- One of the most frustrating aspects about worship ministry
is when our worship band members
show up to rehearsal unprepared.
While there's no magic silver bullet,
instant solution to this problem,
in this video I do want to share some tips with you
that are going to help you hopefully discover
the root cause of this problem,
as well as give you some ideas on how to inspire
your worship team to show up to rehearsal prepared.
(energetic music)
If we haven't met yet, my name is Jake Gosselin.
I'm the creator of Churchfront.com,
an online resource for innovative
and creative church leaders.
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This video is brought to you by Worship Leader School,
where you will find all the advice, training,
and support you need to plan and lead worship.
Click the link in the description to learn more.
One of the courses that I've been working on
for Worship Leader School is called
"How to Lead Worship Band Rehearsal."
It's so important for us worship leaders
to know how to lead our band members through that
so that they can be prepared and confident
to lead worship during the actual Sunday service.
I emailed the folks who are on the wait list
for Worship Leader School and asked them,
"What's your greatest challenge when it comes to
preparing and leading worship band rehearsal?"
And the most common response I got by far,
there's a lot of other great responses too,
and lots of other challenges worship leaders face,
but the most common one is that my band members
are showing up to rehearsal unprepared.
I totally get how frustrating this can be,
because we as worship leaders put so much time
and energy and planning and passion
into the worship gatherings and making them go smoothly
and making sure we know the music,
but then when someone else shows up in our band,
they don't know the music, it just drives us crazy.
And before we dive into this topic,
I want to ask you what tips do you have
for worship leaders who want to inspire their band
to come to rehearsal prepared?
Let us know below in the comments.
I love hearing from you guys and learning from you guys,
because I don't know everything, but here's my best shot.
Now, everybody's worship leading context is different
and there's no one size fits all,
magic silver bullet solution to this problem,
but I do think that we could benefit from
the following five questions that I want to ask you
if you are facing this issue of band members
showing up unprepared.
My first question for you is have you laid out clearly
the expectations for your band members?
The difference between practice and rehearsal?
Have you explained to them that practice
is something that happens at home, by yourself,
you use Planning Center or whatever you use
to organize your worship ministry,
you use Planning Center ideally to work through
your chord charts and listen to the MP3 files,
practice playing your guitar or drums
or electric guitar or bass or keys or voice.
At home, you practice and learn how to play the songs,
but then when you come to church for rehearsal,
it's rehearsal, it's not practice.
The different between rehearsal and practice
is that rehearsal is when everybody comes together
and they know the music already,
they're just bringing it together
and that's where the fun magic happens, right?
As a worship band it's so fun when everybody
comes together in rehearsal, they know their parts,
and when you put it all together, it just sounds fantastic.
So have you made this clear distinction
for your band members and have you made the expectation
abundantly clear that they need to be prepared
when they show up to rehearsal?
Because I know sometimes we have these assumptions
that maybe everybody has these expectations, but they don't,
probably because you never made it clear to them.
And you need to repeatedly make this clear to them,
so let them know every couple of weeks,
"Hey guys, we really appreciate you putting in that time
at home to come to band practice prepared."
You don't have to necessarily mandate
"come to practice prepared," but if you put it
in those terms like they already are
and you pretend like they are, they're going to be like,
"Oh, should I be prepared when I show up to band rehearsal?"
The chances of them being prepared will increase.
If you have an audition process for your band,
make sure you make it clear when people commit
to volunteering on a regular basis that they know
that part of the responsibility of being in the band
is that they will dedicate time at home to learn the songs
before they show up to church for rehearsal.
So that was my first question for you,
what expectations have you laid out for your team, if any?
Question number two, are you resourcing your band properly?
As worship leaders, we want to remove any excuse
that our band members may have to not practice the song,
and practice the proper arrangement of the song,
because we don't want people showing up unprepared
and then we ask them why they're not prepared
and they're like, "Oh, I couldn't find the chord charts,
or I couldn't find a good recording of the song
to practice along with."
As a worship leader, we need to eliminate those excuses
by preparing the best chord charts and MP3 files
and other practice resources we possibly can.
You can also resource your band with
amazing tutorial resources and websites
like worshiponline.com or worshipartistry.com
where you have people giving the best, most clear tutorials
on how to play the acoustic guitar
for "How Great Is Our God," right?
As easy as that sounds, some people could benefit from
a tutorial from that.
Another thing you can do as a worship leader
is offer one-on-one training sessions
with your worship band members.
For example, in another church I worked at,
I had a drummer who was very dedicated
and was pretty solid at drumming but still had
some difficulty with certain songs
and there were some issues coming up
where he'd show up and wouldn't really know
how to nail it the right way,
and of course if the drummer can't get it right,
the whole band does not feel right.
So what I did is I just scheduled a one-on-one meeting
with the drummer where he could get on the drum set
and I had my tracks and my click playing from Ableton,
and we had our in-ears in and we could run through the songs
and I could give him very specific instruction
then and there, which then helped him
come to rehearsal more prepared.
