WORSHIP LEADERS
THREE BIG LIES ( THAT LEAD TO BURNOUT ): THE EXTRA CRISPY WORSHIP LEADER | Jon Nicol
Eight men stared at me from around the boardroom table . Their expressions ranged from skeptical to empathetic . A few were poker-faced , not giving away what they were thinking . But at that moment , I didn ' t care what any of them thought .
I ' d had enough .
At that point , I had been the worship pastor for six years after serving the previous decade in two other churches . In all that time , I was responsible for planning and staffing at least 832 Sundays — and led 752 of them . Probably more . Sunday after Sunday after Sunday after Sunday ...
During my six years at this church , every 12-18 months presented a new challenge :
The first challenge : Turn around a relationally and musically dysfunctional team .
The second challenge : Grow the team to staff a multi-campus church to a comfortable rotation . When I started , most musicians played at both campuses each Sunday . ( A logistical nightmare .)
The third challenge : Divide my worship ministry in half as the two campuses were deliberately planted into two independent churches .
The fourth challenge : Rebuild the team at the campus - now a new church - that my family chose , saying goodbye to some fantastic team members and friends . The next challenge happened almost simultaneously with the fourth challenge .
The fifth challenge : Renovate a former beer distributorship warehouse into a house of worship . Which meant going toe-to-toe with the architect and contractor to get the layout and technology I knew my church needed . They would ' ve built a stage the size of a queensize mattress and bought the sound system from RadioShack .
The sixth challenge : Now that we had a permanent space , it was time to move my team to in-ears and click tracks . ( Lost a drummer and a couple singers on that move .)