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You are so much more than a musician.
You’re not just a replaceable, dispensable instrumentalist.
You play a significant role in leading people to encounter God by your skill, your sensitivity, your humility, your stage presence, your worship.
That’s why we as worship leaders love when you’re prepared. You make it easier for people to meet with Jesus.
But I’m going to have to ask you to step down for a season. Trust me, it’s not an easy decision to make. We’re actually in need to your particular instrument. I like you. I believe God has a massive purpose for your life on this earth.
But there are some things that need to change.
I feel if I allowed you to continue playing, I would do a disservice to your future. So I’m taking you off the schedule for a season so you can work on a couple things.
Here are the issues:
1. You show up late – trust me, I’m not a mean dictator. If you were legitimately late once or twice for different reasons, I would understand. But you are consistently late to practice. It’s not fair to the other musicians who show up on time. We take what we do as a worship team seriously. We place importance upon our roles as musicians and singers. When you show up late, you communicate that you don’t value the team or what we’re about to do.
2. You show up unprepared – I know you know this. We expect our musicians to come to rehearsal having listened and practiced each song. Listen to your part. Chart out the arrangements. Come ready to contribute. We respect you and believe in you enough to do this. But you show up unprepared. You haven’t listened to the music. You don’t know your part. It wastes a tremendous amount of time and isn’t fair to the rest of the team.
3. Your musicality is insensitive – sometimes I wonder if you realize there are other people in the room…and they aren’t there to listen to you. They are there to meet with God. You don’t listen to the other musicians or play tastefully. We need you to understand that we’re “serving” people with our music. We want to make one sound as a band that is undistracting, keeping the focus upon Christ.
4. You have a “know it all” attitude – one of the things that’s really tough is when I try and teach you something and you nod your head as if you know it already. Or you make excuses as to why you make mistakes. Part of what it means to be on a worship team is to submit to the leader and serve the needs of the congregation. Be humble and willing to learn.
5. You smoke weed backstage – KIDDING!
6. You’re making too many mistakes – you need to learn how to focus a little bit more. Your playing is distracting because of all the mistakes you make. You doodle too much. I’d like to see you take notes on your music during rehearsal and work hard on being precise. It can be difficult for the vocalists to stay on pitch when you can’t find your place. Also, when we’re flowing on a chord progression, stop playing until you know what it actually is. Don’t keep hitting wrong notes in hopes that no one will notice. We notice.
I suggest you work on these items and we’ll revisit the idea of scheduling you in a few months. I believe in you. If you humble yourself and commit to learning, there’s no limit to what you can accomplish.
Question: Have you ever had to have a hard conversation with your worship leader or worship team member? What was it about? You can leave a comment by clicking here.
Ah, the conversations that so many of us just love having. Especially with all the pot-smoking guitar players we have 🙂
I’ve had my fair share of these types of conversations, but one thing that needs to be added to this list is the importance of presentation. Our intentions can be great, but 90% of what we communicate isn’t with our mouths. It doesn’t matter how kind or encouraging our words are – if they’re not communicated in a soft, genuine and loving manner, they won’t be received well.
Those are my two cents. Great post. Thanks, David!
I recommend punching them in the face first. Works like a charm 🙂 Thanks Ryan. Wise words!
yeah that pretty much sums up why I was “sat down”…especially number 5…JOKE!!!!! LOL…
GREAT POST DAVID…
We have young teenagers who play at the worhip band at our church…and they all get a little talking to when they…yes…get a girlfriend….
haha. oh yes.
David, I love that you are willing to tackle these conversations. I think too often we as busy Americans forget why we’re doing the things we’re used to doing, even in church and serving and we just go through the motions. I applaud your intentionality and conviction. Thank you for sharing.
Can I really punch them in the face first? I always thought I was supposed to go for the arm or kidneys so the bruising wouldn’t be so obvious 🙂
Carlene! Nice to “see” you on here. You’re right, arm or kidneys is a way better idea. I don’t know what I was thinking 🙂
#5…haha!
On the serious, these were great points. As a worship leader, these are things that we will have to do unfortunately…
indeed!
I remember you having one or two of these conversations with me over the years. Haha They definitely got me focused. Thanks for having those tough conversations.
Haha. Proud of you bro. You’re doing great! Excited for the new position?
Love this. I’ve actually had the weed conversation with players (not backstage though!)
Are you serious? That is hilarious!
Me too! The weed was causing extreme tardiness and generally wasn’t prepared. He was OBVIOUSLY a guitar player. Which leads to another reason he was asked to step down. He had the chops but his tone was not very…quality.
On #4 – The toughest thing is for a worship leader who knows next to nothing about musicians and music theory to tell a musician of 40 to 50 years’ experience that their music is “distracting.” Right. If you’re going to tell an experienced musician like that to get off their “know it all” attitude, you had better know what you’re really talking about. And don’t give them any marlarky that insults their experience.
“Knowing it all” attitude typically means someone has already paid their dues way beyond the typical worship leader’s lifetime experience, and that someone is being asked to “dumb down” what they are doing to “fit in the group.” There is no logic to the request — and frequently, the worship leader can’t explain to the “know it all” what they want, just what they “don’t want.” This is tremendously insulting.
Most of the musicians I know who “know it all” have applied themselves to increasing their skill levels on most fronts over the years. They have an understanding of what works and what doesn’t that generally is light years away from the basic level of the group.
What about insisting that the rest of the group start bringing their skill levels, both spiritually and musically, up to the next level? A level that challenges the “know it all” to keep up with them.
So sad, we’d rather get rid of that valuable person because we don’t know how to properly challenge the rest of the group, as well as the “know it all,” to come up higher.
Tragoudi,
I sense a small chip on your shoulder. I agree that we should be raising the bar but to do that we have to work as a team. The excellence and talent of a musician often depends on ones perspective which can lead to debate about who is a ” better” or “more experienced”. When we join a worship team we are to submit to the pastor or leader of that team. You may be the best guitar player but if you don’t have a humble spirit or submissive attitude, it creates tension and division in the team. With this division the team will die instead of grow and nobody wins no matter how talented everyone is. But if we follow our leaders, even when we don’t agree with a decision or opinion they have, we have a much better chance at succeeding as a team.
I tell my team all the time, we are all on the same boat and if it sinks, we all sink together. If we work together, yes there will be storms, yes there will be bad decisions, but we will survive and thrive because we worked together as a team.
Just my two cents. Let’s do life together, we weren’t designed to be alone. God bless!
Thank for this post, it really hits home in a lot of ways. I’m not a worship leader but have been on different teams throughout my salvation. I’m still learning and trying to do better.
I think humility should be first on all our lists. The more humble we are, the less excuses we’ll have throughout our life. We need to be super serious with our instrument and try to play it every single day and then we’ll realize that we will never know all there is to know about what can be done with it. God will direct our paths so that we end up being where he wants us to be in our studies. If we just strum or hit ‘G’, ‘C’, and ‘D’ all our lives then we will never move forward.
There are so many great resources out there and this looks like one of the best. These days there’s just no excuse…you either want to or ya don’t!
Thank you again for this site sir. I just found it yesterday and I’m sure I’ll be checking back very often…
al
What about backup singers and the occasional worship leader who cannot make it to practices all the time and then asks to move the practices to a night she’s available?