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2025 Leaders Gathering Breakout: Raising up Sons & Daughters vs Hired Hands.
KEY LINKS
BREAKOUT Q&A SUBMISSIONS
EQUIPMENT
| How do you consolidate EG/Bass tone from different people without having a permanent pedalboard? | The main thing is to have a specific goal for what that tone needs to sound like at a foundational level. Define your core tone. example could be (EG - warm, ambient, verby. Bass - punchy, clean, slight drive in big sections). Maybe have an audio file from a multi track to show as an example of what the style you are going for is and then let them have their interpretation on that style outside of the core traits you need as a team. |
DEVELOPING LEADERS
| What are you best and most effective resources/strategies for mentoring leaders under you? |
Our Dev process has been a game-changer when it comes to developing the leaders coming up in our environment. We have all of those resources available for you in the links above! We also really lean on our church's Growth Track and prioritize leading small groups with our developing leaders that take them through Foundations, Freedom, etc. You also can't underestimate the power of just bringing people along for the ride as you're doing ministry! Invite people into your everyday life and let your life speak. |
| how do you find “hidden” talent in the church & help them want to join the team? | We focus on developing leaders as they come up in Next Gen ministries, and provide several opportunities for them to express interest:
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| How do you lead through developing a team member in improving their stage presence who might not be self-aware that they need to improve OR who struggles with seeing that improvement as “performing”. | We make it a point to give a lot of "why behind the what." When coaching a volunteer, we try to not just say things like "open your eyes." We will say "Be sure to open your eyes and look at the congregation while you're leading. If you shut your eyes, you're on your own journey and it makes it really hard to lead others and for them to follow you. Keep one eye on God, one eye on the people." When people understand WHY you're asking them to shift certain things, it helps in their motivation to actually apply the coaching! |
| How do you address people on your team who have a different style of playing that clashes with your style and are persistent to play that way? |
We don't get too particular about "style". We have a diverse team, and everyone has their style or preference. The main points we coach are:
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| How often do you do Dev? | Currently, we have 3 rounds of Dev a year. These are planned strategically in "down" seasons–i.e., not Easter season, Christmas, etc. We have a round in February, May, and September/October. |
| Explain the "No" after Audition. | When we determine that someone isn't a fit for the worship team, they receive an email that gives context and suggested growth areas (listed in our Email Templates resource), and then we always CC our Serve Team Leaders on the email and get them connected to another Serve Team that they notated interest in during our Growth Track, to make sure they have a next step. (for example: during Serve Team 201, they rank their Serve Team preferences. If worship is their #1, and Hospitality is their #2, we will copy the Hospitality Team Lead on the email to ensure a clean pass-off between departments.) |
| Do you have online Dev resources for team positions (e.g. drums, bass, guitar, vocals, keys, etc)? | We don't have any official resources for musician development, but were currently working on way to help our team in this area. Such as YouTube playlists of videos we found that could be helpful for their development (specific for each instrument: Drums, Keys, Electric Guitar). |
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Do you use the same songs for auditions/Dev or is it different every time? I understand different ranges of songs as far as keys go but are there songs you would rather use because it encompasses what you’re looking for over others. |
For Auditions: We strategically pick 2 songs and use them for a year or so. We choose one upbeat, and one slower. We think through the lens of what it showcases vocally and musically, then make shortened cuts of both songs. (Typically a verse, chorus, and bridge) For Dev: We create a 2-song set for all 4 weeks of Dev using the lenses listed above. We've used the same sets for the past several rounds of Dev. |
| How do you address dress code? | Our full Dress Code Guidelines are laid out in our Worship Handbook. |
| How do you prep vocals for different parts if you aren’t the best at hearing all the different parts yourself and aren’t a trained vocalist to know the parts? | There’s a good chance there's someone on your team who loves picking out harmonies. If so, you can empower them to create vocal part mp3s using the voice memo app on their iPhone. You can send the mp3s out or post them on planning center for the team to practice with. You could also invite this team member to help you co-lead vocal rehearsals. If you don't have someone to help you with this, you could solo out the BGV part on a song's MultiTrack and either send it out to your team or learn it to teach to the team. |
| How do you create opportunity to raise up musicians outside of a Sunday morning in a church that doesn’t have a youth worship space to allow for practice on stage? Sunday morning music has an expectation of professional musicianship at our church. | We utilize our Worship Center after services on Sunday to facilitate Dev where we train new musicians. They learn and play worship sets like they're in an actual service, and we give feedback and coaching in real time. We also use our green room, office spaces, baptism room, etc to facilitate 1:1 lessons periodically! |
| What do you do if you have people that want to be involved but are not at a skill level to be on stage? | We send people through our Dev process as many times as needed to get them platform-ready! Another thing we have implemented for those that need some extra help getting from Point A to Point B is 1:1 Breakouts that happen with Dev simultaneously. While Dev is happening in our main Worship Center, we have 1:1 keys, acoustic, and drum lessons happening around the church. More hands on, more foundational, more teaching than coaching. |
TEAM STRUCTURE
| How do you schedule? Do you have specific groups that sing together on scheduled Sundays? |
Our scheduling is done a month in advance for every worship environment. That's one way we steward our volunteers well–looking ahead and not making asks of them last minute, if possible. We don't schedule by A, B, C teams - we rotate our vocals and musicians based on several factors. We consider the following: their current serving rhythm (don't want to run anyone ragged), partnering new musicians with seasoned players so that our team doesn't feel weak when we loop in new players, we consider the guy/girl ratio on platform, and diversity is a high priority in all departments-we want people to come into church and see someone that they can relate with! We have many environments and multiple campuses that require musician teams, and we try to roster people in envronments that make sense for them (scheduling them at a campus they live close to, scheduling student musicians in our youth environment) |
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Are all of your worship and/or tech teams volunteer, paid, or a combination?
