Structuring your team for discipleship, development, and creativity

Jon Usborne (00:00:00.07) Truly setting up a structure that ensures that there is space for relationship and discipleship creates this beautiful community that can create a backflow of energy and creative energy and stories that can even fuel creativity. Really, focusing on the community first, and then like, Oh, by the way, do you guys remember we get to lead worship this weekend? But that almost has nothing to do with this community. That is something that we do together, and it’s a cool thing we get to respond and do. But this is actually a creative community of believers, not like a worship team where we get a whole bunch of people to share their skills with us for free.

Alex Enfiedjian (00:00:34.22) Welcome to the Worship Ministry Training podcast, a monthly podcast for worship leaders who are serious about growing in their craft and calling. My name is Alex, fellow worship leader. Super stoked you’re here. If you’re a new listener, I’m going to encourage you to hit that subscribe button because every single month I’m going to give you helpful, practical guidance that you can immediately implement into your ministry. Hit that subscribe button and then go back through the past nine years of episodes and binge listen your way a healthier ministry. If you’re someone who is really serious about growing as a worship leader, I’m going to point you to the Worship Ministry Training Academy. What is the academy? It’s an online training platform that will give you everything you need to build a thriving worship ministry. You’ll get 10 in-depth courses on topics like set building, team building, musical excellence, vocal technique, and more. You’ll get live monthly training workshops on topics that are relevant to you. You’ll get exclusive expert interviews with some of the best worship leaders in the world You’ll get done for you, Ministry admin systems and audition process, onboarding documents, team training materials, and even team discipleship materials.

Alex Enfiedjian (00:01:38.21) We will take care of you so you can focus on leading your team. If that sounds like something that would be of help to you, you can try the Worship Ministry Training Academy for just $1 by going to worshipministrytraining. Com. Sign up today for your $1 trial, and I hope to see you inside of the academy. All right, let’s get into today’s episode. How do we set our ministries up so that they develop people musically, spiritually, and artistically? It’s a big question. There’s a lot to that. There’s the structural side, there’s the developmental piece. We’re going to be talking about all of that with John Usborne, who is in Michigan at 242 Church. I’m going to bring John on the screen, and we’re going to get to know him a little bit. Hello, John. How’s it going? It’s going well. I’m excited to have you on the podcast. I was introduced to you by a mutual friend at the New Thing Church Planting Network, and you’re a part of that as their creative director? Yeah. Okay, great. Just so I can quickly summarise a bit of the highlights of who you are, and then you can fill in some of the gaps.

Alex Enfiedjian (00:02:45.04) You are a creative director at 242 Church in Michigan. You also are the creative director at New Thing, and you also own a design agency. You are like the Uber creative bro. What else do you want to share about yourself briefly for our audience so they can get context for who you are?

Jon Usborne (00:03:05.08) Yeah. Music is my first language. I’ve been a worship leader since I was in middle school. The first time I led worship, the worship pastor that I led with after the service was just like, Hey, great job. Did you have fun? I was like, Yeah, that was great. I’m looking forward to learning more. He’s like, Great, because I’m leaving, and this is your job now. He totally just bounced. I was in middle school. I think I was in eighth grade. Ever since then, I’ve been a worship leader and learning and exploring music. I’ve played some bands and done stuff like that, but navigated my way through over the past 19 years into just general creative, like overseeing the creative process, how music and story and video and visual and all that stuff balanced together to create a packaging of the gospel that hopefully is effective and reaches people who need to be closer to Jesus. That’s been my journey for the past while.

Alex Enfiedjian (00:03:54.20) It seems like an arc that a lot of people take is I’m the worship pastor, but then I to get my hand in the creative elements of the service, like the videos and the lighting, and then I’m pretty much overseeing all the production, and then now I’m the creative pastor or the creative director. It’s a good arc to be on. You said a really fascinating statement, packaging the gospel. Now, I know exactly what you meant, and I don’t even need you to explain it to people. But our language and our words really matter. And this is not the topic of the conversation, but I think it’s worth talking about this briefly. Yesterday in our pastor’s meeting, one of our pastors said, Yeah, I want to do an apologetics class. And the other pastors were like, Yeah, so that means all the older people will come, but none of the younger people will. I said, Unless you call it something else like your hard questions answered or answers to difficult questions. Now everybody’s curious about it. It’s the same exact content, but how you package it gives people an openness to it. Just a very sidebar comment.

Alex Enfiedjian (00:04:50.24) I don’t know if you want to comment on that comment, but it’s important.

Jon Usborne (00:04:53.14) It’s modern parables, man. Like Jesus spoke in parables. He told so many stories in the way that people could understand and relate with and connect with. In our context, sometimes we read a parable, and without understanding of the cultural context, it’s hard to understand what he meant by that. Maybe 3,000 years from now, should the Lord tarry, people might look back at the way we package services now and say, How does that apply? But truly, that’s what we’re trying to do with all things in ministry is how do we put this in front of people in a way that connects with their life, makes it applicable, and helps them take another step.

Alex Enfiedjian (00:05:25.04) Yeah, that’s good. You are the guru of all things creative because you’re doing it in three different spheres. Creators. We had discussed talking about in this conversation how you have developed a community of creatives at your church. Now, there’s a lot to that because there’s the structural side of how you structure things, but then there’s also the developmental piece, like what are you inputting into them as they pass through that structure? I’m going to read a sentence that you sent me, and that will set the table for the conversation. You said, We invest in our leaders from a spiritual disciple discipleship perspective and set goals for them to do the same with their team members. The focus is always community way before it’s the Ministry of doing the task. In other words, it’s not about executing the programme, it’s about the people and the community in the people. Do you want to flesh that out a little bit for us? Then I have some specific questions about who are these leaders that you’re investing into and stuff like that. Tell us more about your approach to creativity and community.

