A worship team contract — often known as a worship team covenant — is an important part of running a worship ministry.
Download your free worship team contract template here
Sure, you can go for years without an official document (we certainly did at our church) but eventually, you’ll need one.
For instance, what happens when one team member is consistently late to rehearsal? Everyone else is waiting around. That’s unfair and disrespectful to the rest of the team. But without a document, it’s likely clear expectations were never set.
And that’s the number 1 reason to have an agreement in place. It’s not the kind of contract that you use to nail people when they break it. It’s more to set guidelines upfront and avoid those situations altogether.
Recently, some of the worship leaders at my church scoured the internet and pulled together the best parts of various worship team agreements we found. The guidelines we decided on fit well with our church, but you may want to add more (or take away some) for your team. It’s up to you.
The good news is you don’t have to start from scratch. I’m offering a free sample template as an editable Word document that you can download, alter, turn into a PDF, and start using.
Download your editable worship team contract here.
How To Roll Out Your Worship Team Contract
I know what you’re thinking.
How are you going to get everyone to sign this? Awkward…
It doesn’t have to be weird. First, you’ll have to call an all-team meeting. For some churches, that’s like three people. That’s totally okay.
Whoever you have, call them all together. Say it’s a meeting to get everyone on the same page as far as expectations. All you’re doing is making the undocumented ethereal guidelines into written guidelines. You shouldn’t be rolling out huge new changes with this agreement, by the way. It should just reinforce guidelines that everyone “kinda knows”.
Communicate that this is the next step in your church team’s growth. Without a written agreement, your team can’t go to the next level.
Make sure you don’t single out any one person. These rules are for the whole team. You shouldn’t roll out team-wide rules to address the problems of one. Instead, go to that person first, address the issues specifically, then roll out the agreement to the whole team.
When your team is together, go through the points verbally. Describe why each item in the contract, backing it up with Scripture when you can.
When we implemented the agreement at my church, four leads took a portion of the agreement and talked about it in-depth. The leads received the contract ahead of time and prepared notes and anticipated questions or concerns.
The team’s response was great, we didn’t lose anyone or turn anyone off, and there were fewer questions than we thought there would be. The team thought the guidelines made total sense.
Since then, I can say we’ve had fewer issues, and, if anything major ever does arise, we have a signed document showing what the team member agreed to.
The worship team contract doesn’t solve all your problems. But it does give you a foundation upon which to address issues as they come up so you can move on and take your worship ministry to the next level.
Image via MJ S/Unsplash