I have been at my current job for 52 days! I have made it past the 30-day review. I have carried out my first campus Night of Worship. I have auditioned a vocalist and met with a potential acoustic player. I have navigated vocal rest and volunteers’ vacation schedules. I have co-hosted TWICE. One of my original songs was chosen as a closer for a message in our church’s favorite series.
Somewhere around 30 days, I really felt like I’d finally adjusted.
I wanted to document the state of things at this point in time, because my last post outlined three specific goals for my ministry.
- Switch up the flow of rehearsal. This was easy! I’ve actually gone back and forth as of late.
- Rehearsal room recordings. We are now regularly recording rehearsals straight from the board. It definitely beats the sound quality of an iPhone. Also, Jonathan has been editing these as soon as we get home from rehearsal. The email I send out with the recordings also recaps the prayers and praises mentioned at rehearsal.
- Evaluation link. I have also begun sending this out! Some weeks it doesn’t go so well (user error on the tech side) and so far I haven’t been big on giving feedback from the video. I may eventually encourage people to look for specific things in the video.
Some other things that have happened are:
- I have finally figured out how to communicate with the team. It’s not my preference by any means, but at least I’ve figured it out. For mass communication, they need a group text that is to the point. If it’s more complex information, like call times and expectations for the Night of Worship we held, I send out a Marco Polo for people to watch. Also, on any given Sunday, about 50% to 75% of the team is at church, so word of mouth has been useful.
- I have managed to streamline rehearsal prep. My dream of having everything ready for the volunteers before rehearsal begins is looking more and more like a reality and a habit.
- So far, I’ve been pretty good about communicating unique service details to our Producer. In the past, there have been some unusual service elements here and there that weren’t explicitly communicated and explained in advance and my goal is to foresee those things and make sure she comes into rehearsal knowing everything she needs to know to do her job confidently.
- Going along with the same theme of communication, I have managed to do this well for my drummer. He lives in an area that has terrible internet, so he goes somewhere on Mondays and gets everything he needs for the week to practice. Being specifically told about arrangement changes or transitions ahead of time makes a world of difference for him, and then for our rehearsals. After all, everyone just wants to have the full picture and have confidence on Sundays. One step forward!
The next big thing I plan to tackle will likely take place on August 7th, and that is a team meeting. To do this, I need to have a conversation with my Technical Coordinator and make sure we can co-lead a meeting that covers everything that we need to cover. I’m hoping that he will contribute some ideas of his own. It will be impossible to drive the worship team as a whole forward without the tech people being on the same mission. We’re about to find out how interested he is in that.
SARAH HARPER 