Grow Your Team (Part 3) A leadership position you may not have thought of...
There’s a leadership position on some worship teams that I love that you may not have thought of:
Have you ever considered making one of your worship team members a music director (MD)? You know, someone to take over (most of) the music side of things. I’ve done this a few times and it can be pretty beneficial! You might be thinking “isn’t that my job?” And the answer is probably yes, but hang with me.
When I first came across this idea, I had a hard time with it, but the truth is there has almost always been someone on my worship team who is better at music, coming up with parts, or communicating how to flow better than I can. I can do it and really I’m pretty good at it, but usually there’s someone better. So I let them do it.
I’m good at leading people in worship. He/she is good at leading a band. It makes for a great partnership. It benefits me by allowing me to focus on other things, like growing the team spiritually and pastoring the church. It benefits the MD, by allowing that person to be used in their gifting.
You could have an MD do a number of things (anything musically really), but I have mine focus on these three things:
Decide on Musical Parts
Build Tracks
Run Rehearsals
Deciding on Musical Parts
Really, the song does this. But I have my MD do it too. He/she is the one that decides what part is necessary to be played live, what can be tracked, and what we can go without.
To give you an idea: the lead line to From the Inside Out by Hillsong United is one that we think is pretty necessary to be played live. However, the pads behind the song can be tracked. And the 8th, 9th, and 10th guitars on the recording we can go without. That last one is an exaggeration, but i think you get my point.
The music director decides those things so that I can focus on other areas.
Build Tracks
If your church uses tracks, you could have the MD build them or put them together. Sometimes it makes more sense for the worship leader to do if he/she is full time and in the office all day, but sometimes that job can be given to the MD. It takes something else of your plate!
Running Rehearsals
I say I have my MD run rehearsals, but really it’s a team effort. Typically I’ll lead any devotional or vision casting moments and he/she will lead the musical moments. If there’s a mess up musically, most questions go to the MD. Questions about repeating something or flowing on a certain part of the song may go to me though.
In case you’re wondering, it’s not just running rehearsals that’s a team effort - all of it is. We talk through musical parts together, I still build tracks sometimes, and I still answer plenty of music questions. And of course even on the weeks I do give much of that away, I oversee the whole thing.
Don’t be afraid that you won’t be doing music - you will be! You’ll just be freeing up time for pastoral and leadership things too. I don’t give away the entire music side of my job, but I do give away as much as I can. It’s a way to give away leadership, grow my team, and even set them up for success when I take a week off.
Give it a shot! If you’re not sure you can put all of those responsibilities on someone else yet, start small. Start by asking someone their opinion on musical parts. Then slowly give them more and more responsibility. I really think it’s worth trying!