Jon Usborne (00:06:32.06) Well, I think at every church that I’ve worked at, and probably every church that people who are watching have worked at, it can be a real challenge to recruit, to find people to do ministry with you. Depending on where you are, sometimes I’m envious. I popped up a church in Nashville, and I just happened to have a whole bunch of professional musicians in my backyard, so no problem at all. But if you’re doing church somewhere that’s not in a musical epicentre like that, then it can be a real challenge. For a long time, I would struggle through, how do I adequately recruit people for ministry. But I was thinking about the need before I was thinking about this community of people that God has brought to me. I was living in scarcity that I have a need that needs to be fulfilled, and it’s my job to do it. And there’s a little bit of fear. What if it doesn’t happen? What if I can’t find people? That mentality forces me out of a community-oriented mindset and into strictly using people for the abilities or the skills that they have. Over time, I discovered as as we grew a team, even unnaturally in that way, that the community aspect of what we were doing together was more bonding for me, more shaping for me as well as them than anything else.

Jon Usborne (00:07:41.00) We were limited by our capacity to know each other, to trust each other, and to, in a way, belong with each other as a community. My eyes were open through some friends, just talking through some things about, Hey, we need to focus on having team leads, people who lead this team spiritually. We need to focus on having apprentices, people who are in training for that, team members, people who commit to serve. Then let’s talk through our audition and onboarding process. I had a guitar player one time. Sorry, a short story. I had a guitar player one time, lead guitar player. His name was Bruce. He was epic. He was super, super solid. He came and he served on the team. At rehearsal, we had him the backline. There’s the front line, the backline. He’s back by the drums. He was like, Oh, I’m not used to being back here, but like, Okay, this is cool. Let’s do this. We played after He called me a couple of days later and was like, Hey, I just want to follow up on how this weekend went. I had a lot of fun, but I’m not used to being in that backline.

Jon Usborne (00:08:38.14) I really like to be up front. Also, I like to have at least one or two prominent moments throughout the service where I can just cut loose or whatever. I didn’t know Bruce that well. I had put him in a position to fulfil a need that I have, but I didn’t truly know Bruce. Had I gotten to know him a little bit, I might have had a couple more questions for him before he joined our team. There are some people who come into auditions and they’re extremely talented musically. I’m like, Listen, stop singing. You continuing to sing is only for me at this point. I know you’re an amazing vocalist. You passed the test. I’m going to fast track you. We’re going to have you on this Sunday. Can you sing a solo this? Whatever. But that’s backwards thinking. The way that I’ve over time learned is there’s more value in investing in the person, understanding who they are, treating them like a child of God, getting to them and investing in their life and then seeing where that goes. I’ve built a ministry in my past from 5 people to 50 people. In that process, I did that strictly through community-oriented discipleship, and it was far more fruitful, and there was so much more richness and value to the relationships.

Jon Usborne (00:09:51.03) I know as a worship leader, many people who are watching this, sometimes when you do a weekend, you feel like, Man, I wish I knew this person more. I wish I had more time to invest in this relationship. I feel like I’m using them like I’m asking a lot of them, and they’re just here. We don’t really hang out outside of them being here and playing music. There’s this tension. But the problem is we can’t do that all by ourselves, so we need to bring people alongside us. Truly setting up a structure that ensures that there is space for relationship and discipleship creates this beautiful community that can create a backflow of energy and creative energy and stories that can even fuel creativity. Really, focusing on the community first. And then like, Oh, by the way, do you guys remember we get to lead worship this weekend? But that almost has nothing to do with this community. That is something that we do together, and it’s a cool thing we get to respond and do. But this is actually like a creative community of believers, not like a worship team where we get a whole bunch of people to share their skills with us for free.

Jon Usborne (00:10:49.25) There’s a big difference between us.

Alex Enfiedjian (00:10:51.18) You’re basically putting the people over the product. It’s not actually about this thing that we’re doing. It’s just about the people, and we’re going to love the people, invest the people, know the people, serve the people, encourage the people. From that, fruit comes out of it. But you’re not like, I hope people forgive me. You’re not like raping the tree. You’re not just taking everything off the tree. You’re actually gardening the tree and letting it blossom into, I hope that did not offend anybody, but it just that seems like what many people do, not just in the church, but in the world as well. They’re like, I’m going to squeeze everything out of you to get the thing that I want instead of caring about you as a person and helping you grow. And then fruit comes from that that we all benefit from. It’s a backwards mentality. Now, I think a lot of worship leaders struggle with that false expectation that my ministry must look like this or it must look like… It sounds like you are struggling with that. You’re like, I don’t have great musicians here at my church like I did in LA when you used to live in Southern California.

Alex Enfiedjian (00:11:53.12) You started to put this pressure on yourself of like, well, my team has to be at this level. We have to have these positions filled. We have to have these musician types, and you were just doing whatever you could to get to that level. What flipped the switch for you where you were like, this is not the way forward?

Jon Usborne (00:12:11.21) I think it was through a lot of prayer, honestly. We went from a large mega church in Southern California. It’s a lot of resource. We interviewed at a few different churches. We needed to just move out of California at the time. That’s where we were at. We needed to start something fresh. I interviewed at other large churches across the country. There was one small church, not 242, but this is before that, in a rural area here in Michigan. I told them, Listen, we’re interviewing these other churches. They wanted to bring us out and to interview. I was like, I just feel bad. Let me do these other interviews first. They’re like, No, no, no, come anyway. We did this grand circle tour of the United States and did all these interviews. On our way back from Michigan, we just had connected with this community so deeply and richly. It’s all we could talk about. It was the last thing I thought was going to happen. When we moved from Southern California to this rural area in Michigan, I felt like maybe I committed career suicide. Don’t worship leaders and creatives in the church. You want to end up working like an elevation or like a Hillsong or something like that where you can truly have all the resources you could possibly imagine and rise to whatever level of success.

