week — to eliminate excuses for not practicing . Not only that , but you ’ ll also begin to build a team culture that values preparation .
TACTIC # 1 : DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN PRACTICE AND REHEARSAL Can you guess what the number one preparation mistake worship teams make is ?
If you guessed “ NOT practicing ,” you ’ d be ... not correct .
Practice-shirking slackers are a big problem on a lot of worship teams . But the thing I see more often in almost every size church is this mistake : The worship team practices at rehearsal .
Huh ?!
You might be thinking , “ Isn ’ t that the point of rehearsal ... to practice ?” That ’ s what I used to think too . But I was dead wrong .
When I arrived at my last church , I inherited a worship team that had gone without a clear leader for over six months . As a result , they had deteriorated to pitifully low expectations . Like ,
“ Just show up sometime Sunday morning with an instrument . Any instrument .” Yeah , that low .
After a while , I succeeded in raising expectations about rehearsal , as in , “ let ’ s actually have one !” We even got to the point where people were showing up . But it was still , too often , a musical dumpster fire .
So I started to look at what was really happening . Every week , my team ( and I ) would routinely show up to rehearsal without having our music learned thoroughly . We were neglecting our personal preparation ( practice ). So when it came time for our relational preparation ( rehearsal ), we were highly self-focused since we were still learning the music .
We were practicing at rehearsal .
Then , I had an epiphany : “ What would happen if my team ( including me ) showed up to rehearsal with their songs actually learned ?” ( I know , profound epiphany , right ?) So , I set out on a crusade to get my team to prepare BEFORE rehearsal . And that was the birth of one of my most game-changing tactics :
I started to differentiate between practice and rehearsal . And I came up with a mantra to help communicate this :
Practice is personal ; rehearsal is relational .
I also stopped calling our mid-week preparation event practice and referred to it instead as rehearsal .
To help you and your team implement this concept , I have a ‘ cheat sheet ’ that gives six differences between practice and rehearsal . You can use this to start some meaningful dialog with your team about their practice habits . I ’ ll tell you how you can get it at the end .
This concept of ‘ not practicing at rehearsals ’ is so foundational that it ’ s one of the first things my coaches and I work on with leaders when they join our coaching program .
Usually , we find worship leaders ’ teams are in one of three places with preparation :
They have an unhealthy culture of not practicing due to busyness , lack of commitment , or even musical ignorance .