How senior pastors can help their worship leaders grow and improve (longer)

  You really want to be in a good connexion with your worship leader.

Clear communication does a lot of things, but it definitely

fuels trust and understanding.

Because now you’re a worship leader and you are actually

talking instead of assuming.

If you’re listening to this and you’re like, Oh my gosh,

my worship leader is a hot mess.

First of all, do everything you can to help them grow.

Also, vision cast that higher calling for them and ask them to step into that.

If they refuse, then they will make it clear to themselves

that they no longer want to be there.

It’s either grow or go.

They’re either going to lean in and grow or they’re going to lean out and go.

Well, welcome back to the Vandebloomen Leadership Podcast.

I am Kristen.

I’m one of the consultants with Vandebloomen.

Today, we are having a conversation with Alex, who is actually the founder

of Worship Ministry Training.

I would love, Alex, for you to just give some colour

around what that means, who you are.

You’re sitting in California as we have this conversation.

The Our perception is that it’s…

Or the perception, I should say, is that it’s very sunny

where you’re at right now.

So number one, is that true?

And then number two, just give us just some bullet points of who you even are.

Sure. Thank you.

Yes, the perception is correct.

It is sunny today, although We’ve gone through a couple

of weeks of stormy weather.

And for California, stormy weather is like nothing compared to most

of the country, but whatever.

So yes, it is sunny now.

I am the founder of Worship Ministry Training.

I have been a worship pastor for nearly 20 years, and and just began training

worship leaders through a podcast and then through a blog and then email us.

Then it grew into this full-on academy where we have thousands of students

going through our in-depth training material, our courses, really

trying to equip worship leaders to be biblical, godly leaders in the church.

Leader first and musician second.

I think a lot of worship leaders get that backwards.

They take the music as the primary and the leadership, shepherding part

as the secondary or not at all, and things are just a hot mess.

I work directly, usually, with worship leaders, but in this conversation,

I’m excited to encourage senior pastors and how they can work better

with their worship leaders.

That strange creature that sits in the corner that you don’t know what

to do with, I’m excited to encourage you about a few ways that you can help them.

That’s me. Is that enough?

You want more? Yeah, no, that’s good.

But you are also a staff member at a church, right?

Yes. I’m still a full-time worship pastor.

I feel like I need to be rooted in that in order to continue to grow and also

shepherd the worship leaders who the Lord has entrusted under my care.

I want them to know I’m in the fight with them, I’m in the fire with them.

A lot of my gifts are a benefit and blessing to a local church context.

I’ve been in churches of all sizes, from church plants

in Russia on the mission field.

When I was 20, my previous church was 10,000 people in Los Angeles,

but I recently left that.

I’m now at a church of about 1,000 people or 1,200 people where I oversee all

the creative stuff and communications, connexions, and all that stuff as well.

That’s a new role for me.

But worship ministry training is rapidly growing, and so I’m just trying

to balance all of those responsibilities.

Wow, that is a lot.

How many years ago did you create worship ministry training, by the way?

In its current form with be a full-on academy, live courses and our course

library and all that, it’s been two years, but I started training Worship

Leaders Online 10 years ago, 2014.

I launched the podcast and the blog and the email list.

It’s just been a evolution transformation to what it is today.

The Lord continues to bless the reach, and I want to continue to steward that well.

Okay, so 10 years. That’s a long time.

What was the catalyst for you pulling the trigger to say,

Okay, I’m going to go for it.

I’m going to create this.

I’m assuming you saw some a need or you were experiencing some gap

in this worship space.

What was it that led you to want to even create this?

Yeah.

Well, I was working at a church and training up worship leaders

from within that church, and I was creating content for them.

And I said, Why don’t I just put this out online?

And so I started reading it into a microphone as a podcast.

And that was the beginning, and I had no idea what it would evolve into today.

But the Lord continues to just give greater influence to encourage

more and more worship leaders.

And I think the gap is that most worship leaders get thrown

into ministry with zero formal training.

