Powerful AUDITION process for worship teams

  Speaker 1 So my last church I told you was big. It was 10,000 people. But when I came, there were only 14 people on the worship team. And I said that in a YouTube video recently, and people were like, Only 14? I would kill for 14 people. And I’m like, I get it. It sounds like a lot, but when you’re doing six services a week, it’s definitely not enough. So I actually was able to take that team in a four-year span and go from 14 people to 55 people and build an actually excellent worship team that completely no paid musicians. I was able to build this really healthy team that was not just spiritually strong, but musically strong. I think a lot of it came down to how I auditioned people and brought them into this family dynamic. And so that’s what I want to teach you guys today is how do you do that? Now, I’m not going to cover… I have team building courses in the academy where I cover every single thing about team building, like the recruiting and the training. I’m just I’m going to focus specifically on auditioning and onboarding in this little live training we’re doing.

Speaker 1 And I always like to start with why things matter. And so why your auditioning and onboarding process matters is because it is the front door of your ministry. I like to think of your audition and your onboarding process as your castle gate. It’s like a castle gate has those big, thick metal bars. Those bars do two things. They let people in or they keep people out. And that is exactly what your audition process is meant to do. It’s meant to let the right people in and to keep the wrong people out. This is literally where you’re building your team. This one thing, when you feed people through, you’re going to fill your team with the type of people that you want or the type of people that you don’t want, depending on how clear and clean your audition and onboarding process is. And so this is where you’re actually building culture. You’re actually building your culture through this audition and onboarding process, and you’re also protecting your your current team’s culture by keeping the wrong people out. That’s why this matters. It’s not just where you’re building or protecting your culture, it’s also where you’re amplifying your culture.

Speaker 1 This is where you are pressing and forming people into the ideal team member as you squeeze them through that castle gate. Another analogy that I like to think about is it’s a factory. They come in as cows and they leave as ice cream. I don’t know. That’s the only graphic I could find. Basically, the The idea is you’re bringing your people through this tunnel, through this process. In that process, you’re pressing and squeezing them and getting out most of, not all of, most of their weird musical tendencies or their bad team habits. You’re basically forming them and pressing them into the type of team member that you want to work with. Then when they come out, they are closely formed into, I mean, hopefully, ideally formed into that person, but at least closely or at least closer than if you didn’t do anything at all. During this onboarding process, they are really a blank slate. This is like the golden ticket right here. When you bring a brand new team member on, you have the opportunity of a lifetime. They have zero clue what’s expected of them. They have zero clue what you’re going to tell them to do.

Speaker 1 They don’t know what’s right or wrong or good or bad. I mean, obviously, in the moral sense, they do. But you have this super clean opportunity to press them into what you want them to be. They a moldable piece of clay that you can bend and squeeze and shape into whatever you want them to be. Since the ice cream is on the screen right here, you could literally tell a brand new team member, Hey, something that we do on our team is for the first month of your training process, you need to bring ice cream for every team member each week. You could tell them that, and they might think you’re weird, but if you said it with a straight face and you held to it, they would actually do it. That’s the power you have to ask for stuff from people in this season because they have no other frame of reference. And so you really want to capitalise on this one and only chance. This is your one and only chance to form this person into the type of team member that you’d like to work with long term. And I also want to encourage you, if you have a pencil or pen or your Apple notes or whatever, take notes as I share on key thoughts that pop out to you or things that you need to take and apply to your ministry because it’s proven that when you take notes, you retain much more.

Speaker 1 So otherwise, you’re just going to be like, Oh, yeah, some guy blabbed at me this morning. I don’t remember what it was about. That’s what I do with my pastors when they preach. You guys, too? Anyone? No? Okay. I know they said something good. I just can’t remember what it is. But anyway. So this is your chance, the onboarding process is your chance to set expectations, define values, train the requirements, set the tone for the rest of their time in ministry with you. And that’s why you really want to be intentional about this. And the number one question that you want to ask is, what attitude do I want to transmit and impress upon this new team member? It’s mainly about the type of mindset that they into being part of the team. Take a picture of that, screenshot that question. But that’s what you really want your onboarding process to do, is to transmit this attitude or outlook or approach to that person so that when they are on your team, that they live out that approach. And if you fill your team with ideal team members, then guess what? You’re going to ultimately have an ideal team.

