Blog | 4 Best Practices: Motivating Your Volunteer Worship Team
4 Best Practices: Motivating Your Volunteer Worship Team
Many volunteers live for worship team rehearsals and playing on Sunday mornings. It’s where they get their energy and they’re absolutely ecstatic to be a part of the team. But unfortunately, it’s not that way for everyone. When worship team volunteers are excited and motivated to be a part of the worship band, your team thrives. But when it feels like a weekly “to-do” item, they’re not putting their best foot forward.
If that’s the boat you feel like you’re in, you are not alone. Several worship pastors feel like they’re constantly racking their brains on how to keep their worship team members inspired, excited, and motivated to practice and play.
4 Best Practices: Motivating Your Volunteer Worship Team
Here are some things you can do to keep your volunteer worship team excited about being a part of the worship ministry at your church!
Be Organized, Prepared, and On Time
Team members will only reflect the passion, excitement, and attitude of their leader. If you want your worship ministry’s volunteers to be motivated and excited to be a part of the worship team, you need to demonstrate that, and that first comes in the form of being prepared, professional, and enabling the team to be so also.
Make sure PCO or whatever system you are using for charts and mp3’s is up to date, organized, and available to everyone. Come to rehearsals with the songs memorized. Bring charts for everyone. Be there early. Have instrument lines and mics set up before the band gets there.
These are the types of things that will get your team members motivated. They need to see you demonstrate the same things you expect them to be passionate about.
Raise the Standard for Everyone
Some of your volunteers will naturally be more talented than others. Often, worship pastors focus on telling the less talented members to learn the parts, prepare, practice, and care while failing to deliver the same expectations to more talented members in the ministry.
If you want your worship team to be more involved, more motivated, and more passionate about getting better at their instruments and being a part of the team, you need to raise the expectations for everyone. Give everyone a goal to reach. That could be any combination of several things: memorizing music by Sunday, getting rid of music stands, learning the parts on the recording, etc.
Of course, your more talented worship ministry volunteers are more likely to meet those expectations earlier, but simply watching other teammates strive for excellence is enough for everyone to want to step up their game.
Do Life Together
Being a part of a worship team isn’t just a job – at least it shouldn’t be. It should be a place for genuine friendship and personal growth, and that only happens when relationships are established.
In the prior point you to need to factor in that team members aren’t going to strive to meet the performance and involvement standards of their peers if they don’t feel connected in the first place. Start building deeper relationships with your team.
Once a month, do a grill out. Go out bowling. Grab ice cream. Get together and do something! The most important part is to just get everyone in the room at once – all team members and all tech volunteers. Getting people away from their own weekly worship team clique and into a space with all volunteers who are a part of the team is a great way to build fellowship and raise everyone’s motivation to be an integral part of the team.
Delegate Leadership
The strongest leaders empower others to lead. And that can be one of the toughest things to do. The sign of an incredibly healthy, thriving, and growing worship team is one in which the worship pastor can take a step back and have the band carry out the rehearsal and Sunday morning seamlessly.
Do vocalists know how to figure out harmonies with one another? Can they lead a rehearsal efficiently without everything falling into chaos? Have any volunteers been trained on how to use, organize, and update charts in PCO? Do all drummers and keyboardists know the basics of Ableton and how to run tracks? Do they know how to setup the audio interface for a Sunday morning?
These are just a couple examples of many responsibilities that you can train your team to lead. If you have a keys player that can keep people organized on track, you don’t have to worry about distracted conversations slowing down rehearsal. If your vocalists can figure out harmonies by themselves, that’s less to worry about. If your drummer can run (and even put together) tracks for Sunday morning, all the more freedom for you to focus on other aspects of the ministry you’ve otherwise been neglecting.
And once again – this isn’t just about taking things off your plate. Empowering the team to lead in their own respective areas drives good morale in everyone. Younger teammates want to meet the expectations and accomplishments of those who are a part of the ministry, and volunteers begin to lead, encourage, and train other volunteers into their roles.
About the Author
Chris Fleming is a professional musician from Minneapolis, MN who has played with artists such as TAYA, Big Daddy Weave, and Jason Gray. He is actively involved with the worship music scene and has contributed as a drummer, music director, song writer, and producer for various worship artists and churches locally and nationally. Chris is the Motion Designer at Motion Worship, helping to create motion background collections and countdowns for our subscribers.