Back in March 2020 (just before COVID), my Worship Pastor/Mentor, David, and I received some… surprising news: We were suddenly losing our entire worship team with no warning. A bit of context first: This is 2 weeks after David’s wife had their third child, so David has been out of church about half the services prepping/helping take care of the kids and his wife. Our church did a morning and evening service (identical) at the time, so David showed up to morning service this week to ensure things went well and then stayed home in the evening.
This particular week I was filling in on keys since David was out. I could tell something felt off with the team all day, but wasn’t sure what. As I was leaving, I saw them all walk up to our head pastor and ask to talk to him. The next morning, David texts me and says that we had lost essentially our entire team. They had told Pastor the night before that it was their last week.
This left us with 2 options: Give up and go to acoustic worship that may not have come off as well, or try to rebuild. This post is going to show our journey through rebuilding that team to what we have now.
Focus on heart, not JUST talent.
The most important thing for any person who steps on your stage is that they have the heart of worship. Ezekiel chapter 28 shows the story of Satan being cast down from Heaven. We see that Satan was designed to be a worship leader. His job was for the glory of God to shine through him (he was made of every precious stone) to the people. In turn, he was supposed to direct the peoples’ praise up to God. His pride, however, corrupted him, and caused him to turn against God.
It is important that any musician on the stage has a level of competency in their instrument, but more important is that they wish to direct the glory back to God. Be seeking out people first and foremost that have a heart to serve God. The best way to test this is to go through a short study on your church’s core values and how those relate to worship in your congregation. If they are unwilling to at least have that conversation, or they go through and disagree with parts of it, maybe you or they should reevaluate them joining your team.
Start With Relationships
David and I have a 2-part system for recruiting new team members: it usually starts with me (or someone else on our team already) making friends with them. We get to know each other well, spend time together, and I plant the idea of them coming and playing with us, visiting the church, etc. After this, David reaches out and gets the nitty gritty and practical things gathered. With one of our keys players/drummers, Colter, this is exactly what happened.
Colter is my best friend. One day I posted a video on my instagram from a studio session with Colter. David saw it and said that we should recruit him. I talked to him later and asked if he would be interested, and then 2 weeks later he was on the platform with us. When we start with building friendships and mentorships, we find that the team is a lot more coherent and friendly towards each other.
Keep Up Relationships
Once you get volunteers, it is important to keep them. One way we do that is by keeping up friendships. The reason I have stayed at Jesus Church? The ability to play with my friends and get mentorship and experience. Nearly every week, David is reaching out to our entire team and trying to build relationships and friendships with us. He frequently does small things like get online and play Call of Duty with team members, schedules zoom calls for the team, and creates fun events every month or so to gather us together. This makes us feel valued and allows us to stick around for a while.
Meet Their Needs
The other way we keep up volunteer morale and numbers is by making sure they get the resources to succeed as individuals and as a team. One week in Feb. of 2021 (almost 1 year after we lost our team) David finally took a week off. I asked why he wasn’t on the schedule via text and his response was “Just taking a week off. Do you need one of those soon?” The answer was yes, and David was happy to help me get that rest. We scheduled one out for a couple weeks later, on a week we knew someone could take my place for the day. A lot of weeks, especially with new volunteers, whoever is leading the team (usually David or his wife, sometimes me) is texting the team to ensure that they have what they need to succeed.
Daniel Floring Music 