Jon Usborne (00:13:19.04) But at that time, that was my orientation. But when I got to rural Michigan and the small church, God began to impress on me that my goal here is to sing the song of this community. Not anything else. He’s going to provide everything that we need in that. There can be a lot of fear of like, Well, what if it’s not this? Or what if it’s not that? Or what if I can’t find enough musicians? I know a lot of musicians a lot of times feel like they failed if they have to do an acoustic weekend because they don’t have enough volunteers. The reality is I would rather not have enough volunteers and have a beautiful acoustic weekend than try to force-fit something that doesn’t fit. We sometimes at our church, we struggle with contracting musicians or paying musicians to come do it. But I think that sometimes there is a need for that, and I get it. I’m not trying to just rain on that parade. But I think if we do that regularly and rely on that, then we’re short-circuiting what God is trying to do in our ministry by taking away the provision that he’s already given to you.

Jon Usborne (00:14:19.01) I truly believe that as a worship leader, our job is to draw out worship out of our community. That was something that I found. I think I need to just take a breath and discover what has God provided for me here because I truly believe he can do that if you’re open to it. Over time, that’s what happened. For four years, I worked at this church in Michigan, and creatively, I had to check my ambition at the door. But what I grew in its place was this bonded community. That was the thing that was way more fulfilling and lasted for me, and I think created more effective moments of worship because there was trust and understanding, and there was camaraderie there. When we were on stage together, I knew these people. These were my family. We’re close. I think that that even invigorates the moment and allows the spirit to do what only it can do in these moments rather than force I was feeding. I don’t know this guy. We contracted him, but I just really needed an electric guitar, and this drummer can barely play this song that’s in 12:8, but we’re making him do it because that’s what Cody Karn is doing, so that’s what we’re going to do.

Jon Usborne (00:15:29.26) There was a lot of compromise, but I found beautiful community in that process. I can only imagine that there are other worship leaders who deal with that on a regular basis because we’re not all elevation and Hillsong. That’s a good thing, I think.

Alex Enfiedjian (00:15:42.14) It seems like much of the problem where this stems from and roots from and comes from is just comparing ourselves to everything else out there and looking externally at what success is instead of looking into the scriptures for what success is or even just internally into who’s in my church and How can I elevate those people and bless those people and encourage those people? It’s funny, I just released on Monday a YouTube… Well, by the time this airs, it’ll be long release, but it was a YouTube video called Four Ways to Help Your Team Grow Relationally and Spiritually. I started it out by saying, your team should feel like a family. It should not be strangers fulfilling a function. It should feel like a family. That’s what you’re saying. For sure. Just love and serve and care for the people that are in your care. Christian, who’s watching live, she said in one of our recent academy calls, she said something about, I can only tend the soil. That’s my job. God’s job is to create whatever out of that he wants. Christian, thanks for making it into the podcast today. Yeah, That’s the idea is love and shepherd and care for the people that are in front of you.

Alex Enfiedjian (00:16:49.01) Now, I’d love for you to tell the listeners what your ministry looks like today at 242 Church. What does it look like in terms of creativity? Then we’ll start break down the structure of like, okay, you have different people fulfilling different functions to create that healthy soil. What does it look like today? How many people are involved and what creative roles are there? Photography team, if there is a graphic design team, I’m not sure, but just share what that creative community is where you’re at.

Jon Usborne (00:17:19.26) We definitely have staff members who are responsible for different aspects. We have communications and creative team that is graphic designer. We contract videographies our videography business. Actually, the guy who started this company was an apprentice of mine for a couple of years, so it’s perfect. It feels like an extension of our staff. They do such a great job. When it comes to the music and weekend side, we’re a seven-campus church, so we’re multi-site. Each campus looks a little bit different, the resources that they have all the way from… One campus has one part-time worship pastor, no production director, and that’s it for the weekend, where another campus might have a full-time worship pastor and a full-time production director and a a whole bunch of contract production staff to pull off a broadcast. Our YouTube channel runs a broadcast out of our central campus, and there’s a whole bunch of different roles that go into making that broadcast happen on the regular. But the way that we structure our volunteers is we have a very specific and intentional team structure. It can be discipleship is such a buzzword, and it can be a blue ocean of possibilities in how you do it, how you don’t do it.

Jon Usborne (00:18:25.19) We’ve decided to get really specific about what that looks like for our community Just at least in terms of creating space and being intentional, making sure that it’s happening. Throughout our weekend teams, we have coaches, team leads, apprentices, team members, and people who are trying things for the first time. Remember, they’re in training or we call it a test drive. That’s the roles broken down at each one of our campuses. I can lay out a brief analysis of what each person does within that structure if you want me to, but that’s how we do it.

Alex Enfiedjian (00:18:58.06) Yeah, I would like you to. How many people are involved currently in all of your ministry throughout all your campuses?

Jon Usborne (00:19:05.22) We have about, I’d say, 15 weekend staff across all seven campuses, and that’s a mixture of worship pastors and production directors. That’s staff members and then volunteers. I mean, a lot. I don’t even actually know the number, but it’s a lot.

Alex Enfiedjian (00:19:18.17) Over 300?

Jon Usborne (00:19:19.17) Yeah, somewhere around there, but between production and worship as well. The way that we do it is our coaches… Well, I’ll start with team leads. Team leads basically are… They’re like the bread and butter of our team. These are lay pastors, basically. Our team lead role descriptions lay it out in a way that say, with spiritual formation and discipleship as the emphasis of this role. The team lead helps the worship pastor and production director in these ways. The way we do it is we break it down numerically. For every five to seven team members we have on our team, we have one team lead. That team lead is responsible for mechanical stuff, administrative stuff, scheduling people or whatever, making sure that people who are in training are getting that training, helping audition and bring people into the role, as well as the spiritual formation of a select few people from their team. Depending on the team size, if it’s a big old team, then we basically have section leaders, so guitar leader or whatever, and they’re all responsible for their team. Sometimes we have multiple team leads for vocalist teams. Typically, vocalists have 30 members, and then guitarists have three, just depending.

