Day 4 of “12 Days Of Weekend Service New Year’s Resolutions!” Today’s resolution is to “Have Backup!” Back in my worship leading days, I prided myself on never missing a weekend. Even if I was sick, I was there leading. Well, Proverbs 16:8 caught up with me: “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall” [thankfully, just the second half applied in my case]. I learned the hard way that sometimes dehydration = a kidney stone, and I was down for the count. In addition to a lesson in humility, I learned something else – you better have backup.
Worship services are important – you never know what is happening in the hearts, minds and souls of the people in the congregation on any given Sunday. While God will work miracles regardless of our weakness or our failings, He still wants us to give Him our best. While I attempted to give my best in my PERSONAL preparation, I did not give my best in my TEAM preparation. My team had to scramble to pull off an even passable service – it wasn’t fair to them or to the congregation.
Long story short – someone needs to be able to take over [or at least cover] if an emergency arises and you’re out. Or rather WHEN an emergency arises… All of the vocalists on the platform should know the melody, and at least one individual [besides the intended vocalist] should be capable of leading a song if someone gets sick. With other team members, it’s trickier – if you lose a drummer, it’ll be a very different service than what you intended. One of the benefits of using Ableton, etc… is that you can simply call up the part of a missing team member, and the service goes on. If you don’t use tracks, you need to have some team members on emergency standby.
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