What is the culture like on your team? Are you frustrated by it? Happy with it? Proud of it? I read a blog a few years ago that stuck with me: You Create the Culture, Punk, by Ben Arment.
Read it! As leaders, we need to own the culture we’re creating. If you’re not happy with how yours sits right now, go after it and fix it. There’s no time to waste—without change, you risk losing those you most want to keep around.
Second, and not-so-heavy, question: Do you share your Sunday set lists week-to-week? Are you a blogger? One thing I’ve found to be fun and informative, to our church and my social media followers who LOVE worship music, is to share our weekend experience each week through my blog. I get many requests asking about specific songs; sharing the set list weekly has helped our team to direct people to the post. I am able to include links for videos that we’ve done, a link to the service page on our church site (where the podcast, notes, and video are posted weekly), the songs with the writer information, and a fun piece of my blog that I call “BloggyBits” (where our behind-the-scenes culture really shows up—more on that at the end).
The reason on bring up culture first is because I’m so proud of my team and the culture we’ve created. Yes, we audition all participants and the skill level is high—a certain level of ability is required. But the cultural “fit” is also important, and we talk about that as people join the team. We have a climate and culture that is fun and relaxed; people have great attitudes, we serve one another, we are highly skilled (instrumentally/vocally), and we are ultra-prepared. We work hard and prepare hard; in our down time, we’re laughing uncontrollably and playing hard together.
Culture doesn’t have to mean a specific age or style, either. We are a multigenerational, multicultural team. We have teens through 60-somethings, a psychologist with a PhD, a former Billy Graham worship leader, a stay-at-home mom, educators, IT and computer programmers, gigging professional musicians, married couples serving together in the band, self-taught musicians, and people with Masters degrees in music. You want a relaxed, fun team with amazing camaraderie. The culture starts with you—you set the attitude and expectations; you own it and lead the way.
Back to the blog…
A fun way that I share our culture and weekly serving experience on my blog is called “BloggyBits.” These are simply wild, fun, random moments behind the scenes of our weekend together. I’m going to share some with you, in the style of my BloggyBits. These are highlights of this year:
The epic roof shot…
Family pic with some of choir too..
Eating together during a service, missing our friend & team member who was out of town…
Sometimes I take “Players of the Weekend” pictures & post them. Love every one of them…
Half of the band sneaking away to Sonic, seeing if they can do it in time & texting me the pic….
Having a birthday party for our sound man and friend, Josh!
Seeing who can still do a handstand/cartwheel in a upstairs, back hallway during first…
Family pic in the photo-booth last Christmas…
Eating together at my house. Of course, we HAVE to do this way more often. Andrew, our worship leader had just found out about his cancer…
So, he missed Christmas but came to one of the services…family pic with Andrew!
Praying for Andrew in all of the services…
Now we’re rocking his WITT-Strong bands…
So is choir as we group picture around his guitar while he was out getting treatments…
Crossroads band rockin’ a mega BLIZZARD!
Electric guitar player, smashing one of those weird cysts on our violin player’s wrist on Easter. We were SCREAMING laughing!
Tailgating in my new RV out back before I flipped it…
Yay!! This tech team had problems ALL weekend long & fixed everything with smiles & skills!!
There may be beef jerky in my piano on stage…
The band’s green room – my RV now glamorously flipped!
I always include others’ instagrams or facebook posts in the bloggy bits & now many people on our team will send me their pics from the weekend for the blog…
You should think of doing this! One tip that helps me, is if I post the songs portion before the weekend so that I can gather pics & commentary after church on Sunday – then share. …AND lastly, don’t underestimate how a culture shift can impact your team & ministry…lead the way!
