WORSHIP LEADERS
THREE STEPS TO SURVIVE A MUSICAL TRAIN WRECK | Jon Nicol
It will happen. Guaranteed.
Something's bound to go awry. Askew.
Sideways. Off the rails. And why do I know
this? Two words: human beings.
We work with flawed people who are led by
flawed people (that's us, by the way). Because
of that, mistakes will occur. At times, it may be
a slight hiccup. Other times, it's a complete
derailment that makes you consider changing
the closing song to Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy
Train."
Most of the time, you can ignore the hiccups
and speed bumps and continue with the song.
But I want to talk about what to do with an "offthe-rails"
wreck that can't be ignored. Here are
three steps to recover from the crash, redeem
the moment, and regain momentum afterward.
STEP 1: ACKNOWLEDGE IT.
When it comes to minor mistakes, it's best
to ignore those and move on. Often, the
congregation doesn't catch those errors—
even though they feel significant to us on the
platform. But when a song comes to a grinding
halt, people tend to notice. So say something. If
we pretend it's not happening or awkwardly try
to restart, it enforces many people's perception
that we're just putting on a show.
I had a twenty-something in my congregation
come to me and say how much he liked it
when I messed up. Really? I wasn't quite sure
how to take that. But he explained, "It helps us
remember everyone up there is just like the rest
of us. You're authentic."
I hope worship teams come across as authentic
in other ways besides their public mess-ups.
But this is the silver lining in the cloud of a
sonic setback. People connect with authentic,
genuine humanness.
So how do you acknowledge it? The best
way is to stop the band (if they're still trying to
claw their way out of the musical muck) and
say something like, "That didn't go as planned;
let's start over." Spend as little time at the crash
site as possible, but do acknowledge that it
happened. If you don't, it transforms a slightly
awkward moment into a blundering spectacle.
One last thing on acknowledging it: never
throw the guilty party under the bus. (Or the
locomotive, in this case.)
One of my worship leaders had to stop the band
because the acoustic guitarist couldn't stay the
click in the intro. As other players tried to join in,
it quickly devolved into simultaneous tempos
and time signatures. When he stopped and
acknowledged it, he didn't draw attention to the
person who messed up. I knew who caused it
and why, but the congregation around me likely
didn't know—or need to know. I appreciated
my worship leader's discretion.
STEP 2. ENJOY IT (AND INVITE THE CONGREGATION
TO ENJOY IT).
Nobody 'enjoys' messing up. But you can
lighten the moment with a little humor. If the
platform team is tense, the congregation gets
tense. But if they laugh it off, that puts your
church family at ease and helps lead them out
of the wreckage.
When the aforementioned train wreck happened
to my volunteer leader, he joked about "not
being a trained professional" and then restarted
the song. After the service, we talked about
something that both of us observed after that
event: the mood in the room lightened, and
people seemed to sing louder.
I'm not saying you have to biff it every week
to engage people in worship. Please don't.
But when it happens, you can actually come
out ahead of where you intended to be. In this
case, it seemed to disarm people and allowed
them to relax and worship more freely.
3. LEARN FROM IT.
Worship service failures aren't fatal. The biggest
casualty of a train wreck is our pride. And that's
a good thing—if we are humble enough to learn
from it.
In those moments, it's easy to start mentally
assigning blame to people. But stop yourself
and ask, "What's on me? What part of this do
I need to own?" Sometimes, it is somebody
else's fault. But if I'm honest with myself, I
discover that I'm at least partially responsible
because of how I planned it or delegated it.
This is critical: I stop short of transformational
leadership if all I do is evaluate myself. Besides
my own self-assessment, I need to help my
team take the same kind of honest look at
what they were responsible for. One of the
best virtues you can develop in your team
members is personal responsibility—which is
the courageous offspring of humility and selfawareness.
Musical train wrecks are never fun (and hopefully
are few and far between at your church). But
when they happen, these three steps will help
you recover, resume, and redeem that wreck.
Jon Nicol
Jon’s the founder of WorshipWorkshop.com and
WorshipTeamCoach.com, two sites that help worship
leaders build strong teams and lead engaging
worship. He lives and serves in Lexington, Ohio with
his wife Shannon and their four kids.
WorshipWorkshop.com
WorshipTeamCoach.com