Taking this a little further, I know a lot of great and talented musicians who are on many worship teams and who are even the head worship leader at their church who have no clue what it really means to be a true worshiper, yet they know everything there is to know about music.

So, I think the first question a church should ask is what are they looking to do with their congregation. After all they are the sheep and the worship leader is a kind of shepherd. That worship leader will feed his sheep or congregation something every week and what he feeds them is what they will eat not only on Sunday morning services at the church, but they will take it home with them throughout the week as well. What they eat is what they will become, and so you must ask, what do you want your congregation to become?

If you want song singers in your church, then find yourself a great musician who knows how to produce a great show every week. However, if you want lovers and worshipers of God, then find yourself a worship leader who is first a lover and worshiper of God himself. Make sure that worship leaders number one priority will always be to raise up other worshipers. He can’t raise up worshipers if he’s not one himself.

Leading worship and music is always secondary.

Yes, it’s harder. But I would recommend that churches not overlook people on this one issue, particularly if they have experience.

Thanks for the thoughts.

What is the best boss you have worked for? Why?

What is the worst boss/company? Why?

How would you like working on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in regards to pace? (attempting to see pace they like, if they say, “would hate it” and the job requires tons of multi-tasking, watch out).

If I handed you 10 million dollars today and said, “Go do something significant with your life, what would you do?” (See if they would still align themselves somehow with the general field you are hiring them for. This shows if it is their prime passion).

How does a person manage people well? (Not only to see how they like to be managed, but how they would manage others).

Tell me about yourself when you were 9? Were you a people person, reserved? Did you play offense or defense on the playground? (Biehl says you are at the core who you were at age 9. In stress you will revert back to that. Are they an offensive goal setter or defensive problem solver? Does doing “people stuff” come naturally? We have found this is a fantastic question).

In addition, we have learned to utilize the Leading From Your Strengths test available for purchase at http://www.ministryinsights.com. We make all second round candidates take it. It reveals what combination of Lion (take charge), Otter (people person), Golden Retriever (team player), or Beaver (systems and numbers) they are. You want a receptionist to have high otter skills. I want my admin to be high Golden Retriever and Beaver with very low Lion. I want my tech leaders to have high Beaver as it means they’ll pay attention to detail. The head of that area needs to have some higher Otter to manage people well. This test is remarkable. I have asked every candidate that is married to show the results to their spouse to see how accurate they think it is. We always get a, “Wow, that is amazing!” result. It helps you know who you are getting personality wise very effectively. I’ll post up my results tomorrow so you can see what a profile report looks like (that is the profile of an extremely anal beaver..hahaha)

from http://www.worshiptrench.com/?p=163

“- Vocalists (lead excluded) who sing all the time
- Musicians who play all the time
- Vocalists who constantly harmonize
- Vocalists with too wide of a vibrato
- Vocalists with too much vibrato
- Vocalists/musicians out of tune
- Lack of dynamics
- Poor mix
- Musicians who play over top of each other instead of leaving room for others
- Guitarists and keyboardists who use sounds/tones/patches that don’t suit the music or its style
- Poor vocal enunciation causing words to be difficult to understand or giving the music the wrong style
- Musicians playing the wrong style for the music
- The wrong instruments used for the style of music being presented.”

Very good points there. It is easy to let these slide with the attempt of not causing conflict with seemingly always “being on peoples cases”.

On going forward, I hope to find or see some tips to push these points along. Some ideas on handling difficult people. Or for instance if there are singers that are traditional hymn singers and need to sing in the contemporary style.

What has happen to the singing Biblical based songs ( much of Maranatha’s early music was simply from scipture) and I might add quite beautiful.

Hymns are important as they represent the history of our people, the Chrurch of Jesus Christ. To dismiss singing these wonderful songs and not teaching them to our young people is a mistake like cutting off an arm from the body.

One thing I have been pleased to see that we have in the last month or so have sung at least one hymn each Sunday albeit very jazzed up. But this Sunday we sang a wonderufl hymn without the drums or guitar and it was just beautiful, and at one point we even sang as a congregation acapella. What beauty! to hear the voices of the saints singing in unision without the instruments. That is not to say we need to go back to singing only hymns but to dismiss them totally is a mistake. The Bible says to make melody in our hearts by singing a hymn, a psalm and a new song. We know the hymns, Maranatha has many songs based on the psalms and I think all bases are covered on the new song.

Next I would like to express my concern for the music in the fam jam being too “rock and roll ” in sound for the smaller children. I took my grandchild and the music played before the program even began was way to modern for small children. I think their music should reflect a simpler yet fun style, similar to the Psalty series. Those songs were upbeat while scriptural. I was uneasy in my spirit that Sunday. And i am not trying to be critical just sharing some thoughts as an outsider just coming in.