Leadership Principles

Just like most other things in life, a worship team stands or falls on in the implementation of important leadership principles. In this section of HotPraise.Com, we'll be looking at how to apply leadership skills to a worship team.

I'm using a handy definition of leadership that was coined by Ian Jagelman in his book The Empowered Church. In his book, Jagelman differentiates between leadership and ministry in that ministry is meeting the needs of others, whereas leadership is facilitating, influencing and directing the ministries of others.

I realise you could argue the point that leadership is a kind of ministry, but it's handy to use this definition as a springboard to a greater understanding of leadership.

You can find a fuller explanation of this concept on my website HotSermons.Com, but for now let's see how this applies to leading a worship team.

According to our definition, most of what takes place in a worship team is ministry; it meets the needs of others. Others have a need to worship God, and the worship team meets that need by providing the means to do so, by playing musical instruments, singing, leading the actual songs, providing lyrics on a data projector, or running the sound equipment.

Real leadership takes place when team members look beyond their own contribution and begin to think about how they can facilitate, influence and direct the ministries of others.

For instance, you may have a great worship leader. One day, they notice that one of the other vocalists has got real potential and offer to train them as a worship leader. As soon as they start doing this, they are now developing someone else's ministry and providing leadership.

In this way, anyone in the team can function as a leader. All they need to do is look for opportunities to develop other people by passing on the skills they may have taken years to hone.

You may not have a leadership title, but you are nevertheless functioning as a leader if you look for opportunities to release others into ministry.