Mission and Method and Experimentation

I recently had a conversation with a worship leader about mission and method. Mission being what you’re trying to accomplish and method being how you go about accomplishing it. He described a scenario that I find fairly often. Often enough to mention it here anyway. 

My friend told me about a worship team he once played on where the leader would spend over an hour before rehearsal doing a devotional. My friend hated it. He said it drove him crazy and it seemed to bother others as well. After all, they were to rehearse! To work!

The leader of my friend’s team needed a lesson on mission and method. You see, the leader’s mission was great. He wanted to develop his team spiritually. That’s admirable. His method, however, was not great. It was too time consuming and worship team members became frustrated. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to grow spiritually, they did! It’s just that an hour or more of devotions before rehearsal was too much for them. It was too much of a time commitment and it wasn’t exactly what they were there to do. 

It may be helpful to survey your method’s once in a while with key members of your team. Find out what’s working and what’s not. If needed, adjust your methods. Your mission in most cases will stay the same.

In my friend’s case, his worship leader may have had more success taking 15 minutes on the back end of rehearsal to do a devotion rather than an hour on the front end. Go after your mission, but be willing to be flexible with the method. Don’t be afraid to experiment!