
I get a lot of emails from worship leaders asking for advice and counsel, and I am always happy to help! Some churches require even more help than a simple email response, so I recently started offering coaching services for an affordable rate. If your church needs some guidance or coaching, feel free to email me at alex@worshipministrytraining.com and we can try to get something on the calendar. Here are 16 questions I answered recently while coaching a church, and decided to make available as a podcast episode. The questions are listed below, so feel free to jump to the ones that interest you. Resources mentioned are also listed as well.
QUESTIONS:
- How large is an ideal volunteer force (let’s say a church of 1500 weekly) and what does the makeup look like? I.e. How many singers (of each type), band elements, and choir?
- Why don’t modern worship bands and singers use sheet music? It seems sheet music provides specific guidelines and clarity for what to play when, when to rest, what notes to sing, rhythms, cuttoffs, etc. Do you ever find sheet music useful at times? If so, when?
- How do you recommend on-boarding new members (vocal or band). Do you audition? Once someone is selected, is there a rehearsal process beyond a mid-week rehearsal before their first Sunday?
- How do you evaluate the sound while also participating in it? Traditionally a music director or choir director is listening to the sound so that they can critique and make changes. This is difficult to do while focusing also on your own sound, in ear mix, blend with other vocalists (to the extent there are any) etc.
- What are the tell tale signs of a thriving church music ministry? When you visit other churches, what are you looking for that will indicate a healthy program?
- What is your position on the music ministry raising up children/teens in music? Do you believe in a children’s music program? Children’s choir? If so, with what frequency do you incorporate them in the main auditorium service?
- Do you do anything like special music in your services? If so, how do you lead the congregation to know not to sing along, but to listen, enjoy, and connect to God silently?
- What is your ideal worship song selection template? We sometimes follow the upbeat > slow build > ballad > misc/hymn pattern. Would you recommend something different?
- If you don’t use sheet music, how do you instruct background vocal singers on what to sing and when to sing? Do you plan chords and teach parts to them at each rehearsal? Do you record preview tracks and put in planning center for them to listen to?
- How do you give specific direction and feedback with the intention of making the sound better, while still shepherding and loving the team well?
- When someone is failing (i.e. can’t perform up to standards musically) how do you address that if they really aren’t good enough to be on the team?
- What are the top 2-3 spiritual leadership practices you would recommend implementing in the worship ministry?
- What do you think is the biggest frustration for worship ministry volunteers? What drives away participation in the music ministry?
- Do you have any tips for how to transition between songs, especially of different styles like modern songs to traditional songs or the other way around?
- What are your favorite ways to train and equip vocalists?
- What does your worship ministry leadership structure look like? For instance, worship leaders, music/band director, service producer, etc.
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
FREE E-BOOK on Set Building
Transitions – Why They Matter and How To Master Them
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Transcript
Alex Enfiedjian 00:00 This episode is sponsored by Planning Center, the best way to plan schedule and resource your teams for your upcoming services. Planning Center is an easy to use powerful online software that also is available as smartphone apps. You can use it to schedule your teams plan, your services, host, your chord charts, host your multitrack files, and many, many, many more things. Planning Center is free to try for 30 days and then plans start at just $14 a month, it will literally change your ministry.