Jon Usborne (00:20:33.14) Everybody likes to sing. We’ll have multiple team members for vocals because we don’t want to outpace that number. We really want to stay 5-7, and that’s a team lead role. On the upside, team leads are invested in by the staff members directly. Every term or quarter, however a church might do it, you’d sit down with your team leads and have a team lead huddle, talk through things like, How’s your team doing? How’s team health? Any stories? This is where the beauty is, any stories coming out of your community that we should know about? Hey, this person got a really bad health diagnosis, and we all prayed for them, we did a meal train, and now they’re on the men, and God’s showing up in these specific ways that were really powerful. That’s like, wow, we need to write a song about this. We need to create something from this beautiful thing that happened in our community. But without having this space for that community, it’s really hard to find that level of inspiration. That’s the unintentional backflow. It’s It’s like the blessing. It’s like an added blessing on top, not the motive, though. The team leads are doing that.

Jon Usborne (00:21:35.29) They have team lead goals once every quarter or term, depending on your church. They have typically three goals. One is to meet with their entire team one time as a group. It does not have to be any business. It could just be like, grilling out or whatever you want to do. Once, meet with each person individually on your group one time. Then also whatever the third goal is, just depending on what that team needs or what the context is. We do that regularly, and that’s how we create a system of care throughout our community. From there, you have apprentices who are studying under team leads.

Alex Enfiedjian (00:22:08.05) Can I stop you before you go on? Because I think, first of all, it’s amazing the intentionality, but I think some worship leaders listening might be like, That’s not going to happen at my church. I can’t have team leads and then apprentices and then this, their heads exploding right now. But however, I will say to those worship leaders who feel that way, John didn’t start this way, and neither will you. You build to this, it’s good to see something so far ahead that it breaks your categories. It gets you thinking in a different way. If you feel overwhelmed, it’s just because you’re seeing something that you’ve never thought of before and it doesn’t fit into any bucket because you’re like, Oh, man, my vision was so narrow. Okay, well, welcome to a wider view. Great. Now, the question is, what can you guys do? I’m just going to apply it to the team lead thing right now, and then John will keep going with his different positions that he’s structured. But for the team lead guys, you could just ask the Lord, Lord, I just need one helper in my ministry who’s mature. And I was going to ask you this, John, are all the team leads musical or are some of them just literally they’re just good leaders?

Jon Usborne (00:23:10.21) Okay, great.

Alex Enfiedjian (00:23:12.18) Guys, you don’t even need to recruit a musician to It could just be the team lead. It could just be someone in the church who has a shepherd’s heart. Here’s the idea, though, you guys. Even if you just say, Lord, give me one team leader or person who can co-shepher these people with me because I can’t. Like Moses said, there’s too many of them, Lord, I can’t do it. If you just ask Lord for one of those and then just get that person shepherding with you and doing some of these tasks, that will be your first win and your first step into building more of a structured shared leadership environment. Okay, sorry, John, I stole the mic. Go ahead. No, That’s good.

Jon Usborne (00:23:45.26) We started out a lot smaller than this. It really does take one, and it comes down to those numbers. We started mainly with the numbers. What are our numbers? Let’s start there. If you have five volunteers in your ministry, then either A, you are the a team lead for now, or B, I need to start finding a team lead because as soon as this doubles, I’m going to at least need one. It doesn’t have to be section-specific. In the very beginning, we just grouped people together, and they don’t have to all be keyboard players. That’s how we do it. Start really small. The thing that I have found is that this community is like a magnet. This church that I started this in, actually, long story short, I’ve lived in Michigan since 2009, but I moved to San Francisco for two years, trying to be back near our family in Southern California. It didn’t work out, moved back to Michigan. But in those two years that I was there, I built this exact structure for the first time and experienced a lot of the challenges and learned a lot doing it. But the cool thing was we were able to start out really small and expand it.

Jon Usborne (00:24:50.24) The thing that blew my mind was there were a lot of people in the seats that had been worship pastors in the past or could play music or or really love the production stuff, but maybe they’ve served at a church before and they know what that world is like, and they’re like, No, I’m not even raising my hand. I came here to get away from it. I came here to be anonymous, so nobody knew I was here. We never recruited, but the people who are part of this community, through whether it’s small groups or just knowing other people in the church, word spread that, Hey, this is a cool community. Another big standard that we have is you can only serve 2-3 times a month maximum. That would force us into acoustic weekends and things like that. My campus pastor would be like, Hey, why are we doing an acoustic weekend? I’ll just tell him straight up because we’re building this team, and I’m not going to do it by creating a standard that people can lead four times a week. Because from my opinion is, it just takes something fun and it makes it no fun anymore.

Jon Usborne (00:25:51.01) As well as that person, when you’re just coming with your family, especially to attend, it’s so much more fruitful for your family in your home life than to always have dad missing because he’s up playing guitar all the time for free. Those standards grew like wildfire. We had worship leaders come out of the woodwork that were like, Hey, I can’t believe I’m even talking to you right now. I’m very hesitant, but I want you to know this is where I’m coming from, and slowly begin to integrate them and say, Listen, you want to do once a month, once every other month? Doesn’t matter to me. The important thing is this is a creative community of like-minded people that I think you’re going to love. You know what I mean? It doesn’t really have anything to do with you up on stage leading worship all the time. It’s more about giving you a community of people that you can hang out with. That grew. There were so many people that were… It was almost offensive at first because I’m like, How come none of you are willing to do this But as I got over that, I began to understand it’s because it’s a really difficult thing to do when there’s no boundaries and there’s no care.

Jon Usborne (00:26:52.02) It can hurt. There are a lot of hurt people that began to come forth with that, which was cool. But yeah, so that’s how we do that. Team members are just serving on a rotation regularly, twice up to three times, never four. They’re scheduled by their team lead, they’re led by their team lead, or the worship pastor if you don’t have a team lead yet. Then our coaches is the last thing that’s actually, I think, unique and cool. We had one musician who was a professional musician. She toured and all that stuff. For one reason or another, she just didn’t feel comfortable volunteering and doing what she does for a career for free. That was fine with me. I basically invented a role for her. Well, I would still love your feedback. I would love your leadership. This is what you do. You don’t have to play on the stage, but can you offer me twice a month? Can you just give me critical feedback on what’s going well, what’s not going well? Then twice a year, we do a leadership meeting where everybody from creative leadership gets together. That might sound like a big staff.

