This past Sunday at Living Word we had a bit of a minor technical difficulty where the wrong song was put into the schedule for the day and we didn’t have a backup of the correct one. Although it was humorous and everything else went well, there was a bit of an awkward moment and it would be good to know how to avoid any awkwardness when things like this happen. So, what do we do to avoid the awkwardness?
Plan Ahead
The first thing to do is to make sure that you’ve planned well enough ahead of time. Check and recheck things. Very often there are several worship songs (or even hymns) with the same title. Check with the data entry volunteer, the volunteer who proofs and/or runs projection and yourself that you have the right song entered in. Remind the volunteer who enters the songs that when they are in doubt which is the right song they should put in both (or all five) with the same title. That way, if the wrong song is on the screen the right song can be found quickly (with the use of decent projection software anyway). It is especially vital to triple or quadruple check things when you are working in a church plant and several different people in several different places are putting the elements of the service together.
Teach Everyone What To Do
It won’t really help much if you as the main worship leader know what to do when a situation like this happens but the rest of your team is clueless. Teach them some simple ways to keep a musical flow going while you lead the congregation through the distraction. Teach the team to:
- Keep playing through the verse of the song that isn’t up on the screen (or the chorus, if that’s where the team is currently playing)
- Be ready to keep playing through that song if the worship leader feels led to use it as a solo
- Be ready to find an ending point if the worship leader feels led to go to the next or a different song
Main worship leaders need to be able to do these things while the team is doing the above:
- Recognize that the song is not correct. If you can see the projection screen or if you have a confidence screen or monitor that will be an easy way to tell. If you can’t see the projection screen, watch people and see if they’ve stopped singing.
- Don’t focus on the problem. Quickly and gently inform the congregation that the correct song is not on the screen, then move on to what you feel the Holy Spirit is leading you to do. A short, “It looks like we have the incorrect song up at the moment” is sufficient.
- Use this as an opportunity to let the congregation pray and worship on their own. After you’ve informed them that the wrong song is up, you could say something like “While we see if we have the right song, take a few moments to pray and worship God silently or with your families.” Lead them through a couple minutes of corporate prayer or praise. This also gives the projection volunteer time to find the correct song and get it up if they can.
- If the projection volunteer can’t find the correct song, it’s obviously time to either move on or inform the congregation that just the worship team will be singing this song and the congregation should worship by listening to the words. Only do this if you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the vocalists are always clearly understood through the sound system. If you sing with no words on the screen through a muddy, unclear system, no one will be able to worship without being distracted by the fact that they can’t understand the words.
- If you feel led by the Holy Spirit that having the congregation listen isn’t the right fit for the moment, decide to move on to the next song for the morning. Hopefully you’ve taught your team to keep playing the verse or chorus for a bit while you’re waiting to know what to do next. Give them a cue to end the music at an appropriate spot (not in the middle of a verse!) and then lead the congregation into the next song.
The absolute best thing to do would be to plan ahead well enough to avoid these situations but if they do arise these are some simple things you can do to help minimize the distraction and keep people’s hearts and minds focused on Jesus, not on the technical difficulty at hand.
Today and tomorrow Abiding Savior has the privilege to host three staff members from Faith Free Lutheran in Kalispell Montana. We’re going to have an opportunity to show how God is blessing us here, a little bit of how we do things during the work day/week, and perhaps more importantly to learn from them as well.
I would love to make opportunities like this available at Living Word someday and I would absolutely love to come visit another church to learn from their worship ministry.
Have you ever been involved in these experiences, either on the hosting or the visiting side? If you visited, what was one of the most meaningful things you learned? If you hosted, what was the most meaningful thing that your visitors taught you?
So what happens when we think we don’t have the right people in place to raise up? It’s time to ask some questions:
- Are you praying? If you aren’t praying for a person to train and raise up, chances are that God’s not going to give you one. It’s possible that He would, but much more likely that He will if you ask Him.
- Are you looking? Or are you just saying “There’s no one available” when you haven’t even looked?
- Are you asking? It’s very likely that your pastor or another ministry leader would know of someone with the gifts and abilities you’re looking for. Ask them!
- Are you equipping? Surely you already have several volunteers involved in your music and worship ministry. Have you been training all along, with the intention of raising up someone out of that group?
In summary, the best way to avoid burnout in your ministry is to let go of our selfishness and our fear, learn how to train and equip, and pray, look, and ask if there is anyone available to raise up. Once that person (or persons) is found, the burnout we would face from trying to do everything ourselves will go away, and a new leader will emerge.
This week we’ll finish looking at some reasons why we might be afraid to raise up new worship leaders, which eventually causes us to burn ourselves out.
One of the reason that we don’t want to raise up new worship leaders is that we don’t know how. This is a very valid reason with some potentially easy solutions:
- First of all, learn how. This might seem obvious, but many times we rely on our own talent to get us through things. Because we rely on our own talent, we don’t know how to teach and train others. It is our responsiblity to continuously learn and train ourselves. I believe the most important training we could ever go through is that of learning how to equip others.
- Recognize that you might not have the gift of teaching. The Bible is clear that certain gifts are given to certain people. Perhaps you can play and instrument, sing, and lead worship really well but you have no idea how to teach others how to do it. Find people who do. Find music teachers within your church or even within your community. Find people that can teach you how to be a better leader, and let those people teach your volunteers as well.
- Make time to teach. So often in the world of church music we are constantly rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing. Schedule some time for teaching. Come up with a monthly workshop time to teach your volunteers. If that is too often, do it quarterly, or even twice a year. Make time to teach.
Tomorrow we’ll look at what happens when we think we don’t have the right people in which to pass on leadership.
So, we want to raise up new worship leaders and avoid burning ourselves out, but we’re deathly afraid of what might happen when we “let go of the reins.”
The first problem is that we really shouldn’t have been holding the reins in the first place. When we place our own control of a ministry over God’s leading of it, we are really creating an idol out of our own ministry. A certain amount of control is good (making sure that the ministry is Biblical; having control of who is involved in the ministry, so that lifestyle is consistent with the ministry, etc.), but when we refuse to step down from leading worship for a Sunday and let someone else do it because we want things “perfect,” we are bowing to the control idol.
Instead of thinking, what if this goes wrong, or what if that goes wrong, have you thought of these what ifs?
- What if the young teen who plays guitar is allowed a chance to lead worship in youth group or a small group, and eventually becomes a dedicated, God-honoring, worship leader, devoting his life to training, teaching and leading others?
- What if the classical guitarist who has been seen as playing an old-fashioned style is allowed to use his talent to play one of the most beautiful musical intros heard in quite some time? (I know the author of the post definitely didn’t see the guitar player in that way, but I’ve always wondered what to do with classical guitar in contemporary worship, have you?)
- What if the young lady with not much formal vocal training is mentored, trained and given the opportunity to be a vocalist on the worship team? Will she be able to one day glorify God by be involved in recording vocals for worship CD’s?
You get the point, hopefully. So often we’re wrapped up in the negative what ifs that we don’t even think about the possibility that the what ifs could be absolutely positive. In fact, they could change a life for God’s glory.
