Daniel J. Mathew offers BGV tips:

A lot has been said about worship leading, about the responsibilities both musically and spiritually a person has when leading a congregation in corporate musical worship, and whilst most points are relevant to all members of the band and creative arts, often they’re specifically referring to the vocal worship leader who is chiefly leading the band and congregation.

Today, however, I want to specifically talk about a section that can often feel a little less important or even slightly overlooked in a worship team – and that is the backing vocals.

The Backing Vocalists or BVs as they’re commonly called (although now we call them “Frontline Vocals” at church; it’s all in the semantics…) are an integral part of the team and go a long way into helping the general sound of the worship as well as supporting the worship leader and leading the congregation. They’re so important in fact; my first point is actually this:

Know your worth

When BVing, it’s often easy to think that no one can hear you and that no one will notice if you give a bit less effort and take it easy. But when worship leading I know how aware of the BV’s I am and how much I rely on them to back me up and help me drive the service. From every other perspective it is so integral to the team, so if you are BVing please take everything you do seriously. Your body language makes a huge difference to the presence on the stage, and when the stage is setting the vibe for the congregation, every little thing is crucial.

Prepare diligently with warming up your voice, memorising lyrics and harmonies, and even being ready to sing different parts if the service needs it. Don’t set your level of expectation to what the bare minimum is that others expect of you, know your full ability and within yourself set that level of expectation of the very best you can possible give as the bare minimum for what you’re bringing to the service as a BV.

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Catalyst director Brad Lomenick on team building:

So what about when someone completely drops the ball? We all have experienced this as leaders. I know I have. So how do you respond?

You give a big assignment or project to someone on your team, and they lay an egg- totally drop the ball and don’t get it done. We’ve all been there. I know I have…..both as the goat who goofed up, as well as the one in charge trying to figure out how to handle the situation.

So how do you handle it? Let’s look at this situation from both sides, both the one who dropped the ball and the one in charge.

1. As the one who dropped the ball, just own up to it. Don’t make excuses. Be self-policing and self aware. Be accountable. And be mature. And realize that your leader or your boss or the person in charge is trying to figure out how to deal with your mistake or lack of action- lean into that and bring it up first and tell them it won’t happen again. Don’t wait on them to have to confront you. Be proactive. Leaders would always rather find out from you that you laid an egg, vs. finding out from someone else, many times when it’s too late to do anything about it.

Own up. Grow Up. Shut up. And don’t be the goat again.

2. As the leader, four things to think about: 1. confrontation; 2. conversation; 3. restoration; 4. affirmation. Got these from Kevin Myers in a talk he did a couple of years ago at 12 Stone Church. The key on this- confront, and then move on. Get through the confrontation and onto to the conversation and restoration as quick as possible. If you have the right kind of person on your team, they feel terrible anyway, so spend very little time confronting, and way more time on restoration and affirmation.

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Eric Dye on sound levels:

My first experiences with church sound level complaints was pretty flippant. I thought, “Seriously? Have you nothing more important to think about?” However, the truth of the matter is, church volume is something that cannot be ignored. If you have people in your congregation that complain about the volume being too loud, their volume with continue to increase until something happens.

When someone complains about the volume being too high, what’s your first reaction?

• Do you think those at the battle of Jericho complained about the volume?
• Wow! Really? We’ll have to re-check our levels next weekend.
• I’m sorry, let me turn that down for you.

I recommend the second reaction. There’s no need to start a battle. We’ve got more important things to do in the church than bicker about the volume like an old married couple.

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