Photos courtesy of First West, West Monroe, LA
Merry Christmas, friends. This season, we’re charged not only with sharing the gospel through the Christmas story, but also caring for our production teams more than usual. I’m sure by now that you have a couple of Christmas service rehearsals completed with a few more to go before your Christmas Sunday or Christmas Eve services. These rehearsals are crucial to making your team feel cared for, and I’d like to share five tips on how to make that care feel next-level.
1. Be Ready To “Plug & Play”
When your worship and production team arrives for rehearsals, have everything ready. They should be able to head to their station and go—set out in-ear body packs, mics, water, music stands, sheet music, and generally anything besides what they’re bringing themselves. Your team needs to be able to walk in and start making sound within ten to fifteen minutes of their arrival time.
This honors your team in an unspoken way by demonstrating that you care about the time they’re volunteering to your ministry. Most of our volunteers have a lot going on this time of year, and they’ve chosen to add your Christmas program or service to an already full schedule, which means it’s on us to take care of them during the precious few hours they’ve given us.
2. Get Planning Center Dialed In
You can schedule rehearsal and arrival times on Planning Center. I’ve found this to be much more handy than just sending out an email with a rehearsal and service schedule. You can assign certain times to certain teams so that worship and production know when to arrive even if they arrive at different times.
While you certainly should send out an email with all relevant scheduled times on it, placing all those times on Planning Center gives everyone easy access to the schedule, and it’s easier to update if plans change.
Don’t stop with rehearsal and arrival times, either. Planning Center allows you to schedule your whole service down to the second if you’d like, and you can annotate each item in your service plan so that everyone knows where they need to be and when.
3. Have Food And Drinks Out
I’m going to say this more than once—your team is volunteering their time, and it’s probably during their dinner hour. While you might not be able to cater a whole meal, have some good snacks and drinks out. Nailing this little detail will be another way of saying you care and you’re thankful for them without saying anything at all.
4. Consider Arranging Child Care
This might lead to a conversation with your executive pastor about budget, but if you can arrange child care during your Christmas rehearsals, it’s only going to help you. Parents with young children will be reluctant to volunteer for your Christmas team if they have to arrange child care themselves, so you’ll have more volunteers at the ready if you can have childcare available at the church.
5. Be A Little Intense About Time
This is the last time I’ll say this: your team is volunteering their time, and being efficient so they’re not at the church late making tweaks to production elements is crucial. They have families and they’d like to see those families, especially at Christmas time.
I’m not saying be mean about it, but, again, make sure your end of things is handled and ready to roll, then take charge when teams start to dilly-dally, which they will if you’ve worked to develop a healthy team culture. People should be chatty and having a good time, but it’s also ok to gently keep things moving so that everyone can be home at a reasonable hour.
At the risk of being cheesy, this all boils down to remembering the reason for the season: Jesus himself. He led as a servant, and we are to lead in the same, putting ourselves last. I pray we lead with that heart this Christmas season.
