WorshipCentral

I was recently chatting with a friend about how we run the worship team at our church.

Our church, Holy Trinity Brompton, is a large Anglican church in the centre of London. On a typical Sunday, we have six services over two sites, requiring three different worship teams. Things are always very busy, with about 4,000 people passing through our worship services every week.

We face a number of exciting challenges, from finding musicians, to making sure our team don’t burn out and stay sharp. Here are some thoughts on how we run the nitty-gritty of the worship life of the parish.

Building A Team

We are keen to build a worship team, not run a series of ‘bands’. The emphasis is on everyone being part of one greater team that exist to serve firstly God and secondly the congregation.

We have found the most effective way of recruiting new musicians is always word of mouth. Open auditions never seem to work for us: the people you really want to come forward and play are usually hiding under their chairs and would never dream of coming forward and auditioning, even though they love to worship and excel at an instrument. We’re always putting feelers out to find out if anyone knows any musicians, then twisting arms, begging, bribing…

If someone does get in touch or is recommended to us, we’ll find out about their experience, and perhaps meet them for a jam in the church over a cup of coffee. The main things we’re looking for are (1) a love for worshipping Jesus (2) the right character, attitude and servant-heart and (3) crucially, teachability.

We have a rule that everyone in the worship team has to be an active member of an HTB Pastorate. This is the primary place they are supported pastorally, get discipled and integrate into the church. We don’t run ‘Band-Only’ Pastorates, as we’ve found them to end up being quite cliquey. Once we’ve met them and got along, we’ll invite them to join the Worship Team.

How the Worship Team Works

Our worship team is a relaxed affair, made up of about 100 people involved in three key areas of the church worship life: worship leaders, musicians and singers, and then the production team. Many of the team will just be involved in leading and playing in their Pastorates, which are just as key an expression of the church as a Sunday Team.

We call the team together about six times a year for ‘Team Nights’, where we eat together, catch-up, encourage the team and worship together. Sometimes we have a bit of a thank-you party. The Team Nights are essential for the dynamic of the team. Any new musician, however brilliant, is expected to come along to these nights for a while so we can get to know them before we put them on a stage. It is out of this core group of 100 people that we build our Sunday Teams, Alpha Team and other bands.

Sunday Teams

Three times a year we sit down and make up Sunday Teams out of the pool of 100 members of the worship team. We’ll allocate people set bands for that term, and work out their dates in advance for the whole term (e.g. Sept-Dec, Jan-April, May-August). Usually, about 30-40 people will be allocated into a Sunday Team. Sometimes musicians will request a term off, so they can recharge their batteries, but we’ve avoided setting that kind of thing in stone, as everyone is different.

The most difficult part of organising the term is the scheduling. Tim and I lock ourselves in our office for an afternoon and try and pull together both the ideal teams, and the way they’ll play out across the dates. We’re aiming to spread the load to make sure that pastorally we don’t burn people out, while making sure everyone is involved in what is quite a tight team. We pair newer musicians with stronger ones within the bands, to ensure the standard is as high as possible across the rota.

HTB is a church spread across two sites, and on any given Sunday we have 6 services over those two sites:

9am – St Paul’s Onslow Square

Traditional Holy Communion with Classical Music

9.30am – Holy Trinity Brompton

Informal Family Service

11.30am - Holy Trinity Brompton

Informal Family Service, with the same band and speaker as the 9.30am

5pm – Holy Trinity Brompton

Informal Evening Service

6pm – St Paul’s Onslow Square

Informal Evening Service, very relaxed feel with no chairs, café, teaching broadcast from the 5pm, different worship.

7pm – Holy Trinity Brompton – Informal Service, with the same band and speaker as the 5pm

We’re currently operating on a two-week--on/one-week-off model for our Sunday worship teams, as we’ve just planted a new service at our other parish building, St Paul’s, and are a little stretched. On a given Sunday, three of our five teams (A, B, C, D, E) would be in action. Our Autumn schedule starts like this:

Sept 2nd 9th 16th 23rd 30th

HTB AM A D B E C
HTB PM B E C A D
St Paul’s C A D B E

So, you can begin to see the pattern of playing – everyone plays a maximum of two Sundays in a row, then takes a break and is free to just ‘be’ in the services.

