Why Worship Team Members Aren’t Prepared…and How to Fix It
Let’s do a deep dive into an important worship team value: coming prepared with your parts to rehearsal.
We’ve all been there, either as a worship leader, pastor, or team member. Someone on the team isn’t prepared….and it shows. The vocal is off, or the guitar part isn’t learned. Discouragement sets in, especially if this is the pattern that repeats itself weekly. You might catch yourself in a little bit of despair. After all, these are volunteers…how in the world could you MAKE them come prepared? They aren’t getting paid.
The situation is not as hopeless as you might think. Let’s take a look at a few reasons team members aren’t prepared, and what can be done to make it better:
People are busy. Let’s face it, live isn’t getting any less busy in our world. Jobs, kids, spouses, hobbies, travel, sickness, emergencies…the list goes on. The problem of busyness isn’t going to get better any time soon. But you can help your busy team by getting them their rehearsal materials earlier. A week seems like plenty of time to learn songs and parts, but it’s not if most of the week is taken up with other items. Think about giving your team 3 weeks with the materials. The chances of a few free hours to prepare music increase dramatically..in fact they increase by a factor of 3 if you are used to giving out materials 7 days or less before your first rehearsal. And here is a side benefit- sending out materials way early gives you the ability to expect preparedness from your team members. There is really no excuse if the materials have been out there for the better part of a month. Suddenly, the onus is on your team and the “I was busy” excuse isn’t an option.
People don’t know they are supposed to be prepared. If your team has a pattern of unpreparedness and it hasn’t been addressed, team members will interpret the silence on this issue as tacit approval. No one talks about being prepared, there are no consequences, so why spend the effort if it’s not required? The fix here is a bit harder as you, the team leader, will have to begin to state the expectations clearly. A good way to start is a communication to the whole team to review the team expectations and/or values. A hard copy should also be distributed. Once the expectations are defined and understood, you can legitimately begin to call out unpreparedness (kindly and gently, of course).
People don’t think it’s necessary. Once in a while, a team member may come along that has a different view on preparedness. There are two forms this can take. One is that the person feels they are talented enough to fly by the seat of their pants and don’t need advance preparation. The other is that they don’t believe that increasing the quality of your worship process and your worship service is important. If you feel that preparedness IS important, a confrontation must occur. Do your best to state your reasons why you believe coming to rehearsal prepared is a good idea (it honors the rest of the team, it increases quality and effectiveness of worship, it honors God, etc.). Here is the hard part: if you believe preparedness is an important value for your team, anyone who doesn’t is going to be a liability, no matter how naturally talented they are. They will hold the team back by rejecting the value of preparedness and create a disconnect between your leadership and the team. You may lose a team member or two over this one. However, my personal experience is that ultimately the team becomes much stronger when united around the value of preparedness (among others). It’s better to have a smaller but united team than a larger but fractured team.
Your team deserved the best, don’t settle for unpreparedness! Hopefully the ideas expressed here will encourage you to lead your team into a consistent practice of being prepared.
Learn more about our low cost, customized review of your worship ministry, just $50!
Virtual Creative Arts Assistant
Look into our affordable work-from-home assistant solution for team scheduling, service planning, music charting and more