Alex Enfiedjian 00:37 Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the worship ministry training podcast. This is Alex Enfiedjian, your host, I wasn’t planning on doing an episode in December because it’s December and you’re crazy busy and you don’t have time to listen anyway. So I was going to give you a month off. But a friend of mine suggested that I release this q&a session that I did with a church that I was coaching as an episode for December just because he said there was some helpful content in it. So just so you know, I do offer coaching services to worship ministries. And so if you’re interested for a very reasonable rate, we can schedule a private coaching time and do some of these q&a type things as well. So reach out to me if you’re interested Alex at worship, ministry training, comm Alex at worship ministry training calm, and hopefully we can do something. So today’s episode is just a q&a that I did with the church through coaching. And I hope you’re helped by the responses, I will put a list of the questions in the show notes so you can see what we’re tackling, and maybe skip ahead to whatever you want to hear about. Alright, enjoy. Here we go. How large is an ideal volunteer force, let’s say for a church of 1500. Weekly? And what does the makeup look like, for example, how many singers have each type band elements and choir? Well, I think that it’s going to be different for every church. And it also depends on the amount of, you know, volunteer engagement that you have at your church, because some churches have super high participation in some churches have very little participation. My Church, weekly attendance on a single weekend would probably be six to 7000 people. And in our entire worship ministry in all of the different zones in our church, we probably have 100 volunteers max. So it’s very low participation. And we’re working on solving that. And we are solving that. But it also depends on how many services you have each week and how many volunteers you need. So for example, if you only have one service per week that you need volunteer musicians in, you know, you’re not going to need that many people on your team, you might need two teams worth of people. So you might need two to four electric guitar players, you might need two to four bass players basically two to four of each position, if you’re only filling one type of service slot per weekend, meaning there might be two services, or maybe even four services on that weekend, but you use the same band for each weekend. And so that’s why I’m saying it really depends. What you do want is enough people deep so that if somebody cancels, you have someone of a similar caliber of ability to replace that person. So you want to make sure that the quality of your musicians is high, or that you have what I love is multi instrumentalist, guys who can play multiple instruments. So if my bass player cancels, I can call the guy who usually plays electric and he can kill it on the bass too. So you want to make sure that the quality of your musicians are high, and that you have enough so that if somebody cancels, you can fill that slot and you also want enough so that you don’t burn people out. I have a couple young guys who are like college age, and they’ve got nothing else to do with their time. So I use them quite often. But people with families and stuff, you know, I only try to schedule those people once to twice per month. And we we do a lot of services here a lot of different services. And so even with let’s just say we have 12 different services in our main sanctuary every month, we only schedule those people two times a month just to keep them healthy and balanced in their life. I know that’s not an ideal answer or what you’re looking for, but I can’t really tell you how many people you need because your situation is unique. Just make sure you have quality people and you have enough to rotate them and that you have enough to not burn people out. Also keep in mind that like if you have too many people, then you’re gonna have too much inconsistency because people aren’t getting enough reps and they’re not staying warm and they’re not learning to mesh and gel with each other and So what I found is, you want to keep the team somewhat small,
Alex Enfiedjian 05:06 so that you can really invest in the people that you have. So our main sanctuary team probably consists of 50 musicians, they also play in other venues at our church. But the main sanctuary team is about 50 people. And that allows us to know each other, and to be in regular fellowship with each other. And to learn each other’s musical styles and musical tastes and the way people approach their instrument because you can start to riff off each other a little bit and anticipate where so and so is gonna go with a drum fill or, you know, with a rhythm, so you don’t want it to be too big either. So and I’m not even including the technical side as well, but that all of these principles apply. You don’t want too many sound people, because then it’s going to be different mix quality each week, you can create positions for people, you can create a stage team that helps you set up the stage and take some microphones off the stage when the preacher comes on stage. And you can create opportunities for people to serve, but just try to keep it manageable. So Alright, that’s one question number two, why don’t modern worship bands and singers use sheet music? It seems like sheet music provides specific guidelines, and clarity for what to play and when, when to rest. What notes to sing rhythm, etc. Do you find sheet music useful at times? If so, when so we never use sheet music at our church? I think most churches don’t use sheet music because most churches don’t have access to professionally trained musicians. I think churches you serve with what you have. And most people have hobbyist musicians who taught themselves guitar taught themselves bass taught them how to sing. And so that’s why I think churches don’t use sheet music. Of course, it’s more accurate. Of course, you can get exactly what you want. But do you have 45 people at your church who can read sheet music and execute? Well, I don’t, at least I don’t know where they are. So that’s why I think people don’t use sheet music. Occasionally, if I’m doing like a Christmas thing, and we’re going to score some string parts, then we will give sheet music to the strings players who require it. So that’s the only time I’ve ever used it. But hope that answers your question. Number three, how do you recommend onboarding new members vocal or band? Do you audition? Once somebody is selected? Is there a rehearsal process beyond the midweek rehearsal before there for Sunday? Yes, yes, yes. So onboarding is the most important, most crucial, most critical time of bringing people on, because you literally can tell somebody, we do it this way, this is how we do it. And we expect you to do it this way. That is where you set like the entire tone moving forward for their time of service. So how you treat them how you talk, what you talk about the tone of the group, you know, in the back how things are relationally, all of that tone gets set during the onboarding process, expectations get set during the onboarding process. So for us, it looks like this. I will audition. I don’t even call it audition. Because it’s not like a pass or fail. We just say hey, yeah, we would love to get to meet you get to know you and hear what you do and how you play. And maybe we can jam. So we use the jam word all the time. So I’ll be like, hey, do you want to jam with Jesse, one of our guitar players, I’ll set up a time and so we have him jam with so and so. And then I’ll ask afterwards, how did it go? And he’d be like, Oh, man, he was really great. And he he’s totally a good fit for our culture and for our team. Or he’ll say, Oh, you know, he’s okay. And I’ll say, well, Is he good enough to serve in men’s ministry? Because we have, like, men’s ministry has a band and stuff like that.
