4 Easy Steps for Training New Worship Volunteers

  In this video, I’m going to share with you the fast and simple way to get new team members trained up and ready to serve well on Sunday. Now, this isn’t the full, robust training pathway that I usually develop at churches, but I’m brand new to my church, so I’m trying to get new volunteers involved as quick as possible. I’m using these four steps. The fourth one is probably the most important. The first step is to send them a pre-training video. Now, this assumes you’ve already found someone that you want to train, so obviously that step is done. But once you find someone, send them a pre-training video. What do I mean by that? Well, you want to create a video video of you doing the thing that they’re going to do and show them how you want them to do it. For example, I’m bringing on two new percussionists to my team, and so I created a 20-minute video of me. This is how I want you to shake the tambourine. This is how you’re supposed to shake the shaker. This is when you use the shaker. This is when you use the tambourine. This is when you hit this drum pad. This is when you hit that drum pad. I made a 20-minute video, which is on my YouTube channel, by the way, if you want to see what I’m talking about, I’ll link it below. But I made a 20-minute video. I sent it to these two percussionists and I said, watch this and ask me any questions you have. And you should do the same for each of your musicians. You don’t need to make a complicated video. Just set up your iPhone, say, This is how I want you to strum the guitar in a band setting. And if you don’t want to make these videos, you can find them online and send them to your trainees in advance. Or I’ve actually created training videos for every single position in a Modern Worship team. And in the academy, you can get all of those videos as part of your membership, and you can just send those to your musicians and say, Watch this, do what he says, and let me train your musicians for you. Either way, find them, make them, or use mine. It’s fine, but send a pre-training video. That’s your first step. Once they’ve spent a couple of weeks practising at home or at least mentally thinking through the process, bring them in for one-on-one training with you. You shouldn’t just throw someone up on stage until they’ve been properly prepared. Your job is to set people up for success, and in order to do so, you need one-on-one training time with them. This is where you’re watching their hands, you’re giving them specific feedback. No, I need you to slap the shaker like this on the accent beat. No, I need you to not let that string ring on your guitar. So you’re giving them specific feedback on what you need them to change in order for them to do well when they actually serve on Sunday. Now, this doesn’t need to be a huge long ordeal. Let me tell you how I’m doing it with these two percussionists. For the girl, she works. I said, Come in on your lunch break, and we’re going to spend 30 minutes. I’m going to play through the whole set with you, and I’m going to tell you exactly what I want you to do for each section of the song. It took us 30 minutes. We got through the whole set. She knew when to shake the shaker, when to use the tambourine, when to hit that sound, when to hit this sound. Within 30 minutes, she was actually ready to play on Sunday. Now, if If she was a little rough, I would have actually said, Okay, great job. Let’s come back next week and do another 30 minutes on your lunch break, same time, same place. With the guy, he had never played percussion before, so I knew I was going to need to work with him a little longer. I said, Hey, every Wednesday after Youth Group for 15 minutes lets you and I play together. So that’s exactly what we’re doing. After Youth Group, most of the kids are just hanging out. He and I go to the corner. There’s a little percussion set up there, and I play through the songs with him, and I give him feedback. I look at his hand, I give him specific things I want him to work on, and then here’s tip, I sent him home with our extra shaker and tambourine, and I said, Practise to the songs at home. I want you to listen to the radio. I want you to listen to when they’re playing the shaker. I want you to listen to when the tambourine comes in. I want you to practise along with the radio, and I want you to practise along with the click track. So we downloaded a metronome to his phone, and I said, I want you to be like a machine. I want you to subdivide so cleanly between those beats and just be a super tight tambourine machine. So that’s what in-person training can look like. We’ve been doing this for two, three weeks now, and he’s basically ready to serve. So the next The next step is to schedule them for rehearsal. It’s very important that you only schedule them for rehearsal. You don’t want to say, I’m going to schedule you for service, because what happens if they bomb at rehearsal? Now you have an awkward conversation that you need to have. Just promise this much, and if they do great at rehearsal, then say, Hey, great job. If you’re comfortable, I think you’re ready to play in the service. Do you want to just play for service? So that’s exactly what we did with the girl. She was further along than him, so I said, Why don’t you play for rehearsal on Sunday morning? I’m going to give you a very specific direction so you know what I expect. Don’t take it personally. And just play with us for rehearsal. And she did really well. I said, Why don’t you just play service with us? And she was like, Okay. Now, obviously, you want to ask them, Hey, if you’re comfortable, would you like to play service with us? But yeah, make sure they’re comfortable because some people aren’t. Some people are more timid and they’re not ready to jump in. But if they are, throw them into service. And that leads to the fourth and final, and I think most important step, which is have your trainees shadow the better musician. So now at rehearsal, he’s going to stand next to her and awkwardly stare at her while she’s playing. Hopefully not too awkward. But she’s going to play just like she would for service. He’s going to watch everything she’s doing, and he’s going to mentally practise it as well. Now, one pro tip here is if you’re able and you have enough capacity, give your trainee a set of in-ears and earbuds as well so that the trainee is able to hear everything the way that it’s actually going to be in service. They’re getting used to hearing the click track, they’re getting used to hearing what in-ears sound like, and they’re getting comfortable in that environment. That is the key to good training, is to make someone comfortable in the environment so when they actually do it, it doesn’t feel any different than their training. You want to get them as close as you can to the line so that when they step across the line, it feels like they didn’t even take a step, that they were just like, Oh, yeah, I’ve done this before. That’s what good training looks like. Now, this is the quick and dirty way to train people, but it works. I usually recommend a much more robust training process, and I teach that in the academy. If you want to check that out, we have a team building course and 10 other courses about topics that you would need to know as a worship leader. You can try it for just $1. Or I have a free chapter from an unreleased book that I never put out there that is all about developing training pathways at your church, and I’ll put a link below for that. So either join us in the academy, try it for $1, you get 15 days of full access to all the courses, the live monthly trainings, the musician training videos that I told you about earlier, the Team Divo’s that I give for every single week of the year. You can try all that for just $1 at worshipministrytraining. Com or link below, or you can grab that free Training Pathways chapter that I never released. But please set your people up for success. God wants you to equip the saints for ministry. It’s literally your calling to help them succeed. So I hope this video helped you. Check out whatever YouTube is recommending next. Otherwise, I’ll see you inside the academy or in the next video. God bless.