4 Things that Create a Healthy Worship Team (4)

This will be my final post on Healthy Worship Teams. Again these are just some thoughts that I have had the last few weeks about what creates a healthy worship team. You must adapt and adjust aspects of these to fit your team and model, however I think the big ideas are essential. You can read my previous 3 posts here, here, and here.

#4 - Create a Community
The trap that a lot of us can get stuck in, is to focus only on the sunday morning worship time slot and the rehearsal to get you there. This may sound a little like the last post but its different for its focus on the group as a whole. I am not saying that Sunday morning isn't important, because its the reason we have a team. Its what all the hours and hours of planning and practicing go into. However from a team perspective, there is way more. And its the behind the scenes action that creates the best platform experiences.

One of the big things for me this year was to create a "COMMUNITY OF DISCIPLESHIP". I didn't want Thursday nights and Sunday mornings to be all there was to our worship ministry or our relationships. Inside of that "COMMUNITY", I wanted to see individual growth as "WORSHIP LEADERS", stretching us in our talents, and to encourage/challenge us to a "LIFE OF WORSHIP".

Community won't happen on performance day. It happens off stage.

About 2 months ago, I felt that we needed to start a lifegroup on sunday mornings with the worship team. Now that we are doing 3 services there was some room to do that. We meet during the sermon of 1st service and talk about life. Its a chance to cast vision for where I feel God taking us, its a chance to hear each others stories as a group, to get to know each others personalities, to encourage one another. This has been a great UNIFYING experience for our team. We are just getting started and I have a lot of ideas. I have found that there needs to be time where you as a leader cast vision, teach on worship, etc. Not just lead music. We as leaders have to 1st model a life of worship privately and then teach and invite people to join the journey.

Another community thing I have seen effective is to cancel thursday nights and go have fun. Again BBQ or watch a DVD of other worship teams, change things up. I know rehearsal nights are vital and key, but you have to be willing to provide opportunities for community which will enhance your sunday mornings. Do your best to make rehearsals enjoyable and fun. If its stressfull and full of attitudes and negativity all night, your team will eventually get burned out. Bring in food, or jam on some good Jazz chords in pre-rehearsal, be creative, but have fun. Your team will feed off of you as the leader. I have seen this first hand, for the better and worse.

Again if your team is unified and together, you worship experiences will be that much better.

learning,
adam