They have no one telling them what the goal is, what they’re supposed

to be doing, how to do it.

They’re literally just reaching their hand into a hat, picking out songs at random.

I know we’ll cover some of that today in this conversation,

but there’s just no intention or thought behind what they’re doing.

They were holding a guitar, they were gifted at music,

and the pastor said, Tag, you’re it.

Do the thing. They’re like, What’s the thing?

Then they’re looking online like, What is Bethel doing?

What is Hillsong doing?

Without even asking the fundamental questions What is a worship leader?

What is a worship pastor?

What does it mean to be a church leader and a shepherd first?

That is the gap that we’re trying to fill, is to help people

move from musician to actual shepherd.

That’s what I feel passionate about and called to do.

It’s been a blessing to be able to do that.

I’m so grateful to partner with Banderbloom.

You guys are such high-quality, high-caliber people in an organisation.

For you guys to reach out and say, Hey, can we partner with you

as a strategic partner?

So thank you for that. Oh, absolutely.

I mean, you have a lot to offer.

And so that segues right into the conversation

that we are going to have, because I think it’s incredibly valuable

for anyone who’s in a senior leader position who’s listening or anyone

who manages worship leaders, has worship pastors, worship directors,

worship people reporting to them.

And they’re sitting here thinking, what on earth do I do with these worship people?

And so specifically, the topic we’re going to talk about right now for the next

couple of minutes is how do senior leaders help their worship pastors?

So how can we help these senior leaders help their worship pastors?

So I’m going to ask you questions based on some of the things that you have

already taught me about this topic, and I’ll let you put colour around that so

that we could really help anyone who’s wondering, I don’t know what

to do with my worship pastor. Please help.

So one of the first things that you had said was, in any senior your leader

who has a worship pastor reporting to them or you’re managing them, you need

to help them to understand their role.

So unpack that for us first because that feels obvious.

Yeah. Well, it feels obvious, and yet it’s not.

Like I said earlier, most worship leaders don’t actually know what the goal is.

They don’t know what their role is.

They don’t know what actual success is.

They think they do, but they’re mistaken because they’re taking their cues

from what they see online.

They’re not taking their cues from what does Scripture say my role is?

Most worship leaders don’t understand the fullness, the importance, the impact

of their role, that they are one of the primary disciple makers in the church.

They are actually putting words on people’s lips that are going

to carry them through the week.

It’s going to shape their theology.

Really helping the worship leader understand you are primarily a disciple

maker, a pastor, a shepherd.

You’re not a performer, you’re a pastor.

You’re not a song leader, you’re a shepherd.

Your job is not to sing songs.

Your job is to lead the room.

Your job is to help the church get a bigger, grander,

more beautiful view of who Jesus is.

I want you to lead us through scripture and prayers and confessions and,

yes, songs, but to really help them understand the importance and the impact

of their role and that they’re a leader first and a musician second.

Because I think when people understand the importance of what they’re doing,

they take it more seriously.

They might just think, Oh, I’m just singing songs.

What’s the big deal?

No, bro or gal, you are literally shaping people’s soul.

The corporate worship experience is a formative experience.

How we do things, what we do is forming people in a certain direction,

whether for good or for bad.

And so how we do our production, How we pick our songs, how we lead the room.

All of that is a formative experience that happens habitually week after week

that is shaping people into something.

Really helping them understand the fullness

of what they’re shaping people into. That’s good.

This might be an That’s an unfair question, but I’ll ask it anyway.

How often do you find worship pastors that

actually do not understand their role?

Do you run into that a good bit?

I would say no one has ever taught most worship pastors

what they’re supposed to be doing.

I’d say 70% of people are just musicians who got put in charge of a ministry,

and they’re fumbling their way forward.

That’s why they come to the academy. They’re like, Please.

Most of the people who sign up for the academy or who listen to the podcast,

we’re coming up close on about a million downloads, and probably in the next year.

There’s a lot of people who are hungry, and they always tell me the same thing.

