TEASER

Today on the Church Helper Podcast, we're going to dive deeper into what it takes to be a worship leader in a church by looking at some of the parts of the job that everyone might not know about but definitely should know about.

So, if you're a church staff member or an elder, and you'd like to share a more common language between your groups so you can work well together as a team, then stick around because the Church Helper Podcast starts right now.  

INTRO

Hey there, and welcome to another edition of the Church Helper Podcast. Our mission here at church helper is to help churches make every decision on purpose. My name is Mike, and I'm excited to help your church staff and elders team get on the same page today with the second episode of our series, "getting to know your staff."  

If you're a church staff member, now is the time to connect an elder with this content and sign up for our weekly emails because this will help your relationship immensely. 

And if you're an elder, make sure you forward this to the rest of your team, so you're all speaking the same language. And just so we're all speaking the same language, every church calls this role something different. It could be a worship director, a worship pastor a choir director, music director or something else.  Today, I’m going to use the term Worship Leader.  And with that lets get into it, the Three Things EVERY Elder should know about Worship Leaders.

 

Three Things Elders Should Know about Worship Leaders and Choir Directors

#1. Sunday Morning Service a small part of the job

This might sound a little strange at first, but of course, when we look at it, it makes a ton of sense. 

Most people's experience of worship leaders is seeing them on a Sunday morning playing an instrument, singing a song or giving an insightful word about some lyrics, or praying. And when that's all you see, it makes sense that you could consider that the most significant part of the job, but if you ask most worship leaders, you find out that it's pretty different.

Church Helper reached out to some worship leaders to ask about some misconceptions of their jobs and what they wished elders knew about their day today, and here are just a couple of quotes from that survey.

The first one says:

"The congregation believes that I "just pick songs" or I'm "only a singer." They don't understand the magnitude of my job or what goes on behind the scenes.

And here's another: 

"Worship/(front of house) tech (and) live stream is so much more than what you see on Sunday mornings. The 20-minute worship set is the tip of the iceberg; prep, rehearsal, projection/Livestream setup etc. Take 10x-15x more time than what you see. And that's just standard weekly service prep. 

Finally, in one extensive list, this quote pretty much sums up the whole job. When speaking about their elders, this worship leader said quote:

"They don't understand all that goes on behind the scenes; planning, scheduling, communicating, learning, arranging, rehearsing, etc. Then there's all the "stuff" not in the job description; praying, studying, counselling, meeting, helping, teaching, sharing, inspecting, organizing, assisting, cleaning, moving, finding, calling, emailing, texting, attending, etc.

And all this is true. 

If you talk to the average worship leader, you'll find that a 4-5 minute song on a Sunday takes hours to prep – from getting arrangements, working through keys, teaching people parts, getting all the technology to play nice – it's a lot of work.

So how can you help? 

As you can see, usually, the biggest thing that the average church workshop leader needs is a little more time. 

So I would suggest starting a conversation with them to see what areas they might need some extra help and if you need to find a way to give them a few more hours a week to do their job well. 

And make sure if you're ever hiring another worship leader, you take into account the time they'll need to do every area of their job well, not just the stuff you see on stage

#2 Music Selection is Terrifying 

We'll start this section with a couple of quotes from leaders who reached out to us through our survey. The first says: 

"Moreso than any other position, worship pastors live in the tension of diverse feedback from a congregation…."

 This person states:

"I cannot fulfil or please everyone's whims or opinions on what should be done."

and finally one worship leader said

"(many people think) that my job is primarily meant to foster esthetic experiences."

Stop me if you've heard this before – but music continues to be one of the more polarizing topics when it comes to churches. Why is that? 

Well, there are a few reasons, but the big one is: Music is an art – and everyone has different tastes and options when it comes to the arts.  

I can back up from my own experience, as a person who was regularly leading worship at his church for a few years, that music selection really can be stressful, especially when introducing something new.

But before we get into why don't get me wrong here, I don't want to go too negative. Music selection is also exciting and a lot of fun. It's a neat moment as a worship leader when you hear a song that you know your team can plan, that's theology and message are solid, and that sounds great, and you think your church will react to well. 

