Building Community

[barrydt]

Fred pointed me over to the forums, and said you all could offer some really good feedback for me. I'm not the worship leader at our church, but am on the team as a layperson. We have about 25 people who are involved in leading worship at our church - several instrumentalists and vocalists. We serve on a rotating basis, and don't always serve with the same people, so there are very few times during the year when we're all in the same place at the same time. As a result, we're having trouble figuring out how to build great community in such a setting. For instance, one of our drummers had a heart attack (mild) back in May, and some folks just heard about it last week. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how you and your team builds community.

As one of the team members, I'd like to be able to go to our worship pastor with some possible suggestions, and then work with him to implement the one(s) that he thinks would work for our situation.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts you might have on this topic.

[milepost13]

We have two full bands (both who end up playing all together half the time because people are out of town, etc.). I try to throw 2-3 parties every year for the band. Always away from the church building, always involving free food, always NOT involving ministry stuff.

The thing I've discovered about building community is that, unless it's happening on some level naturally, you're going to be climbing an uphill battle. People have to naturally want to hang out and love each other. Many of our band members are in several small groups together, serve on other ministry teams together, etc., so it's easy for us to not really plan anything and just let it happen because we love being together. (which is why personality/chemistry plays a huge part in our audition process).

Nate

[Mike Darley]

Our team is a little smaller so it's probably easier for us. A couple of things I do is give a buffer/hang out time before practice. We "start" practice at seven, but we normally don't actually sing or play the first note until about 20 after. This probably seems kind of sloppy or not as regimented to some, but it does give the team time to fellowship. We'll also stay after and talk. I make it a point not to shove them out the door. We'll also often go out to lunch after church. All of the younger guys are in our "college and career" group which I help out with so we get time to fellowship then as well. I also make it a point of calling at least one of the guys to go with me when I go to GC or something. Those are a couple of things that work for us.

[mjdaniel]

Two scenarios:
1. Larger church with separate teams for Saturday Night/Sunday mornings. We didn't put this into place, but it ended up happening over time. Saturday night team would stay in the youth center during the message (they came back on Sundays for messages) and had cokes and talked and played games every Saturday. Sunday morning team members got there early for coffee every weekend. We just chatted for 20 minutes before rehearsal, but rehearsal always started on time.

2. Smaller church with multiple musicians playing randomly together (about 20 in and out). Lots of mass emails back and forth, especially from me. Everyone could respond to everyone else to let them know what was going on. No one ever abused it. Also, we invited everyone over to our place about every other month just hang out. Not everyone always attended, but everyone did at one point or another.

You can't make folks have relationships - but you can give them opportunities to!

mjd

[mikeymo1741]

We spend a lot of time together. There are nine of us, four musicians and the singers. All are college/high school age except three of us. But we spend a lot of time hanging out, talking about music. We try to get together and jam when we can, or after service.

We also try to look for organized things to do together, like a worship seminar, a concert, or a worship event at another church. We have a picnic just for the worship team and families each year, and maybe another get together around Christmas.

[russhutto]

Small groups a must!

I'd also recommend something like a google group or a yahoo group (somebody else chime in here with the paid options) to build a group based discussion community.

Nothing beats face to face, but in this digital age I've found that something as simple as having a group discussion available 24/7 is really helpful.

I'll post a question to our google group such as:

If you had unlimited resources to do whatever your passion was what would you do?

or

What's your favorite movie and why?

or

If you could ask everyone on the team one question about themselves what would it be?

The responses and discussion that happens within the group is amazing and people "get to know" one another in a small way. I think it opens the door for the face to face community.

[broshore]

Russ,

Love your discussions man. We have an e-mail system that we can use to communicate just within our worship team. It is a new concept, but it has helped tremendously. We are also exploring using text messages for those immediate notifiactions. We might as well use the technology God has provided us.

Bless you bro

[free_by_grace]

One thing our Music and Arts leaders have started doing is a monthly dinner in the same window as practice for everybody followed by an abbreviated practice for that week's team. They just bring in pizza or some other meal for everybody and just facilitate time for everybody to eat dinner and just socialize.

Also, since we practice on Thursdays with vocals and instruments at different times we get together in between on the front of the platform to just share "joys and concerns" and pray for one another as well as inspire each other. Then we do a couple of the special-focus songs together before continuing with the instruments-only portion of the rehearsal.

We do have a shorter combined practice Sunday morning before service where we pull it all together and polish up our transitions.

[matreames]

believe it or not it was actually a quote from the simpsons that got me thinking about what true community is.
'Communication and Unity' this is especially true of qorship teams. we need to be able to communicate with one another freely and openly. To achieve this I suggest having a series of get togethers, watch some movies, Boxing, UFC, etc... things that people can enjoy together, and also spend time getting to know one another personally. sharing a little about yoruselves and your life at current (i.e. more than simple testimony, but actual, what life is for you at current)

also find a vision for the team as a whole and stick to it, it there is a unity of purpose and the whole team is going for it, then the team will flow together.

[Smitty]

Don't know about the rest of you, but I tend to make lists...of pretty much everything! I think its valuable to "road-map" where it is you are as a team, and where it is you want to go. Write it out!

As far as the number of musicians onstage is concerned, I would say that 8 is the magic number (it is for me, at any rate) If you have more than 8 interested, committed, talented musicians...you really need to start a second team. Just make sure you deal with the whole "A Team, B Team" thing.

Smitty

[hisfirewithin]

I decided to implement web 2.0 stuff and I created a myspace/facebook - type social networking site for our worship community. I found a company that hosts these type of social networks for free called Ning(ning.com), and I use it now as my one-stop communication portal for everything from lists, to songs/mp3s, and it also features commenting, private messaging, and discussion forums. The great thing is that you can make the network invite-only to make sure only your worship peeps get on it. Nobody can sign up without being invited.

[windbag]

Just make sure you deal with the whole "A Team, B Team" thing.

Smitty

Is there a thread on this somewhere? I've never seen this accomplished without hurt feelings and competitive nonsense.

[Smitty]

Windbag:

What I have done in the past, and still do when augmenting existing teams, is to rotate members from one team to another. This virtually eliminates hard feelings, and can be very helpful when "raising up" younger, less skilled musicians. It gives everybody a chance to play with everybody else, and quite often new friendships are formed, and older friendships are strengthened.