Alex Enfiedjian 08:49 And he’ll be like, Yeah, he could probably serve in men’s ministry doing like rhythm electric. So at that point, one of us will meet with them, or I will meet with that person and say, Hey, we’re so excited, you want to be part of our team, I want to sit down, get to hear your story. And we’ll spend, you know, 30 minutes, just digging into their history and their life and their family if they have one. And then I’ll just share a little bit about our ministry. And here’s our vision for what we’re trying to do here are cultural values, we have seven core values. And I walk them through each one. And just try to make it super positive and encouraging experience. And by the way, we’re a high feedback culture. So we’re always going to tell you how you’re doing and help you grow. And I’ve been saying this recently, for whatever it’s worth, I’m just rambling at this point. But I say there’s three things that I promise you, I have three promises for you. One, you’re welcome. As part of our family, you’re welcome to be part of our community. That’s the first promise you’re welcome here. The second one is we will help you to find an appropriate place of service based on your giftings and your passions and your desires. We will try to guide you to the place where you’re going to succeed. So trust us in that we promise to put you where we believe you’re going to excel. And then the third promise is, we will do everything we can to help you grow in your craft and your calling, you have to take some initiative, but we will give you the tools you need to grow. So you’re welcome here, we will help you find the appropriate place of service, and we will help you grow. So those are the things I tell people during the onboarding process, we keep it very open. And we kind of hand select people for the team once they’re already serving in other areas of ministry. So we’re going to plug you into the men’s ministry, this is how you get scheduled, here’s Planning Center, blah, blah, blah. And then if they’re doing really well, then one of us will be like, Hey, you know, we need a bass player on our Sunday night service, like, let’s try that guy. And, and then we’ll give him feedback. And we just make everything a coaching opportunity, everything is we’re going to help you grow being on our team means you’re going to grow. And so there’s just a high feedback culture, it’s a longer process. So we schedule people for training, especially in the main sanctuary, where we might come in and have them do some private training with us. But once we feel that they’re ready to potentially serve in a service, we will call them in for rehearsal. And they will put on in your monitors and listen to the click track and hear how it sounds and get used to all that weirdness because most people have never done that before. And so we have them come to three or four rehearsals, they hang out with the band after rehearsal, so that they start to get to know us and we start to get to know them and see how they would be as a cultural fit. And then once we feel like they’re ready to do a service, we plug them in, in the the least pressured service environment, which for us is our Sunday night service. And that’s when they do their for service. And then we give them feedback. How did you feel you did and here’s how we think you did, here’s what you need to work on for next time. And then from there, we schedule them, you know, once a month or whatever, until, you know, they keep improving. And then that’s how they become part of our team. So that is our onboarding process. Yeah, that’s it. Number four, how do you evaluate the sound, while also participating it traditionally a music director or choir director is listening to the sound so they can critique and make changes, this is difficult to do while focusing also on your own sound. You’re in your mix, you’re blind with other vocalists, etc. Yeah, that is tricky. You know, worship leading is such a weird thing. Because you are trying to worship yourself. You’re trying to lead a band, you’re trying to lead vocalist, you’re trying to lead a congregation, and you’re trying to get offstage on time. And so there’s so many things going through your head. And I used to be discouraged by that feeling of like, I’m not really emotionally connecting with the Lord as much as I want to during the times that I’m leading worship, or the times that I’m playing bass, or the times that I’m mixing or whatever it is that you’re doing, it’s distracting you from connecting with the Lord emotionally on an emotional level. And one woman once told me, she said, you know, Alex, serving is worship, because worship is honoring God, right? worship is bringing God honor through whatever we’re doing. And by leading people into worship, we are worshiping by honoring God, we’re honoring God as we’re leading people. So you might not feel an emotional connection to the Lord in this moment of the song, or maybe not even once in the whole set. But you are worshiping because you’re doing it to honor the Lord. And so I just want to encourage you in that. And you know, there are times where you can disconnect from what’s happening, maybe you’re not leading a song, maybe someone else is going to lead a song. And you can emotionally engage with the Lord while someone else leads the song. Or for me, a lot of the times it’s during the prayers, like after the songs, and I’m praying, and that’s where my heart gets to connect with the Lord. Because I don’t have to think about the man. I don’t have to think about the lyrics or anything. I just get to pray. And so for me, those times have been really helpful. I hope that’s what your question was. But if it’s not, I’m sorry. What of it tell tale signs of a thriving church music ministry, when you visit other churches, what are you looking for, that will indicate a healthy program? Well, honestly, joy,
