The average church in America has only seventy members. This means that most worship leaders are fighting the uphill battle of trying to create an excellent worship ministry with limited resources and limited personnel. However, Kade Young seems to have cracked the code. In a church of only 100, Kade is consistently bringing forth excellence from both his worship and tech ministries. Today we talk to Kade about how to hold high standards for excellence in a small church. The principles outlined here will apply to small and large churches alike, so no matter what your church size dive in and be encouraged!
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Quotables:
Whether you lead a church of 100 or 10,000 people, the calling to be an excellent worship leader is the same. – Tweet That!
It’s better to have an incomplete team than have a team full of people who aren’t a good fit. – Tweet That!
More does not equal better. You don’t need a large team to be musically excellent. – Tweet That!
The majority of a worship leader’s most important work takes place behind the scenes, not just on stage on Sunday. – Tweet That!
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Transcript
Alex Enfiedjian 00:10 Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the worship leader training podcast. This is Alex Enfiedjian, your host. In today’s episode, I speak with Katy young about holding high standards in small churches. Did you know The average church in America is only 70 people. And that means there are many churches that are even smaller than that. That poses a great challenge of trying to create high quality worship ministries with very limited people and very limited resources. Yet somehow, Kate has managed to create a worship ministry in his small church that rivals the excellence of many mega churches out there. And the principles we discuss in this episode actually apply to any size church that’s seeking to be excellent in their worship ministry. So whether you lead at a large church or small church, I know that you will be helped by cades wisdom today. Before we get into the interview, our recommended product of the month is Planning Center Planning Center is the most robust, easy to use online software to plan your worship services and schedule your teams. It honestly saves me hours each week, the tools and the things that it can do are incredible. One of the things I want to highlight is that you can actually link your Planning Center account to your song, select account. And from then on, it will automatically import chord charts anytime you add a new song, or if you add new keys, it will automatically download those keys for those songs. So be sure to check out Planning Center at planning dot center. It’s free for 30 days to try. And then plans start at just $14 a month. And you can find all of this in the show notes or at planning dot center. Okay, let’s jump into our conversation with Katie young about holding high standards in small churches.
Alex Enfiedjian 01:52 Hey, everybody, I am here with Katy young, who is a worship leader worship pastor, and also the founder of collaborate worship, which is an online resource for worship leaders, especially worship leaders of small churches, to help them be excellent in all that they do. Hey, Kate, how you doing?
Kade Young 02:10 I’m doing great. Thanks for having me, Alex.
Alex Enfiedjian 02:11 Yeah, man, it’s a pleasure, kid. You know, I know a little bit about your story, but you are leading in a smaller ish church. And I have a hunch that we have a lot of listeners who lead at or volunteer at smaller churches, because the average church size in America is 70 people, which means that there are some that are actually smaller than that. And so I have a hunch that they’re they’re wanting to listen to this podcast and do things excellently because otherwise, I don’t think they would actually be listening because they wouldn’t care. And you have proven that in a smaller church, you can do things excellently. In fact, I want to encourage you, because I’ve, I’ve seen some of your stuff online, and the quality with which you are doing things, it rivals that of large mega churches. It’s amazing. And so I’m excited to have you on today to talk to our listeners about how to have high standards in a small church. You ready? Yeah, I’m ready. Let’s go. Awesome. Okay, so Kate, first of all, let’s just talk to our listeners in smaller churches, tell them why they should care and why they should strive to have high standards and high excellence in their small church.
Kade Young 03:18 You know, the truth is that like whether you lead a church of 100 people, or a church of 10,000 people, there’s no less of a call on your life. And I fell into the belief that there was at one point, and I was encouraged, whenever I, I worked for three years at a larger church, you know, about 100 people as their business manager for three years. I didn’t think I had anything to offer, you know, to the worship leader, that was their site. So I would never say anything. And then he came in, started asking me questions. And I found out that the things that I knew actually helped him in his larger church. So I mean, that’s, that’s when it hit me. And that’s when I realized I was like, there’s, there’s my call is no less than his or somebody who’s leading worship at at a church of 10,000. But my calling is just as great. I’m making an impact in my community, and we should all see it that way. We should all be pressing into the gifts that God has put in us, you know, regardless of the size of our church.
