What Your Worship Leader Isn’t Telling You

Some worship leader - senior pastor relationships are fantastic! They are open and honoring partnerships built with trust, filled with joy, and creating synergy.

Some are terrible. Non-existent. When you talk, you feel like you may well be a toaster.

Most worship leader - senior pastor relationships are somewhere between. Pretty good. “We have a working relationship.” But you’d never invite each other over for pizza and a game on TV.

This Fertilizer is for senior pastors. I hope to shed some light on what your worship leader may not be telling you.

I’ll start with the relationship, then move on to the practicalities of working together. I often try to write from a very broad perspective (especially when thinking about the Five Faders), but this one may be more from personal experience and perspective.

Fathers and Friends

I look to you as somewhat of a spiritual father. Our whole congregation is looking to you to be primarily a SPIRITUAL leader for us, and the same is true for me. I want you to mentor and develop me spiritually. I want you to care for me, like everyone else in our church, but even more so as one who has significant influence in the life of the church.

But I also want to grow to know each other as friends. I’m not expecting to be buddy-buddy with you, nor do I want to just be co-workers. I want more than that. I’d love our families to get together a couple of times each year. I want to know your heart, and I want you to know mine.

Human

I want to remind you that I’m a human, and I can forget that you are a human too. We have history. We were once children, teens, and young adults. We’re not robots who don’t need rest. We have feelings, and we live on encouragement. We have issues, weak areas, temptations, and struggles.

Fellow Bondservants

It’s a joy to be under the safety of your authority. I respect your leadership and the mantle God has placed on you for your role. In the same way, I’d like you to respect mine. Like you, I am a sinner saved by grace. While I realize that we have different roles and spheres of influence, I see us as fellow bondservants, both devoted to Jesus and serving His church. I see us living this strange duality, where you’re both my overseer and fellow journeyman on the same playing field.

Prayerful Discernment in Planning

I know you take time to seek the LORD and find out what He wants to do in the sermon each week, and I also do the same for the songs we sing. But I want more than two individuals who put their plans together on Sunday and hope it fits. I don’t mean I need your key scriptures, title, points, etc., a month out. (That’s helpful and all, but there’s more.) I want us to pray together. To experience the excitement of divine inspiration in the planning stages so that when we’re in the flow of the service, we can look at each other and “call the audible” - adjusting as needed. The time spent together in prayer prepares us to be unified in executing the plan.

Spheres of Influence

Of course, we can speak into each other’s areas of influence, but I would no more expect you to tell me what songs I can and can’t lead than I would dictate what scriptures or illustrations you can use. God has put us in separate roles with training, calling, experience, AND, most importantly, the responsibility for the effects of what we choose to do. We have an interdependent autonomy. I like conversations and questions, not rules and regulations. And, of course, warn me if I’m about to shoot myself in the foot with a decision I’m making. I’ll try to do the same for you.

A Culture of Honor

Lastly, I want us to enjoy a culture of honor, where we practice “submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.” (Ephesians 5:21) It’s a joy to be serving our King together, and I think the way we do that toward each other is as important as the way we say we do that to Him. And that’s a perfect way to end. I want us to be “toward each other.” Like I’m for you, and you’re for me. I have your back, and you have mine. When you cry, I cry. When I celebrate, you celebrate. My heart is toward yours, and yours is toward mine. We glorify the Father by being “one, even as we are one.” (John 17:11)

Disclaimer: This isn’t an “all-encompassing” list or even “this is the way every worship leader and senior pastor should be” list. I hope that it opens conversations for leaders to work together better. I hope it gives voice to your longings and gives you the courage to ask for more and to give more. Onward, friends!

-Dave Helmuth
(purchase my book, "Worship Fertilizer: (the first hundred)" HERE)

What Your Worship Leader Isn’t Telling You (Nº 338)