Speaker 1 That’s how you build a great team is one person at a time. That’s why I say that this is super important. Just to recap, the audition and onboarding process is important because it’s where you build your team, it’s where you set the tone, it’s when you set your expectations, and it’s where you protect the culture. I’m going to talk about auditioning first, and then I’m going to talk about onboarding. I’ll probably stop in the middle to let you guys ask questions, But let’s start with auditioning. So your audition process, in my mind, now I’ll caveat everything that I’m saying to say simply that everything I’m sharing is what I think is a good way to do it based on my experience over the last 15, 20 years. I could be You could have a different way. That’s fine. So this is how I do it. This is how I think you might want to do it as well. There are four elements that I like to include in my audition process that I think you should include in yours. And those are a pre-audition spiritual questionnaire, and I’m going to give you one right now.

Speaker 1 I’m not going to make you take one. I’m going to give you one, make other people take. A pre-meeting resource. We’re giving them pre-meeting resources. This is what we expect of our team members, and here’s some musical prep stuff. This Same stuff that you would provide to your team, MP3, chord chart, tutorial videos. Whatever you resource your team with, you want to give that to the person who’s going to be auditioning. Number three, the in-person interview is the pastoral connect. That’s where you’re getting to know them on a relational level and seeing if they’re a good fit for the team and if their gifts are well suited for worship ministry or if you should point them somewhere else. And then the last and final step of the audition process is the musical assessment. Notice the language there, and I will explain why in a minute. And this is where you’re establishing the coaching relationship. You’re establishing yourself as the coach and them as the mentee. Even if they’re excellent, you’re still there to coach them. So I’m going to go through each one of these in a minute. But the first one is It’s a spiritual assessment.

Speaker 1 I’m going to go ahead and give you this QR code. You can grab that spiritual assessment, but this is just a Google Doc that you’re going to print out and hand out to someone when they come to you. And so you’re going to find out about that person’s their testimony, their history at the church or in church in general, their family life, their understanding about what worship is, what they do for a living, and any musical history that they have. And so you can go ahead and grab that. There’s two ways you can do that. You can physically print it out and give it to people when they’re interested in serving. Or the second thing that you can do is you can take those questions and put them into a Google form and just send people a link and have them submit those forms to you virtually. After you’ve read through the spiritual questionnaire, if If you feel interested in moving forward with that person, then the second thing you want to do is you want to resource them. And so, resourcing them means having a Dropbox folder with all the things that they need to know to succeed.

Speaker 1 The first thing I would encourage you to make is a musician or singer requirements document where you’re basically explaining, this is the standard. So the spiritual standard is you’re part of our church, you’ve been part of our church for four months. I’m making this up. You can tweak these for yourself. But you’re part of our church. You love the Lord. You’re rooted in the community. That’s the spiritual standard. But then the musical standard for each position. Singers must be able to sing harmony. They must have the modern vocal tone, meaning not too much opera vibrato. They must be comfortable on stage so that they’re not awkwardly hiding and shivering in the dark corner because they’re too nervous to stand in front of people. These are the requirements that a singer must have. And then you’re going to make those requirements for every single position. I know that sounds like a lot. That’s why what I do for worship ministry training in our academy, I’ve done all this for you. You just take the document and use it at your church. But you can do the work yourself if you’re not part of the academy and you can just create these requirements.

Speaker 1 So that file will be in the Dropbox folder so that they know what you’re looking for. Drumers must be able to play to a click track, must be able to stay on tempo, must not get lost, able to follow a song structure. You just list out the requirements for each position. Then the second thing you’re going to put in that Dropbox folder is you’re going to put to tutorial vids and multitrack stems, anything that’s going to help them play their parts, and MP3s in the proper key so that they can actually practise in the key that you’re going to audition them in. Then, of course, a chord chart, unless you are really strict about people memorising music. That is the second thing, and then lyrics for the singers. You’re going to create that Dropbox folder. The nice thing about that is once you do that, that’s the link you use for every new person who’s interested. First, they take the spiritual questionnaire, then you send them that Dropbox link, and that’s the link. You create it once, you use it forever. It’s a very good way to approach life in general is to do something once, do it well, and then save yourself hours and hours each time instead of manually typing the email over and over again and copy and pasting links.

Speaker 1 So once you’ve done that, you’re going to go into the in-person interview. So you send them those Dropbox folders. Two weeks later, they come in for an in-person interview. This is really a pastoral connexion. It’s important for them to understand that you’re not even there for the music. You’re there to know them as a person. And you’re not promising them anything other than spending time getting to know them. That’s the only thing you’re there for. You might not even play music with them. Yes, they should bring their instrument or their drumsticks or whatever, but you might not even play music. You’re just there to get to know them on a relational pastoral personal level, and you’re reviewing their questions with them. You’re asking them more questions from their spiritual questionnaire, deeper things like, Oh, I see you have a boyfriend. I’d like to know more about your relationship with that person. The idea is you want to get a sense for the person, spiritually and relationally. And you’re partnering with them to see where God might be calling them to serve in the church. And one thing I like to say is during this in-person interview is to pull on any threads.