So make sure you are going way out of your way
as a worship leader to prepare the best practice resources
for your band and you are removing any excuses
they may have for not practicing at home
and learning the songs.
My third question for you if you are struggling with
band members not coming prepared to rehearsal is
do you model preparedness yourself?
If we are expecting our team members to come prepared,
we as worship leaders must also come to rehearsal prepared.
Have you memorized the lyrics of the songs?
Have you memorized chord charts?
Do you know the arrangement of the song
like you do the back of your hand?
Is it so familiar to you that you can easily troubleshoot
any issues you hear and you can also easily
give your band members a clear roadmap
of how the song is supposed to go?
Lead by example, and make sure that you
are modeling preparedness for your team.
Question number four, and I think this one
is going to be a game-changer for a lot of you,
do you send your team members specific instructions
and guidelines for what they should be working on
for any given worship plan?
So here's what I'm talking about,
hopefully you're sending out some sort of email
or form of communication to your band
a few days before rehearsal.
In that email, obviously you have the order of service
planned by then, and you're telling people,
"Hey, the songs are up, all the practice resources
are there, go practice them."
The problem with just stopping at, "Hey, the songs are up,
go practice them, go learn them,"
is that instruction is very vague
and people quite honestly just won't take it seriously.
Unless if they're really driven and motivated
to want to learn the songs themselves,
when you don't give people specific instructions
and tasks that they are responsible for,
the chances of them not doing anything are drastically high.
So one quick trick that I started implementing
in my pre-rehearsal email that I sent out
is that I would list out the different songs
and then for each song I would like out
the different band members names and be like,
"Jack, the guitarist," I'm just making up these names,
"Work on that lead lick in the interlude
between chorus one and verse two," or whatever.
Give them very specific things they need to work on.
"Tony, the drummer, make sure you really focus in on
honing in that buildup coming out of the bridge
into the last choruses of that Hillsong song.
If you don't do it right, it's going to make
the whole song flop, no pressure, Tony."
So my point here is that when people are given
specific instructions, then they have something
more specific they can be held accountable to.
I would recommend having all that information
in that one email or in one place where everybody can see it
because then Jack will know if Tony is going to nail
that drum part or not, and Tony's going to know
if Jack actually did work on learning that lead guitar part.
Give your team specific instruction
and they will feel much more accountable
and they will want to take action to learn the song.
My fifth and final question for you is
have you actually approached someone in your band
who is not preparing and address this issue
with them directly?
You have no right to complain about an issue about someone
if you have not actually talked to them about it.
Once you talk to them about it, we'll talk about
what you can do afterwards if it's still not fixed,
but make sure you actually bring this up to them,
make sure they know this is an expectation
that they practice at home and they rehearse at church.
Ask them this question, so don't be a bully,
don't be confrontational, don't be,
"Why aren't you showing up to rehearsal prepared?"
That's not going to inspire them to want to
be prepared for rehearsal,
and it's probably going to make them
not want to be in the band anymore.
So approach that individual in a kind way
and just engage in dialogue that may sound like this.
Say, "Hey Bob, I noticed recently that when you show up
to band rehearsal, you haven't really quite nailed
your part of the song, and that kind of makes it
a struggle for everybody else to nail their part
of the song, and I just wanted to ask
what can I do to help you come more prepared
to worship band rehearsal?"
So what you can do is ask them that question
and put the ball in their court to come up with a solution.
So that's a way to raise the issue with them
without sounding like a complete meanie or jerk.
Then after you put together a solution,
give it some time, allow that person time to make change
and to do what they said they would do,
which is hopefully actually change the amount of time
they practice at home so they come prepared.
Then maybe after a few weeks or maybe a couple months,
re-evaluate, see if they've actually been taking action,
see if they're actually taking it seriously,
and if they're not, you're going to have to have
another conversation with them and say,
"Hey look, I asked you about this a couple weeks
or a couple months ago, and I've seen no progress at all."
Ask them the question, "Do you even want to be
in the band anymore?"
This is totally up to you and your leadership preference.
You have to decide if it's okay to have someone continue
to be on the band if they continue to show up unprepared.
My personal preference is no, I'm going to give them
a chance to change and if they don't change,
I'll have the hard conversation, maybe even give them
one more chance, be like, "Hey look, the next two times
you play, you have to come prepared
to really prove to me that you're serious about it."
But I would guess most likely that a lot of the people
who come unprepared to rehearsal
honestly don't care that much about being in the band,
and you could probably find and recruit other people
who are more passionate about being a part of your team.
So those are the five questions I have for you
and the tips I have for how to increase the chances
of your worship band showing up to rehearsal prepared.
Do you have any tips on how to address this problem?
Please let me know below in the comments.
If you're ready to take your worship ministry
and leadership to the next level,
I want to invite you to check out Worship Leader School
where you're going to find all the essential advice,
training, and support you need to plan and lead worship,
as well as just grow as a worship leader.
Click the link in the description to learn more.
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