But it's also terrifying because then the doubts start to come in. Will people like it. Will they catch on. Can they sing it? Should I change the arrangement? What will people think of the words?   

Honestly, there isn't another area of the church that is so often and so quickly and easily criticized by the average attendee than the music.  

And because your worship leader feels that their calling is to lead people closer to Jesus through music, and when people are loading telling them that it isn't going well, it's a big emotional toll. 

They take their role seriously and want to make sure that there aren't any distractions so that people can come to and worship God freely.  

So what can you do to help them out other than asking how things are going? Make sure that you encourage them about how it's often going. Try to remember that even when you don't love the music, your role is to encourage and support the member of your team who is doing their best to bring people into God's presence during each service. And even if you don't like the song, which sometimes you're not going to, find other ways to say "great job." The execution, the slides, their voice or a member of their volunteer team. Worship leaders don't have to go far to find criticism in their song selection, so make sure you're always someone they can count on for an encouraging word. 

 

#3 Most Worship Leaders Trained in Music, not technology.   

This has evolved a lot more in the last ten years or so and was really accelerated in 2020 and 2021, with so many people needing to stay home due to the coronavirus.  

So many worship leaders are hired primarily for their music skills. And that makes a ton of sense because if you're going to have someone standing at the front of your church each week playing or singing, creating musical arrangements and training others – they're going to need to be highly skilled in the area of music. Often churches will put right on a job description the desire to have someone with a degree in music, extensive musical training, or to come in for an audition.

But somethings that's been evolving more and more, and now is at the point of really requiring a different skill set entirely, is the level of technology that workshop leaders need to understand – and honestly, it's starting to get overwhelming even for people who enjoy dabbling and learning something new.  

Here's a quick example. 

Many churches are starting to use live-streaming as a more primary part of their Sunday service strategy. And in many cases, this is falling on the laps of worship leaders.  

This makes sense because it's their ministry area, but it doesn't make sense because, well, that's not what they're trained in. And when I'm talking about technology, I'm not saying that this stuff is as easy to run as an iPad. A lot of these systems, even the simple ones, require a lot of setup. And that in itself isn't so bad until you realize that you need to learn an entirely different language to set it up.  

Steams, encoders, switchers, camera settings, a different online mix vs in-house mix – all of a sudden, your music leader is also an IT specialist, a photographer, a sound engineer and tv producer.  

And in some cases, your church might not have a choice. You don't have the bodies, so the worship leader has to take them on. 

And I get that, so here's how you can help. When you are budgeting for new equipment or assigning a worship leader a new job outside their wheelhouse, you give them the support they need to learn the skill. In many cases, this will be you freeing up money so they can take an online course, but this could also mean hiring someone on a contract to come so an initial setup and spend some time in training and coaching. I get that most churches aren't going to hire someone to manage the technology, but make sure you make room in the budget so that if someone needs to learn something new, they have all the tools they need to do the job.

Now I'm not the guy to help in this area. I'm pretty good with my iPhone and an analog soundboard, but when a camera has more than three buttons, and a soundboard has backlit sliders, I'm running for the hills. 

If your church requires some training in this area, check out Jake Gosselin, who runs a YouTube channel called ChurchFront. He has an enormous amount of free content and an excellent course covering every area of this you could think of, and it's worth every dollar. 

And just so you know, I don't know Jake, and he doesn't know I'm suggesting this.- I think it's just that good.  I’ll leave a link to his YouTube channel in the disruption below.

OUTRO

And that's it. Three things you should know about your worship leader: 

Hopefully, today's podcast helped you better understand your worship leader and some of the things they're going through every week. Make sure you like and subscribe to the podcast or our youtube channel, and if you think someone needs to hear this content today but they aren't a technology person, you can go to our website churchhelper.ca/podcast, to print out a full transcript of today's episode.

Make sure you go back and check out our last episode on getting to know your children's ministry leader, and stay tuned for more ways to build better relationships between your staff and elders teams.

If you've ever got any questions, please reach out to us through email at hello@churchhelper.ca or go to the Get Help Today tab of our website. 

Thanks for taking a few minutes to help your church make every decision on purpose today. I'm Mike, and I'll talk to you again real soon.