Alex Enfiedjian 14:14 joy,
Alex Enfiedjian 14:15 if there’s joy in a group of people, then things are healthy. And if there’s a family feel, and people can be themselves and they feel loved, and accepted and welcomed, and encouraged and excited and growing. Those are all indications of health. You notice it has nothing to do with the sound of the music or any of that. It’s just do these people love each other? Do they love to be with each other? And is it a positive environment? If I see those things, and I can say that it’s a healthy place. Now that doesn’t mean it’s successfully accomplishing its mission because it still needs to accomplish its mission which is in this case, to leave the church to sing to Jesus in worship Jesus through song. And so that’s totally different set of metrics to evaluate. But on that side of things, if you look at the congregation and you ask, are they participating? Are people engaging? Are they singing? How loud? Are they singing? Are they timid? Are they expressive? Are we modeling it for them? Are we showing them what it looks like to worship God with passion? Those are the questions that you need to ask. And you can usually tell if the church is engaging with all their heart, and they’re just like singing their guts out. And it’s loud. And you’re making space for them as a as a band. You’re not like overpowering the church, but you’re supporting the church’s voice. You can tell you can tell when people are connecting to the Lord, if you’re just performing at them, or if it’s like too busy, and you’re all flashy, and you’re just making noise. That’s not very supportive environment for the church to sing. They need to have just a simple solid platform upon which to sing the songs. And so and I think the worship leader has to model worship for the church, but also the senior pastor has to model worship for the church, if the senior pastor is like looking at his notes, or looking at his phone or looks disengaged, the church is going to pick up cues from that, especially if the pastor sits in a visible position. So I’ve heard him said many times that the senior pastor is the primary worship leader of every church. And so the senior pastor has to be fully engaged during the worship services as well. So that’s number five. Number six, what is your position on the music ministry raising up children, teens in music? Do you believe in a children’s music program Children’s Choir? If so, what frequency do incorporate them into the main service? Um, yes, there should be development of the young people in worship arts. And I found that like a youth band is the best place to really develop talent and to develop hearts because little kids are really young. I’ve seen some churches do like music camps, like, honestly, they have like a school, that’s like quarterly school programs for music, those churches, obviously are investing heavily into, like the future of their musical excellence at their church. But for a lot of churches that’s out of reach. So a lot of churches will just do like a Junior High High School combined youth band, that is really great, because those kids have hours and hours of free time. And they’re usually really quick to pick things up. And also, you know, they’re open to input and feedback. And so, youth bands are really great. And once you get a youth band started, they can lead every youth group service, they can get lots of reps in. And then you can look at having potentially a youth Sunday, where once every six months, you bring them into the service, and you set it up and you make sure that the congregation knows that, hey, this is the youth band, and let’s like be gracious towards them. But you also make sure that you spend one or two extra rehearsals with them, really making things Great. So that, you know, it’s not just Oh, how cute, but it’s like, oh, wow, they were really good. And so I love that we do that sometimes here, we usually do it on our Sunday night services. We also have a kid’s band as well. It’s not made up of little kids, but there is like a drummer who is 12 or 11. And then we have like a 15 year old piano player and they lead worship for our kids services. So yes, you should invest in the youth of your church. And if you don’t have a youth band, you should start one immediately because that is where your future musicians are going to come from. And honestly, we’ve been doing the youth band for about two years here. I mean, they have been before, but it wasn’t really invested in. But we are already using five of the kids who just graduated high school in our main services now, because they’re just really good. And they’re very modern in their style. So let the youth replace you. There you go. Do you do anything like special music in your services? If so, how do you leave the congregation to not sing? So we don’t really do specials? We do like a Christmas performance where Yeah, it is participatory. But there are moments where it’s just, you know, listen to this song. And there are a couple ways to do it.