Alex Enfiedjian 04:09 Yeah, God deserves our best and our church deserves our best, right? For sure. Yeah. So I’m thinking, you know, in terms of these smaller churches, a lot of them I think, do have more of an uphill battle and more challenges than, say, a church that has all the resources and can hire anyone they want and buy any gear that they want. So there are some some barriers to smaller churches achieving excellence. What would you say are some of those barriers?
Kade Young 04:38 You know, we might see it as a barrier that we can’t hire people or we don’t have as big of a pool of people to choose from, but you really got to see that as an opportunity that maybe you can look into your church and see somebody who has very little skill, but that you can bring on to the team and help develop that skill and turn them into something that, you know, rivals what the big churches have on their team. So that’s that’s how I’ve always viewed it. I’m all about helping people develop who they are the gifts God’s put on the inside of them. You know, actually, there’s a lot of Sundays that I’m not even on stage leading worship, because I’m all about helping my team become the best that they can be. And so I mean, it’s, it’s really an opportunity. It’s not, it’s not really a setback as a smaller church.
Alex Enfiedjian 05:20 That’s awesome. Yeah, you actually have more intimacy and more more opportunity to work closely with a smaller group of people. So just so our listeners are aware, what size church are you at? What was it when you started? And where is it now,
Kade Young 05:35 when we started about nine years ago, we had 15 total people. And I was able to pool from my friends and family to create a full band of about six to eight people. So when we took the stage that no, there were less than 10 people out the congregation. so humble beginnings. And today, we’re about 100 people on a Sunday, which is still a small church, but doesn’t bother me at all. I love being a part of it.
Alex Enfiedjian 05:58 Yeah, you and I talked before this, and you said, That’s by intentionality, your pastor, desires to keep a smaller church because of the discipleship, and you actually are moving towards a really cool model, but we won’t get into that right now. So it’s, it’s not bad to be at a small church. And I think that’s what we want to make very clear. It’s, it’s not a bad thing. And I think a lot of people, they desire to be at a larger church, and they’re like, oh, it would be so cool to work for a bigger church. But bigger churches usually just mean bigger headaches anyway. So
Kade Young 06:26 yeah, through through that, and you got to please more people. So you know, another benefit of being a smaller church is, you can take your time, you know, developing your skills, and nobody’s gonna say much about it. You have more grace there.
Alex Enfiedjian 06:38 Yeah, totally. So you started with 15. Now you’re at 100. Talk to the listener of a smaller church who is ready to take their worship ministry to the next level? How should they start recruiting and onboarding people to bring in the next level of excellence? Because obviously, there aren’t as many people to choose from? Where would you start? Well, you
Kade Young 07:00 still need an onboarding process. And I think that’s the mistake that most small churches make is they don’t have any sort of process at all. So I’ll tell you my process, but that doesn’t mean that yours has to look exactly like this, just, you know, pull some ideas from it, make it your own. But I start with an application where, you know, I’m asking the important questions like, are they ever lever, when did they get saved, you know, things like that, and tell me a little bit about your musical background. And that just helps me to get to know them. And then I schedule an audition where they come in, during a rehearsal. And if they’re trying out for vocals, they’ll sing a song with the band, if they’re on an instrument, they’ll play along with the band, and then I’ll let them go home after that and talk to them later. What I’m looking for is not perfection there, but you know, natural talent. So if I don’t see that they could get to where they need to be, then, you know, at that point, I just helped them find somewhere else in the church to serve, because there’s no reason for us both to waste our time there. You know, maybe their mom told them that they’re a great singer. But the truth is that they’re really not. So you know, it’s time to help them move on. So they can actually find the gift that they’re called to. And then, you know, at that point, if somebody does pass the audition process, I transition them into a 90 day probationary period, where I’m looking for commitment. So I want to see if they’re going to show up on time, I want to see if they’re going to show up prepared, and those sort of things. And I communicate with them within that 90 days, if they’re not meeting my expectations, to give them an opportunity to bring it up to that level. But if after the 90 days, they’re still not there, then once again, I help them find somewhere else to serve.
