Worship Leader - October, 2007

feel like I’ve become a better leader, worship leader, husband and father because of your influence in my life. I value that and I want that to keep coming.” And that, again, is an aspect of leadership that is expressed in humility, which is absolutely fundamental in our roles as worship leaders.

Beyond the spiritul aspect of this job, there is one skill that will absolutely make or break you in your role as a worship leader. If you could only practice one thing for the rest of your life, practice this: leadership. Worship leading is more about leadership than it is about being a musician.

First-Round Draft Picks

I’m sure you can relate to this one because we all have them. People who know they were called to be on the worship team. Whether it was in a dream, a Scripture reading or an epiphany during the second verse of “Above All” during last Sunday’s service, they received a message that singing on the worship team is their new place to serve. Can they play an instrument? Not necessarily. Have they sung in a performance group before? Not since elementary-school choir. But they seem to have a heart for it, so you feel like the right thing to do is give them a shot.

I thought I’d share a little bit about the philosophy of our audition process at Bayside Church—why we do what we do (see the sidebar to this article for a little more of the details of our audition process). There are plenty of directions to take in finding the right team for your church’s worship, but it really is a leadership issue. And it all starts with the right questions. We always ask people why they want to be a part of the worship ministry. But first we explain our goal in worship: creating an atmosphere where people can connect with God with as few distractions as possible. And we make no apologies for using the best tools that are available to us to reach that goal. This helps us get on the same ground. Because whoever is auditioning, no matter what their skill level, they can usually agree that we all want to create to the best of our abilities because we are ultimately there to serve the church body.

So what do we do when that one person shows up, but can’t sing on pitch, or has no sense of beat or harmony, or they can’t play the songs through without mak-

ing a ton of mistakes as an instrumentalist? We ask what we ask anyone who wants to be a part of the ministry, “Why are you here?” If the answer is, “I like to do it,” then they don’t really understand the goal and the idea of serving the church body.

The Right Stuff

I actually want to suggest something a little frightening to a lot of worship leaders out there: find the best possible team you can. Let me explain why I think that is not always easy to do. I am the worship arts pastor at Bayside Church. That is my job. However, my schedule requires me to travel, so I can’t be home every weekend. Under that reality, my church needed someone on staff that can be there when I am gone. So, I had the pleasant task of replacing myself, so to speak. During this process, my pastor actually approached me and told me to hire the person who would make people forget that I was gone when I was out of town. It wasn’t easy, but I had to remind myself of our goal. As the leader I needed to make sure our church has a great worship experience every week, to the best of my abilities whether I’m there or not. That’s leadership.

We found the best person we could find. I went out and hired a guy who could do my job. And, unlike me, he was there all year long. Yes, there were times when I thought I had done the stupidest thing possible—what a great way to make myself obsolete, but in that process, I had to remember another important aspect of leadership. Someone once told me, “A-players hire A-players. B-players hire C-players.” People with a limited mindset hire lower-caliber people because of their insecurities, while people with a strong leader mentality hire the best person they can find because it’s better for the big picture. Personally, I find a lot more job security in that: not being the only one who can do your job, but being strong enough to lead high-quality people.

At Bayside, we have some amazing support staff who are very accomplished worship leaders. Our associate worship pastor, Jeffery B. Scott, is one of the best worship leaders in the entire country. What an honor to have a guy like that to serve along side, but that could easily make me feel threatened.

The point of this is that, yes, worship leaders are musicians, with all our stereo-

typed musician insecurities and doubts. But first, we are leaders. We’ve got to get over ourselves and identify that our insecurity is rooted in pride. It’s rooted in the question, “What are the other people going to think?” Once we can identify that and get over it, we can be extravagant about pouring ourselves into our teams, about developing younger people, about knowing when it’s time to step aside. And the musicians—the guitarist, drummer, bass player, pianist, and BGVs—are leading worship, as well. They aren’t just players, so the entire team has to be united in the goal of offering God our best.

The Hillsong team in Sydney Australia is a great example of this. I remember a few years ago when I was there, and Joel Houston was playing bass in the youth band. Now he is leading a huge teen movement—an army of young people from Australia impacting people around the world. I really believe it is because Darlene Zschech, the worship leader at Hillsong in Sydney, Australia, was able to be a strong leader and get over any insecurities. Darlene pushes others to the front. She has a lot to teach about that aspect of leadership, and this has certainly contributed to the fact that she has built a worship team of over 1,000 members who serve a multitude of positions within her church.

The Natural

Now, all this talk about hiring the right people and turning down singers who can’t stay on pitch can easily slide down the slippery slope of elitism. There is nothing more off-putting than a worship team that thinks so highly of themselves simply because they are on stage leading the songs. So, I’m not saying that your teams have to be perfect. Your singers won’t all be Broadway show artists, nor should they be. After the Indianapolis Colts won the Super Bowl last year, I heard the team’s coach, Tony Dungy, say something very powerful. In essence he said, “This is not the most talented team we’ve had. But it’s the best team we’ve had.” I don’t know if there’s a stronger statement towards teamwork. I absolutely believe that if you take the right mix of people and you don’t coach them beyond their skill set, they can be outstanding.