Mastering the Rota

“Master the rota, you must, or master you, the rota will” - Yoda*

It’s a fact: if you don’t master your rota and make it work for you, you’re going to be mastered by it. Come on, no one wants that. Once we’ve worked out who is playing when, Tim and I will call each player individually and the conversations go a little like this:

Al: “Hi Ben, it’s Al, can you talk?”
Ben: “Yeah, I’m good, go for it.”
Al: “I’ve got the dates for the Autumn. Have you got your diary there?”
Ben: “Hang on... (the drummer goes to find his diary. Returns three hours later)… Yeh, I got my diary now.”
Al: “Have you got your pen?”
Ben: “Hang on… (the drummer goes to find a pen. Returns three hours later)… Yeh, I got my pen now.”
Al: “Ok, here are your dates: 2nd in the morning at HTB, 9th in the evening at St Pauls, 23rd in the morning at HTB…”
Ben: “I can’t do that one I’m afraid, I’ve got tickets to the Man U game”
Al: “No worries, thanks for letting me know, we’ll organise cover. Then the next date is…”

Some crucial rules:

(1) Never accept a ‘maybe’, as it will double your workload. Only accept a yes or a no for a date.
(2) Don’t get into the habit of asking musicians to find their own cover. You’ll loose pastoral and administrative control of the team.
(3) Once someone has committed to a date, they’ve committed. You’ll accept doctors notes, plane tickets or death certificates, but no other excuses.

We find that by nailing the admin personally over the phone, we generally tie down a strong team for the term. Then if there are any dates someone can’t make, we’ve got plenty of notice and can invite newer members of the team to take their place.

In any given term we might have five of each instrument allocated to a team, and then one or two newer of less experienced musicians on ‘standby’ to step in at any point. We’ll explain to them as well that they’re on standby and we’ll be calling them at short notice. In fact last Sunday we had a mix up and one of our drummers was late for the morning soundcheck. Tim rang his mobile and he turned out to be in Morocco. Tim ended up waking up another drummer who was on standby at 9.10 and he made it for the first click of the first song at 9.30.

Team Culture

We encourage all our team to practice, learn the songs, so that if the above happens, they’re ready to go. One of our little mottos is that we ‘aim for perfection and settle for excellence’, because we believe that God deserves the best, the most excellently rehearsed, the finest honed skills. At the same time, we make sure that there is no pressure, that the teams are a fun place to be and that mistakes generally go unnoticed, as we all make them.

The amazing thing is that our teams seem to walk this balance brilliantly: there is an unsaid ethos of giving God our best, whilst relaxing and just worshipping from the heart, with the music way down the importance list. We often find that the sweetest times of worship are when things go wrong, and an extra dimension of God’s grace seems to kick in and enthuse the place.

Then our rehearsals are at 8.00am for the morning, 2.30pm for the evenings. We circulate new songs and set lists by email in the week before, and always copy the worship administrator in so that they can keep a record of what is being sung.

You Don’t Know My Church!

Now, I know many people will be reading this and will be thinking that’s fine for HTB, they have a gazillion people blah blah. The truth is that we’re on a journey: 25 years ago we just had a very difficult robed choir who were not at all filled with the Holy Spirit, and an old organ. We’ve come a long way and now have a wonderful team both of Holy Spirit-filled contempoary and classical musicans working alongside each other. We use the organ and string quartet, sandwiched in between the electric guitars.

If you’re doing this while juggling a full time job and family, then you’re going to need to become a master of delegation. You’re team is going to need people in it that can work with you as volunteer ‘organisers’, set aside to manage the teams by email, in their spare time. You’re going to need to find a system that works for your whole team, so that you’re leading the team in a way that encouraged rest and fun and creativity.

But the truth is that it is always hard work. We’re always desperately searching for good bass players and electric guitarists. We’re always struggling with almost every part of the team. It’s not just that London is a busy place and people come and go, but our worship team are committed to ‘the re-evangelisation of of the nations and the transformation of society’. As a result, we’re constantly giving away our brightest and best people to new initiatives. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.

So my final advice would be to make sure your team is giving itself away – that is a sure-fire Biblical way to grow things!

Any questions?

* Yoda may not have ever said this...