Practice
“Practice makes perfect.” “How do you get to Broadway? Practice, practice, practice!”

I’m sure you’ve heard these before. It’s not something new.  If you don’t practice you won’t get better. Period. There are very few people on earth that don’t need to practice their craft or art. Chances are good that you’re not one of them.

Good practice begets good worship. Bad practice begets bad worship. Just because you get together with the worship team and maybe someone from the tech team to turn on sound an hour or so a week doesn’t mean that you practiced for Sunday.

As the father of a rather exuberant 13-year-old and the husband of a wife with serious health issues while trying to run a ministry full-time, I know how hard it is to carve time out for proper practice. We tend to let life get in the way and that’s a shame. We are cheating God and our congregation by not putting the worship service practice as a priority.

Too many churches that I visit think that practicing for an hour before service on Sunday mornings is adequate practice. I’ll be blunt. It’s not. Practicing prior to service on Sunday is the worst time to practice. You’re under the gun to get songs, some of them new, right with the members of the band and the technical crew. You are expecting an awful lot of your team mates and that’s not fair to them nor to you .

I know all of the reasons people practice on Sundays, but honestly, can you say that you can’t carve out a couple of hours early in the week to practice and get everything in snyc? Maybe if you’re that busy you shouldn’t be doing worship. If you’re that busy maybe you need to receive instead of give.

I know it sounds somewhat harsh, and I apologize for my tone. But if your ministry is your calling, shouldn’t you dedicate the time to get it right? Do you know how many hours the worship teams at the churches we look up to practice each week? A lot of the big-name worship groups don’t get paid to lead worship at their churches but they still practice a significant amount of time.

At a minimum you should be willing to rehearse the Sunday worship service for a couple of hours during the week. Since I play drums and also am the technical lea,d I know what both sides expect to be able to be on their game for Sunday.

Worship team rehearsal early in the week, say Tuesday or Wednesday, gives the band time to work on the music, together and individually, throughout the week. If you’ve got any sense of pride in your craft you’ll be practicing at home to get the songs down.

Having practice early in the week also gives the worship leader the freedom to change out songs if they don’t feel right or if the band is struggling with the songs. It also gives the band time to learn the new songs without the pressure of having to try them out for the first time on Sunday morning.