As we approach the end of the year, I encourage you to take a moment between sips of 'nog (stay tuned for a killer recipe) to reflect on the state of your team's relationships.

What’s your worship team like? And by “worship team,” I mean the musicians and techs together.

Are you like a Worship Family? A Worship Indie Band? A Worship Elevator? Let me describe each one.

Did you ever wish you could teach your worship team to have better musical instincts? You can!

Every leader disciple needs to learn how to work with people.

Every week, when we make music together as worship teams, we have essential musical decisions to make. So here’s a humorous yet insightful story of what it takes to make music together.

Today, I’m giving you an outline rather than paragraphs. That’s obvious.

But what’s not obvious is how much what you do impacts congregational engagement. I want to challenge us, as leaders, to grow in BEING:

Have you ever wished your teams, pastors, and congregation were great at giving each other feedback?

Going it alone really, really stinks! Oh, it can kill you too. You may have friendly people on your teams, but how do you become true friends?

I hope you were inspired by the last Worship Fertilizer to begin creating a Growth Plan, but chances are it collected about seven days of dust by now. Poor little Growth Plan.

You have talent, gifts, and the desire to improve.

I love questions.

When you went to your worship team rehearsal this week, what skill did you plan on working on with your team?

Have you ever been frustrated, confused, or saddened by a lack of response from the congregation you’re leading in worship?

Do you want current members to serve for a long time?

What’s the most important musical part of a song? Melody. It’s the DNA, the unique fingerprint. Which brings up the next question…how do I learn melody, especially if I don’t read music or don’t have the musical notation available?

Why do I need to know how to build a song?

Because knowing how to build songs enables…so many things.

I love what Todd Henry says in his podcast The Accidental Creative: “It is the age of creativity. Cover bands don’t change the world. Don’t be a cover band. You need to find your unique voice.”

Almost every week, I lead a new team of musicians. Sometimes all we have is a Sunday morning rehearsal.

Do you wish that rehearsal would go deeper than just pulling the music together?

Groove, Space, and Dynamics are three things that we can always have more of in the music we create. But how?