The A-Word. Four Steps to Start...

A lot of churches avoid the A-word like a plague. And not the one we are allowed to sing in that one Christmas song and read about on Palm Sunday. I’m talking about auditions.

Some churches avoid it semantically. Instead, they call it an interview, or an evaluation. Either way, the person being “interviewed” knows what it really is.

Other churches avoid it altogether. While they may not let anyone on the street walk up on their platform, they don’t really have a standard process to bring new people on the team.

And some churches that avoid the A-word do so because they just don’t bring new people in.

If your worship ministry doesn’t have a process for interviewing and evaluating potential team members, let me challenge you to start. Even if there’s no one knocking on your door to join. (And actually, that’s a great time to start.)

Here are four steps to get you started:

1. Begin now to look at this as multistep “process” and not a one-time audition or meeting.
2. Initiate a conversation with your team and your church leaders.
   What should we expect of new players/singers? What process should we use to qualify them for this ministry team? Who would lead this area of the ministry, and who has the final say? Pray through all this. And the other steps, too.
3. After those conversations, record your process in some sort of “official” document.
   Include all expectations for team members. If you don’t have your expectations and/or values documented, use this as a great excuse to develop them.
4. Prepare your current team members for growth.
   Cast a vision for why the team needs to continually grow. (Google “organizational life-cycle” if you can’t think of any other reason to grow.)
   
   And remember, the longer your team’s composition has remained static, the more one new person will change the dynamics of the team. Your people need to know it will move their cheese.

Creating an audition/evaluation/interview process will be more involved than this, but don’t worry. Start with these steps to build a foundation. If a interested musician waits in the wings for six months while you develop this, it’s probably not a bad thing. It’s better to risk losing a potential player than to rashly recruit a real problem.

Email me if you’ve got questions or want some feedback on developing your process.