Paul McClure and Brandon Lake - Running A Worship Department | Speaking Moment

welcome any worship pastors in here probably all of you huh why else would you come to this class if you weren't right um so i managed the worship department for bethel church brandon what's your title what's your official title um i just changed a little bit but i i i was basically central worship pastor at seacoast church so we are located in charleston south carolina just to give you a little back story real quick it's a stereotypical mega church i mean our main locations probably like six seven thousand people worship teams a few hundred people and then we have 13 to 14 campuses now and so i was overseeing our campus worship leaders um and we'll talk a little bit about how we personally structured that so this is actually going to be cool because paul will be able to speak to how bethel does some things and then i'll be able to speak and how we do some things and um so you'll get best of both worlds love it so um the bethel worship department obviously brian and jen are over everything they're mom and dad i am under them as the guy who does all the things they don't want to do basically so that's my job role um but so i manage the the anything scheduling any auditions any rehear anything like that is me probably the same job that you have and then here and brandon again can talk about seco structure here all of our uh anyone that plays or serves on a weekend is 100 volunteer is that the same with you guys um we have a a few of our team we pay yeah um and their contract with us and they we pay them to play but also kind of take on some other responsibilities and they're kind of a higher level uh leadership role yeah perfect so anyone including me on the weekend is just volunteer and then we kind of do the same thing there's a few people that we pay but it's more of like a section leading role and so in our world brian and jen me there's uh someone else on staff with me who runs admin and helps all the things that i don't know how to do in google world and docs and sheets and all that stuff um jared walsh you in here jared where are you at yeah he's in here somewhere right there he is hey jared jared is the man that's all i'll say jared's the man jared keeps me sane um and then anyone else that's on staff with us is again the second leader role and so we have uh someone over drums guitars bass keys uh violin and those are basically in place to to know how people in their section are doing to help pastor those people and to help with feedback and things like that and they're paid a they're paid a monthly stipend it's not a full salary anything it's just it's a hey thanks for doing that kind of thing how is it set up in your world yeah so um like i said we have many campuses and um some campuses are 1500 people 2 000 uh in regular week weekend attendance some may be 100 300 people so it varies big time so you'll kind of see it vary per campus and every campus worship leader who's either part-time or full-time reports to their campus pastor and then uh someone like the role i've been in uh they kind of dotted they they hardline to their campus pastor and then they dotted line to me um i'll tell you a little bit about structure and then and and path twos uh but they kind of dotted line for worship so i was overseeing our campus worship leaders so kind of the the vision for worship would come from me but their one-on-ones and who they're reporting to campus worship leader-wise is their campus pastor now what we've done is we've given a budget to every campus based on how big they are how many how much attendance their week in giving and giving reports and all that and so they're kind of allowed to do with that um however they want to and and who they hire and so the worship worship leader can uh i think at every campus we've kind of set a standard like you could hire one or two people if you want that to be your music director because they're taking on a whole lot more responsibility um you can do that or if you want to hire a part-time worship leader or whatever you can you can kind of use that money how how you like so and then as your campus grows and there's more budget um you can begin to pay musicians so i think that's like the question all everyone's always asking should you pay or should you not there are pros and cons on both sides i don't think there's a right answer i think you know you should just honor your leadership and and try to have those conversations and routinely have them like because it could change i've been in churches where like we will never and i just don't know if that's the right way to look at it um i think you should just look at the season that you're in and who's on your team and ask god how can i you know is it the best thing right now to to to not or maybe this is a season where it would really bless this person um so yeah so um yeah that's really good yeah we so we um anyone that plays for a conference or something like this gets paid because it's a paid event but as far as weekends go we don't and again i'm with brandon i don't think there's a right answer i think you ask the holy spirit you talk to leadership and you figure out what works for your church the best and do that um as far as this so this is like nitty gritty you guys cool with that like logistical stuff so scheduling scheduling everyone yeah exactly i think that we should start a planning center support group i'm like it's like when i see a decline i see red and i literally see red and i'm getting so mad you guys know what i'm talking about i i uh one of the planning center guys was here for an event and i was like hey can you remove the decline button for my planning center yeah because i it makes me so mad the only thing that's worse is when they decline and there's a reason why and they just put nothing or out of town and i was like dude bro the no reason given oh no reason huh sometimes i'll just add them back in and confirm them yeah like and then see what they do oh man i like to get