Speaker 1 So if there’s anything that piques your interest and you hear something, don’t just ignore it, explore it. So be like, Oh, man, you got a boyfriend? Tell me about that relationship. Is he a Christian? Does he go to church? Wait, you’re living together? It’s better to find that out before you bring on the team than after. So don’t just gloss over anything that’s sticking out. Pull the threads and explore any of those interesting comments. Okay, so pull the threads. And then in that interview, there are three things that you want to happen. You want to get a sense for them as a person, spiritually, relationally, and musically. You want to be thinking, will they be a good fit? Will they be a good addition to our team? And then you want to begin to start communicating the vision and values to them of the team. This is the type of team that we are. This is what we expect of our people. Begin planting those seeds of this is what it means to be part of this team. And then the third and very important piece of this is to avoid making any promises to them.

Speaker 1 So you’re not promising them that they’re going to be on the team. The fact that they’re sitting in your office with you does not mean they’re on the team. So don’t even use language like, So when you join the team, you’re going to… No, just say, I’m excited to get to know you and seek God’s will about where he’d have you serve in this church. We know God wants all of his children to serve somewhere in his body. It might be on the It might not. We have many places to serve in this church, and I’m excited to partner with you to discover what that place might be. I know that whatever you end up doing, God is going to do amazing things in and through you. So that’s the in-person interview. Now, I didn’t include in my notes, but if you hit a stopping point in that interview like, Oh, you’re living with your boyfriend? Well, I’m so glad that we spent this time together and that came up because the Lord obviously wants to deal with that. The Lord obviously wants you to be in alignment with what his word and as Will says.

Speaker 1 And therefore, I’m going to encourage you not to play on the team because your energy shouldn’t be focused on that. Your energy should be focused on the Lord and growing in your walk with the Lord. And so that’s where you’re going to just stop the interview audition process right there. When you bump into something like that, just say, Hey, I think this was so helpful. I’m so glad you came in. I really believe the Lord wants you to focus on blank. So that’s the end of the interview right there. On the other side, if you do feel like they would be a good fit for the team and that they’re spiritually mature, now you move into that third phase of that audition process, which is the musical assessment. I like to call it a musical assessment instead of audition because that’s what it is. It’s not this pass or fail moment. It’s just, I want to hear you play, and I want to tell you what you’re doing well, and I want to tell you where you can grow. The most important thing that I can tell you about the musical assessment portion of this is for you to establish a coaching relationship with the person.

Speaker 1 You really want to help them to see you as the coach, as the guide, as the person who is there to help them grow in their craft and in their calling. You can say something like this, Hey, I want to hear you play now. What we’re going to do is I’m just going to listen to you and I’m going to tell you what you’re doing really well, and I’m going to share with you a few things to work on. I’m always going to give you both the positive and a growth area every time because my job is the coach. My job is the guide. The Lord put me on this team to help this team grow spiritually and musically, and that’s my role. That’s my job. I do this with every single one of our team members. We’re really big on feedback. If you don’t like getting feedback, you probably won’t like being part of this team. I even ask my team members to give me feedback on my leadership. I just want you to know that you’re going to play, and I’m going to tell you what you’re doing great, and then give you a couple steps for things to work on.

Speaker 1 So once you say that, now you’re in this, I’m here to help you, roll. I’m partnering with you, and I’m going to coach and guide and direct you. And then you have them play through those songs, hopefully two songs that you sent them. You’re going to make notes, whether mentally or write it down, and then you’re going to share those thoughts. Here’s what you’re doing well. Here’s where I want you to grow. If you want to record them, you can do that. I found for singers, they can’t hear themselves for some reason, but when they sing and you play it back, they’re like, Wait, that’s what I sound like. I sometimes will have them hold an iPhone with the voice memo app, and I’ll just say, Here, I’m going to play you sing, and then we’ll play the recording and we’ll talk through. Oh, you hear right there, you’re dipping flat. You hear how you do that at the end of every sentence? That might be because of your breath support. It can help to record them if you want, but that’s optional. But it does help because now you have proof. Okay. And so the approach to the coaching relationship allows you to not make any promises.

