Worship Teams

Most churches want their worship time to be not only enjoyable, but a powerful and transformative experience for the entire congregation. But that can be easier said than done. In fact, many churches struggle in this area, not knowing where to start.

A worship team can powerfully influence the quality of worship in your church. But left to themselves, they can be a constant source of frustration. If you want your team to be the best it can be, this section of HotPraise is especially written for you.

Leading worship is a team effort; no one person can claim to be the individual solely responsible for good praise and worship. Although some may seem less essential than others, the whole team works and cooperates together to facilitate the flow of worship. Each person, therefore, is an important part of the team.

The worship leading team consists of the worship leader, music director, musicians, singers, sound team, and data projectionist. For a good flow in corporate worship, co-operation is essential. The Bible calls it unity. (Psalm 133:1) Each member of the worship leading team works together to lead the congregation into the presence of God.

People can face personal hindrances to entering God's presence, but failure by those in one or more of the six roles I mentioned above, can present obstacles and distractions that simply don't need to be there. Each person in the music team must bear in mind that one of their most important goals is never to be a distraction to other worshipers. Wholehearted worship and the spirit of unity will minimise the possibility of creating distractions.

Some of the things we'll look at deal with attitude, but many are purely practical, and with good reason. In 1 Cor 15:46, we see that those things which are spiritual are not first, but the natural, and then the spiritual. In the context, this verse is talking about the resurrection, but it seems to be just as true in the areas of music, praise and worship. Music is one of those areas in life where having the natural principles of order in place will help the spiritual side to flow more easily. The quality of the praise and worship in a church can rise and fall in direct relation to the outworking of the practical details. Everyone wants to experience the presence of the Lord, but all too often the essential mechanics which facilitate an enjoyable worship experience are overlooked.

Consequently, people who are trying to enter God's presence can be distracted by all sorts of things ranging from bad music and poor planning to nonexistent communication skills in the worship team.

You may say, "They should enter God's presence anyway." And to an extent, that's true. But the function of the worship leading team is to make it as easy as possible, not to make it a test of faith, concentration and endurance. Worshippers should be able to enter God's presence with as few distractions as humanly possible. Certainly there should be no distractions from those involved in worship leading.

It's true to say that people generally only notice if something goes wrong, and in my experience many of the problems that arise are on the practical side, and can, with a little forethought, be easily overcome. We'll see, however, that even though this is true, a great number of the practical problems have their foundation in the attitudes and spiritual qualities of the participants.

Praise and worship is more than just a matter of someone grabbing a few songs before a service and progressively announcing their titles over a thirty minute period. Most of the people in the congregation will be unaware of just how much planning and coordinating goes into a worship service, and that's exactly how it should be if everything is flowing smoothly.

So anyway, check out these articles:

How To Set Up a Worship Team | Pursuit of Excellence | Worship Team Rehearsals | Why More is Less | Worship Teams & Keys | Worship Teams & Guitars | Worship Teams & Drums | The Power of Music