10 Tips To a Better Rehearsal, Part 3

Wrapping Up

We’re wrapping up with the final four “tips” for running a fantastic worship team rehearsal. Just in the way of review, here are the first six tips we discussed:

Start on time.
Be the most prepared person in the room.
Plan out your rehearsal.
Separate vocalists and instrumentalists for part of the rehearsal.
Get tech support.
Listen only to new songs.

Here are links to read Part 1 and Part 2 if you haven’t yet.

7. Get your team in the habit of marking their charts.

You may need to resolve to say “write this down” or “mark this spot” each time a change is made or a problem area arises. Eventually it’ll catch on. At least I’m hoping it will for my team…

And just to enable this, keep a replenishing supply of cheap mechanical pencils at your rehearsal space.

8. Don’t be afraid to NOT run the whole song.

This was alluded to in Tip 3. But it’s important enough to be its own point.

If a song is well known by the team, don’t waste time playing it all the way through. Work on the intro, the outro and any section of the song that might cause a stumble.

And like it was mentioned in Tip 3, use your well-worn song as a warm-up or sound-check tune. Or open your rehearsal by using this song to worship together as a team.

9. Institute a ‘No-Noodle’ Policy.

It never fails. As soon as you stop a song to talk about something, your instrumentalists start ‘noodling’ away on something. And the vocalists start chit-chatting.

Instruments and voices need to stop when the leader or another person is talking or working out something. This isn’t just a respect issue, it’s an efficiency issue. The noodling and side conversations are distracting.

Let your team know that if the issue at hand doesn’t pertain to them, they can work out what they need to work out with their instrument volume at zero. Vocalists, acoustic guitarists and drummers…you might be out of luck on this one.

10. If you’re the leader, lead.

Don’t be afraid to take charge. A worship team should never be a full democracy.

Often times in churches we have this misguided sense that we’re all in this together and there’s an equal say. But there’s a clear theme of leadership and authority structure in the New Testament.

As a leader, should I be open to suggestions? To constructive feedback? To the fact that my way might not be the best or right way? Yes. But when the call or decision needs to be made, I need to make it.

Remember, this is servant leadership, but it’s still leadership. And worship team needs you to take charge make this a fantastic rehearsal.

So this wraps up this three-part post with the ten tips to make our rehearsals better. I know you’ve got some great rehearsal techniques that I didn’t mention here. Add those below; we’d love to hear them.