LOOP COMMUNITY
7 VALUES WORSHIP TEAMS SHOULD HAVE WITH AUSTIN RYAN | Matt McCoy
Communicating values with your worship team is important to make sure everyone is on the same page . Matt McCoy with Loop Community sat down with Austin Ryan from Worship Catalyst to talk about the seven values he feels all worship leaders should have .
Why should we establish values with our teams ? If you are already a part of a worship team , you may wonder why it ’ s even necessary to establish values in your team .
[ Austin ] People are going to come up with their own things if we don ’ t share them . Our goal in worship ministry is to go to God and take others with us . Values are like guard rails on a road that help us get to our goal . When you have a team that embodies all of the same values , then when we add other people to the team they can either come in line with the team or they have to find somewhere else to go .
The 7 Values The values that Austin uses emerged over time through his experiences and from Scripture . Now he communicates them with all of the worship teams he ’ s a part of . Here are the 7 values with a brief description of each :
Excellence – “ Doing the best with what you have . Which means a small church can actually be more excellent than a mega church because they ’ re doing the best with what they have .”
Creativity – “ This starts in scripture . God created , and we were made in the image of God . So we were made in the image of the Creator . So if we don ’ t do creative things when we serve him , we aren ’ t living up to the potential that God gave us .”
Unity – “ A lot of people consider unity to be relationships . But unity is based on mission . What is our shared mission ? Then our relationships come around that mission and unity emerges .”
Humility – “ This is rooted in Philippians 2 . Serve one another , give someone else the good parts , turn things down to lift others up . I think that church bands are an incubator of pride . Something about the stage , lights , accolades , etc . We need to remember it ’ s not about us . Wake up every day and remember that it ’ s not about you and believe it .”
Authenticity – “ Authenticity is words matching life . Be honest and be true . We aren ’ t being authentic to God if we ’ re singing songs about surrender and yielding when our lives aren ’ t matching up . As worship leaders and teams have to have this value and be honest to God and honest with each other . Be authentic horizontally and vertically .”
Evangelism – “ A majority of people that die are not going to know Christ . Does that weigh on us ? If it does , what can we do about it ? When Jesus left Earth he said was that we ’ re going to
be his witness , make disciples , baptize them . He never said , “ Be a worship leader ”. So how does worship and worship ministry play into the role of evangelism ? If that ’ s not a value , then we kind of left the calling God gave us in the first place .”
Celebrate Together – “ If I ’ m going to be doing ministry for five to ten years with the same people and make memories together , it ’ s going to be because we had a good time together . There ’ s a million places where people can sing and play music . If you want them to sing and play on your team , they need to have a good time doing it .”
To hear Austin dive deeper into these values , check out the full interview below ! Take time this week to think about if you can add in some , or all , of these values to your team .
Matt McCoy Matt is a worship leader , songwriter and Ableton Certified Trainer from Chicago , IL . He has been using Ableton and tracks in worship since 2002 . He ’ s passionate about creating new products and teaching worship leaders and artists how to use technology in live performance . www . LoopCommunity . com