"How to Evaluate and Manage the Worship Team" Video Transcript

Video Transcript: How to Evaluate and Manage the Worship Team

Steve Elzinga  

All right. The worship leader is the broad topic. This one this session, we're going to look at how to evaluate and manage the music program of the church. evaluation of the service. Record services. We do that we do we audio, record and video, video.

Marie Elzinga  

And sometimes not everything gets put up depends on who's available to do that that week. But typically they get put online and that makes it really easy to go back and look at it,

Steve Elzinga  

right. So we put it on our website too. So everyone gets to look at it. Ah, it things you check the balance, balance of instruments versus sound. I mean, the biggest issue or the biggest thing to balance is you have a bunch of instruments playing and then you have singers singing and sometimes some people have a hard time with getting that balance.

Marie Elzinga  

Right? You don't want the instruments overpowering the singers but you don't want the singers so loud that you don't hear the instrumentalists either. So, yeah, that's tricky.

Steve Elzinga  

 It was tricky. The tightness. Tight this means

Marie Elzinga  

is everybody together? Are you all playing together are the singers that's probably coming in there. Are they coming in at the right time?

Steve Elzinga  

Yeah. Clarity with a mean by that. I think it's the, you know, it's the words. I mean, they're seeing some words and we're trying to, you know, could we hear the words are they gonna bumbling through them? Or they're not coming in on time? So we're getting half the first word, things like that. The look?

Marie Elzinga  

It looks like they're comfortable enjoying themselves are they worshipping.

Steve Elzinga  

How about dress?

Marie Elzinga  

Yeah, you know, every church has their own dress code, at least I hope they do. You know, is it modest? But not grunge? Probably. Yeah, doesn't reflect the people coming to your church. You don't want everybody on the stage to be in ratty jeans, but the people in your congregation about come dressed up or vice versa.

Steve Elzinga  

How about advice for women? Well, modesty, you know,

Marie Elzinga  

you don't want to as a person be distracting from worship. So the way you dress can be distracting

Steve Elzinga  

transitions, you know, did we get them with it? Was that dead space in there? Okay, give periodic specific feedback to the instruments, instrumentalists and the vocalists individually

Marie Elzinga  

So it's a good idea to have a meeting, let's say once a year with each person, just a one on one, coffee time, whatever to say, okay? And this is the time for them to, they might have some frustrations that, then they're given the opportunity to, to voice that, but you're able to say, Hey, you know, I've really seen this growth in you or, you know, I see that you tend to want to play all the time, and I keep telling you, you can't play here, but you do. And that's really frustrating for me. And this is why so why,

Steve Elzinga  

why is it important to do that individually, rather than

Marie Elzinga  

you're not gonna call people out on the carpet in front of everybody? that's just rude.

Steve Elzinga  

yeah, when people diging their heels, right? Yeah. Give general feedback to the whole band weekly.

Marie Elzinga  

All right. You want to encourage you, 

Steve Elzinga  

where do you do this at the practice? 

Marie Elzinga  

Yeah, at practice. When we have our Pre practice time of devotions and sharing. Or, yeah, I can send individual emails out as well, to the whole group maybe paying, you know, good job, whatever.

Steve Elzinga  

Evaluate and record each week on a scale of one to 10 on how enthusiastically did the congregation's sing. There is the goal of the whole leading of the music is to get the congregational congregation singing. I think you know, just to keep track of Okay, this week, how well did they do next week how well they do at the end of the year. How well did we do

Marie Elzinga  

and why was that? Did I have three fairly new songs in a row? Maybe I shouldn't do that again. So you're trying to find out what works,

Steve Elzinga  

what doesn't work. So I wrote in there, keep track of this in a record book. That you know, it should be right there. So we can you know, a year later you can look at it. Or you can see a trend or I think if we don't record it, we really just don't do it.

Marie Elzinga  

Right. And the whole point as evaluation is for improvement. Yeah, that's not to be. Yeah. 

Marie Elzinga  

You know, 

Steve Elzinga  

not to put anyone down no questions to evaluate your worship songs. Are they in the right key? So again, is it was it singable? Right sometimes, you know we sing one, I thought last Sunday, that just as high Yeah, it's just even though you lowered it and so on. I was just like, wow, I'm straying too high. I'm striving to do it. And I'm a tenor.

Marie Elzinga  

And I have trusted people who maybe aren't even on the worship team, but I go, you know, how was that? Was that too high? too low. You have that feel for you?

Steve Elzinga  

You know why? Okay, good to go back on why these songs are high and why sometimes we like to keep them there is because it has a certain energy, the way the artists Did it and then when you lower it, it's like, for some it's like, Wow, it just doesn't seem as punchy. Right? Partly because you're not used to it. But sometimes the song does lose a little bit when it gets lower. Are the are the songs theologically and biblically okay? Does it fit? what we believe as a church? Is this really true? Is this in the Bible? Or is this just some person's thought? That should be evaluated? Can the average person in your congregation learn it in three weeks?

