10 Vital Steps to Hire a Worship Leader (for Churches)

  Speaker 1 So your church is ready to hire a worship leader. Congratulations. I’m going to give you 10 steps that will make this process as smooth and easy as possible. I’m also going to give you some free resources that will help save you time and headache along the way. Now, I want to say hiring a worship leader is a big decision, and it’s either going to be positive for your church or negative for your church. If you hire the wrong person, you are going to have a lot of headaches and a lot of cleanup to do, and I want to help you avoid those mistakes. And so this process will help you find a qualified candidate and will set you up for success as you bring them onto your team. So step one, Sounds obvious, but you really do need to define your needs. Do you need a part-time worship leader who’s just going to lead Sundays? I don’t want to undersell that. That’s actually a lot of responsibility. A lot of times churches think, Oh, what do they do? They just pick five songs. No, there’s actually team building, culture building, there’s discipleship, there’s meeting planning.

Speaker 1 It’s not just sing songs. They’re building a ministry. They’re building a team. It’s not just five hours a week. Really expand your understanding of the worship leader role. It might still fit into a part-time category, but you have understand there’s a lot more than just singing songs on Sunday. Is it a part-time role or is it a full-time role? Is it a combined role? Are they doing youth and worship or communications and worship or social media and graphics and worship? Or is it simply just a worship leader? Another thing as you’re thinking about the needs, do you need primarily a musical person or do you need a leader type person? Most of you are going to lean towards the leader side, but some churches have all of the infrastructure built and they just need a good singer and musician. And so that might be something to consider. Do you need a musician or do you need a leader? I have created a job description template for you to use that you can get below. There’s a link below. Just put your email in. I will send you the job description template for what a worship leader should be doing in a normal church job.

Speaker 1 So grab that below. I think it’ll really help clarify your needs. After you’ve clarified your needs, your second step is to determine your budget. I want to say the worship leader role is a lot bigger and more important of a role than we give it credit for. They are actually discipling the church every Sunday. They’re spending about 30 minutes on stage in front of all your people. And so you don’t want to cheap out and pay the lowest you can to get the most mediocre candidate that you can. If you want someone qualified, I’m just telling you, you need to spend some money. And I’ve been in the worship leading space for a long time, and I can tell you there is a glut, a lack of qualified worship leaders out there. If you’re looking for a strong pastoral presence, someone who’s gifted and skilled at music, someone who’s organisational and organised, you are You’re going to have to pay some money more than you probably think. I would say that if you look at your pastoral staff, whatever your pastoral staff is making, the worship leader position, if you want someone great, you’re probably going to need to pay towards the upper end of that pastoral staffing salary.

Speaker 1 So be ready to spend a bit of money if you want a gifted candidate. So once you’ve determined your needs and your budget, it’s time to get the word out. There are several ways you can get the word out, and I’m going to give you about four. There are headhunter companies like Vandebloomen, Slingshot, Fruit Group, and others who have networks that they’ve built over the years to find and pair worship leaders with churches, and they try to find a good DNA fit or a good culture fit. Now, that does It costs money, and sometimes it costs significant money to use some of those services, but it is an option. Another way is to reach out to other pastor friends and tap into their network, ask their worship leaders if they have friends, and so tap into your own friend-based network of other people in ministry. You can also post your job description, which hopefully you downloaded below, onto Facebook groups. There are many worship leader Facebook groups out there that you can search and post them there, see if you get any qualified candidates there. Or we, as Worship Ministry Training, can help you. We have over 20,000 worship leaders on our mailing list at the time of this recording that we can send your jobs to.

Speaker 1 We can blast out your job to 20,000 or more worship leaders. If you want to take advantage of our network, you can do that below with the link. Once you’ve disseminated your description out there on the internet, say a prayer and trust God to bring you a great candidate. And that leads us to step four, where now you’re going to begin reviewing your applicants. On the job description that I gave you, it tells the candidate to submit a cover letter, a resume, and very, very, very important, very important, a sample video of them leading worship. And what you want to ask for in that sample video is a few songs. You don’t just want to hear one song or a snippet of a song. You want to see them lead two or three songs, and a speaking moment or a prayer moment because you want to see how they are verbally on stage because leadership is more than just singing. So as these applications come in, you’re going to start reviewing these videos and cover letters. Now, I want to give you a tip. You’re going to be tempted to watch the videos first, but the problem with that is you might be wowed by someone’s talent, and then you’ll overlook some major gaps in their work experience or their theology or whatever, because you’re going to be like, Oh, my gosh, they’re so good.