Alex Enfiedjian 08:23 That’s really cool. And I was thinking, you know, there might be some listeners out there going. Well, that’s, that’s awesome. I can put together a onboarding process. But how do I find out who’s a musician in my church? So how do you do that? How did you, you know, initially get the word out that, hey,
Kade Young 08:40 we’re looking for musicians in such a small church. Was it word of mouth? Or was it like an announcement from the stage? It was announcement from the stage, in the moments that we needed a musician, we just got up said, Hey, we’re looking for to grow the worship team. So if you’re interested, you know, seek aid in the back after service, and he’ll give you an application.
Alex Enfiedjian 08:56 Okay, cool. Awesome. So that’s what they should do. They should just get up on stage and say, Hey, anybody want to audition? They should, they should not say anybody want to join the worship team, because that means there’s no onboarding process, and the person will assume that they automatically get a spot, but they should say, anybody want to audition to be part of the worship team? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Now, you know, I think one of the temptations in a smaller church is to say, Gosh, well, he plays guitar good enough, even though he’s hitting bad notes, like half the time, but he’s the only other guitar player we have. So what would you tell somebody who’s like, I’ll just take anyone because I don’t have anyone.
Kade Young 09:33 You know, it’s better to have an incomplete team than to have a team full of people who may not have the skill level or are causing strife on the worship team or things like that. It’s it’s a temptation to just let anybody on the team so that you can have eight to 10 people on stage and you know, how the electric the acoustic the bass and the drums and, and all of that, that bigger churches have, but it’s better to wait for the right people to show up and let them go through the onboarding process than to just Throw them up there to have the band.
Alex Enfiedjian 10:02 Right, because you could have the band, but it’s gonna actually sound worse, right? I mean, in a lot of ways, I think I 100% agree with you, I would rather have just me and an acoustic guitar and have worship going well, then have, you know the whole band and have just massive, ugly sounding distraction? Like, that’s not better, more does not equal better. Right? Exactly. Yeah. But I think that that’s the trap that many, you know, smaller churches fall into, because they see the big churches and go, gosh, I want to, I want to have all that I need to have that if I’m going to be musically viable. But that’s not true, like an acoustic and a piano can do much better if they’re, if they’re together, like you said, in unity.
Kade Young 10:44 Yeah, you know, to give you an example, at our church, we normally do have a full band, but there was one Sunday where I think it was like, after New Year’s that like, half my band, you know, called me the Saturday before it’s like, can’t make it like, okay, so you know how to make a decision. And what I did is, I just let everybody else have the day off and me my wife, because my wife’s on the worship team as a vocalist lead worship that Sunday, I was on the keys, and she sang with me and after church, you know, the people that were there, were just like, that was awesome. You need to do that more often. And so I mean, the congregation actually enjoyed having less
Alex Enfiedjian 11:17 Yeah, no, in many ways, it helps people sing out more. In fact, I found that some of the huge churches with like the really loud band and everything, have less participation from the congregation than the smaller churches that have a small team, and it’s a more acoustic II sound in the church can hear themselves sing, and they’re more apt to participate. So yeah, you’re right, you actually have an advantage in many ways. So take heart, use small church worship leaders, it’s really, it’s really a benefit to you. So how do you Kade encourage your team members in excellence? What are some of the things that you do?
Kade Young 11:49 The first thing that I do is be a good leader to them? So before putting the blame on my team members for something that’s going wrong, I examine myself and you know, am I providing the tools that they need, am I being a good communicator, and things like that, because it always, problems will always stem from the leader. You know, even if you have somebody bad on your team, it’s the leaders fault, because the leader let them on the team in the first place. And they’re not dealing with the problem at hand. So the best way to inspire excellent excellence is to be excellent as a leader,
Alex Enfiedjian 12:19 Okay, what else like I know that you’re like, really heavy on prep, and just like giving them all the tools they need? So what does that mean? And what does that look like?
Kade Young 12:28 So, I use Planning Center, like a lot of worship leaders do. But you know, I go above and beyond whenever I’m adding a song and Planning Center scheduling, I make sure you know, all the rehearsal times are in there. And when I put a song in, I make sure that the mp3 is there on a YouTube video and a link to the piano tutorial and, and all of that, so they don’t have to go search for it themselves. That’s my way of serving the worship team is to do that for them.