Jon Usborne (00:27:52.28) It’s actually almost all volunteers. You have all of your team leads there, you have your coaches there. We would have our pastor where our staff obviously would also be there. We would just talk through like, Hey, what’s working? What’s not working? What are some things we feel like God might be calling us into in this next season? What are some good goals for our team leads? Talking through all that stuff collaboratively together. The coach who went from, I either have to serve for free or I have to be completely disengaged, to actually leaning in and being able to engage in coming to the leadership meetings and speaking into things and just creating an opportunity for them. There was another person as well who He led worship for a really long time. He auditioned, but he was very classic, in the gay there style, very strong vibrato and like, Why don’t we play more like ’80s music? I’m like, I don’t know if this is going to work, but you have a wealth of knowledge that we could benefit from. Can you be a coach, please? That turned into another beautiful relationship. Really, like you said, looking beyond just the guitar player or the musician, there are so many people who have a passion for worship, and we just haven’t created an an opportunity for them to speak into it yet.

Alex Enfiedjian (00:29:02.08) Yeah. Those in the academy know that I always encourage creating positions for people based on their skillset, because the goal of ministry is to get people involved and to be in relationship and community like you’re talking about. And so an event planner, Hey, lady in the church who’s really good at hospitality, would you plan four fun events for our team every year? That’s your role, right? And so it can be way broader. I love that you’d found these two people who didn’t fit into the guitar player, singer, drummer roles, but you said, You would be great at this. Would you consider that? I just want all the worship leaders listening to open up their minds to that possibility. There are other ways to involve people in your ministry and build your community that leans into their gifting, gives them a place to serve and feel needed and loved, and grows the team and grows the church. Man, you’re doing a great job, and this is very, very encouraging. The roles team lead, coach. Then you had what? Team member and then apprentice?

Jon Usborne (00:30:05.14) Yeah, that’s all of them. Okay.

Alex Enfiedjian (00:30:07.23) Maybe share a little bit about the apprentice role, because I think one of the things that people struggle with is they’re like, I want great musicians to come to my church, but usually great musicians don’t just show up at your front door. Sometimes if you’re super blessed because God loves you more than he loves other people, he sends them. But most of the time, it’s you developing people from within to be better. What does the apprentice role look like so that our worship leaders can start to think through that?

Jon Usborne (00:30:31.23) We have an internal level of competency. It’s basically like standards for every area of our ministry, so within music, for all of the different instruments, as well as in production, like lighting, pro-presenter, audio, whatever. There are developmental steps. Essentially, when we bring someone in and we’re talking through like, Hey, maybe this would be a good fit for you, it’s a one through five. We’re looking at least at a level one of ability, skills-wise, when we’re talking specifically skills. That’s what our team leads know to use, to use as a measuring stick like, Hey, can they play with a click? What do they do in the Nashville numbers system? Or whatever the thing might be. Then from there, when it comes to skills, if they come in at two or three, those are all internal. This is a very sensitive pastoral tool. It’s not something to say, Hey, you’re a number three. That’s great. We’re going to take you, whatever. It’s really like, I’m just trying to create a system where I can help someone take their next step with this skillset because a lot of times it can be so subjective and I don’t even know what to work on with them next.

Jon Usborne (00:31:38.09) It’s almost like a little curriculum. The way that we do things is if they come in at a three and we know that, we literally have a spreadsheet in a chart where we notate that with their name on our team roster. That’s a leadership tool that they have access to. Then they will say, Okay, well, what are the skills in level four? That’s their next step skills-wise. I’m going to encourage them Hey, can you maybe put your cord sheet away and try to play this one song next weekend with no cord sheet? I’m not asking you to abandon cord sheets forever, but just play the one song next week with no cord sheet and slowly working on that next level. From a skills development standpoint, that’s how we do that. Team leads and apprentices, as well as staff members, have access to that piece of leadership. That’s where apprentices start being involved in development. They’re They’re also assisting the team lead with scheduling and duties like that. If they’re on the music director side, maybe they’re setting up tracks, whether it’s Ableton or playback or whatever you happen to use. They’re starting with some of those things, but they basically communicated, I think at some point I would love to be more in a leadership role or have a little bit more influence, and then we take them through an apprenticeship track.

Jon Usborne (00:32:52.08) That is probably the most nebulous thing because we don’t say, Oh, it’s a six-month apprenticeship or it’s a year. It really is up to the team lead staff member to go, I think this person’s ready for the next step. We do it that way. That’s apprentices. Typically, apprentices turn into team leads at some point. Sometimes they’re happy just in the apprentice level, and they’re like, You know what? I don’t want to be the team lead. I just want to assist the team lead, and I’m happy with that. I’m like, Okay, that’s good. That’s that role.

Alex Enfiedjian (00:33:18.27) The apprentice is not… They’re already serving at some level. What does your audition intake process then look like? Obviously, you’re checking people spiritually, inviting them, casting vision for the community, all of that, and then checking out their musicality, if they have the ability. If they hit the threshold, you put them somewhere appropriate to their skill set, and you keep your eyeballs on them and then develop them from there. It’s almost like a pre-apprentice-apprentice, or is it the apprentice part? I guess I’m just confused about the word.