Speaker 1 They’re going to bring so much to the table, but they’re lacking experience or things that actually that are in the long run. So I would say start by reading so you’re not biassed and find candidates that seem like a good match on paper and then go to the videos and see how they do in the actual musical leadership side of it. If you find a candidate that you really like, go to their church’s website or their YouTube or Facebook and try to find other live streams of them leading and watch some of those recordings so you can get a better feel for their leadership style. Because obviously, if they’re sending a video, they’re choosing the very best performance or songs that they’ve led. And so go to their live stream and do a little bit of sleuthing and spying and see how they are over the long haul. And I have two key factors that you should be looking for as you’re reviewing their performance and their videos. Number one is is humility, and number two is excellence. I want you to ask as you’re watching the videos, does this person seem to want the attention for themselves?

Speaker 1 Are they a little bit Peacocky, or are they genuinely more concerned about the congregations experience and the congregation encountering the Lord? Are they trying to get the attention for themselves, or are they a pass-through for the Lord? You can get a sense for a person, how they hold themselves on stage, what they say, how they sing, how they move their head. All of that is indicative of whether or not they’re trying to get a little bit of the limelight for themselves. So you want to look for humility, and then you also want to look for excellence. Are they able to perform the songs and do so with undistracting excellence? Are they able to encourage engagement through skillful execution of music? So humility and excellence, there’s a lot more to a good candidate, but at least those two should be considered as you review the videos. After you’ve reviewed the candidates, if you find one or two that you like, step five is to send a theological and cultural survey to the best candidates. You want to make sure that this person is actually a good match long term for your church’s culture and theology. The questions in this survey, and you can use Google forms or you can just use a word doc and send it to them, but the questions that are important are the key theological political distinctives of your church.

Speaker 1 Lean into those and see where they land on those topics. Find out what they’re like as a person to work with, what their work style is like. Are they organised? Are they relational? Are they task-driven? Find out what they’re like to work with, and then ask questions that help you see if they’d be a good fit for your current staff team culture. And give them a deadline of seven days to get this back to you. And some worship leaders might disqualify themselves by being unresponsive or providing incomplete answers or answers with a lot typos because they’re not detail-oriented or just failing to meet the deadline of seven days. And I would encourage you to be attentive. Take note of their attention to detail and their excellence in their communication with you during this process, because if they’re already failing to meet your standards when they’re in the phase of trying to make the best first impression possible, then just imagine how bad they’re going to be when they actually join the team and they get a little bit lazy. So if they can’t be excellent up front in this very important process, then they’re not going to be excellent long term either.

Speaker 1 And so don’t compromise. If you have somebody who is just really not showing initiative or drive or interest or excellence in the way that you desire, save yourself a lot of heartache and let the catch go. Just let the fish swim away. You don’t need that headache on your team. It’s going to cause a lot of heartache for your church if you bring them on and have to let them go. So that’s step five, really find out if they’re a good fit for your team. Step six then is to actually begin interviewing them. And I would encourage you to do some virtual interviews. Zoom is really great because a phone call is okay, but when you’re looking at the person, you really get a sense for them. So schedule a Zoom call and review some of the questions from their questionnaire. You can explore any other areas you feel are important, and also give them time to ask questions about the church, the role, the staff team, the community, if they’re not from the area. So you should also give them some time to ask questions as well. It’s a two-way conversation. You want to make sure both parties feel good about things.

Speaker 1 And if that first interview does go well, schedule second Zoom interview that includes other key staff members to see how they feel about the candidate. And if they feel good about it, then we’re going to move to step seven, which is to bring out the candidate to lead worship. This is a very important step, and I want to give you some detail about this. You need to be very intentional about step seven because you want to get the most out of this time investment and money investment of bringing them to your church. There are a few things I want to say. Number one, you should invite the candidate and their family, if they have one, out to your church to lead worship. And before they come to lead worship, you need to do two things. One is put them in touch with the tech director or production director, if your church has one, because they need to iron out all of the production details. When do you need the songs by? Here are the order of the songs. Here are the orders of verse, chorus, bridge so that the lyrics are correct. What tech do you need me to bring?

Speaker 1 Do you have a direct box? All these questions that they need answered, they need to show up prepared. So you need to put them in touch with the tech director or the production director, whoever that might be at your church. The second group of people you need to connect them with before they arrive is the band. You probably should email the band and the worship leader on one thread and say, Hey, everybody, so and so is coming to lead worship with us, and they’re going to be communicating with you about rehearsal times and songs and all that stuff. So make sure you connect those two groups before the worship leader arrives. And then you really want to be available to answer as many questions as possible and give as many details as possible so you can really set them up for success. Here’s what happens when they arrive. When they arrive, you want to be so hospitable to them. You want to make them feel not like Kings and Queens, but you want to make them feel really welcomed and loved. You want to make a good first impression because they might be moving their family across the country to come lead at your church.

