Development Flow of a Worship Leader

This last year, our overall Creative Arts Director Eric Bramlett, stepped into a pretty big staffing gap we had at our Naperville North High School site; one of the sites of our Naperville Campus. We started that campus in a big hurry because we were looking for ways to relieve some of the overcrowded services at the Yellow Box. We started it so fast that it was really two years later that the appropriate staffing caught up (plus we started that site as a prototype off-site location and kind of made up the staffing structure as we went.)

  On the music / worship side, Eric (check out his blog) has an unparalleled voice and does a really great job at leading the audience. He is also a closet keyboard player, but until now was only breaking that out for dramatic effect once in a while. (And if you know Eric, I really mean DRAMATIC EFFECT!) But since he began the Arts Director position at NNHS, he has really began breaking out and developing in some new areas that have been a huge plus for him and for that weekend site. This conversation with him made me think through this process for any Worship Leader and here is what came to mind. (That really is the best part of a blog. It allows me to dump any thoughts I have on any Arts topic into print, making me think through structure, sequence and terminology. If I can put it into words that someone can read and understand, then I have processed that idea sufficiently. But that is also why all of my good posts are 1000 words or more.)

Development Process for a Worship Leader

This is the process I would like to see every Worship Leader go through to reach the highest level of capability an versatility. The order of these steps are not really as important as completing all of them. (I included some pictures of one of our rehearsal leaders and bands he has lead. I learned a lot of what I know from him over the years!)

1) Suitable Proficiency on Their Instrument

I often get asked by my vocal leaders if we are moving to a place where, to be a Worship Leader at CCC, you will have to play guitar? I usually answer with something like, "Not necessarily, but I wish you would!" To be a "great" Worship Leader, the first step is to become proficient on your Worship Leading instrument of choice. To be able to properly communicate a worship flow, you need to be able understand the chord progressions of the songs. To understand the chord progressions of the songs, you need to know how to play an instrument. Well! You also need to be proficient enough at your instrument that you are respected by the rest of the players in your band. As I have said in previous posts, you never have to be the best instrumentalist on stage. I actually hope that you are not. But you need to be good enough for the band to trust and respect you. And if you want the band to follow you, you need to be able to talk the language of your band members. I would actually say that it is more important for a Worship Leader to start as a good instrumentalist, than a good vocalist. (Feel free to disagree on that one. I am sure I could play both sides of that argument also.)

2) Apprenticing as a Worship Leader

Every potential worship leader should spend significant time understudying several experienced Worship Leaders learning how to engage the audience, how to work successful transitions, how to direct the background vocalists and how best to prepare each week. (As Worship Leader, you are ALWAYS the most prepared person on the stage.)

3) Apprentice as a Rehearsal Leader

This is where a Worship Leader truly comes into their own. Every Worship Leader who wants to be the most effective they can be, needs to sit through several band rehearsals and observe how the rehearsal leader maps out each song in advance and then communicates to the band where he wants to go and guides everyone to get there. If you know chord progressions, have a clear idea where you want the worship flow to go and can properly communicate that to your band members, you can be successful as a Worship Leader. But you need to learn several skills from an effective rehearsal leader, such as how to arrange the songs while playing to the strengths of your particular band, how to correct tempo problems on the fly, how to get a band back on track after a mistake has happened, how to communicate to the band when you want them to change directions, how to get the different layers of instruments to lock into each other and the number one rehearsal leader skill: How to stop any disagreement about one chord on the chart that attempts to derail a rehearsal and push things forward! As a Worship Leader, you need to have the ability and confidence to take control of the rehearsal and keep moving things forward. Otherwise you will spend lots of additional time spinning in circles.

4) Train New Worship Leaders

After you master the higher levels of Worship Leadership, your next step is to learn how to teach others to do what you have learned to do, but that is a topic all to its self.

Comments

[Joe Ulrich]

Is that Tom Green in the first picture (bottom right?). Awesome!

[bdmusician]

Being fairly new to today's worship leading, I have some questions for either worship leaders or band members out there: In genereal, what are some of the most challenging concerns in working with - or in - a worship band?

reponses appreciated & thanks!