Alex Enfiedjian 19:15 One is you just don’t put lyrics on the screen. So that makes it pretty hard for people to sing. You could put a Bible verse on the screens while the person sings a song. Or if we were going to do a special because we have done a couple specials. We do it in our offering slot. So we have four songs up front that we have video announcements, and then we have our offering. And so if I was going to do a special I would say something right there. I say we’ll invite the ushers to come forward. This time. We’re going to worship God they’re giving and we’re going to sing a special song for you guys. So just let these lyrics wash over you. And just let the Lord minister to your heart and then I would have whoever was going to sing it, sing it. So that’s how I would do that. Hopefully that’s helpful. Number eight. What is your ideal worship songs? selection template, we sometimes follow the upbeat, slow ballad pattern. Yeah, I’m gonna just send an ebook that I wrote about this because it’s way more in depth than my answer would be. So, yes, your template is a good template, but I will send you the ebook as well. If you don’t use sheet music, how do you instruct Background Vocal singers on what to sing and when to sing? Do you plan chords and teach parts to them at each rehearsal? Do you record preview tracks and put it in Planning Center for them to listen to? Okay, so ours is really sloppy. So we don’t have a mid week rehearsal. I wish we did. But we have three different services that we do each week. So we can do three different rehearsals each week, just be crazy. And those are only the services in our main sanctuary, we have other services that we do as well. But um, what we do is we have singers who are good enough to arrange on the fly. And I just give a little bit of direction. And we just zipped through rehearsal right before service, we have an hour and a half rehearsal. And we just zip through it all the songs twice, and I’m listening for bad notes. They kind of know when to come in and when to not come in just because i’ve you know, taught them over the years, like, Don’t sing verse one, sing verse two, blah, blah, blah. They’re good. They’ve kind of been trained. So we ours is really ghetto and sketchy. And it’s not ideal. Sometimes if I hear bad notes, I’ll stop the rehearsal be like, Hey, guys, can we practice that chorus. And then if it’s really rough, then after rehearsal, we have 30 minutes before service starts. So we’ll go in the back. And we’ll practice a couple parts that are not working. And so that’s how we do it. Now, for a while I had a guy here who was on staff, and he was very talented vocally. And I had him making mp3 recordings of the parts. So he was we would have a recording of our version of the song that we took off the broadcast mix, and we would chop it up and be like, okay, here’s, you know, I will look up in kg. And he would just talk, okay, no singers here, verse one singers here, and then he would lay down other tracks where he saying the parts, and he would just talk that through and we would upload that to Planning Center. I’ve also heard of a church that uses like an Excel spreadsheet, and they put all the lyrics of each song in the Excel spreadsheet. And then they put who comes in where and when. So those are three different ways to approach that problem. And number 10, how do you give specific direction and feedback with the intention of making the sound better, while still shepherding and loving the team? Well, so I’m not sure if you mean the sound like the audio quality, or if you’re talking about the sound of the band. It’s hard, because I have some people on my team who were part of the team for 20 years before I got here. And for them, I’m asking them to change a lot. And so with those people, I am very sensitive on how many asks that I make in a rehearsal. If something is not massively detrimental to the song, I won’t usually make an ask on a person like that, unless it’s really not working. And then I’ll be like, Hey, could you please just do hold on there? Because Can you hear that the rest of the band is quiet? You know? Yeah, I’m sensitive to the people who were here before me because they came from a different culture. And they played whatever they wanted. And so I try to be really strategic in how much I asked from them. For the people who have been part of the team since I came, they just know like, this is how it is. And the rest of the team. You know, even the guys who have been here forever, they kind of know, this is how it is now, you know, and Alex is just trying to make us play better together. And so how do I do it? Well, like I’ll say, let’s say we’re running through a song. And I’ll be like, hey, you can have that drum part. Could you do this instead? And then he’ll be like, like this? And I’m like, Yeah, like that. Thanks. And then we’ll be going, I’ll be like, Guys, I feel like it needs something up top. Like, could you know, Luis, could you take this on the keys? Could you jump your right hand up an octave? And can you give me some like string sounds? Because I just need somebody to fill in those frequencies.