Alex Enfiedjian 12:52 No, it’s good. And you know, what you just said, basically, is that you do a lot of work upfront. And I think some worship leaders listening might say, Well, yeah, but you’re paid. And I’m a volunteer, and our church is 60 people, and we can’t afford Planning Center. But the principle still applies, right? If the worship leader wants to have an excellent worship ministry, they have to do work, right. Nothing. There’s no such thing as like gardening without work, you’re not gonna grow tomatoes without digging, you know, and same thing is true in worship ministry, like, whether you’re in a big church or a small church, if you put in the right kind of work, you’re gonna have good results.
Kade Young 13:30 Right. You know, you’re totally right. And, you know, I think that a majority of the work as a worship leader takes place behind the scenes, not not on stage on Sunday. Yeah, well, go ahead and expand upon that. What do you mean? Well, you know, like I said, I mean, we should be spending time in the week, providing the resources, our worship team needs, and we should be, you know, googling ways to fix the problems at hand. And, you know, we need to be putting in that work. And, you know, a lot of times worship leaders will only show up on Sunday. And, and that’s it, and they don’t do any prep work in the week. I’m not saying that you need to, you know, put in 40 hours a week on this stuff. But you do need to dedicate, you know, for me, what I do is every Monday morning is the morning that I plan, worship, and, and do those things that need to be done. And so the worship team knows that, you know, sometime Monday morning, they’re going to get that scheduling request from me for the upcoming Sunday. That’s, that’s a strategy that I use that works. A lot of worship leaders will plan several weeks in advance, but I like to take things one week at a time. Because what I found is the worship team, you know, they they only practice one week at a time anyway. So
Alex Enfiedjian 14:34 but it’s still in advance, and it’s not, hey, here’s the chord chart Sunday morning, of course, they’re not gonna, you know, and I don’t want to bash any churches that are doing that. But you know, you can’t expect a very quality experience if you’re only getting together with your team 35 minutes before the service to put four songs together, you know, and they might say, Well, yeah, but we’re all busy and we’re all volunteers. You’re right, but You know, God deserves excellence. And so let’s figure out a day maybe you practice Sunday after church for the following Sunday, I don’t know, just find some time to, to bring the excellence that God has called us to bring as leaders in the church.
Kade Young 15:15 Yeah, you know, here’s the deal, we can’t use time as an excuse, you know, almost every human being does that. But, you know, you just got to figure out ways to get more done in less time. And so what that means for me is, I expect my worship team to show up to rehearsal with their part already learned on their own time. And so when we, when we have rehearsal, you know, it’s just putting all the parts together fixing anything, that that’s not sounding good together, and things like that. So, because we do that, because that expectations there, we actually only rehearse usually one time a week, and that’s on Sunday morning before service. So I’m not even asking for their time, you know, in the middle of a week for rehearsal. Now, we do occasionally have a midweek rehearsal, but most cases we don’t. And that’s because we found a way to do more in less time.
Alex Enfiedjian 16:00 Yeah. And mainly, that’s because you are putting the work in to give them the parts and the chord charts and the mp3 so that they can show up prepared. And so it is about the worship leader, really, like you said, being the one to lead this thing. And so I want to encourage the worship leaders listening like it’s, it’s on our shoulders, like God has called us to grow and build our ministries. One thing that he said came about, it’s up to the worship leader to Google things on how to fix the problem. That’s something that I’ve really learned and come to really appreciate about you is that you are a perpetual learner, you are constantly researching how to do things better. And I think that’s probably the biggest thing that is going to help a worship leader in a small church, because a lot of times we just want to throw money at our problems. But in small churches, we don’t have money to throw at our problems, we need a new sound board or things aren’t sounding great. But you’re saying get on Google, research it figure out how to do the best with what you have. So you want to speak into that a little bit.
