Developing new musicians in smaller churches

Larger churches often have the budget to bring in “ringers” to enhance and lead their music programs. Smaller churches usually have to depend upon volunteers. These comments may be more relevant smaller churches at first glance, but can apply to that “how tos” of developing worship musicians in any setting.

Remember that using volunteer musicians does not mean you’re using substandard musicians. There’s plenty of talent available in most of our churches; it’s just a question of calling that talent forward in worship music. That requires flexibility and patience.

It requires flexibility because you may not have a stellar pianist coming up through your local church ranks, but you might have a decent guitar player. Can you and your congregation flex enough to encourage the guitar player to lead worship? You might have someone who can carry a tune, but they might also be challenged in getting the rhythm right. Will you exercise enough patience to get that struggling musician the help and time needed to correct the issue?

Usually you can develop musicians well by bringing them onto your worship team early in their developmental process. You let them spend some time (here like a few weeks or months) watching older, more mature musicians and leaders rehearse and perform. In most cases, you will almost immediately encourage them to join you in worship music in some way – perhaps by attending rehearsals regularly and then gradually joining the team in worship services – so they’re actually getting the experience of learning and leading worship.

After a few months of leading worship with more seasoned volunteers, the opportunity and time may be right to encourage that developing musician to take the lead now and then while your more seasoned musicians act in a support role. You can develop them even further by giving them their own experience in worship leading at events like a prayer service, a youth group gathering, or a coffee house.

But don’t think for a minute that worship leading is only about music. There’s a deeply significant spiritual side of this we too often ignore. Any worship leader needs to be a worshiper first. Although we’ve talked a lot about musical technique in this series, the most important element in developing worship musicians is to help them develop a sound relationship with God. Over the years, I have found that reviewing Psalms (a logical starting point of reference for worship music, don’t you think?) with younger musicians is a great way to help them address their own development in worship and musical skills.

Trust me, you’ll need to continually develop musicians to help with worship leading in a smaller church context. Be flexible. Be patient. You might be surprised at the positive results you get.

One more installment coming…

–Steve Wamberg