I got thrown into ministry, and I was dying in the desert,

and I just needed someone to tell me what I’m supposed to be doing.

I would say 70% of worship pastors have never really been taught what to do.

Wow. Okay, that’s very significant.

Okay, so that’s a very important point.

All right, the second way that senior pastors can help worship pastors

is help them get unorganised.

I feel like we probably all have jokes about worship pastors

who are unorganised, but give us some detail around what that looks like.

Sure.

Obviously, we’re characterising people and saying that all worship pastors

are creatives, which is not necessarily the truth.

But generally speaking, if someone really loves music and singing and songs,

they’re probably a creative person.

Most creatives are not good at being productive or proactive or focused,

and they struggle with follow-through.

As a senior pastor, why not mentor one of the most important people

on your staff to be a better human, not just a better Christian?

Yes, we want to cover discipleship, but disciple them also in the practical areas

of time management and developing routines or developing systems

and processes for themselves in their personal life and for their ministry.

What this could be, it could be a conversation where you’re just

asking about their current workflow and you’re offering suggestions.

Oh, have you ever thought about trying this?

Or, Oh, this is how I plan my week.

Or, Hey, tell me about how you do your tasks each week.

I’m not trying to micromanage you.

I just want to help you streamline your workflow.

You could give them homework and say, Hey, this week, I want to help you

develop a more streamlined workflow so that you have more time to just

encourage your team or take people out to coffee or take people out to lunch.

I’d love for you this week to categorise your tasks

that you do every week by type.

Write them all out on a paper and we can start to batch your tasks.

Just teaching them those concepts.

Because I found most worship leaders don’t listen to leadership podcasts.

They actually listen to dumb, stupid. I’m not even…

Okay, this sounds so bad, Kristen. It’s true.

Most worship leaders are not actually interested in the stuff that I teach,

which is practical training.

They’re literally scrolling memes on their Instagram.

The most popular worship accounts are meme accounts.

I’m friends with the guys who run those accounts, but it’s like, Oh, no.

This is what Our worship leaders spend their time

scrolling past and thinking about.

Anyway, for us, senior pastors, leaders, disciple your worship leaders

to be more organised.

The reason this is important, and you guys listening intuitively know this,

is that stability precedes growth.

An organisation can’t grow unless there’s stability and reliability.

You want to help your worship leader become a stable, reliable,

consistent person and create a stable, reliable, consistent ministry.

We do teach all of this in the academy.

But the reason for that stability is when things are stable and things aren’t

shifting and just changing constantly week after week, then things can go up.

You can’t build a skyscraper without a solid foundation.

Really helping your worship leader get organised and efficient

with their structuring of their life and their ministry is a huge thing

that you can help them with, probably.

Unless you’re also unorganised, which hopefully you’re not.

Then that would be problematic.

But you bring up a really great point because I I do not tell you the amount

of conversations I have had with someone in a position of leadership,

and they have been frustrated that their worship pastor is so creative and all he

or she wants to do is sit around and ideate and comes up with these massive

dreams, and they think that they’re actually going to come to fruition,

and they do not, because the person actually does

not have the skillset of executing.

But I feel like what you just said gives a lot of hope, because there’s a lot of

practical steps that you can do to create learned behaviour, even if you are not

naturally bent toward organisation.

So that was excellent.

Okay, number three is, oversee song choices.

Why is this important? Oh, my gosh.

Senior pastors are going to hate me for saying this, and I love you for listening

to this guy that you don’t know.

But truthfully told, most people forget what your sermon

is about after their lunch.

I say that with such love and such respect.

I’m not saying the sermon is not important.

The sermon is so important, and God commands us to preach the word.

So thank you for faithfully labouring hours every week doing that.

However, people walk out of church humming the songs, and they often…

Maybe it’s just me. I forget sermons.

Okay, maybe it’s just me. I forget sermons.

But songs are sticky.

Songs are the stickiest thing.