Speaker 1 And the only promise you made them was that you’re going to listen, give feedback, and guidance. And then once you’ve done that, you’re going to tell them what they’re what your next step is. Great. This is what you’re doing well. This is where I want you to grow. I think you’re already ready to play with our team, and I spiritually get a sense that you’re going to be a good fit. So I’m going to move you into the onboarding process. That might be your response. Or the response, if they’re not quite ready, is, Hey, this is what you’re doing well. This is where I’d like you to work on. I’m going to send you some YouTube videos. I want you to work on these three things for the next few months, and then let’s connect in a couple of months and just see how you’re doing with the growth. And if they don’t follow through, then that’s on them. So now you put the ball back in their court. Then the third option might be, if they’re really close, you say, Hey, here’s what you’re doing well. Here’s what I’d like you to work on.

Speaker 1 I think you’re really close to being ready to play with us. I’d like to meet with you for the next three Wednesdays, an hour before rehearsal, to do some work on those two areas, and then I think you’ll probably be ready, but we’ll just play it by ear. That is the musical assessment, and that is the no pressure way to hold auditions. You see how that feels very different than, Come and play, and I’m going to do the American idol type thing, right? To summarise the audition process process, and then we’ll take a break and take questions, and then we’ll talk about onboarding. You want to set expectations. What are you looking for? You want to partner with them to find their calling. You want to give them resources to prepare. You want to establish the coaching relationship, and then you want to provide clear next steps. So any questions about audition process or anything I did not cover that you’re like, Alex, what about this? Or how do you handle this? Any questions? I have a question. What’s the timeline then for these things? Do you always take Do you have a season when you take auditions?

Speaker 1 Or week, you’re like, this is your audition week. And then how long are those things you’re doing all in one day?

Speaker 3 Are you in a season on a separate day with an audition? What’s the timeline? That stuff.

Speaker 1 Great question. Thank you. I’m always open to a new team member. I don’t have like, join or don’t join in this season. Now, there are certain seasons where you might promote it more, push more because you need people. But for me, anytime someone is talking with me about, and again, I’m not talking about recruiting in this particular thing. Otherwise, it would be a three-hour video. But But I’m always asking, Oh, are you musical? Or when they talk to me about music, I’m asking them, Do you play anything? Do you sing? That stuff. I’m always trying to dig up potential new members. Or if someone approaches me, I just take their email right there and I say, Okay, I’ll email you on Monday. And then I email them, and then I begin a dialogue with them. I have a couple of young people that I’m going through that with right now. Or if I hear someone in the youth band. I mean, some of this can be really organic where it’s like, Hey, I’m going to teach you a couple of extra guitar cords or a couple of extra strumming patterns. Work on that this week.

Speaker 1 And then eventually, If you see progress and you see this diligence on their part, then you’re like, Hey, I think you’re ready to hop up there and just be in the background, strumming away. Anyway, but the timeline would be, let’s say they give me the spiritual assessment, I read it, I schedule an interview in two weeks. They have two weeks to prepare because I sent them the Dropbox link. They come in. If they’re good, I’ll do that. So the interview, we’re having the interview, then we do a musical assessment right there at the end of the interview. Sorry if that wasn’t clear. And then right at the end of that musical assessment, if they’re good, I’m already going to start the onboarding process, which we haven’t covered yet, but we will in a second. So it could be within a two-week time span. It could be less if they don’t need that much time to prepare. Singers are easy. There’s this girl, she’s like, Oh, yeah, I sing. I was like, Okay, meet me on Sunday after service. She met me in the green room and I was like, All right, let’s sing. I was like, What songs do you know?

Speaker 1 Then I was like, Great, let’s onboard you. Singers are easy. Drumbers and electric and keys, especially if they’ve never played parts or lines, that can be So yeah. And usually, if they’ve never done it before, that’s where the musical assessment becomes the first step of training them. Because it’s like, okay, you have the skill. It’s just you need some guidance. Anyway, two weeks is probably 2-3 weeks max. I mean, the onboarding process that I’m going to share in the next section is probably a three-week, maybe four-week process, depending on the person’s skill level. But that’s a whole other separate segment of this journey. Does that answer your question? Yeah, it does. Yeah, that’s great. Thank you. Any other Any other questions about auditioning?

Speaker 2 I believe within our denomination, we have a lot of smaller churches. I know when we first planted the church we’re at 17 years ago, we had this core team that was all phenomenal musicians. It was odd. But as the church grew, I actually felt like as more people join, our expectations will have to probably lower. How have you found in different sizes and churches, what is an appropriate expectation? We’ve started a few campuses, and in our expectations, it says just because you’re on the team now doesn’t mean you will be forever. But I’ve never actually asked someone to step down like, Okay, you could keep a beat for a while, but now we have better drummers, so we’re going to ask you to step down. Is it better to just… Yeah. How do you manage that?

