In many churches, the worship leader is the champion of the weekend service. They often lead the service planning process, and commonly have the overall responsibility to make sure that the service is done with excellence. I am a former worship leader myself – it can be a big job, especially if you are overseeing all service elements and the teams that make them happen [worship, production, video, etc…].
However – and just being bluntly honest here – sometimes worship leaders have absolutely no clue about the technical side of the service and what it takes to make it work. That’s not surprising – in many ways, worship and production people have very different [or even opposite] wiring, personality-wise. That’s a problem – in my visits and experience with churches, I’ve sadly seen a number of churches where the worship and production team were at odds, sometimes in very toxic ways.
If your church has a large team/staff, ideally I like to structure with a Worship Pastor and a Production Director who are peers, rather than having production under worship. However, if that’s impossible due to size, resources, etc…, it’s critical that whoever is in charge has:
1. Done their homework and understands the nature of the production role and what team members need to do their jobs well;
2. Communicated in such a way that keeps the production team solidly informed of what is happening with the service [and how it affects them].
Make sure that your techies are looped in as soon in your process as possible – they should really be part of the planning all along the way. Production team, your role is to help figure out ways so that things can happen, rather than immediately jumping to why they can’t. When it works together and everyone respects and honors each other, awesome services happen!!!
creativeworshipideas 