Idle Words: The Destruction of Teams
December 26, 2008
Luke 6:45 The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.
I honestly believe if a negative word was never spoken during a rehearsal, during a service or during team meetings, teams would be so strong nothing would destroy them.
Out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks! So basically what is in our heart is revealed when we open our mouths. Scary.
The most discouraging ongoing problem we face on our worship team is negative words, endless suggestions as to how the sound can be better, complaints about who has a solo, suggestions on how to improve this or that.
Any word spoken with the intent of self edification, with a critical spirit or just a negative tone is truly an idle word. So how as leaders do we stop the barrage of words and teach our teams to live worshipfully and not just lead on stage worshipfully?
Stop it as soon as it begins. Speak to any individual immediately who begins to slowly poison the team with negative or idle words of any kind. We have learned this the hard way. In several cases if I or one of the other leaders had confronted negativity immediately, it would not have seeped in to affect others.
In the case of confronting someone in love we have NEVER had an angry exit. We have always had team members who confess and admit that they realize they are being negative. Sometimes they choose to leave the team after a period of time if they see they have no audience. We have standards that insure to the best of our ability that each team member is a fully devoted Christ follower, or is pursuing a deeper walk with Christ. What a blessing, to be tough up front and avoid trouble in the end.
Lori Biddle
Director of Magnification
Crossroads Community Church
Mansfield, Ohio
www.loribiddle.com
Related posts:
- Heart Check
- Perspective
- Spirit of Excellence
- Peace! Does Your Team Have It?
- Letters to Leaders, Vol. 2
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Great Article Lori! This is so true. I have had many meeting with individuals regarding not only negative words but negative actions. A worship leader cannot be afraid or brush these issues under the carpet, it needs to get attacked immediately with love, respect, and wisdom, Awesome!
this is so true. i adopted a no s.o.s. policy which means no Suggestions On Sunday. i felt my team and certain people in the church were becoming way to critical. they couldn’t wait to give me criticism before i left church. it was draining me. i began explaining that i didn’t listen to suggestions on sundays, but they were welcome to call or email me during the week and i’d listen to every complaint or suggestion. it’s working. i think sunday should be reserved for worship and encouragement. most of the time, people forget their criticism once they leave the church.
Lori,
As always, great advice and counsel – thanks for your incredible contributions to TheWorshipCommunity.Com here!
Fred
What a blessing, I’ve been praying about this issue (it’s going on in our team) and this article has given me courage to be straight about not letting negativity fill the atmosphere and stopping it immediately.
thank you!
Jose Gonzalez
San Jose, California