Jon Usborne (00:33:54.17) It’s in training to be a team member. I would say 90% of our volunteers are team members. That’s just show up on a rotation, you’re part of a team, you’re scheduled, and you come play or whatever. So trainees or people who come in to test drive, they are basically shadowing a team member at first. When they first start out, we don’t throw them right on stage ever. Our thing is by the time you go on a weekend stage, not only do we want you to be free of fear for what you’re doing. A little bit of nervous is understandable, but we want you to be free of fear. Secondly, we want to know that we know you pretty well. We have a good relationship. Yeah, there’s that community there. There’s that piece. Typically, people will just come to rehearsal and just hang out at rehearsal. They’re not doing anything. They’re not playing anything. They’re just watching. They’re seeing how it all runs. Then when they’re like, Yeah, I dig the way you guys do things. I want to take the next step. Then, All right, why don’t you come play a song with us or play whatever at rehearsal.

Jon Usborne (00:34:49.18) Then they’ll play, Well, here’s how the… A lot of times we’re training people on a lot of skills really quickly. Not everyone has used in-ear monitors or interacted with planning centre or used to play back or the click and the guide and all that. A lot of these things are new. We want to make sure that people have adequate time to do that. But even for people who are like, Hey, I used to play at Hillsong. I was like, Chris Tomlin’s guitar player. I’m just here to volunteer. Even then, it’s like, Well, we’re still going to take you through this process because it’s not just about you as an amazing musician, it’s about you as a person. We want to make sure that we know you well, that you know us, that there’s still that connexion. There is a lot of having your hands open and having a mindset of abundance and not like, This person is going to leave. Maybe we’re boring them. They just want to go straight to the stage. I found more and more that people find so much more redemptive value by being a part of the community and being valued as a person way before they’re scheduled for anything.

Jon Usborne (00:35:46.17) You know what I mean? So we take that process anyway. We do that anyway. So that’s how we do it. So once they’ve played with us a little bit at a rehearsal and everything’s continuing to vibe well, that’s when we say, All right, why don’t you play with us on a weekend? And then they do that once, and then we follow up again. Hey, how did that feel? How are you doing? Are you enjoying this? Everything. If there’s any red flags, we talk about that. But if not, then like, Hey, would you be willing to be a team member? I just want to remind you, we’ve already shown you all this, but here’s what team members commit to, time commitment, all that stuff. Then once they’re good with that, then we put them on the schedule regularly from there and let them know who their team lead is. And then they go from there.

Alex Enfiedjian (00:36:26.27) Yeah, and for the Academy students, I would encourage you to check out the team course and the Copy Me Course because a lot of the nuts and bolts of some of the stuff that John is sharing is in those courses. So check out Copy Me course and Team Building course. Also, I wanted to say one of the big easy wins for you guys is finding that one or two team lead people to distribute leadership to, ask them to meet with the whole team once a quarter, meet with every member individually, and then develop people internally, whatever. Then you meet with those people, your leaders, regularly. I think that’s a really great first step for everybody to take. I like how you said it’s distributing the care. You will be the lid on your team’s growth if you’re the only person checking in on everybody. So empower others to care. And again, they don’t have to be musicians. Now, question, John, you said that creativity bubbles up out of the community. Where do you let that creativity bubble up to? Let’s say gets cared for at the hospital and there’s this beautiful redemptive moment and they decide to write a song about the moment.

Alex Enfiedjian (00:37:35.26) Where does that song go to? Does it have to go to the church or can it go out to the world? Can it be their own song that they put on Spotify? How are you capturing certain They are legally bound to give that to the church. Give it to the church. It came from the church. No, I know. I guess the heart of my question is, obviously, creativity is going to go out into the world, but sometimes you as the leader of the church decide, Hey, that is a great, beautiful creative piece that I want to bring into our service, or we’re going to make a video about that, and we’re going to do a testimony video based on this situation that happened within our team. How do you as a leader capture creativity, find the stories, find the songs, decide which ones make it into the church and which ones are just for the Lord or which ones are just for the person to put on their own Spotify thing?

Jon Usborne (00:38:25.19) Yeah. Go ahead. Again, with an attitude of abundance, I own no claim to anything that God is doing. This is something that we’re actually just now beginning. This process, I want to encourage anyone who’s watching this, takes a long time to do, to get to a place to where now you’re starting to see that backflow. Not only do you see the backflow, but you actually have the bandwidth to do something about it. I know a lot of worship pastors are like, Man, this sounds great, but I don’t know how I’m even going to begin to do this process, how long this could possibly take. We had cast vision for what our worship staff actually is, because it’s really easy to get caught up in the weeds of every little task that needs to be done. When the reality is, when this care is distributed across this team, you can elevate out of a lot of those administrative tasks that volunteers will happily take from you. We hate that part of our jobs as musicians and creatives and pastors. We’re like, Who wants to do PCO scheduling? Like planning centre scheduling. Nobody wants to do that.

Jon Usborne (00:39:28.24) I don’t want to give it to anybody because they’re going to think I’m just trying to use them to do something I don’t want to do. But the reality is people are often willing and happy to do that, and it’s our issue that we don’t like it and we don’t want to do it. We put that on them. But the truth is, once we’ve elevated out of those weeds and we’re spending all of our time investing in our team leads and just making sure they have everything that they need, then we can start the list of what are the things that only I should be doing, that I probably shouldn’t hand off, that I feel like, or even the things that I’m passionate about that I want more time to do, like writing music. Once you have that stuff written down, then when you hear about a story, you’ve got the bandwidth to actually do something about it. The way that we decide, and this is new for us, but we are starting to work on original music and potentially put something recorded and all that. But I really believe in as many things being organic and spirit-led as is possible.

Jon Usborne (00:40:20.23) So I told our team just this year, Hey, our goal is to write whatever bubbles out of this community. And if that’s an electronic song or if it’s an acoustic folk or it’s hip hop or whatever it is, that’s what it is. We’re not going to make it be anything else, and we’re going to trust that God has a plan for that. It really isn’t. There is no expectation that that belongs to the church or this belongs to the church. If somebody feels like there’s something that they want to share with the church, then we take it from there. What is it? Let’s listen to it. Oh, this is really cool. Let’s develop that. Would you be willing to develop that? And How do you want to go about it? We’re more likely to create a record label than we are to create one band and have a whole bunch of artists that have a whole bunch of different expressions of what that looks like and no ambition to shoehorn it into anything again. Because I believe that if we’re true to ourselves, then God has a ministry for that. There are people out there who are going to connect with you being true to yourself way more than connect with you with the exact same guitar tone as this person or that person, the same progression.

