What do I do with uncommitted worship team members?

(Transcript)

Question:

How do you deal with uncommitted members in a team? They only come for Sunday service, no midweek service, no rehearsals, etc.

Answer:

You kick them off your team!

No, I'm just kidding. It's not quite that harsh, but maybe that is the answer.

If somebody is uncommitted to your team, what do you do or not to your team but fulfilling the responsibilities that it takes to be a worship leader, what do you do?

Direct Communication is Key

First of all, I always say this, but make sure that you have actually addressed the uncommittedness of the worship team member.

A lot of times, we always complain about things we never actually address it to the person. We just talked to the other worship team members and complain about them behind their back at our worst, or we talk about it to other people in our church or other ministry leaders and vent to them, or we vent to our spouse, or we vent to our other worship leader friends, or we vent in a Facebook group, or we vent any YouTube comment, but we never actually address the problem.

We've tricked ourselves into thinking that we have talked about this problem over and over again, but we've never addressed it with the person who is actually a problem with. So, address it with the person.

A sub point under that, if I was writing a blog post, would be make sure that you actually have a concrete code of conduct to point them to and say, "When you join the worship team or as a worship team member, these are the things that we live up to, and I feel like you haven't been living up to this. You know, we've talked about how if you aren't at rehearsal during the week, then you can't play on Sunday." And in addition to that, if that is your expectation that you have set, which I think is a reasonable expectation, then it's your responsibility to enforce those expectations.

Enforcing Clear Expectations

If somebody isn't at rehearsal, if they aren't at your midweek service, if they only show up on Sunday, the conversation is pretty easy if you have put in the proper things in place beforehand. You say, "These are the things that need to happen for you to play on a Sunday. You did not do those things, and therefore you cannot play on Sunday."

Now, let's say that you don't have those things in place. What do you do now? Well, now you have to take a little bit of the responsibility because you've let it get to this point where this uncommitted worship team member you have allowed to take root in your worship team and you haven't addressed it. So, what can you do to slowly move them to where they need to be?

Setting and Communicating Expectations

Number one, set the expectation today. Set the expectation at your next worship rehearsal. We have to get these expectations in place because if we never set the expectation, we can never hold people to the expectation. So, don't, once again, don't just let the expectation be in your head. Communicate it regularly to your team so that you can hold them to it.

And then don't just spring it on them and say, "Hey, if you're not at rehearsal on Wednesday night, then you can't play on Sunday morning." Tell it to them multiple times and say, "You know, this is starting this coming month, in the month of December, whenever it is, we are going to be moving towards this." And that gives them heads up so that they can adjust course.

And then, when they don't show up for rehearsal, then you tell them, "Hey, you know, we're doing this now. I've told you about it multiple times in advance. You weren't at rehearsal during the week, and so you can't play the Sunday."

That's how I would go about it if I haven't set the expectations in advance.