Speaker 1 That’s a great question. I mean, there’s a couple of questions in that question. So I’ll address the first part, which is, personally me, I try to think about the teams I’ve led. I usually start not where you started with excellence and then let lesser and lesser people on. That’s interesting. I can see how if that’s all you have around you, that’s going to happen. But I’ve always started with lower excellence and added better and better players. And that’s the route I recommend is never go backwards, spiritually never go backwards, and musically never go backwards, if at all possible. I’d rather just have a small team that plays well together than a big team that’s a hot mess. And so I’m only going to add people to the team if they’re literally right below where we’re currently at or at where we’re currently at or above where we’re currently at. That’s how I approach building teams and adding people is like, I’m not going to add you if you’re below the line, but I will work with you to get up to the line for a season. For a few months, I’ll invest into you if you’re hungry for it and work to get you up to the line.

Speaker 1 I don’t want to just toss people aside, but I do have this line and I’m going to help you get to the line and then you can join the team, if that makes sense. So it’s not really ever saying no to anyone unless they’re just a complete newb. And then I’m like, well, hey, we have this choir, singing the choir. And that’s something I teach in the team building course in the academy is creating training pathways, development pathways for people outside of your main worship venue. That’s the first part of how I’d answer your question. The second thing was asking people to step back because they’re not good enough. If you inherit a team, if you inherit a team, you’re going to have some of that. You inherit these people, they’re right here, and then you add all these better people, and now the first people that you inherited are not quite up to snuff. I just typically will manage that by just putting one bad person on the team. I mean, if it’s a it’s hard, right? I would probably begin to start having corrective conversations with the drummer or encouragements or exhortations of like, Hey, you’re not really staying on the click anymore, or you never have.

Speaker 1 And then you just have to help them see that they’re falling short and then be really gracious and slow and patient to help them try to get better. And if they can’t, then just be like, Hey, listen, we’ve had this conversation 16 times. I think it might be best if I put you in this percussion position that we’ll create for you where you can play shaker, tambourine, whatever. And you might not like me, but this is something we’re going to have to do for where the team’s at right now. Those are all really tricky situations, and I would approach each one very differently, but I don’t know if any of that helps. Chris? I think, hopefully, a quick question.

Speaker 3 Alex, one of your examples was you had a team of 14, you grew it to 55.

Speaker 1 All of that you’ve laid out here sounds very achievable for one person when it’s 14, when it starts to get to 55 and you’re talking about having, hey, three straight weeks of an hour in advance of rehearsal. Did you, at some point, start to delegate the audition process to other people you had raised up, or how did you do that? Yes, great question. At the very peak of involvement, yes, I did entrust some auditioning to our music director at the time. I don’t think it was a good idea because he wasn’t as mature, spiritually or emotionally as I thought he was. I would say this is a pretty important role. There are certain things that anybody can do, and there are certain things that only you can do. To For me, this is one of them that I would say you should probably be in charge of deciding who stays on your team. Unless you’re at a multi-campus mega church, then you’re going to have to equip your worship leaders to be able to audition people. But if you set up that system, the paperwork, the form, the expectations document, the resource Dropbox link, if you set up the system, you can train your worship leaders to follow the system.

Speaker 1 And then if you help them understand how to establish a coaching relationship, etc. I am recording this video so you guys can and send it to your other worship leaders as well.

Speaker 3 Hey, friend, this was a live training that I did for the Evangelical Free Church Worship Leaders. If you are a part of a network of churches, I would love to train your worship leaders for you just as a free way to say, God bless you. They did donate in the end, but I’m happy to serve the global church for free. If you have a group of churches that you would like me to speak to, I would love to do that. If you are interested in really taking your ministry to the next level, I would invite you to join the Worship Ministry Training Academy, which you can try for free for 15 days. We have 11 now in-depth courses on every topic that’s important to you. We have live monthly trainings. We have live workshops like the one you just watched. We have expert interviews every month with some of your favourite worship leaders. We have livestream reviews where I give you feedback on your livestream. We have a supportive community, forums, where you can post your own questions and get help from thousands of other worship leaders from all over the globe. We would love to have you inside the academy.

Speaker 3 You can try it for free for 15 days by going to worshipministrytraining. Com. And in the next episode, you will hear the onboarding part of this workshop. Hope to see you in that one as well. God bless.