WORSHIP LEADERS
TEN TACTICS TO CUT YOUR TEAM ' S PRACTICE TIME ( AND BE MORE PREPARED ) | Jon Nicol
If you ' re a worship leader , how often have you heard this ? " Yeah , sorry , I didn ' t have much time to practice ." This statement usually follows some varying degree of a mid-rehearsal train wreck and comes from the person who led the band off the rails . Inside , you ' re thinking , Nah , you just didn ' t ' make ' the time . But instead , you smile and say , " No worries , let ' s do it again ."
Let ' s swing the camera to a different angle . If you ' re a team member , how often have you genuinely expressed , " I ' m sorry , I didn ' t have much time to practice this week ," only to get a whiff of judgment from your worship leader ? ( Don ' t worry , you ' re not paranoid . Your leader is annoyed . And they might even be posting about it in a worship leader ' s only Facebook group .)
Leaders and team members alike need to recognize that personal practice is a massive commitment . No other non-staff position in the church ( other than video editors and volunteer preachers ) requires that much preparation during the week . The greeters and nursery workers just get to show up . How nice would that be ?
Very few of us have ample hours to leisurely learn the songs for Sunday . So let me give you ten tactics that will get you better prepared and cut your practice time .
Before I do , I need to differentiate between two terms . Practice is our personal preparation — this is where we learn the songs and get them rehearsal-ready . Rehearsal is group preparation . Here ' s where we get the songs ( and ourselves ) service-ready .
What we say at WorshipTeamCoach . com is this : Practice is personal , rehearsal is relational .
Now , when it comes to practicing enough , it ' s not all on the vocalists and instrumentalists .
Two of these tactics require the worship leader to take action . But let ' s talk to the team members first .
1 . SIMPLIFY IT . 99.4 % of your church will never know that you didn ' t play the part exactly like the recording . In fact , the . 6 % of people who might know are on the stage with you . For new songs — and especially for specials (' one-Sunday-only ')— approximate the challenging parts with a simpler approach .
If that song gets put in rotation , you can continue to work out that problem part without the pressure of getting it right by ' this Sunday .'
2 . REPEAT IT . Create a playlist on Spotify or Apple Music and put it on infinite shuffle . Listen whenever you can . If there ' s a new song , set that to singlerepeat and let it sonically burrow into your subconscious .
By the way , if you don ' t pay for a music subscription , consider it . Having every song and every arrangement available in seconds saves you so much time . As a church musician , it ' s worth the investment . Plus , all of Steve Taylor ' s albums are on there . ( Two words : Squint album . You ' re welcome .)
3 . PIECEMEAL IT . Don ' t think of a worship song as a single sevenminute composition . It ' s not . It ' s approximately four small sections repeated . ( Over and over and over and over ...)
Learn each section of the song . That lets you tackle the tune in bite-sized pieces , and you ' ll master the entire song more quickly . Now , sometimes a second verse or a repeated chorus has a different part or line . That ' s OK , treat the first verse or chorus as the foundation , and build on what you already know .
Another benefit of learning the song in sections is being able to pivot when your worship leader changes the arrangement — usually in the middle of rehearsal . ( And by the way , I ' ve got a tactic coming for him or her . You ' ll appreciate it .)
4 . PARKINSON IT . Parkinson ' s law summed up is this : a task expands to fill the time allowed for it . Apply this