passive aggressive in planning center uh but no scheduling so how we schedule things um we we're we are super big on blocking out please block out your dates please be an adult please be responsible people are creatives are actually capable of being responsible and using their calendar so we hold them to a standard of we're going to send out two reminders to block out after that this is our rule after if you haven't blocked out and i do the schedule and you forgot to block out sorry you're you'd have to find someone to fill your place i set that up because i realized i was going to go crazy and kill people if i didn't set up some a healthy boundary so in our world block out if you don't block out it's on you and then we ask confirm or decline as soon as you can the week of we don't allow decline so if it's the week of a service and you're scheduled and you're unconfirmed um you're on the set or you're finding someone else so we put a lot of responsibility on people of hey you signed up to be on our team you've asked to be on our team we're not making you be on our team but if you're on our team this is how it works scheduling wise how you guys doing yeah very similarly what's up seacoast what up seacoast y'all they call me seacoast like and we're like we're really prepared and playing and stuff so just insider funny joke we'll be on tour and i'll go to our our band director and david whitworth who's amazing and i'll be like hey dude um so what song are we doing and he's like okay sea coast hold on listen this is bethel we're gonna like go with the flow a little bit you know okay seacoast um no we we do it very similarly we um we send out an email uh a reminder all the time and we try to schedule worship leaders uh six weeks out um and then the schedule goes out for we have someone who kind of owns planning center but like we we ask them to take responsibility at a certain point and find someone else if they can't if they can't be there if they're declining like a week or two out and um even what we go so far we actually do mid-week run throughs and if they can be on we have saturday service and then sunday morning services and if they can't even be at run through we'll actually have them bring in someone else to like find a replacement for a run through and so we really value that um that run through time and making sure that they're there um so we kind of do six weeks out and then ban band members team members go out like four weeks and then our person who kind of owns planning center checks in and then we assign a lead worshiper to every weekend and so they're also responsible for you know monitoring the team if anyone's declined following up with them they're also sending out notes about that specific weekend uh putting in vocal notes that kind of thing and they can actually empower other people to do those things but it's ultimately their responsibility and it's also put on them that spiritual responsibility um for the weekend uh coming to our our we could talk about this too we we have this time called family tree and so um how many of you know it's exhausting if you've got to come up with something every weekend to like spiritually shepherd your team like you know it's just it really is exhausting especially like if you got to be there really early and you know and you're like god i just need a word for myself um here i'm trying to encourage everybody else and my eyes won't even open um but we do we take one service and we all meet as a team it's called family tree and whoever's the lead worshiper on that weekend we'll we'll uh plan something and a lot of time we just feel facilitate conversation and um this is where uh our team really spiritually grows and and we sharpen one another and so it's cool because it just we have so many worship leaders that you know i'm only leading family tree maybe once a month or every other month something like that but um i kind of went away from scheduling but i did want to say something um when it comes to dealing with that person on your team who can consistently declines um doesn't give a reason and they're just kind of being difficult like you're you're their leader you're responsible for them like push on that like raise them out like get them out of that and one of the best ways you can do that is just asking them simply um hey what can i do to help you be more responsive or be you know um you're an adult you know find a nice way to remind them you are an adult you can take five minutes to look at your schedule you know weeks out and plan it and if it's an emergency dude grace grace and but like you know if we're really loving our people well we'll pull them out of that like we'll you know and because because we are responsible responsible to like help them see and become the best version of themselves and they're they're maybe not going to see that unless you give them a little spanking that's so good man yeah and i i think too along those lines within pastoring not making assumptions about people's heart or their motives or why just ask good questions but honestly the biggest thing is just having the conversation because for so long when i was doing this job at the beginning i would i would be frustrated with people but i would never sit down and have a conversation and honestly as pastors we're going to have a lot of hard conversations aren't we yes like all the time probably but they don't have to be bad if we have a heart for people a pastoral heart we don't assume but just make the time to do it because it's way better to have a conversation and then realize oh i didn't realize that was so frustrating for you that's a lot of times the case so like oh i didn't know that was such a problem or i i didn't know the rules or i didn't know how the expectations so setting up expectations well and then following through with the conversation is so key um as far as um uh scheduling for us so we're two months out at a time so at the beginning of july i scheduled august so people have plenty of time to accept that sweet decline or