Worship Musician Magazine January 2023 | Page 26

WORSHIP LEADERS
HOW ( AND WHY ) TO TRIPLE YOUR TIME OFF ( AND NOT GET FIRED ) | Jon Nicol
photo : Saffu , Unsplash
Note : This article is Chapter 10 of my new book , Exceptional Every Sunday : Build a Worship Team That ’ s Consistently Excellent Week after Week ( No Matter Who ’ s on the Platform ). I adapted this ever so slightly to work as an article here for [ WM ].
“ If you don ’ t take a Sabbath , something is wrong . You ’ re doing too much , you ’ re being too much in charge .” Eugene H . Peterson
TRIPLE MY TIME OFF ? This idea is just nutty-bananas for a lot of worship leaders . For some , they ’ re thinking , “ How am I supposed to take a bunch of Sundays off when I ’ m the only leader ?” For others who take their allotted vacations and even get time off for conferences are thinking , “ Wait , you want me to take more time off ?”
But hang with me for a second .
If you ’ re going to lead exceptional Sundays every week , you cannot be the only person leading every Sunday . It ’ s not healthy for you , your family , your team , or your church . Lone ranger worship leaders ...
• create a cult of personality ...
• fail to develop other leaders ...
• frustrate their family ...
• ... and eventually burn out .
You need to be emotionally healthy . Nothing will kill the consistent quality of Sundays more than a governing board-enforced sabbatical of the main worship leader .
To steadily increase your team ’ s excellence and grow it for the long term , you have to develop a team of worship leaders and get yourself off the platform ! Now , I don ’ t mean you should suddenly disappear , shirk your responsibilities , or take three weeks of vacation multiple times a year . What I mean by ‘ triple your time off ’ is that you need to take at least three types of Sundays off .
3 TYPES OF TIME OFF 1 . “ Away ” Sundays This is when you ’ re absent from the Sunday service because you ’ re on vacation , going to a conference , on a weekend getaway with your
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