Kade Young 17:00 Yeah, for sure. You’re right, you can’t throw money as a small church, you don’t have the money to throw out your problems to try to fix it. And even if you did have the money, you know, throwing it out the problem probably wouldn’t fix it. Because if you’re not dedicated to learning the basics of the soundboard that you have when you get a new soundboard, it’s just it’s gonna sound just as bad, if not worse, like, if you’re going from analog to digital, and you have all these new controls available, I can almost guarantee you that it’s going to sound worse, if you haven’t put in the effort to actually learn the basics of what it means to have great sound. And how do you get there, like how to set the game and simple things like that? Most small churches don’t understand. And you know, that’s one of the main reasons I started collaborate worship and on collaborate worship, you’re gonna find answers to those questions you can get on there, figure out how to set the gain and things like that. Basically, everything that I’ve learned over the past nine years of not willing, I’m not willing to get a bit given to mediocre. And so everything I’ve learned along that journey, I’ve put it on collaborate worship, so that other worship leaders can learn those same things and a whole lot less time.
Alex Enfiedjian 17:59 Yeah, Kate has done all the googling for you. And you can just go to his blog, collaborate worship.com, and you can literally just suck all of his learning from his brain, and not have to do any of your own and reap all of the benefits. So thank you, Kate. You’re welcome. Yeah, man. Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about more of the expectations. So you say that you expect your team members to show up? This is part of holding high standards, right? You expect them to show up on time with their parts down? What happens if team members aren’t meeting those expectations? What do you do? And why? What do you do? And why do you do it?
Kade Young 18:37 You know, just like Jesus would do I start with grace, you know, I’m not gonna, I’m probably not gonna do anything if it happens once. But you know, the second, the third time, I realized there’s a problem there. And so what I’ll do is, pull them aside one on one, and, you know, that’s very important, these aren’t things that you want to dress in front of the team. So you pull them aside, you know, as discreetly as possible and you say, Hey, this is what’s going on, you know, I, you know, as well as anybody else on the team, that I expect everybody to come prepared. And you can tell that because you know, everybody else is prepared, but that you’re not. And so we need, we need that to change. Because when you’re not prepared, it wastes the team’s time, you know, it wastes your time. So let’s figure out what we can do to make sure you can get prepared. Are you having problems logging into planning centers and not working on your phone, you know, what’s going on here? Help me understand, and let me know if there’s a way that I can help you fix the problem. But it’s just see, it needs to get fixed. And what happens after that, I give them time, usually somewhere around 90 days to to work this out. And I’ll communicate with them along the way. You know, if you know two Sundays down the line, nothing has changed. I say, Hey, remember that conversation we had, you know, make sure that we’re working on this. And if we get to the end of the 90 days, they haven’t changed at all, then I have that hard conversation with them where I let them know that they’re no longer part of the worship. team, but I will help them find somewhere else in the church to serve. Because there’s lots of great things to do in the church. It’s not just the worship team,
Alex Enfiedjian 20:05 right? And can you give us the why behind, you’re willing to cut a team member, even in a small church when you don’t have maybe access to many others? What’s the Why?
Kade Young 20:15 Well, because if you leave like the wrong person on the team, or somebody who’s not dedicated to, to excellence, then you infect the entire team. Like, for example, if you let somebody show up late every week, week after week, they show up late eventually, you know, I bet you some other people on the team are gonna start showing up late because they’re like, okay, doesn’t hold him to the standard. So why should I be held to that standard? And so I mean, it’s all about protecting the team.
