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worship-ministry-balancing-volunteer-and-paid-musicians

Worship Ministry: Balancing Volunteer and Paid Musicians

There are several churches that rely entirely on volunteer worship teams, while others rely 100% on a paid contract musician structure. It’s pretty easy to keep everyone’s expectations similar when the whole team is comprised of all volunteers or all paid musicians, but once you start mixing them together, the balance can get difficult. Who should be paid and who should be a volunteer? Shou...

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tips-for-training-in-new-worship-team-volunteers

Tips for Training in New Worship Team Volunteers

As a worship pastor, you deal with people of all sorts of skill levels. Chances are if you’ve worked in churches for long enough, you’ve seen people volunteer to help out who can hardly play an instrument, as well as volunteers far beyond your own skill level. That’s the nature of working in a church – you see a very wide array of skill and commitment levels in volunteers. And while mos...

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10-ideas-for-elevating-the-guest-experience-in-your-church

Church Admins: Handling Last Minute Requests

Church admins are some of the busiest people working in a church. Due to the nature of the job, sometimes work blends into your personal life and vise versa. It’s tough, there’s a lot of moving parts, and it requires a ton of personal investment to make things run smoothly. Before we continue, know this - you are appreciated, and while not everyone may know how much you do, the church would...

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how-to-be-proactive-about-a-pastoral-transition

How to Be Proactive About a Pastoral Transition

Pastoral transitions are never easy. There are a number of reasons they occur - your pastor is retiring, transitioning jobs, moving, or being asked to step down. Regardless of the purpose, the fact remains that pastoral transitions are tough on everyone; your congregation, your staff, and your volunteers. While you can’t avoid all of the challenges associated with a pastoral transition, there...

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building-a-leadership-team-in-your-church-plant

Building a Leadership Team in your Church Plant

When you’re planting a church, it’s important to equip capable, trustworthy leaders to help bring the vision to life. Finding these leaders, however, can feel overwhelming, especially when you’re juggling everything else that comes with planting. Here’s a four-part roadmap for finding, recruiting, and nurturing a successful team for your new church: Pray with people you trust Jus...

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effective-feedback-management-as-a-service-producer

Effective Feedback Management as a Service Producer

Working as a service producer at a church is tough work. You’re always right in the middle of everything. You’re responsible for everything going as planned, but the actual execution of everything is often in the hands of others - the worship pastor, the sound engineer, lighting people, other volunteers, etc. Naturally, you’re put in a predominantly managerial role. You get to decide on s...

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hiring-church-staff-tried-and-true-practices

Hiring Church Staff: Tried and True Practices

Hiring the right church staff is incredibly important if you are actively working in ministry. It’s especially important in churches smaller than 500, as all staff are working closely with each other every day and weekend. Hiring a bad candidate doesn’t mean one department of the church suffers - it can drag down the efficiency, morale, and culture of all church staff. Unfortunately, many c...

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when-is-my-church-ready-for-a-new-building

When is My Church Ready for a New Building?

Many church leaders dream of the day when their ministry grows enough for them to be able to move to a new building. It’s an exciting prospect! Having the chance to search for a place that will be the ideal building and location for your ministry is huge. But knowing when the day has arrived can be tough. You may be financially ready for the move, but is that the only thing that matters? If y...

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how-to-plan-ahead-as-a-church-tech-director

How to Plan Ahead as a Church Tech Director

You’re the first one to band rehearsal and often the last one to leave. You may frequently be in charge of setup and teardown in addition to all the work you have to do during rehearsal and on Sunday morning for all services. Being a church tech director is a lot of work. We understand! Most church tech directors will agree that the most valuable thing to them is “time”. You need time ...

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how-to-properly-handle-church-complaints

How to Properly Handle Church Complaints

If you’ve worked in a pastoral role for any amount of time, you know full-well that there are people who just love to complain. And generally, most of the complaints received in a church always seem to come from the same few congregation members. Complaining is a habit in some people - there’s no doubt. And it can be hard to deal with when much of it is aimed directly at you. But complaints...