Speaker 1 So put them and their family up in a nice hotel if they’re travelling from out of town. Take them out to a nice dinner. Maybe take them to a beautiful spot in your town and show them around and just make them feel like you’re a great host. I would say definitely compensate them for leading worship that weekend. So this is going to take an investment on your part financially. Compensate them at least minimum $250, at least. It could be up to $1,000, depending on your context. So be extra hospitable and extra generous. As you bring them into rehearsal, introduce them to all of the band and the tech team so that they feel comfortable, and then maybe get out of their hair so that they don’t feel like you’re staring at them and judging them while they rehe, because it might be rough. Honestly, it’s the first time they’ve ever played with this band, and you have to keep that in mind, too. It’s the first time they’ve ever played with these musicians. It takes time to bond musically with people and know what the other is going to do. So it might not be a slam dunk the first time.

Speaker 1 I mean, hopefully it is, but it might not. So just be aware of that as well. If you’re not a musical pastor watching this, you have to understand that it takes time to bond musically, and especially don’t sit there during a rehearsal and judge them in a rehearsal. I would hate that if you were doing that to me. So get out of the way, let them do their thing. And then last thing I’ll say about step seven is make sure to spend time with them and their family in different settings, around groups of people, alone in a formal setting, in an informal setting. Try to get a feel for them and their family as people. Introduce them to different key staff on the team, et cetera. And while it is important to spend a lot of time with them, I do want to encourage you to give them some alone time as a family so that they can talk and pray and debrief, and maybe they can wander around the town and get a sense for the area themselves without feeling like you’re breathing down their neck. So give them some space as well so they can have some transparent conversations with one another.

Speaker 1 Okay, so that goes well, hopefully, or doesn’t. And that’s where step eight comes in. You’re going to debrief with key stakeholders on your team. So get the opinions from the staff, the worship team members, the congregants, see how people felt about this candidate. Because listen, if most people felt good, then it’s a good thing. If most people felt bad, then it’s a bad thing. Try to see if there were any red flags. Take in all sides and perspectives. And if it’s heavily weighted one way or the other, then I would tell you to trust the group’s consensus. And at any time, don’t be afraid to pull the plug and start over. It’s better to have no person than the wrong person. So after they’ve come and led, and by the way, I’m going to tell you a little secret at the very end because there’s something difficult. Sometimes if someone’s already a worship pastor at a different church and you have to figure out timing for them to come, I’ll tell you about that at the very end. But if they came and led and it feels good, call their references. Step nine, do not skip step nine.

Speaker 1 Call references. The church that I work at had a pretty big disaster in the past because they didn’t call references for someone they were hiring a very key role. And yeah, that led to huge headaches, heartache makes, and a lot worse. And so definitely call references to find out the candidate’s work ethic and character. Like long term, what are they like to work with? They might make a great first impression, but how are they as an actual employee long term? I will say this, you want to dialogue about the candidate with this because they might not have told their current church that they’re looking for something else, and you don’t want to put them in danger or jeopardise their current employment. So you’re going to have to talk with them about this and either decide when is a good time to approach their current church or you’re going to have to call previous employers, even if it’s not at a church. So you might not be able to talk to the senior pastor at their current church because that blows up their current job. So you’ll have to dialogue with the worship leader candidate about the best way to call their references.

Speaker 1 Once you’ve called your references and you feel good about it, you could have them come back out and lead again, or you might already know that it’s time for the final step, step 10, to present the official job offer. You’re going to have to negotiate with the candidate about salary, benefits, job role and responsibilities, cost of moving reimbursements, that’s a part of it, too, and write out a formal offer. And if they accept it, congratulations, you just hired your newest key team member. And now comes the hard and important work of onboarding them into the team, into the family, introducing them. We can do a whole other video about that in the future if you’re interested. But I do want to give a final note, and that has to do with this idea of if they’re working at a church, they might not be able to get away on a Sunday to come to lead at your church. Or if When they do, they’re going to have to lie and say they’re on vacation. You can get around this by having them come and lead at different contexts. For example, the first time I led at my church that hired me is I came to lead at a men’s retreat on a Friday, Saturday, and I left on Sunday to be back at my church.

Speaker 1 So maybe you do that, or maybe you invite them for a midweek young adults programme, but it might not be possible for them to come on a Sunday. So just be aware of that and try to be creative about how you get them there. Now, I know I kept this a bit broad because every circumstance is going to be different, but this is the general overview of a great hiring process. And again, I want to encourage you to grab those job descriptions below. And we do also offer coaching services for churches who are struggling with the hiring process. If you’d like us to help partner with you and coach you through the process, please reach out. You can reach us at worshipministrytraining. Com/contact. Lastly, if you’d like us to help partner with you and coach you through the process, please reach/contact. And lastly, if you’d like us to blast out your job to 20,000 worship leaders or so, we can do that for you. Just click the link below that is labelled correctly. We look forward to getting the word out about your job, and we pray God leads you to the right worship leader.

Speaker 1 God bless My name is Alex from Worship Ministry Training. Have a great day.