Alex Enfiedjian 20:41 Yeah, I heard a Craig Rochelle podcast recently where he said that the most loving thing you can do is cut the wrong person off of your team, because it’s loving for them, because they’re not a good fit anyway. But it’s more importantly, it’s loving for the members who are on your team who are giving all their effort and trying to bring their best. And they’re being dragged down by this one particular team member. Now, that’s not easy to do, especially in a smaller church where you have to see that person and look them in the eyes probably every single Sunday afterwards. But the thing that I’m hearing from UK is that if you want to have an excellent ministry in a small church, you have to be a great leader. And Kate, I see that from what I’ve read online, in your blogs, and articles and stuff like that, I see that you are a great leader, you understand what it means to create a culture that is healthy, that is happy, that is godly, and that pursues excellence. And I wanted to maybe just before we wrap the conversation up, talk to us a little bit more about that culture, how, what are some of the key elements in creating a healthy team, in a small church,
Kade Young 21:43 I would say, you know, once again, I don’t want to want to sound like somebody keeps repeating themselves, but it always falls back on the leader. So what we need to do as leaders is first, you know, pay with gratitude, a lot of times we focus on the negative and constantly point out what’s not going right. But yet, when we hear something that we do, like or a team member does something we do, like we never say anything about it, you know, and they make us smile. But I mean, I’m guilty of doing that a lot, you know, I’ll listen to them rehearse the song, and I’ll hear something that guitar does that I really like. And you know, and then just let it go by never say anything after the song. So we have to be intentional about those moments and say, Hey, guitar player, you know, I loved it whenever you did this, and be specific about it. So they know that you’re paying attention to what they’re doing. And we also, you know, have to be organized, because, you know, who doesn’t like to be part of something that’s well thought out. Like you mentioned earlier, like, if the worship leader showed up on Sunday, with the chord charts, say, Oh, these are the songs that we’re going to do. And nobody knows, up until that moment, there’s a problem there. And that’s frustrating to be a part of, and all that stems out of his laziness. So you know, just put in the work doesn’t have to be several weeks in advance. But you know, even just the Monday before, you know, sing those songs to you. And for those of you who think that, you know, you can’t pick the right songs except Sunday, because you know, the Holy Spirit doesn’t speak until the Sunday, trust me, the Holy Spirit knows the future. So if you want to plan in advance, he’ll talk to you at that moment, too. And then another thing is, you want to respect the time of your team. If you say that rehearsal is going to start at six, and it’s going to end at seven, you need to start at six, and you need to end at seven with no exceptions. Like, even if you didn’t reach the goals that you want it to be for that rehearsal, you need to end at seven because your team needs to know that you expect their time. And then of course, you want to listen to your volunteers. You don’t want to just bark orders and be the only one that has an opinion. Because, you know, the volunteers have great ideas, too. So maybe you need to ask them, you know, should we in that song different? Should we transition into the next song different? Or should we do a different song? You know, let them share their voice?
Alex Enfiedjian 23:40 Yeah, I think that’s a huge part of ownership, right is letting the team members feel like they have a say in the grander scheme of things, instead of just being a cog in the wheel. Oh, I’m just here to fill a slot, you know, when we say, hey, like, I don’t really know how to end that song. Do you guys have any ideas like that, that breeds respect, mutual respect, and it makes them feel like, wow, I have a voice here. And I can contribute something. And that ownership leads to a very happy, healthy team. And one of the things that we kind of had talked about earlier, I think maybe before we hit record was just that. Now you’re reaping the benefits of a great team. So like you’ve spent years building this really high quality team. And now you’ve got a high standard on the stage every Sunday. And so it automatically weeds out people who aren’t good enough because they won’t even come approach you and say, hey, I want to play because they know that they can’t play to that level. But it also attracts people who are interested in being a part of something excellent. Right? like attracts like. So if worship leaders have a bad team, in these smaller churches, and it just doesn’t sound good. It’s gonna attract people who can play poorly. Right? But if it’s if they’ve got these excellent musicians doing excellent things, it’s going to attract more excellence. So I think this is kind of a perpetuating spiral, you know, the better things get, the better people you’ll attract.
Kade Young 25:07 Yeah, I totally agree, you know that the hardest part is in front of this, you know, for that person right now that has a team, that’s not what they want, you know, maybe they don’t sound good, or maybe they’re just not getting along with each other or things like that. I want to encourage you, because I was in that place, too, you know, I can remember, you know, leading worship and wondering if the team would ever get where I wanted it to be, because it just seemed to be moving so slow. And if changes were being made, it didn’t seem like they were moving very fast. But here I am, nine years later, and have exactly the team that I envisioned, you know, nine years ago, whenever I didn’t have it. And that’s because I kept pressing in, and, you know, one change at a time, you know, kept building an excellent team, and creating excellent sound and things like that. So, and now it’s just, you know, I’m writing on all that hard work I put in up front, because you’re right, like attracts like. So when people see the excellence that’s portrayed every Sunday, the only people who want to be a part of that are people who are also dedicated to excellence, because people who aren’t dedicated to that it scares them off, which is a good thing.
