Auditioning / Onboarding

This lesson isn’t about how to audition new members — that’s covered in depth in the team building and Copy Me courses. It’s about how to use the audition process to increase the musical excellence of your team. Think of your team as a bus: the goal is getting the right people into the right seats, sitting in their strong spots.

Welcome everyone — place them by gifting

Your worship ministry is not an exclusive club. It’s not for some elite group of super-musicians. Everyone who wants to be part of your worship community should be welcome.

You should allow anybody who wants to be part of your worship ministry — but where they serve and what role they play should be based on their giftings and abilities.

So welcome everyone into the family, but have clearly defined requirements for each role and position. For an electric guitarist in your main sanctuary, that list might be:

• Play comfortably to a metronome
• Play both lead lines and rhythm guitar
• Have confident knowledge of the fretboard
• Learn new parts on the fly, by ear

Those are the standards for that seat — and you shouldn’t be ashamed of them.

Never lower your standards

If someone can’t meet your requirements, don’t lower your standards. Instead, work with that musician to raise them up to meet the standard. This is true of both musical and spiritual standards. When you let someone on the team who falls below the requirement, you lower the overall quality of your team’s musicianship — because the team is the sum of its parts.

It’s simple math. Ten plus ten equals twenty. But one plus one equals only two.

Add two tens and your overall is twenty. Add two ones and you drag it down to two. Compromise, and you’ll have a weekly headache managing someone who can’t keep up.

The kindest thing you can do

In an effort to be nice, lowering the bar actually sets people up for failure and frustration — you’ve put someone who isn’t ready into a position where they can’t succeed. That’s an unloving thing to do. The nicest thing you can do is help them find the appropriate place to serve based on their gifts.

Ideally, you’re looking for musicians who don’t just maintain your current level but raise the average. Tech companies like SpaceX and Amazon talk about hiring “culture adds,” not “culture fits” — people who lift the overall ability of the team. View your audition process the same way.

And if your church just doesn’t have many options? The advice still stands. Adding someone below your team’s level takes the team backwards. Instead, welcome them into the community and tell them you’ll work with them to develop their skills up to your standard — which is exactly what the next lesson is about.

Application

• Write out the concrete, non-negotiable requirements for each visible seat on your team. Are they clear enough that a new player would know if they qualify?
• Think of a time you let someone in below the bar. What did it cost the team — and the person? What would placement-by-gifting have looked like instead?
• Reframe your standards as love, not exclusion. Who on your sidelines needs a clear development path rather than a premature seat?