You may know Tauren Wells as an artist who had 11 Grammy nominations and 9 Dove Awards. You may know him as a songwriter and have heard his songs on radio. You may know him as a worship leader or have seen him live in concert. What we set out today was to know him as all of these but also as a Pastor. His perspectives are illuminating. This was the first time I have ever spoken with him …
[ Bruce Adolph ] I like the fact that you’ re a pastor as well as a worship leader and artist. On Sunday mornings in smaller churches, you have pastors that sometimes are worship leaders too, and they must put all their energy into giving the message after they lead worship. So, are you double dipping in doing that too, or how does it work at your church?
[ Tauren Wells ] Thankfully, I am not. We have a very capable and amazing team, actually. Our worship pastor, Pastor Dimitri Wells, leads our worship ministry. And then my wife, Lorna, also leads worship. She’ s an amazing worship leader. And then we have Davies, who has toured with me for the last several years, and we’ ve done songs together,“ Take It All Back” and others. And he leads worship on Sundays as well. So, if I’ m leading worship, it’ s probably a downgrade, not an upgrade.( laughing)
[ WM ] And then do you still give the message too, or do you have somebody else give the message when you’ re leading worship?
[ Tauren ] I do. But I do preach most weekends.
[ WM ] Well then, I want to get your viewpoint here from the pastor’ s viewpoint. Let’ s start with the behind-the-scenes folks. What advice do you have for your audio, lighting, and presentation tech teams at your church? How do you talk to them?
[ Tauren ] Wow. Yes. Well, we have“ cultural building blocks”; that is what we call them.
The culture isn’ t just what you do; it’ s how you interact between people. That’ s really the culture. And so one of the things is a culture of excellence, and that is not perfectionism. We don’ t expect anything to be perfect. We do expect it to be our best.
So, a lot of my conversations as it pertains to Sunday revolve around, did we really do our best? And that doesn’ t just show up on Sunday. That happens in the preparation Monday through Friday. What do we do to prepare teams and prepare people to really give people an experience where God is the focus without production being a distraction?
It’ s that type of environment. And of course they do incredible work. They’ re extremely committed to what we do, but those are a lot of the conversations. But in the front row, during church, I’ m usually texting every once in a while,“ Hey, can we get more vocals? Hey, it needs to be a little louder.” Or for the first time
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