Leader of the Band
by Randy Rowland
April 1, 1999
I came to the ministry from a background in radio—for many years I played the hits. Lo and behold, Rockin' Randy winds up pastoring and forming worship bands in two different Presbyterian churches. God has a sense of humor.
It would take an entire issue of Leadership to detail the lame-brained mistakes I have made. Here's a distillation of what I have learned about worship team development.
What sound are you after?
Don't start putting a team together until you have a vision and "feel" for the sort of service you are going to develop. The first time I attempted the worship team enterprise, I was in a large, very traditional Presbyterian church. Our vision was to gently move the church toward new ways of worshiping. We wanted more singing than in a typical service and a wider range of songs, not just hymns.
We wanted a montage of songs strung together for an experiential worship event, not with a rock beat, a smoother sound like the music of Mariah Carey or Michael Bolton. The team we assembled was very "soft rock," keyboard driven, and pretty inviting to traditional church goers.
Several years later, I found myself planting a church in the heart of the arts community, in the city that birthed Jimi Hendrix, Heart, Pearl Jam, and Nirvana. Seattle's rock isn't for wimps!
In this setting our vision was to be much more "edgy." We wanted a lot of beat, a lot of drive, and pretty high volume. We desired 15 to 20 minutes of non-stop singing that ranged from the nearly-frenetic to the sublime. We wanted to include hymns, choruses, and praise music delivered by a guitar-driven band.
Get a vision. You need a predominant sound. Are you pop, hard rock, alternative, folk, R&B? You pick. But do pick. You can't do it all.
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