By Jon Nicol

For some worship teams I’ve led, we asked, “Did we avoid a train wreck?” If the answer was yes, that Sunday landed in the “win” column.

Avoiding a mid-song meltdown is a good thing. But once you move past mere musical survival, what does success look like?

Some would say excellence.

Unfortunately, measuring excellence for the worship team is subjective:

• Did I worship well?
• Did I do a good job inviting and encouraging others to worship well?
• Did I have musical and technical…awesomeness?

Measuring our success is tough. But measuring our failure? That’s easy:

• My head was stuck in my music stand the entire set.
• She closed her eyes the whole time and ignored the congregation.
• He botched two transitions.
• You fumbled the words on that verse.
• I came in late on that bridge.

It’s tough to improve when you’re chasing some vague notion of “excellence” with no tangible milestones to gauge progress. And, “Try not to suck,” is not an excellence-inspiring goal.

But think about this: If I’m trying to lose weight, what’s my measure of success?

The numbers on the scale.

The fit of my fat pants.

The number of my chins.

Now, if I’m serious about losing weight, those can’t be the only things I measure. Those are known as “lag measures.” They show up after I’ve done the work. I can’t stand on the scale and will it to read my college-freshman-year weight.

 

 

Credit: https://www.worshipteamcoach.com/blog/2018/02/27/how-do-you-measure-success-on-a-worship-team