Do Worship Musicians Lack Confidence?

Junjie, one of the guys that helps me with the admin side of running Worship The Rock has written a great blog called 'Worship Musicians - A Sales Lesson'. It's about how churches should and shouldn't recruit worship musicians and has some great insights and truths. I've included an excerpt below but please do real the whole article.

Worship Musicians - A Sales Lesson

This never fails to irk me.

I'd be talking with some business people, and they'll tell me what kind of customers they want, usually those who would mindlessly buy all their products at prices way above the market rate. Fair enough. I mean, if I was in business that's the kind of customers I would want too.

And when I ask, "What are these people like? What do they care about? Where can you find them?" I usually get blank stares. Or they say "Can you help improve the English in our advertisement so that we can appeal to those people?" They've probably realized that their advertising isn't working, so they hope that a quick fix (like improving the grammar) is enough to have hordes of crazed customers banging down their doors, begging for the chance to give them tons of money...

If business was THAT simple, shouldn't I do it myself and take all the money? Come on!


("JJ, I thought this is about worship ministry?" - I'll get to that in a moment!)


Those business people don't realize that you cannot create something, present it to your ideal customer and try to trick them into buying it. Unless you are the only source of a product everyone needs, you have to know what your customers are looking for, what matters to them and how to give them what THEY want to buy, not what you want to sell to them.

Makes sense?

Just as clueless as the business people I mentioned earlier are many church leaders when looking for worship musicians. They approach recruiting church musicians with the same amount of care, planning and thought those businesses approach acquiring customers - almost zero.

Let me put this to you in business terms: when you are recruiting church musicians, you are doing sales. You are selling people the opportunity to be used by God in a powerful ministry that can deeply touch the lives of people, and can oftentimes unlock many other hidden giftings within the servers as well.

And what is the price? The price they have to pay to buy this opportunity is time; time spent on lessons and practice to acquire the relevant skills and knowledge, as well as time spent on rehearsals and service. This is time that can be spent with the family, on the career or the social life, or studying other areas of interest.


(Taking me for example - the biggest reason I am currently a socially-inept worship ministry geek is because of all the time I spent practicing during my younger days. That was the price I paid. This is why I can't do youth ministry. I totally don't understand youth, because I spent my youth on scales and drum rudiments!)


Besides time, many musicians have also invested considerable sums of money, both in their lessons and to purchase their instruments for practice. Let's not include the opportunity cost, all the money they could have made if they spent their free time working instead of practising!

From this we can see that it takes a certain personality type to become a musician. Working with this type of people is like marketing to the affluent. If you try to sell products and services to the affluent without understanding what makes them different from the rest of the market, you will fail.

Dismally.

There is one thing many worship musicians have in common. And if you understand this ONE feature, you will know how to recruit them, how to handle them and how to lead them.

What is it?


Worship musicians very often lack confidence.

This makes sense if you stop and really think about it. Music is very wide ranging and diverse, and after some time the musician become aware of all the areas they are still not good at. Sight-reading? Arranging? Playing in a particular style, such as baroque, classical, jazz or R & B? Playing by ear? Improvisation? Transposing?


Continue reading the rest of the blog...