sweet uh decline decline to climb because one thing we do too is we schedule worship sets as a team and um i'm not exactly sure i think whoever's leading for you guys puts a set together and approves it right you talk about that a second for us um we do a monthly planning out the next month um kind of worship sets what they'll obviously change depending on maybe what the what the message is going to be about and we want to kind of tie worship in with that as well as we can we do worship up front and after the message so we have this time called response time so we'll do a few songs up front and then we respond to the message with worship and we actually uh give people the opportunity to go take communion uh to pin maybe something to the cross as this you know as a symbol of just like i'm letting this go i'm giving this to you um they can receive prayer we have candles like it's really cool but what we do in that time is try to at least the first response song kind of tie that to the message so sometimes you know as pastors will retweet their message or let you know what they're talking on the night before who might switch a song but what we try to do is and this is the way we want to honor our team is we'll try to pick songs a month out um or for the next month in the month prior we'll try to look at what are the key songs we want to schedule are there any new songs we try to do um no more than two new songs a month and what we'll try to do is introduce a song one weekend uh followed up the next weekend give it a weekend break and then do it again and once it's been hit three times obviously we're evaluating it the main worship leaders were evaluating houses hitting how's it landing we're talking to our pastor how are you liking it sometimes we play a song one time and he's like nope like you know uh it's just it just sometimes you just know but then sometimes you got to give it a a fair a fair chance and so we at least try to do it three times uh then it's in our normal rotation we work off of a centralized list sorry i'm saying a lot right now uh a centralized list of probably um 60 songs then we pair down seasonally to about 15 to 20 and we send it out to our campuses this is one way we stay aligned with 13 to 14 campuses is we choose from a list and again they have campus specific ones if their campus is going through a season of heavy loss maybe they really it's a smaller campus they have a lot of people who kind of are going through a heavy season we're like we want you to lean into that and and lead songs that speak to that so you don't have to be doing the same exact um set or list but we're kind of all together if that makes sense so so there's a centralized list that they can choose from if they want to choose outside of that what do they do yeah they're going to send that song to to me and just kind of get it approved hey this is the song we're wanting to do and yeah did i write that song no then no how much percentage do i have on those songs that's good uh for us set lists oh man a month out would be like jesus is coming back tomorrow ours when i first got here um i got here 2012 um and our setlists were like hey it's sunday morning what should we do let's how about this new song that no one's ever heard that i'm still figuring out how it goes um now we're we try our best to uh if you're leading on a friday night the setlist is out on wednesday if you're leaning on sunday it's out by thursday that's and that's that's doing really good that's that's like look at us it's a day ahead of time and and for me like coming from the opposite like it's so refreshing to me i'm like yes i don't you know because sometimes you're like i don't want to know the set a month out like i don't want to be boxed into that you know so there's pros and cons totally totally you know but all of our band members will be like man i'm going to seacoast that's amazing everybody's moving to the east coast yeah come on over um uh what was i going to say um i will say this real quick while you think say it no matter what you do try as the leader try to eliminate every excuse for your band members to not be prepared yeah bro that's so good um that's on you that's not that's one of them you can lead them really well by eliminating every excuse so for you in the season that you're in with your leadership whatever your structure looks like i would ask what feels good for your team you might have some really really good team the reason why they can do that here is because they have so honed their craft that they can hear it listen to a song one maybe two times and they've got it nailed like all the band members are just they're so good and they you guys hold that that standard really really high you know um it's we man it's weird it's not you guys it's weird it's we that's right that's right i'm seacoast and bethel oh yeah let's go see bethel seacoast west coast seth let's go south um as far as like as far as like approving uh set lists in our world um normal will have leader and then co-leads under that and so the leader is normally texting the co-leads hey what songs do you want to do this weekend send me some ideas and then the leader will put together the setlist from there and again um we don't we do approve set lists a little bit it's mainly just to make sure that the flow is right that they're not doing any like super obscure song or like song that doesn't work corporately and really just making sure everyone's set up well like it's not that we don't want you to do that cool song we just want to make sure that it works in worship and that people can follow along and sing along and so we're normally looking at flow we're looking at the team that's in place can this song be done with this band at this campus things like that um and us honestly it's really like a culture thing like we all as worship leaders know the culture of bethel we know what works we do we know what doesn't work and so it's it's less about you can't do that and more like is that going to be a good thing for our church