WORSHIP LEADERS
WHAT ’ S YOUR TEAM ’ S “ NEXT LEVEL ”? ( AND HOW TO GET THERE ) | Jon Nicol
" A mixed bag of talent and maturity ."
That phrase sums up the members of almost every worship ministry . There might be some outlier churches whose worship ministries are filled with exceptionally skilled people who are also emotionally healthy and spiritually mature .
My guess : that ' s not your worship team .
You ' ve probably got a mixed bag of talent and maturity like the rest of us . As solid as my team was in certain seasons , I always had it . In fact , I was part of that mixed bag . There were times my musical skill outpaced my emotionalspiritual maturity - even as the guy hired to run the ministry .
The mixed bag is actually a good thing to embrace . It means your team has room to grow . But it also makes growing tough .
When you lead a team of ...
• disparate musical and technical skills ,
• along with a wide-spectrum emotional and relational levels of health ,
• and vastly different depths of spiritual maturity , ... training and developing that team is challenging . Everyone ' s in a different place !
Because of this , most worship leaders take a shotgun approach to developing their team . If you look back to any intentional team development you attempted in the last twelve months , you probably see a motley mix of results at best .
As I started building what would later become our worship team member training site , Worship Workshop ( worshipworkshop . com ), I realized any attempt to develop worship team members had to deal with this " mixed bag " reality .
As I worked with my own team and other churches , I came up with a model to help worship leaders identify where their team members are at and what their next stage of growth should be .
It ' s the Worship Team Levels of Engagement . [ graphic ]
I introduced the model publicly back in 2017 in this very magazine ( back when we could flip actual paper pages ). Since then , I ' ve used the model with many churches and leaders while adapting it along the way . So , I thought it ' d be good to revisit it .
Before I tell you about each of the levels , I want to emphasize two things .
First : why this model is useful . It ' s ‘ useful ’ because it gives language to both where your team member is at and where he / she should go next . It also helps you identify concrete ways to grow each of your team members .
The second thing I want to emphasize is this : Why this model is wrong . George Box , a British statistician , said , " All models are wrong , but some are useful ." This Levels of Engagement model is no exception .
You ' ll have team members who won ' t fit neatly into one of these ' engagement levels .' That ' s OK . Models like this are tools . And no tool can do every job no matter how hard you try . You don ' t throw out a crescent wrench because you can ' t hammer in a nail very well with it . ( Says the mechanically inept guy who ' s tried it .)
Likewise , don ' t discount this model just because it may not fit every person on your team . Because it won ' t . But it will be useful . Let me show you how .