Team Roles

So, what are the roles? The makeup of your team’s roles may vary according to your own unique context, but here is a starting point for thinking about the specific needs that must be present in a worship team.

Roles are not people. Some teams can have two or three people filling all of the necessary roles, other teams as many as ten. Brainstorming studies have shown that an ideal creative team has between 4-7 people, each serving at least one of these roles and some serving at least two.

Preacher

Every team needs to have a preacher. This may seem like a no-brainer. But we have witnessed many teams attempt to function without one.

Some preachers, citing other demands on time, will send notes to a meeting in lieu of themselves. One team’s preacher did just this, saying that he had an important small group meeting to attend, so the notes would serve as a proxy, of sorts. The team planned as usual, without their pastor’s presence, developing concepts that made sense in the context of their brainstorming session. But when the preacher saw the image the team had designed the next Sunday morning on screen, he was confused, saying he had no clue what it meant and couldn’t integrate it.

The team tried again the next week without the preacher’s presence, and when he saw the image the following weekend he adamantly refused to use it, saying it represented a concept that was directly opposed to his intent.

After two consecutive failures, the team’s preacher realized his presence was necessary for the team to function well. He realized that pieces of paper don’t talk back. In a brainstorming session, it’s necessary for the seed ideas to be represented and healthy dialogue to occur around them, and for the one doing the preaching to be present in order to confirm his or her ability to integrate the concepts into the message.

A team may also consider having a second preacher on the team. Let’s assume the first-string preacher doesn’t intend to serve 52 Sundays a year. What happens when the back up preacher enters the mix? One without any team knowledge seriously hinders the ability of the team to do its job, but a back up preacher who has been on the team is able to fill the role without too much disruption in the development process.

Bandleader

This person is the head musician and represents all of the music portions of the worship experience. They are an absolutely critical part of any functioning worship team. Since music is such a large and vital part of most worship services, musical choices that don’t fit what the team designs can disrupt the entire planning process.

We’ve seen much resistance from musicians in the past to allow others to participate in the song selection process, but this is an obstacle that must be overcome. Ideally, a creative team designing one cohesive service would choose music that compliments the theme for the day. If the service focuses on purity, then songs of purity (such as “Create in Me a Clean Heart”) make more sense than songs of adoration. Utilizing all of the team members in the selection process makes for a wider array of choices.

Note that we intentionally avoid using the term “worship leader,” out of a desire to move away from thinking of the music portion of the corporate time as worship, and toward thinking of the entire experience as worship.

Producer

The producer is the most important role in worship development that many teams don’t have. The person fulfilling this role is an overseer?Äîthe guardian of the theme, if you will. It’s worth mentioning again here that no one, including the producer, is to act a gatekeeper for ideas. The producer is the point person and is given the task to provide leadership in every area of worship development, from music to media to preaching, to ensure that the main idea of the service is present and that the various elements fit together into one seamless experience. This may happen in the meeting, but typically happens more so outside the design meeting. In our experience, teams that function well are often managed by the producer (as opposed to the preacher or some other party). It is important that this function is truly about management, not micromanagement. Nothing kills the spirit of the team worse than over-managing every detail of the process.

Outside of the meeting, the producer empowers, equips and coordinates with the various staff and volunteer groups who have a hand in implementing the team’s design. He or she is may also act as the director of what can be a chaotic scene on the day of worship and manages a variety of tasks from directing the technical rehearsal to touching base with media, altar, music, drama and other groups to help take care of last minute details.

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