Alex Enfiedjian 26:07 Yeah. Yeah, keep pushing for for progress, keep pushing for growth, and don’t give up. That’s what you’re telling our listeners. Man. Okay, one more question. And then we’ll end with the final question. But what do you want to say, if anything at all in regards to budgets in a small church? Like how would you encourage them to spend money or ask for money, just speak into the budget portion of their mind right now,
Kade Young 26:33 you know, I love new gear just as much as anybody else. But what I want to tell small churches is that you need to take the gear that you have, and actually learn how to use it before you go and spend money on new gear. I’m not saying that you don’t need new gear, like you might need new speakers, or you may need a new mixer. But I want to make sure first that you know, you know those basics of how to use EQ and gain. And learn all that first. Because, you know, getting new gear is not going to fix any of that. And small churches have small budgets. So you just have to invest in things one at a time, maybe this year, all you can get is a new soundboard. But yet you need a new soundboard and new speakers and all kinds of stuff. So you just start one thing at a time and you you build it as you go, it’s a journey, you can’t just expect it all to happen at once and just settle into that Be patient and enjoy the journey.
Alex Enfiedjian 27:19 Yeah, and maybe like make a list of what will make the most impact first. So like, think about what will make the most impact. And by that first and then the next year by the next impact thing and down the line. And all of a sudden, you’ve got an upgraded system in six years. And it sounds incredible. And also, you know, if you’re going to request money from your pastor, or from maybe a rich congregant, you should have the why you should explain to them why spending $700 is gonna make a difference in terms that they care about, not in terms that you care about, but in terms that they care about pastor pastor, if we get you a new microphone, or if we get these new speakers, your sermon is gonna sound much more clear and easy to understand. So you kind of you got to explain to people why you want to spend the money and explain it in terms that are in line with the mission of the church, right?
Kade Young 28:18 Yeah, for sure. Communication one on one, whenever you’re asking for something, you want to make sure you point out how it’s in their interest, you know, not not your interest.
Alex Enfiedjian 28:26 Yeah, awesome. Okay, do you have any last words for our listeners, maybe leaders of smaller churches,
Kade Young 28:33 I just want to encourage you guys, you know, just because you lead worship at a small church doesn’t mean your calls any less significant than somebody who leads worship at a larger church. And I want you to never use the excuse that because I lead worship at a small church, I have to settle for mediocre, because it’s not true. I want you to dedicate yourself to continual learning, and, and making the most of the gifts that God’s put on the inside of you. Don’t ever settle. You know, don’t ever, don’t ever be lazy, you know, press in, do the work, and let God work in your life.
Alex Enfiedjian 29:03 That’s awesome. Kade where can our listeners find you online,
Kade Young 29:06 you can find me online at collaborate worship.com. And on the site, you’ll find lots of great resources to help you improve as a worship leader. And there’s also a lot of great stuff on there about how to improve the sound at your church. I mean, really practical stuff, like how to set the game, how to use EQ and stuff like that. All you need to know, you don’t have to go to Google, just go to collaborate, worship calm. Yeah, we’re also on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. So be sure to connect with collaborate worship there.
Alex Enfiedjian 29:29 Yeah. And I really want to encourage you guys check it out. I keep getting blown away by the articles he’s posting. And they are super, super practical and applicable. Like you can take the things in the articles and immediately apply them. So check it out. He also has an awesome online course for the beringer x 32. And so if you have that board in your church, he has probably the best course out there on that. So I hope all of our listeners will go check out collaborate worship.com and I will put links in the show notes. So Kate, thanks so much. For your time, this has been super encouraging and helpful. Hey, thanks, Alex. I’ve really enjoyed it.
Alex Enfiedjian 30:11 Alright, that’s it for today’s episode. Thanks so much for listening. I would love to hear your thoughts on this episode. Feel free to email me at Alex at worship leader training calm or just click the link in the show notes. If you have a question that you’d like me to answer in a future episode, you can leave us a voicemail by calling 831607 w l t one, or just click the phone number in the show notes. And if this episode helped you please help us by forwarding it on to a friend. You can do that very easily by clicking one of the appropriate links in the show notes. Thanks again for listening and I will see you next month for another episode. In the meantime, feel free to visit worship leader training com for training materials, resources and articles for worship leaders. God bless you guys and I’ll see you soon