Changing Worship Team Culture Is Hard: Here Are 5 Tricks
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED JULY 28, 2019
You’ve been there- frustrated by worship team members that show up late, don’t prepare their parts in advance, communicate intermittently, and back out at the last minute. Worse yet, often they don’t even have a sense that anything is wrong. You’ve tried to change this behavior on your team with little or no success. You know the kind of team you want to have, but you can’t seem to lead them to that reality.
I’ve seen versions of this problem crop up weekly on worship leader facebook groups. Here is the brutal truth- there is no quick fix to these issues because they require changes in the culture of the team. And changing culture is hard.
Hard…but not impossible! Given time you CAN lead your team into positive cultural change. Here are 5 proven tricks that have proved effective over time for me:
Write it Down
In all my ministries I have written down the ideals and behaviors I thought would make us into a great team. Then I made sure every member of my team got a copy or a link to these team values. Every new team member that joined after this also received them. Your expectations cannot be met if people do not know what they are. Or as one of my lead pastors used to say, “if it’s not on paper its vapor.”
Constant Reminders
I made sure that in every email I sent to the team or part of the team, I included a reference to one of the expectations or values of our team. Sometimes it was just a reminder of the time- “see you at 7:00PM sharp on Wednesday.” At other times I just wrote, “remember to prepare your parts in advance.” I also regularly thanked the team for being prepared when they came through. Every email, every text, every conversation, every rehearsal, until the concepts and language sunk in and became part of our team culture.
Explain Why
I was constantly explaining why it was important to be on time, come prepared, and respond to scheduling requests in a timely manner. I was on a quest to help the team understand the value of doing ministry this way, and I never assumed that everyone felt or thought the same way I did. There are other ways to live, other ways to do ministry. Why this way? What difference does it make? People need good reasons to change behaviors.
Build Friendships
Through time spent in ministry together, working through creative and challenging service elements, and hanging out in the green room, I developed friendships with team members. Occasionally I’d spend time with people outside of church ministry too. I had some of the extra rehearsals for Christmas and Easter services at my home. Once I had the whole team over for a picnic...60 people in my backyard! I was careful to encourage and build up team members through our weekly interactions in ministry. Through this genuine effort I built trust and buy-in. Telling people why is important, but building trust through friendship is even more important. People will follow a leader if they believe that leader truly cares about them.
Showing Results
Are your team values really producing a better team? Are they producing fruit in ministry? When people became followers of Jesus or got baptized I let the team know and told them, “you had a part in bringing them to Jesus!” I would explain that our values and expectations resulted in services that had high quality and high impact. We were setting the tone and breaking through barriers that were keeping people from listening to the gospel. The team needs to know that their efforts are making an impact…prove it to them!
Side note- if you can’t connect your team values and behaviors to a fruitful ministry, that may be an indication that your values and behaviors need reworking.
One more note on changing culture- you will probably have to prove you mean it. If there is a team member that will not change, it’s better to lose them than to continue to let them disrupt the team dynamic. This should be done carefully, lovingly, and after many tries to bring the person around. But in the end it’s better to have a smaller team that is unified and can count on each other, rather than a fractured team where some people embrace the culture and some flout it. Usually in my ministry, solid growth of the team only occurred after these problem people were convinced and brought into unity or they left the team.
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