They go with us from cradle to grave.

That’s why we teach people the ABCs in song form, and we teach kids

the 50 States in song form, because songs are one of the strongest monemic devices.

They stick things into our minds.

And so your church is actually learning more from the songs that your worship

leader is singing than your sermons, at least in the sense that they’re carrying

those ideas with them much longer and much more actively in their mind.

And so your church is learning their theology from the songs.

They’re learning about themselves and the world and worldview through the songs

that your worship leader is singing.

And so as the senior over-shepher of your flock, don’t you want to make sure

that you have an eyeball on the songs that your people are singing?

I would love for senior pastors to work directly with their worship leaders.

Again, not micromanaging, but again, casting that bigger vision of, Hey,

this is really important, and here’s I, and I would love to partner with you

in making sure that the songs we’re singing are clear,

congregational, biblical, singable.

There are a lot of great songs in the world, but just because a song

is great on the radio doesn’t mean it’s great in the congregational setting.

Really, and I have five criteria for that, which we won’t get into today, but your

worship leader can listen to my podcast, Worship Minister Training podcast,

and learn that or join the academy.

The thing is, we as senior pastors should be making sure

that at least for a season, we’ve got our eyeballs and our minds

on the songs that are being sung in our church, and that we’re telling our worship

leaders, Hey, don’t just pick five random songs or five songs that we like.

No, we can do better than that.

Why don’t we pick our songs around the theme of the sermon and of the service?

But what that means for senior pastors is that you need to actually get

your worship leader’s the sermon title in advance, not Friday night.

Even if you can give them a list of the whole month.

Hey, this month, I’m going to cover this passage, then

this passage, then this passage.

I want you to pick songs around those passages.

There’s a lot that goes into this.

Actually, I have a free ebook that I can give you a link

for Kristenristen, and I’ll actually make it really easy for them to get.

I love that.

It’s an ebook on the power and importance of strong songs, strong congregational

songs, what that means, where to find them, how to pick them.

They can get it at worshipministrytraining.

Com/songs, because I know we don’t have time to go into the depth

of where this goes. We’ll just leave it there.

But, yeah, oversee the song choices.

Okay, that’s a great resource.

Also, do you talk at all about keys?

I feel like sometimes people choose keys that they’re a little bit

too high for the room to sing.

Yes, we cover all of that in the academy.

We teach worship leaders how to build Christ-centered worship sets

that flow thematically and musically to a climactic destination of God’s

goodness, grandeour, and glory.

You can tell that I’ve said that many times.

But yes, there is so much that goes into having the church participate in worship.

One of those factors is song keys.

And prioritising the people’s voices over our own voices as worship leaders.

It’s not about us. It’s not a performance.

It’s not about impressing.

It’s about inviting, right? That’s really good.

We’ll definitely link to that resource as well.

Okay, next Setting a cadence of encouragement and discipleship.

What does that mean?

What I mean is it’s a. K.

A. Standing meeting.

Set up a cadence of communication with your worship leader.

I’ve unfortunately heard of many worship leaders who don’t regularly

meet with their senior pastor.

But you guys are like two pees in a pod, whether you like it or not.

You’re the two primary faces on stage.

You really want to be in a good connexion with your pastor, worship leader, And so

you want to have a regular point of connexion for encouragement, discipleship

feedback to your worship leader.

Because clear communication does a lot of things, but it definitely

fuels trust and understanding.

Because now you’re a worship leader and you are actually

talking instead of assuming.

And you’re actually able to give them specific things

you think they’re doing well and specific things you want them to work on.

And then they don’t have to wonder where they stand with you and if they’re

living up to your expectations.

Also, if If you ask for something, you’re more likely to get it

than if you don’t ask for something.

You need to just be clear with your worship leader what you’re wanting

from them, what you wish you saw more of, what you think they could grow in.

Also, of course, pepper in lots of encouragement in those conversations.

But you want to have a standing meeting where you two can clearly

communicate, and then you want to really try to stick to that.

