WORSHIP LEADERS
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR TEAM (EVEN IF YOU’RE CRAZY BUSY) PART 2 | Jon Nicol
BETTER BY SUNDAY. bring about a giant change in your leadership was leftover each week. That's Parkinson's
That's the mantra of Worship Musician focus and the trajectory of your worship ministry. law applied to work: our tasks expand to fill
Magazine. I love this. As a worship leader in the We'll get to the tactical shift in a moment, but the time allowed for completion. So without
trenches for twenty years, I was always looking first, what's the giant change? intentionality, I filled up each week working 'in'
for practical, actionable ideas and content to
better myself and my team each week.
my ministry instead of working 'on' it. Let me
EMBRACE EPHESIANS 4:11-12. help you flip that script. It's that small, tactical
While a lot is going on in these two verses, let shift that I mentioned earlier. And it's this:
As a worship ministry leader in a local church, me translate it for us worship leaders: "The you're probably naturally focused on this worship ministry leader's role is to build up his/ Prioritize five to ten percent of your week to
Sunday too.` You have to be. This Sunday her team to do the work of ministry." work ‘on’ your worship ministry before you
never stops coming. But that creates a tension
work ‘in’ it.
because you know there are issues on your But what do most leaders do? They do the team that won’t be better by Sunday. work of ministry themselves and enlist their If you're a volunteer or part-time worship leader,
team members to be helpers, assistants, and that might be 30 minutes to two hours. If you're
Even worse, the weekly demands of This substitutes. Why? Because there's so little time full-time, it could be a half-day. During that time,
Sunday seem to work against the long-term to develop and grow team members because you might revamp your scheduling process to
transformation of your ministry. You have of the high demands of This Sunday. So how raise the commitment standards of your team.
little bandwidth to tackle issues like a lack of do you embrace Ephesians 4 leadership amid Or develop a more intentional audition process
commitment and low standards, or entitlement the Sunday after Sunday grind? to qualify potential new team members better.
and attitude issues, or a performance-focused
Or plan on your micro-dose trainings for the
platform team, or distrust and disunity, or You need to shift from being a Sunday-driven
musician burnout, etc. leader to being a growth-focused leader. Why?
next few months.
If you focus on great Sundays, you might grow And when you do that growth-focused work
So in part one last month, I gave you an idea for an OK team eventually. But if you work to grow first, a fantastic thing happens: the urgent
sustainable, ongoing team development you a great team, eventually, you always have work for Sunday still gets done. You gotta love
could do weekly—I called it "focused micro- great Sundays. (Better reread those last two Parkinson's law.
dose training." These micro-doses of training sentences.)
help move the needle towards a better Sunday,
So here's your mission, should you choose to
but they also work, drip-by-drip, to slowly So how do you make the shift from Sunday- accept it: flip the script for one month—invest
transform the culture of the team (if you keep driven to growth-focused? You need to flip the just five to ten percent of your week to work
doing it consistently). script from working 'in' your ministry (doing the ‘on’ your worship ministry before working ‘in’
work of ministry) to working 'on' your ministry it. I doubt you’ll notice any adverse effects on
Now, in part two, I want to help you think (building a team of ministers and leaders to do Sunday. But what's critical here is this: you will
about developing your team—not to be better the ministry work). have begun an intentional journey away from
by Sunday—but to be better by a year from
being a Sunday-driven leader towards being a
Sunday. Good leadership requires the tension My typical worship ministry leader ‘script’
of the now and the not yet. So keep an eye on looked like this: I did my Sunday work first. If
this Sunday, but also focus further out. I completed all the upcoming Sunday tasks,
then I'd focus on the less urgent work of long-
I'm going to suggest a small, tactical shift that
term ministry growth.
will hardly be noticeable to anyone observing
you and your ministry. But this shift will help
38
You can probably guess how much time
January 2020
growth-focused, Ephesians 4 leader.
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
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