MENTORING WORSHIP TEAMS

CREATING ORGANISATION

In order for me to best assist the worship leader or ensemble, I request the following to be submitted before engaging in lessons or mentoring sessions:

1.    Send a list of 20 core songs that you will constantly be using and that each team member must know by heart

2.    Send a list of 10 theme songs that your leadership strongly feel are part of what God wants to achieve in the spiritual development of the group

3.    With the songlists, provide their tempo (beats per minute / BPM) their keys in alto / soprano and keys for tenor (e.g. if tenor sings in F, then soprano usually sings in C - always 4 / 5 tones lower in the scale).

4.    Team resources / training: With these 30 songs, the resource database must each have an accompanying:

a.     chord sheet (guitarists)

b.    lead sheet (pianists and trained musicians)

c.     mp3 soundtrack (vocalists and musicians)

d.    You can subscribe to Planning Centre online or create a Dropbox account only for the worship team.

e.     Try and make it the team's responsibility to make physical copies and build their own filing system. In this way, you are also preparing the main musicians and leaders when you are not around.

5.    Provide the dates for the training workshop / camp so we can plan adequately. I can also contribute to those days if you guys have it in your budget for certain hours of vocal training?

6.    Workshop structure: Work on a structure along the lines discussed: 

a.     The heart and culture of service to God in the worship ministry.  

b.    Technical skill in mastery of music - the discipline and the commitment personally and not just at the rehearsals.

 i.     a. How to practice at home - making rehearsals at home as a lifestyle 

ii.     b. Knowing your responsibility and commitment 

iii.     c.  getting your heart in line with the Lord - personal relationship with God - a heart of prayer and worship   

c.     Repertoire - getting the group to rehearse the core songs and the theme songs for the term.    

d.    Unity - Leadership vision discussion the importance of relationship, the love of God and people and the importance of catching the leaders vision and submitting to the Lord as a service to Him. Making time for fellowship once a month - braai, camp, including things like team building games, personality tests, what is your gift? etc.

7.    Set list for Sunday Format: after you have arranged your filing and have created an adequate index, you must be able to find the songs in two ways: alphabetically and also in theme.

a.     Alphabetical list will be used when you already have a song idea and you're just looking it up.

b.    Theme list will be used when you don't have songs but only a theme and you want to group songs according to theme.

c.     You can then only arrange these two lists according to tempo and key since you want to start with tempo choices before choosing song titles.

Find out more about this topic by the author Adele Visser of NobleLight Music School

Blog: 17 January 2025