Serving in a church as the solo pastor can be a difficult task, especially if you’re like me and prefer to work as part of a team. The key is to develop a team of people to work with you. That team can be in your church and out of your church. For me the best experience has been to have both parts to the team.
A few weeks before the start of every series I try to pull these folks together to have a conversation about the upcoming worship plan. We discuss the themes, the key elements required, and how we can help each other produce the best worship experience. Including other people in your worship planning will dramatically increase the quality of the worship experience in your church. Even if it’s just two or three other people, gather them together and talk through your next sermon series. You’ll be amazed at how extra eyes and ears influence your planning.
In my church, the worship team consists of three groups of people that all discuss worship.
- Music Team – Our music team consists of a part-time staff person and a team of volunteer musicians and singers. Including this group of people in planning worship helps to keep them engaged, gives broader perspective of musical selection, and input into the worship experience
- Altar or environment team – Having a group of people that focus on the environment and staging of your worship space will dramatically enhance your worship experience. Even if the focus is a traditional altar including this group in worship planning will let them match the preaching themes of worship.
- Media team – If you have a team that prepares visual materials, for screens or print, they need to be part of the planning conversation to be most effective. If you don’t have a media team, Kaio Studios can provide this type of input into your worship process.
The other team that I most missed from the worship discussion when moving to a solo pastorate was a teaching team. I didn’t realize how much having a collaborative process for sermon writing improved my preaching until I found myself doing the preparation alone. If you feel this way check out the Collaborative Sermon Workshop as a way to engage with other preachers in a shared preparation process. The next cohort will meet this fall and plan sermons for January – June in 2018 together.
Photo by amslerPIX 