Marie Elzinga  

Yeah, and typically if I'm introducing a new song, I will do it three weeks in a row just for that very reason. And then again, that's even a little difficult because people are you miss a week here and there,

Steve Elzinga  

and then the only thing twice so the problem is the worship people tend to listen to songs way more than the average person. So they have already heard the song 20 times and then they practiced it another 20 times. So they they've listened to this song 40 50 60 times before the congregation hears at once. All right, and then they sing it once. And then the next week, they sing it twice. And then they sing it three times. I mean, so that and then by then the worship team is sick of it, right? Because they sang

Marie Elzinga  

it 60 times to their three.

Steve Elzinga  

Yeah. So then you the worship team really wants to keep doing a new song and a new song and a new sign because they're sick of them because they, they, but the average person hasn't done that. So you really have to be kind of savvy about the average person and can they learn this? How many times you know, some of them listen to Christian radio, some of them don't, you know yet just be aware that they have a balanced songbook. You know, in the end, at some point, you got to look at your songbook and are we missing some of the topics that we should be singing. Keep track of all this in a record book someplace where you keep, you know, keep track of the songs that you've done. I mean, is your plan For the next service, he should be able to look back and go, when have we done that song that I was thinking about last? If we did it only two weeks ago, maybe I'll pick something else. Or if we haven't done this something a long time, maybe that's the sign I'll pick. But if you don't keep track of the songs, or like special events, Easter, well, what did we do last year? You have to be able to look back and go, what are we saying these signs, then we did this, then we had this reading? Well, we might do some of that again this week, or we'll change this part of it. So it's just a lot easier if you keep track of the services and what you've done in the past and keep them for years. I mean, you can go back to what you did at Christmas time three years ago, and people wouldn't remember that. yearly worship evaluation questions. How many people learned guitar this year? 

Steve Elzinga  

But which is a weird question, what does it have to do with the worship team but remember, as a worship leader, As a worship director, you're not just charged in charge of the worship team, you're in charge of the culture of worship at your church. So it's not like Well, I'm in charge of 10 people or 20 people or whatever it is that you have on your worship team. I am in charge of the whole music thing, the language of music here at this church, and how many people average people by helping do something how many learn the keyboard this year? How many of the congregation play an instrument of any sort, you know, flute to a kazoo something how many people learned how to sing a part this year? You know, I know a few years back we did a big push for this hymn sing learn apart thing and, and we had like the the hymn of the month and people had to pick apart and they had to listen to it and then I think it was the last Sunday of the month. We divided the congregation Okay, everyone that's been working on the melody which is Really, because it's easy, you know? Okay, all of you that didn't really want to learn a part over here. And then all the alto people go over here and all the tenor people over here and all the bass people. And now you have this group of people saying you're part

Marie Elzinga  

of a choir base. Yeah. 

Steve Elzinga  

and then we ended our service that way. It was like, kind of like an a reward and, and then that we started the next center sign for the next month. Okay, you do that, and then you kind of let it go. It's like, Well, I think we need to do that again. So on a scale of one to 10, how enthusiastically did your congregation sing this year? Was this year better than last year? Are people actually singing? How many songs were written by members of your congregation? How many new songs did your congregation how many new songs did your congregation learn? You don't want it too many. You don't want it too few. What songs should you drop from your rotation? You know, they're tired, they're old. Maybe they were never good that good in the first place. It's like, you know, we need to eliminate them.

Marie Elzinga  

All right back to the number seven there. I think different churches have different amounts. And that's fine. You know, I know certain churches, you get six new six new songs in a year. That's it. So one every other month. Others are well, every month we'll introduce a new one. We were doing that with our scripture songs. We had a new scripture song

Steve Elzinga  

every single month,

Marie Elzinga  

which was a lot probably. But then you evaluate that and you go Is that too much of that too little, but it gives you direction so that you are specific with what you're going to introduce. You don't just do the flavor of the month there's some intentionality about it.

Steve Elzinga  

Managing instrumentalists and vocalists deciding decide on the praise teams of rotation display. On, okay, decide on whether you're gonna have praise praise teams or the rotation system. There's like two systems of organizing people, if you only have enough for one group, then it's whatever, that's your group. But when you start growing and you start developing the talent, all of a sudden you have two drummers. You have three guitar players, you have 10 singers, and there's kind of two different ways you can go some churches will do the, you know, we have separate bands, okay, here's this band and they do their thing and then we have another band or what you're doing is you just sort of rotate people in and out at different times. So you're never really just this band or that band. You're you're singing with these people this time and the next week you're off and, and that kind of thing. In either one, you know works they both have their pluses and minuses. But number two keep a list of vocalists, you know, their voice range bass tenor, alto, like who Is your people and keep a list? 

