At Family Fellowship Christian Center, I am on of the worship singers. As we were in rehersal before service Sunday morning, it hit me, we are a great model for a team. Are there things that we could do to improve, of course, but for the position we are in, we are a pretty good model.
First, our Worship Leader, at least when he's able to be in town, comes in from out of state when he can. I wish that he were able to stay with us all the time, but his work doesn't allow that to happen. Our team is made up of an Accoustic Guitar, Electric Guitar, Bass, Drums and 3 to 5 vocalists.
We all have busy schedules and with the leader being out of state, we aren't able to get together throughout the week, so we get together Sunday mornings and hour before service starts and we go over the songs that we are going to do for the day. We are often learning new songs in that hour before service and we many times have that song in the set list.
When we have those days where we're learning new material, it's usually pretty stressful, as we learn the progressions, melodies and harmonies. Each musician must discover what they are going to do to make their part special, the singers need to learn the words and discover their harmonies, to make it tight. It doesn't always come together, but more often than not, everyone gets things ready. We will often match the new songs with old stand-by's that we can skim over.
Yesterday, as we were preparing, we had a new song, partnered with a couple old stand-bys and a couple newer songs that we had done before, but were still pretty new. This caused a stressful environment during practice. My personal opinion was that we shouldn't do the new song yet, because we hadn't had enough time to practice it. There was also a verse in Spanish, which is great, with the exception that only one of the singers knows Spanish fluently and the rest of us needed to learn the pronunciation of the words so we could get the correct cadence... Anyway, we eventually pulled the song from the worship set and played that when people were greeting each other. It was a good place to put it and we let the one singer who speaks spanish sing that particular verse solo.
However, where we were having the stress and conflict in practice, by the time service rolled around we had put it all behind us. To wit, we were a model of fluid movement and communication.
First, we all realize that we are not playing the music for us, or even the people that are there, we're playing it for God and His glory. This allows us to come together with common purpose, even if some are not happy with the song choice or a particular arrangement. We're not doing it for the song choice or arrangement, we're doing it for God and His glory. We put aside any differences when we step up on the stage.
We're alos a teaching church, so the experienced musicians a leaders are not the ones directing, but we're there to help communicate to the one directing if there is any uncertainty. Often this is done with a look or a hand motion. For instance, if I see some doubt at that beginning of a song on when to come in, vocally, I'll make sure that I have the attention of the leader and we'll communicate with a glance. More often than not it works and the people are none the wiser. They would never know that there was almost a mistake made. Sometimes mistakes are still made and we all have come to have each others backs, so even when a mistake is made, it is never disasterous.
The team doesn't always have to agree. We don't always have to get along. However, we have to have a common goal in mind. We have to have an understanding of each others strengths and weaknesses. We need to be able to use each others strengths to dispell each others weaknesses.
I'm a former Rock N' Roller, I was in the hair bands and did the crazy thing that we got into. However, that experience created within me the ability to get a crowd charged. There are others who don't have that ability, so I'll do what I do to get people excited about entering into the presence of God. Sometimes I'm too opinionated if I don't like a song. Though I may express my opinion in practice, I don't care once we enter into worship, but sometimes I need to be put back into place during practice.
The tell, though, is what happens while we are woshiping. Do people enter into the presence of God or do they look at us as if we were aliens? We all have different abilities, talents and backgrounds. Not everyone is a rocker like me, I'm not into soul or country like some of the others, but we all come together, different cultures, different interests, different abilities and work together to accomplish a common goal. We do it every week, in and out.
I wish many of the teams that I've been on in my professional career were more like the worship team. Where we could have a common goal and work together to reach it, instead of working for our own individual goals. We need to learn from the worship teams in the world and learn to have a common interest in everything we do.