Jon Usborne (00:41:31.00) We’re not interested in that. What I told the team is if we accidentally write a corporate worship song, then we’ll do that. But we’re not trying to do that. We’re trying to do whatever it is that God impresses on our hearts. That’s a harder road, and it’s a lot weirder. But it’s been a lot of fun to hear a variety of things that’s not like, Wow, this is just ambient, and I love it. We should do something with that. Anyway, that’s the way that we’re approaching how we handle the creative things that bubble out of the community. Just let it be what it’s going to be. Throw resources at it if they want that, and if they want to do it on their own, then how can we even help you? How can we support you in doing this on your own?

Alex Enfiedjian (00:42:12.23) You act as the curator of like, Oh, wow, actually, that’s really cool. What if we… And you just add your two cents to what they’re already doing and try to elevate it slightly even more. It’s funny, you were talking and I was like, Oh, you mean so your album isn’t going to sound like every other worship album out there? Thank the Lord. Thank the Lord that someone has the courage to be themselves. Again, I just want to affirm that and also encourage the worship leaders listening or watching that God made you and your church to be you and your church, not someone else. Please stop copying. Please be your unique self because that’s what God made you to be. Therefore, if you bring that into the world, it’s what was meant to be brought into the world, not a copy of something else, because a copy is just always lamer.

Jon Usborne (00:42:59.13) Anyway, All of my favourite artists are just… One of my favourite artists is Sigur Rós. I don’t know if anybody on here knows who Sigur Rós is. But when you ask Sigur Rós, there was one interview with them with NPR. They were like, How did you guys come up with this? Like, authorial, so unique. This is this original sound. How did you do it? They’re literally just like, I think we just started playing. We started playing together. That was it. They’re like, How do you… What’s your process? They’re like, Just play music. You know what I mean? They’re just true to who they are, and it’s weird. It’s not normal, but it’s what’s effective. I really believe that in some ways in art, we are lacking that in the church. There are more expressions that I have seen lately, which is really encouraging because I feel like there are more artists in the church who are contributing in this way. I feel like that’s the only way to be authentic to who we are and authentic to what the spirit is doing. I feel like when we do that, it’s going to reach way farther and truer, if that’s a word, when we’re being true to who we I’m passionate about that for sure.

Jon Usborne (00:44:01.06) We do a whole other podcast on that.

Alex Enfiedjian (00:44:03.05) We may do a whole other podcast. You lead a lot of creatives in three different realms. I’d love for you to share some tips with the worship readers listening on how to lead creatives well, whatever Whatever you’ve learned through the years of leading creatives, go ahead, share that. Then I have a question for you about AI. Oh, yes. Let’s start with the first question, though.

Jon Usborne (00:44:24.04) Yeah, I think leading creatives well, again, I’m going to sound like a broken record, but it’s community. It’s 100% community because in order to be creative with each other, we have to really trust each other in order to be vulnerable. When you get into a brainstorm with people that you don’t really know, everyone’s a little bit guarded and a little bit concerned about criticism. Maybe this is a bad idea, I don’t know if it is or not. Typically, I found that the creative process, there’s a lot of bad ideas before there’s a good idea, and that’s just how it works. But if you don’t know each other well, you don’t trust each other super well, you’re afraid to be vulnerable in that way. There is a huge element of caring for each other through a creative process rather than just, Let’s just throw some ideas at the walls, throw some darts, whatever. In my experience, anyway, it has not worked that way. There have been some times where pressure’s on and we just got to ideate now because we got to do something quick. Even in those moments, if you’ve taken the time to create trust and create relationship and community, then it’s a lot easier to fly through a process together than it is to do something that’s somewhat unnatural.

Jon Usborne (00:45:30.16) But I would definitely encourage anyone watching this, even if you’re part of a smaller expression of faith. God has provided people in your church, I fully believe this, that can be part of your creative process. The more community that we build, the more that we discover those people, and then we can bring them into that process. But that’s what I would say. Community, trust, caring for each other, and you’ll end up with something that you’re all really proud of.

Alex Enfiedjian (00:45:56.03) Yeah, that’s good. For those of you who are interested in getting creative teams who ship on time. There is a podcast episode I did with Chris Fouché, and it’s called Leading Creative Teams That Ship, or something like that. I’ll try to remember to put a link in the show notes, but let’s just briefly talk about AI. It’s everywhere. I’m not sure how aware people are that it is literally everywhere and taking over. You can tell different AI bots to create different art, and it just does. Video is now a thing. Music is a thing. Writing, obviously, has been a thing the last year. It really is astounding. I have a videographer/graphic designer on our staff at our church, and he and I joke that he’s just not going to have a job in four years. It might be sooner, but it will edit my YouTube videos for me soon. It will do everything. It’s getting really close to that point. How will AI affect creatives? Then, are you using AI in any of your workflows, anything around that topic? Then we’ll move into our academy Q&A. Guys, get your questions ready if you have questions about anything we’ve talked about today.

Alex Enfiedjian (00:47:02.03) You can even start typing them in the chat now if you’d like to. Go ahead, John.

Jon Usborne (00:47:07.03) Yeah. I remember tales being told of when computers and Photoshop and all that stuff was created. With each advent of technology, there’s an assumption that we’re going to lose the humanity in that advent of technology. At first, with AI stuff, I started to get really weird about it. Hold on. Some artists still are. Ai is basically just knocking an awful a whole bunch of art from a whole bunch of people across the internet and repurposing it into things without their consent. That was the concern with AI from a visual standpoint. I get that, and I’m sensitive to that. At the same time, I feel like AI is just another new tool to be used by people to create great things. I don’t think that, again, having that mindset of abundance and not scarcity, like, Oh, no, AI is going to put me out of a job. How am I going to do this? No, how can I use this? This is a cool thing people have created. It can be super scary. I’ve listened to my share of podcasts about the fear of the future of AI and all this stuff. But from an art standpoint, I see it as a tool to be used more than a threatening thing for me.

