{"id":4093,"date":"2010-07-01T14:54:03","date_gmt":"2010-07-01T14:54:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.musicademy.com\/?p=4093"},"modified":"2019-08-02T11:42:43","modified_gmt":"2019-08-02T11:42:43","slug":"worship-team-auditions-a-guest-post-from-kim-gentes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.musicademy.com\/blog\/worship-team-auditions-a-guest-post-from-kim-gentes\/","title":{"rendered":"Worship team auditions – a guest post from Kim Gentes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Advice on worship team auditions<\/h2>\n

For years, I worked through how to build a team in a “worship band” format. I tried volunteers, training up musicians, bringing in friends and many other things.\u00a0 After a while, I settled on the realization that recruiting for worship and music is something that can be helped by developing a good process. This format is one mechanism that can help in building a worship team.\u00a0 Auditions aren’t for every one, or every church.\u00a0 But where they fit, they can be very helpful. Below is a method I developed from years of pastoring worship teams.\u00a0 I don’t expect people to use this method exactly as is.\u00a0 Use what you can, and modify it to fit your church.\u00a0 Each situation will require different understanding and application of God’s wisdom.\u00a0 I hope this is helpful in helping you to develop your own method that can work well in your local church. – Kim Gentes<\/em><\/p>\n

The PDFs below\u00a0are a presentation note set that can be used used along with the audio.\u00a0 Select the PDF file (“Worship-Team-Auditions.pdf”) below and open it up to viewable size on your computer.\u00a0 Once you have it opened, select the mp3 file (“worshipauditions.mp3”) below and listen to the audio presentation as you follow along in the PDF notes.\u00a0 The remaining files are support documents (an evaluation sheet and an excel results sheet) that are used in this method. The session is 1 hour long, with 15 additional minutes of\u00a0Q&A from the live presentation audience. Total listening time is 1 hour, 18min.<\/em><\/p>\n

To download the mp3, powerpoint, PDF and excel spreadsheet by Kim on this topic, you can do so here:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.kimgentes.com\/worship-team-auditions\/<\/a><\/p>\n

HOLD ON: Before You Do Auditions!<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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If you decide that using worship team auditions may be for you, you might want to think about some priliminary concepts to make sure your integration of auditions flows with the vision and direction of your church. Below I have written some thoughts on what you might consider before<\/em><\/strong> using auditions. Using auditions assumes that you know that auditions will fit with the vision and philosophy of your church leadership.<\/p>\n

Its important to develop a philosophy of ministry that helps you ensure that any guidelines or criteria you use for people fits in the vision and setting of your local church.\u00a0 The best way to do that is to make sure you understand the goals of your local church and its pastoral leadership. In other words, the most important thing to start with <\/strong><\/em>is to know the goals of\u00a0 the pastor and church in terms of the what they are trying to establish with the music.\u00a0 Basically, what level of music performance is expected and what general goals for worship ministry are there.\u00a0 Knowing this is essential to team guidelines or auditioning, in my mind, since it forms the basis for where to set the bar on performance, on expectations and on personnel that are on your team.\u00a0 Having some clarity on that from your pastor here is essential.<\/p>\n

What I often hear back from worship leaders or music directors is something like this:<\/p>\n

From a philosophical level I believe at this time we need to add to the team in numbers without lowering the quality. We need doubles of each position (minimally) for consistency, to be fresh and so we don’t grow control issues.\u00a0 Here are our two essentials we think are important for our church worship ministry-<\/em><\/p>\n

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  1. \n
    Have a heart of a worshipper – not just a performer <\/em><\/div>\n<\/li>\n
  2. \n
    Are minimally as good as what we already have – Ideally, for future auditions we would seek only to add those that would add to or raise the bar of what we have but for now I think more of what we have would be a positive.<\/em><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    At this point I would\u00a0ask two specific questions:<\/p>\n