and our team that kind of thing um rehearsals um we don't really have rehearsals anymore we ha we used to have a saturday rehearsal for sunday morning both of our campuses so we have uh this campus friday night sunday morning two services 1 p.m sunday night and then we have our cascade campus downtown which is sunday morning and then our train view campus which is sunday morning now really because of of rooms people's schedules a lot of our team travels too which is probably not a normal thing for most churches and so our rehearsal looks like two hours before service we have a sound check rehearsal and that is again why it's important to get your songs out ahead of time and for band members to to know this the new songs coming out and so we're always telling guys like hey this new album is coming out we'll send them the songs we'll send them the charts hey make sure you know these songs because we kind of have to be ultra prepared and yeah be willing to flex because of how our schedules work so ours are two hours ahead of time how do you guys look for rehearsals yeah so we do them on uh tuesday evenings and um we really try to make it a requirement that every campus does but a lot of them are portable so they can't and so uh in that case we really try to um you know uh i try to eliminate every excuse for my worship leaders uh to not have all their notes in like we what we try to do too is provide all those tracks on planning center like um iso tracks isolated guitar tracks so if they can't if they can't um rehearse they're at least uh we're giving them like extra and extra resources to be super prepared um so one thing we do and the reason why we've kept um midweek run throughs also we call it a run through not rehearsal i still because words create worlds and and so we we really try to use that language it's our run through midweek run through not rehearsal rehearsal practice and rehearsal is what you do at home run through is what we do together and uh oh um so uh that's what we try to keep it as and one thing that we do we have the um we we're able to record our run throughs and so that our audio team on wednesday and thursday or whenever they can they can actually go in the room play back run through and mix and work on um kind of the whole weekend experience and kind of tweak it so um yeah sweet um how do you guys do auditions add people to the team yes that's a big one auditions just anyone can join right anyone can join no matter what where your heart's at you know um man so auditions um [Music] this one i've wrestled with for for quite a while and um i'm kind of i'm happy where with where we're headed um so we kind of we used to audition um either cattle call or one-on-one um one thing that we've tried in the past is by video i love how that eliminates some like if you can't do a video you're probably not gonna use planning center you know what i'm saying so like it kind of eliminates those people are gonna be really bad about scheduling or using their computer since we use planning centers so but um i found that that's i don't know it kept a lot of people from from auditioning and so i've just realized the best uh the best way to get somebody and lead somebody onto your team is through relationship and so what we'll try to do is first they're gonna just fill something out online um on our website and it just allows us to get to know them a little bit um how long they've been playing what campus do they attend are they serving already on another team because that's one thing we'll really try to push them to do lead them to do is join another team before they join the worship team so they get the culture of the church before they step on the platform there's a few other things we do before they ever hit the platform but we'll try to connect them to a team lead so if it's a drummer you know it's like connecting them to david whitworth it's and so that you are not getting drowned in all these one-on-one auditions as the leader also that forces you to raise up the people on your team to like you need to let them know these are my expectations this is what i'm looking for i'm gonna say a lot of things i'm trying to go fast but we also have competencies so if you want to audition for drums these are 10 things we're going to look for and it's just written down it's handed to you and then that those 10 things for every position 10 or 12 it's like you got to be able to play to a click you've got to be able to um you know correct use of symbols or whatever you know care i don't know i'm not a drummer um you got you got to be able to look really really cool back there and sweat a lot um uh where do you sweat uh that's important um where are your where are your sweat points um some people you look right there's like wow god bless you brother like sweat points everywhere you're one big sweat point but that those 10 or 12 things if they're not ready yet become your development system so okay you can do these two or three things but these are the next few things we're going to work on you're not there yet so i pair them up with david david's going to walk with them over the next few weeks and months working on those things we're going to invite them to run throughs they're going to shadow so one thing we do is we don't uh audition for the platform we audition for development as soon as you audition and we're like and and you be you may be amazing but that doesn't mean you're ready for the platform um and so we want to get to know you we this is a huge honor and a huge responsibility and um holding this mic or you know but what you're saying to your congregation is you can model your life after this person they're not perfect but they're headed in that direction and so we're really careful with that so um yeah so we we auditioned for development and so that season may look like a month it may look like four months but we're committed to them and um one easy way we do that is by pairing them with somebody so it's not on you yeah i've talked a lot oh that's so good we uh we