How do you show up to rehearsals? Would you describe it as "fully prepared?"

I ask myself “Where are the other leaders at the church?”

Imagine your worship team on a retreat. On a missional retreat in Costa Rica.

What am I taking to heart?

My pastor was a college professor who had just finished the semester.

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

I know the need for watering, fertilizing, and generally tending to the gardens (metaphorical as mine may be) are upon us every spring and summer.

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?

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

When was the last time you took a breath, ready to sing the next line, only to slowly exhale, mumble, or watermelon through the next line because the words weren’t up in time?

We know how to lead a worship set, a meeting, an event, or a moment.

But what about a team, a ministry, a department, an organization, or a decade?

As leaders, we must have the energy and determination to move large initiatives forward, to hold the line, and to shift cultures.

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?