I personally like to do it Monday mornings.

We just had service. It’s all fresh in our minds.

We come in, we debrief, and then we talk about the next service this.

The worship pastor is hopefully being proactive and asking, Is there anything

you want to see more of or anything you want me to do this weekend?

Or all those things.

But if they’re not proactive, you can just lead the conversation as well.

But usually Monday mornings works well because it’s fresh in your mind

and the worship pastor’s mind.

That’s good.

This might be an overkill question, but is there an appropriate amount

of meetings that you could have?

For example, is it, Okay, so we meet Monday to debrief what just happened

yesterday and to look at what’s happening in the future, and then maybe we’ll

regroup again on Thursday to make sure.

Or is that just too much?

I tend to avoid too many meetings. Okay, that’s helpful.

You can do a lot in an hour. If you know what you want to accomplish.

It’s like, All right, we’re going to debrief Sunday, talk about upcoming

Sunday, and here’s a few thoughts that I want you to consider, discipleship

thoughts or mentoring thoughts.

God bless you.

You can email me if you need anything else.

You know what? You know what?

I’m going to That’s perfect. Honestly, pray.

Pray with the worship leader. Pray with your worship pastor.

Very important. Okay, that’s helpful.

All right, the next one, resource the team.

I’m assuming you’re talking about resource the entire worship team.

Yes.

This is a little bit different than the others in the sense

that this is not something that you are doing to your worship leader.

It’s something that you’re asking your worship leader to do for the team.

A lot of pastors say that their worship ministry struggles in musical excellence,

and What they don’t understand is that a huge part of musical excellence

comes from the resources that the team has access to.

What I mean by that is your worship leader should be giving their team a clean,

clear, correct cord chart an MP3 in the proper key, and any tutorial videos

about how to execute the song that they can find on YouTube or get a subscription

to Worship Artistry or Worship Online.

But basically, if your worship leader is resourcing the team early enough in

the week, then the team actually has time to practise at home and show up prepared,

which elevates musical worship, which elevates the experience on Sundays.

So many people don’t understand how to get musical

excellence, but it’s not that hard.

Now, this is just one factor of musical excellence.

I have a whole course on it, but this is an important one, which is

your worship leader should be giving the team the tools they need

in the time that they need to succeed.

The tools they need with the time that they need to succeed.

In other words, tools plus time equals excellence.

This is something that you want to have a conversation about with your worship

leader and say, Hey, are you doing this?

What resources are you giving the team each week?

And how early are you getting those resources to them?

Because if your worship leader is picking the set on Friday night,

I can guarantee you that no one on the team has time to practise,

and then they’re showing up Sunday and just barely making it through rehearsal.

You know what I mean?

We really, as worship leaders, want to get the team what they

need to succeed as early as possible.

This is more of a, Hey, heads up, senior pastor.

Make sure you are checking in with your worship leader

about what they’re giving their team and how early they’re giving it to them.

That will help the excellence level at your church improve.

That’s a good point.

Okay, the last one.

Well, the last one for this conversation is senior leaders

can invest in their leader. What does that mean?

Yeah.

So obviously a lot of this now you’re like, Alex, I don’t have time to sit down

with my worship pastor and tell him why he’s not organised and all this.

And honestly, that’s why we created the academy.

Is like, senior leaders don’t have the time for this stuff or the knowledge.

And that’s okay.

That’s not your sphere, your domain that you own or are knowledgeable

about, nor do you need to be.

And that’s where I love to partner with churches to say, Hey,

put your worship leader in the academy and we’ll train them for you.

Now, that doesn’t negate…

It’s like how the Bible says, the parents are meant to disciple and raise the kids

and don’t just give them.

That doesn’t mean that the senior pastor should just be hands-off.

We’ve already talked about how you should be investing in them,

relationally, spiritually, in their life, practically developing them.

But invest in them, send them to conferences, or just selfishly,

seriously, put them in the academy. It’s $19 a month.