Steve Elzinga  

What parts can they sing if any, you know, knowing your people who can sing apart, who can keep a list of the instrumentalists, the instruments they play, maybe how gifted they are. So you know who to, you know, ask to do what? maintaining a schedule the multiple praise band method. The problem or one challenge that you have when you have multiple praise bands, is you have to make sure that the song lists for each week are balanced there was sometimes when you have like, say two worship bands, and one worship band does whatever it wants to do and picks whatever songs it wants. And the other band picks the songs that it wants. And so then one introduces a song, a new song one week, and then the next band is on for the next week, and they just totally ignore it,

Marie Elzinga  

or might do a totally new song.

Steve Elzinga  

Yeah. So now we have tuned songs in two weeks, or one, you know. So in some ways you can have two bands, but they gotta be on the same page right? And they have to balance each other and you really can't just let bands go and do what they want to do 

Marie Elzinga  

again intentional about what you're doing, because it's for the sake of the congregation not for the sake of who I want to do this one,

Steve Elzinga  

right. Make sure new songs carry over for three weeks in a row regardless of what the band is playing on a particular service on the rotation method, rotate people in and out of the band based on abilities blend and availability. So it's kind of a circus sometimes because you want you know this strong singer with maybe this person who is more of a support system and 

Marie Elzinga  

they're learning they're there yeah to it and 

Steve Elzinga  

or, you know, you want to get guitar player that can do something that particular week because the songs are difficult. So You know, either method is hard. I mean, it's difficult. But you have to be again, intentional and and sort of mix and match people so that you get a nice balance. You know, those two people never really sound go good together,

Marie Elzinga  

right, their voices don't blend,

Steve Elzinga  

they don't blend very well. And so then you have to work that in, or these two don't get along. I mean, that can happen. I hand out a schedule for at least two months at a time. So thinking ahead, people like to plan or you know, or they'll, they'll or you'll have to be rewriting your schedule all the time. So you let them know in advance, few people change a little bit, and then it gets that. Adjust if necessary. Okay, managing songs. Keep the songbook of your church up to date, in and an order. Rotate songs in and out. In a balanced manner, as you go, you know, there's praise songs is petition songs, there's hymns, scripture songs, there's new songs. So you know, manage those and you know, you want to balance. Number three new songs should be in rotation at least three weeks in a row, expect your congregation to learn them. So again, that's part of the management thing. I know you've said this before, but you know, now as you're managing and putting the songs and thinking two months in advance, remember, you have to put those in three weeks in a row. On average, churches can only learn 12 to 15 new songs a year,

Marie Elzinga  

and some would disagree and say less. So. Yeah, just attend church. Yeah.

Steve Elzinga  

So I mean, that's not a lot. Now it's, on the one hand, it's not a lot. On the other hand, it is a lot because once a month, you're giving people a new song and then you got to do it three weeks in a row. So depending on how many songs you sing in your service. We do like probably four or lest see five, six, or seven songs. And that's a pretty good chunk of our service. But I know some churches sing a whole lot more and some churches sing a whole lot less managing music venues. We're not going to talk a lot about this but the worship music director is really in charge of not just the worship service, of course the worship service, but then there's the whole kids singing thing. 

Steve Elzinga  

He have Sunday school things and I know we we have that and we have rotation of people who will come in and lead some of that singing. You have youth bands, perhaps you know the youth groups and kids that are trying to learn how to sing or play instruments. We would have prays nights we used to have those every month. That was where we would sing some songs together but we would allow people that are learning the piano or the guitar Something to get up and, and do something. concerts, we do a big Christmas thing. Every year we do a few other, you know, singing in the park and so on. So the music director has to sort of put all that together. Talent nights we had one a couple of months ago where people are encouraged to either saying or do some kind of talent, all those things keep people working and and and people trying. 

Steve Elzinga  

That's most of it. karaoke nights, I was just on a mission trip to Guatemala. And one of the nights we had karaoke night and we had like 20 people from our church on this particular trip. And I heard people sing that night that I'd never heard sing before, and a couple of them did really well. It's like, you know, so if you're trying to find talent, I mean, it takes quite a bit to really sound good with karaoke, you're on your own. You got to follow the thing about singing ball whatever it is, and you know, all those things give people a shot at trying and getting off the dime of doing nothing. You got people that think more highly of themselves than they thought. But then a lot of people think a lot lower of themselves than they are. And so you want all these opportunities. So it's not just so as a worship person, you're not again, you're not just thinking, Okay, I gotta worry about the worship service or the worship services, everything other worship service is just one thing. It's the culture of music. It's people playing in their homes and when they go on vacation, or they sit around the fire and they sing and, and and they use this language of praise that God has given us.