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pastoral-care-things-to-consider

Pastoral Care: Things to Consider

Pastoral care is a tough job, primarily because it doesn’t rely on one individual but the whole community system and leadership structure of a church. You’re all working there for the sake of impacting peoples’ lives and helping them through times of need and crisis. But that’s incredibly difficult when people feel let down. A pastor misses a hospital visit, doesn’t get the memo on tr...

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5-tips-for-creating-a-committed-worship-team-culture

5 Tips for Creating a Committed Worship Team Culture

Commitment is everything when it comes to building a healthy worship team culture. When volunteers aren’t committed, they are minimally engaged and seldom excited about ministry goals or long-term trajectory. 5 Tips: Create a Committed Worship Team Culture If you’re struggling to keep volunteers committed and engaged with worship team, it may be time to revise your approach. Creating a c...

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working-ahead-building-a-sermon-calendar

Working Ahead: Building a Sermon Calendar

Staying on top of your work as a pastor can be difficult at times. You wear a lot of hats, and depending on your church size and culture, you may be working what feels like much more than a single job. But your primary job as a pastor is to lead your congregation and “make disciples”. While preaching a sermon allows you to teach someone about a single concept or passage of scripture, “dis...

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will-a-new-building-grow-my-church-attendance

Will a New Building Grow My Church Attendance

Being a church planter is one of the most difficult and demanding jobs you can have. You’re starting a ministry from scratch, and while you may have a solid idea on why your church needs to exist and what its long-term goals are, it can be really difficult to get people on board during the early stages of your church’s life. If you are trying to grow your ministry, and moving into a new bui...

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hiring-your-first-church-staff-member

Hiring Your First Church Staff Member

As a pastor, you deal with a ton of difficult tasks. You’re faced with growing your ministry, leading a congregation, and leading volunteers in places of leadership over your church; not to mention all the administrative tasks you have to take care of on a day-to-day basis. One of these difficult tasks you’ll encounter is hiring your first church staff member. Tips for Hiring Your First Chu...

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preparing-your-church-to-move-into-a-new-building

Preparing Your Church to Move Into a New Building

Finding a location to do ministry in is difficult. Church plants often struggle to find willing venues and schools to host Sunday morning church in, and even after finding a venue, it’s a lot of work to setup and tear down the necessary gear every Sunday. But it’s almost always worth it - despite the work, the commute, the long hours - you do it for the community of believers that call your ch...

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emergency-volunteers-how-to-handle-volunteer-no-shows

Emergency Volunteers: How to Handle Volunteer No-Shows

We all want to be able to rely on our teams. With staff members, you can usually assume they will be there when they’re supposed to. But when it comes to volunteers, things can get a bit problematic. Depending on the position they’re volunteering for, level of commitment, communication they’ve received, or just plain old forgetfulness, there may come a Sunday morning where you’re short vol...

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5-tips-for-improving-church-volunteer-meetings

5 Tips for Improving Church Volunteer Meetings

Every pastor understands that meeting with their teams is absolutely crucial. But often times, the meetings happen between leadership staff and other employees while neglecting volunteer teams entirely. The truth is, volunteers often provide just as much value as the employees of a church, and attempting to run a ministry without them would be nearly impossible. That’s why it’s crucial to devo...

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letting-worship-team-members-go-how-to-handle-it

Letting Worship Team Members Go: How to Handle It

The people you have on your worship team contribute so much to your church. You know better than anyone that being on a worship team is not just a fun activity – it’s a spiritual leadership responsibility. The worship team members standing on stage carry a responsibility to demonstrate their love and commitment to God on and off stage. In addition to that, performing with musical excellence is...

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things-that-won't-grow-your-church-attendance

Things That Won’t Grow Your Church Attendance

You’ve probably had this conversation with yourself in one way or another: “If I could just do this one thing, I could really grow my church’s attendance.” We look to other thriving and growing ministries around us and are inspired by certain aspects of their church. We convince ourselves that if we could change that “one thing” that our ministry could grow tenfold. Unfortunately, ...

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