Oh, that’s so affordable.

If you pay annually, it’s $19 a month.

That’s incredibly affordable.

I’m not trying to get rich.

I’m just trying to help people.

The $19 a month, and there’s 10 in-depth courses.

We cover all the major topics: production, team building, musical excellence,

increasing congregational engagement, participation, group communication.

I mean, everything a worship leader needs to know, not just the musical

side, but the leadership side, the discipleship side.

We have done for them team devos to lead their team spiritually.

We have done for them, musician training resources so that I can train

the musicians on the team for them.

They just have to send the link.

We’ve done all the work, onboarding documents, audition process.

It’s all done.

They just take the system and plop it into the ministry.

It’s 19 bucks a month.

I just would encourage pastors, if you don’t want to do it, I will do it

for you and would love to partner with your worship leader to see a more robust

and biblical and fruitful and impactful worship ministry.

Because I don’t know about you, Kristen, but when I go to a church and if I sense

a very vibrant worship time, I’m not saying Pentecostal,

but just you can sense that Christ is revered in that place and the people

are like, it’s all eyes on Jesus.

That directly impacts the rest of the church.

Oh, absolutely.

The health of the church and also new visitors, new people

checking out the church.

When they go and they sense like, wow, there’s something special going on here,

they’re more likely to come back and maybe make it their church home.

I think it’s very important that we get worship ministry right in our churches.

It’s besides the preaching, it’s like 50% of the time is preaching

and 50% of the time is worship.

It’s like almost a 50/50 split, maybe 60/40, but it’s so visible and so vital.

Really do what you need to do, senior pastor to invest in your worship leader.

Also, I want to clarify, in case someone just heard you say, Academy,

and they’re thinking, Wait, am I supposed to be sending my worship pastor

to this school for two semesters, and they’re going to be gone for a year.

Talk about the time commitment.

When you say academy, what does that mean?

What is the time commitment?

Sure. It’s a fully online platform.

It’s got all of our courses.

It’s got live monthly trainings.

We have expert interviews with some the best worship leaders

in the world, and the academy students get to ask their questions.

In terms of time commitment, it’s completely up to them.

We have weekly assignments that they can do in under an hour

that will help them improve their ministry one week at a time.

But they can go way deeper if they want to.

If they just want to binge watch all the courses, they could probably get through

all the courses in a month or two.

But then they end up sticking around because we do live monthly trainings,

and we do live interviews, and we do live coaching calls,

and livestream assessments and set assessments and all these things.

Most people stay for between four months to two years.

We’ve only been around for two years, but we’ve had people

staying on since the beginning. The entire time.

Yeah.

It’s a 15-day trial, so you basically don’t get charged for 15 days,

so they could just check it out. We have a 60-day money-back guarantee.

There’s not really any reason not to put your worship leader

in unless they’re just stubborn.

Right. High reward, low risk.

Before we wrap up, there’s probably someone or someone

listening to this, and they’re thinking about

maybe all the ways they’ve failed as a senior leader

with their worship pastor, or they’re thinking about their worship

pastor, and maybe they probably wouldn’t say they failed,

but they’re just frustrated with their worship pastor, and they just felt like

they’re on that verge of just, it’s a lost cause.

I feel like there’s never a lost cause, and there’s always hope.

Can you just speak some words of encouragement and just reassure that

if someone is sitting in that position listening to this, that all is not lost?

Yeah.

There are two parts to your question, which is, one, the senior pastor

feels like they’ve failed.

Then there’s the other side, which is like, my worship pastor is a hot

mess, and it might be unsalvageable.

I want to talk about those separately because I do think I have

two different answers for that.

The first is regarding the senior pastor beating themselves up.

The best thing you can do is humble yourself and go to your worship.

I tell worship leaders this all the time.

When they realise like, Oh, my gosh, I haven’t actually led my team at all.

I say, then go own it and say, Guys, I’m so sorry.

I have not been leading you well, and I didn’t realise it, but now I do..