be to limit your setlist down to around 35 songs. Stick with that set for 6 months. THEN, as you get better and better, you can start adding a song here and there. This does 3 things: 

1. It allows your congregation to become more familiar with the songs and to latch onto them more. 
2. It gives your band confidence in the set. They know that there won't be many curve balls and they can come into practice and rehearsals confidently (instead of wondering how many songs they're going to mess up this week).
3. It helps you add in new members. If you have a smaller set, you can add in newer people much more quickly than if they had to learn an entire catalog of music. It gives them something tangible and finite to work towards. 

Tip #3: Give Your Team Resources

Are you caring for your team? Make sure that you give them the resources that they need to practice. Put out setlists a week or 2 in advance. Give them chord charts to all of your songs (with the chords that you actually play). Give them a Spotify Playlist of your official versions to listen to. All these things take relatively little work for you, but I guarantee it will help your team feel more cared for and loved.

Not only that, but if you have resources readily available for your team, it helps you be more reproducible as a team, because you can quickly and easily pass on your resources to newer people. Our church used WorshipTeam for years. I know many people use Planning Center. These are all great tools and resources that you can provide for your team. 

These tips and tricks aren't a collection of silver bullets by any means. But if you can implement some of them, you'll only be setting up your team for more success. And not only that, but they can also free you up to lead worship more freely. Which, in the end, is why we're here.