Do you use hired musicians so you can more easily sound polished and professional? |
Everyone on our worship and production team is volunteer, with the exception of our small full-time staff team. We do work to bless our volunteers in different ways for big events like Christmas, Easter, etc. where they’re serving for multiple days and services. On occasion (i.e., Easter, Christmas, etc.) we will hire contract strings players to add something unique to those services. Our focus is raising up sons and daughters, not hired hands, and we believe that the provision is in the house. We have operated this way since the beginning and so we always look to develop who we have and improve how we do that, not look outside of who we have. |
WEEKEND SERVICES
| Is it encouraged to memorize the lyrics for your worship team, and what practices do you have in place to make both sides run smoother? | Yes, vocalists are required to memorize lyrics. We set that precedent in our Dev process and don't utilize confidence monitors throughout those weeks to prepare them. The expectation is laid out clearly for them in all communication leading up to auditions and Dev so that they aren't surprised. |
| When choosing the worship set for the service, do you go into prayer and allow Holy Spirit to lead you or do you choose them according to the message of the Pastors sermon or do you get them another way? | When building sets, we always want to be thoughtful and prayerful about the songs we are putting in people's mouths each weekend. To give a few practicals, here is what we think through...
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| How do you deal with the age old criticism of not playing the old hymns? | We play the old hymns! Our church is full of diversity and we always want to create worship moments that hit different resonators. We sprinkle in hymns or a hymn tag probably once every 6 weeks. Every Christmas and Easter, you can pretty much count on hearing a version of Amazing Grace. |
| How do you choose the new songs that will go into your set list rotation? | We want our worship to point to Jesus and give people words to sing back to God. We choose songs that reflect TRUTH. We have a stewardship for what we put in people’s mouths. The songs we write/choose are songs that reflect the attributes of God, they are Gospel centered, songs that build our faith and remind us of the character of God, and songs that give people hope - a promise to grab hold of. We steer away from songs that are me-focused. Worship is to and for God! |
| Do you have any best practices for introducing a new song to your congregation? Has a song ever not worked? What did you do? | Our flow is to play the song two weekends in a row, give it a break week, then play it one more time. Then it's considered "taught." There have been many times a song didn't hit with the congregation! We give it at least 2 tries before we call it quits. It requires our team to be open-handed, receive feedback from our pastor, and pivot if a song doesn't click. |
| How far in advance do you prepare a band for a worship set and what ways help prepare for new songs? | Our standard is that our sets are planned the Monday before the weekend, so we make sure to have every resource possible loaded on to Planning Center. We include a standard MP3 file, an MP3 file that includes the click and guide cues (so they know exactly what they will hear at rehearsal), chord charts, number charts, anything else that could be helpful. We also make ourselves available for questions if a team member is having trouble hearing a certain part/chord. For new songs, we take an extra step to send intentional communication to the team saying something like "Hey everyone! Theres a new song this week - song name - all the resources are on planning center, so lets make sure were ready to go for rehearsal! Let me know if there are any questions!" |
| What would be your play if you are missing a key part of the band team and have no one who knows how to play that instrument? | We have a campus that currently doesn’t have an electric player consistently. We utilize MultiTracks weekly. Depending on the instrument, we have also commissioned trusted/invested team members to learn a new instrument in different seasons! (i.e., asking a guitar player to learn bass, keys, etc.) |