Jon Usborne (00:48:15.04) I have used AI for series graphics as a tool, not as the core creative component, but as a tool to be used. Because sometimes, you can take hours and hours of painstaking detail work, especially, and condense down to trying a prompt 20 times and then you got what you need, which is really cool. But that was the same thing that was true before people used computers to do graphic design. When you started being able to use a computer, just change the game. I went to I was in film school with my wife, actually. She was in film school, and I just took her classes with her. We cut tape and did all that stuff and all the old-school ways of doing things. Now when I use final cut or whatever, I couldn’t imagine doing it any other way. As a person who used to use tape, that is mind-blowing. It’s going to put all these people who cut tape and all the companies that make tape out of a job. That’s true to a certain extent. However, just another tool to be used, and that’s what I really think AI is as well. Maybe it will replace us and I’ll end up being out of a job, but again, I’m just not afraid of that.

Jon Usborne (00:49:16.21) I trust that God knows what it is I’m trying to do and that he’s going to provide for that. I’ve had some really cool experiences with AI graphics, and some of my favourite artists use AI as one of their key ways to generate their art, and the stuff that they make is amazing, really cool and unique. That if you were to set up a photo shoot or something to do what this AI prompt just did, dude, it would take a lot of time, a lot of money. It’s just another tool to be used in my opinion.

Alex Enfiedjian (00:49:46.00) Yeah, that’s helpful. For those of you who haven’t explored it, you can go to poe. Com, P-O-E. Com, and you can try a bunch of different bots that do different things or create graphics and stuff. We got a great question from Jennifer. I’m going to read it, but we’re not going to answer it till the live Q&A. If anyone has more questions, put them in. Jennifer said, Don’t answer it yet, John. How do I build community with activities outside of Sundays when everyone’s schedule seems so busy? We are going to answer that for you, Jennifer. Anyone else? Joel just posted one in the chat as well. We’ll answer these questions in a second. Before we do, John, where can people find you? And any last words of encouragement for our listeners before our Q&A?

Jon Usborne (00:50:24.09) Yeah, I don’t have an online portfolio for my own stuff. Risen. Design is the graphic design company that I own with a couple of friends, and we do church stuff. We do church series designs or branding packages or whatever, as well as nonprofit and parachurch stuff. Then 242community. Com is the church that I work at. I put music out on Spotify and all that stuff all the time, too, and her band called Sleep and Awake, so that’s another thing. There’s just all kinds of random stuff. I don’t have a hub of JohnOsborne. Com. To find all things John Osborne. I don’t have that. But I would love to connect with you. I’m on Instagram, Facebook, all that stuff. You can hit me up and we can and continue a dialogue. Especially if you are out there building from the ground up with a small community, I’ve done that with you. I would love to help you do that. It’s been an interesting process. I’m equally creative and nerd, as you can see from my white sabre perched back here behind me. I love to figure out how do we make sure that this happened. How do we quantify it?

Jon Usborne (00:51:22.29) How do we write it down? Our addition process, we go through a packet with our people that lays everything out clearly. Because I think clarity is kindness. When you’re not clear with people, they don’t understand the commitment level, they don’t understand what it is that you’re doing. There’s just a lot missed when we assume. I would be more than happy to help you walk through that process as well. Support Worship Ministry training. It looks like you guys are doing that, too. Praise God, it’s so good. Anyway, yeah, we can continue the conversation if you want. Hit me up on Facebook, Instagram, or whatever.

Alex Enfiedjian (00:51:50.22) Awesome. Any final words of encouragement to the general public who will not be in the Q&A?

Jon Usborne (00:51:55.25) Yeah, I think one step at a time, man. Start small. I truly believe in appointing. If the leaders who hired you in this position, or if you’re a volunteer, and God has given you this opportunity, then I truly believe that there is a reason that you’re there and that you have the skills that you need to build this community. Yes, you can always learn more. Yes, you can always be better at whatever. Lessons and all that stuff is good. But he’s also provided people at your church that need you to minister to them and help them take their next steps. I really believe that your community is just sitting in the wings if you don’t feel like they’re there yet. One step at a time, one conversation at a time, one team lead at a time. I’ve seen it happen, and I know it will happen in your… If you’re diligent with this in your context, it will become a magnet of creatives that you won’t be able to stop. One of the most fulfilling things for me is seeing staff members at other churches on the other side of the community that we build.

Jon Usborne (00:52:59.22) Built. It’s just so fulfilling. That’s fruit directly from the thing that God used you to do. Take confidence in that and live out your convictions because I believe that your convictions is why God has you there. So do that.

Alex Enfiedjian (00:53:14.08) That’s so good. Sounds a lot like shepherding, which is what we’re called to. Thank you, John. Let’s jump into our Academy Q&A. For those of you who are not in the Academy, I would invite you to join. But let’s run this outro and I’ll see you guys in our Q&A session in one second. Thanks for tuning in today. I hope this episode encouraged helped you and pushed you forward in your ministry. If it helped you, can you take a second and help us by sending it to just one person that you think needs to hear this? And if you’re feeling extra nice, leave us a nice shiny five-star review on Apple Podcasts, or like this video if you’re watching it on YouTube. If you want to discuss this episode or ask questions, we do have a free section in our academy where you can post comments and questions and chat with other worship leaders just like you and also sample some of our courses. And you can go to worshipministrytraining. Com/free to join us inside the free portion of the academy. If you’re looking for more, check out the full Access Academy. You can get 15 days for just one dollar to start and try things out.

Alex Enfiedjian (00:54:09.11) Again, you can try all of it for 15 days for just one dollar by going to worshipministrytraining. Com. Hope to see you inside the Academy, or else I’ll see you next month for another helpful episode.