do video auditions because it keeps a lot of people from auditioning stuff that's a great idea um you know how when you do an audition and you audition for singers like 98 of 100 can't sing but someone told them they could or they just you know i sing in my you know whatever no so we do uh sorry backup we do video auditions uh it just works the best for us um we have the luxury of of most of the people that join our team come from school of ministry and so they've been a year with joanna a year with cali a year with morgan and so they're going through you know they're getting the culture and the feedback and the training through that so i would say probably it's it's kind of rare that someone joins our team that hasn't gone through school of ministry for anyone else we do the video audition we send them the the list of like hey here are the requirements you have to be able to play to click you have to use ableton if your keys player you have to have guitar tone and pedals and all that for guitar player and then the video auditions just allow us to get through all the submissions that we have and then it's kind of rare honestly that we do an actual live audition because there's so many people that audition and so we'll normally do the the video audition and then again pair them up with a section leader things like that um we only got a few minutes left um what do you guys do for community on your team yeah so family tree like i said earlier happens every weekend uh during one of the the services um and then um it's kind of up to the campus worship leader but we we kind of require a once a month touch point like face to face with your team and so that varies depending on the campus but it's going to look kind of like a lot like what you guys do but it's like yo we're meeting in somebody's backyard you know byom bring your own meat or vegetables and let's go let's just hang out and it's just like we keep the family tree to kind of devotion conversation let's push each other sharpening one another and then the hangs like once a month uh are more just like no agenda like we just want to check in on each other's families like how you doing let's hang out and just really be a community um and and not do the fake thing and feel like we have to talk about xyz for us to you know it's just like let's just hang out yeah so we do uh we do similar thing once a month we have a team night um kind of our structure now is uh per quarter will have a team night uh two team nights and then a section specific meeting and so uh the section specific is all the drummers meet together all the you know vice versa and then the team nights are you know when i'm adding someone to the team that's our big mandatory if you're going to be in our team this is important and it's because you guys know when there's when there's a lot of people on scene even if there's not a lot of people it's just really hard to stay connected and we've realized if we're not going to run together why are we doing this and so community night once a month there's not a big agenda the main point is to hang out and spend time together and be in each other's lives but a little bit of worship which is awesome when you have a room full of people that can all sing it's amazing times of worship and then hearing from some of our senior leaders or brian and jenn or even people on the team and then a lot of eating and then we we make sure we always take time for testimonies and encouragement slash prophetic over one another because when you don't keep those testimonies in front of you you can easily forget why you're doing what you're doing and we're in the trenches aren't we like week in week out doing this thing and if we don't keep those testimonies and the faith level really high it's really hard to stay in this long term so times of testimonies and then even just popcorn prophetic or encouragement over one another of hey so-and-so has been doing amazing and i see this on your life and i see you stepping into this season it doesn't have to be weird but make sure you're taking time to create a culture of encouragement because it makes those times when you have to give hard feedback easier because you've poured into that well of encouragement so that's a big deal for us on our team i've heard you you'll suffocate what you don't celebrate and our church is celeb we are experiencing such a move of god right now and i've i'm watching week to week how some weeks it feels like we're missing it and then some weeks we're doing really well at sharing stories encouraging one another and it's like it fans back into flame and so i just want to echo that man celebrate celebrate celebrate what god's doing um vision leaks people are coming from a nine to five to showing up to run through they're not they've not been spending time in their bible or you know having these enriching conversations and you know so they're showing up you're it's your responsibility to like get them back in that mode you know and remind them the why behind what we do so the more you can attach people to the why and not just what they're doing they're gonna they're gonna feel like they're thriving and they're going to bring their best and they're going to keep it about you know the main thing so so good well let me pray we're out of time jesus thank you for these amazing pastors and leaders i pray that this the next two weeks would just be such an amazing time for them in your presence that they would first just meet with you and have a fresh encounter with you god and i just pray for fresh vision fresh encouragement fresh hope for the next season of their life and i pray that this would just be an amazing refreshing two weeks for them thanks for what they're pouring into things that we're all running after you and running after each other we thank you in jesus name amen amen amen thank you guys you

Channel: WorshipU by Bethel Music

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Length: 30min 54sec (1854 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 11 2020