Alex Enfiedjian 24:11 And then he’ll be like, like this? And I’m like, Yeah, like, that’s perfect. And then sometimes while we’re playing a song, I’ll just be like, hey, it needs something right here. And I’ll like hum, a little melody thing, but like an electric guitar player could do and be like, Mikey, could you? Could you come up with something like right there in that frequency and be like, like this? Yeah, like that. And then sometimes I’ll just ask, what do you guys think? Does that does it need to go there? Does that work? What do you guys think? And most the time, they’re like, Yeah, that’s great. Sometimes one or two of them will be like, No, I don’t think we should do that. So asking their opinion as well. So that it’s like it’s a dialogue is important. Yeah, specific direction and feedback. It just should be built into your culture. And it’s something that you’ll have to just explain, if it’s new, you’ll have to be like, Hey guys, we’re gonna try to be more intentional about making our band more cohesive and so, so and so leader is going to give a lot more feedback during the rehearsals so that we just sound tighter and more together. And so no offense given no offense taken, like this is just us trying to make what we’re doing better. And hopefully you guys adjust to this new way of doing things. And so that’s, you’ll just have to set it up like that. But you should definitely be able to give feedback to your band, and then say, thanks a lot. You know, you said, How do you do it while still shepherding and loving them? just be like, you guys sound amazing. You guys sound great. Or if you hear something that someone’s doing that you like, always say, Oh, I love that drum fill. Because what gets praised gets repeated. So there you go. When someone is failing, can’t perform up to the standards musically, how do you address that if they really aren’t good enough to be on the team. It’s difficult. I had a woman who she was part of the team before I came, and she couldn’t sing. And so it was like, hey, I want to work with you. I feel like you’re not in tune, you’re singing out of key. Let’s work together. Let’s meet together. And so what I did was I made her sing into my iPhone, recorded it and played it back and showed her all the weak spots, and asked her to work on those weak spots. And then just kept doing that over and over until she she was like, This isn’t fun for me anymore. I don’t want to be on the team. And so she stepped down. I have other people on my team who I inherited that they’re great people, they love the Lord, they’re really kind musical style is not my favorite style. And they’re having a hard time adapting to it. But like I said, I can kind of work around it because we’re not trying to sound like Hillsong or anything. But that same person isn’t like following some of the core rules that we just have now like, hey, on Tuesdays, you need to read your set notes, because we send out our set notes every Tuesday, like so and so please learn this part and do this part and this and that. And he doesn’t read them. And so I need to have a conversation with him and say, Hey, I really need you to read this, you know, or I need to have a group meeting where I reiterate the rules like mandatory meeting and be like, Hey, guys, there’s two things I expect from you. One is to check band. And two is that you prepare you know, check your set notes and prepare like and spiritually Be strong. If you can’t do those three things, maybe this isn’t the place for you to serve. So, but yeah, having those conversations, it’s never fun, but you can’t get where you need to get if you are going to chicken out of those types of conversations. So I guess if I had to summarize what I just said, work with people where they’re at, try to help them improve. If they can’t improve, it should become obvious to them that you’ve given your best effort, and that they just can’t keep up. And then lovingly be like, Where can we plug you in to serve the Lord because we know he wants you to serve. But this just isn’t the season for you anymore. All right. What are the top two to three spiritual leadership practices you would recommend implementing in the worship ministry, I would say praying together, taking prayer requests as often as you can, because the team who prays together stays together. Just kidding. And also, like we do a Bible study. Every week, we read through a psalm. And we each take turns reading a verse in a circle until we’re finished with the Psalm. And then we talk about what we see what we liked, what challenged us, and then see where the Lord guides that conversation. But just keeping it spiritual is good. And honestly, I wish I had more to say, because I don’t think that the spiritual side of our team is as strong as I’d like it to be. We did just start like discipleship groups, where we have some of the older team members discipling, the younger team members, so I’m hoping that’s going to help. But yeah, we’re trying to figure out the spiritual side, too, because I feel like smartphones are ruining everybody’s soul. All right, number 13. What do you think is the biggest frustration of worship ministry volunteers,
Alex Enfiedjian 28:49 what drives away participation? Two things, lack of a clear vision, and lack of organization. So I think the number one frustration I hear from other people who come into our worship ministry is at their old church, it was a hot mess, the leader wouldn’t communicate, the leader wouldn’t send out the charts. The leader wouldn’t get the songs to us in time, etc, etc, etc. I think a well oiled well run well organized. Ministry attracts people because they’re like, these people know what they’re doing, and they want to do it well. So that is a frustration for people. And I think if it stinks like it was just bad quality is coming out of your ministry, lack of excellence, I think that also drives away people from wanting to participate. So if you can be excellent, and if you can be organized, I think you will attract a really capable people. Number 14, do you have any tips on how to transition between songs especially of different styles, like modern songs or traditional songs or the other way around? Two things to answer this one, I have an episode on transitions. I will just put a link in the email back to your pastor but in regards to the hymns and the traditional and the contemporary songs. We don’t like stop and say, now we’re gonna sing a hymn. We just arrange our hymns in a modern way. So it feels like a modern song, but it’s very traditional melody. Everybody loves it, everybody knows it. And we just weave them into a meaningful flow. So we don’t really have to change things in terms of how we transition between hymns and modern songs. But I will put the link for the transitions episode into the show notes. What are your favorite ways to train and equip vocalists? Well, we started a choir, we’re starting a choir, we just had our second rehearsal. And that’s a way to have our better singers lead this group of singers who aren’t as good and teach them how to blend. And I do send a lot of videos on our private group thing, we have an app called band hood, recommend checking out band. It’s like a private Facebook group, but way more powerful. So we use band for all of our communications. So I send out videos to stuff that I see that I like, but the choir is our attempt at trying to take people from point A to point C, what does your worship ministry leadership structure look like? For instance, worship leaders, music band director, a service producer, so our church isn’t like superduper structured. So I take my cues from the senior pastor, I’m the worship pastor. And then I’m also the worship leader a lot of the time, and I oversee the band, obviously, I’m the music director of the services. So if I want it to be a down chorus, I’ll be like down chorus, this and that, during rehearsal, I will map all that out, I’ll tell the bandwidth, the play, where to play, shaker come in here, you know, sub drop here, whatever. And then the person who is on stage who is the music director, will take over my role, because obviously, when I’m leading the services, I can’t say those things into the microphone. So we have a microphone on stage that our bass player usually plays, sometimes our electric guitar player plays. I’ve seen keyboard players use it before. But that person basically reminds the band what to do and what to play, shaker come in sub drop, hear this and that. And so he takes over, or she takes over my role of music director. So that would be kind of leadership structure of the stage while we’re performing. In terms of the audio side, I oversee the audio director, which we currently don’t have one because he left. And so we’re looking for a guy, and we might have a guy, but he will be underneath my leadership. And he oversees volunteers for the audio side of things. And that’s how we structure our leadership. We don’t have a service producer. I kind of am the service producer. So I will after we rehearse with the band, I run over to the tech booth, and we have a tech meeting and prayer time before service. And then I run back to the senior pastors greenroom. And I’m like, Hey, here’s the service flow. Like we have a baby dedication third service. So I’m, I’m basically the service producer. So that’s, that’s that. So that’s 16 questions. Hey, how long did that take? Let’s find out. 36 minutes. I hope this was helpful. All right, but all right. I hope that was helpful to you guys in your ministries. Again. Like I said, I do offer coaching services. So if your ministry is in a weird spot or transitional point, and need some advice, just hit me up Alex at worship ministry training calm and we can get something on the calendar. All right. God bless you guys. See you in a month. Merry Christmas.