Worship Teams

7 Values Worship Teams Should Have w/ Austin Ryan

Communicating values with your worship team is important to make sure everyone is on the same page. Matt McCoy with Loop Community sat down with Austin Ryan from Worship Catalyst to talk about the seven values he feels all worship leaders should have.

Why should we establish values with our teams?

If you are already a part of a worship team, you may wonder why it’s even necessary to establish values in your team.

Austin: “People are going to come up with their own things if we don’t share them. Our goal in worship ministry is to go to God and take others with us. Values are like guard rails on a road that help us get to our goal. When you have a team that embodies all of the same values, then when we add other people to the team they can either come in line with the team or they have to find somewhere else to go.”

The 7 Values

The values that Austin uses emerged over time through his experiences and from Scripture. Now he communicates them with all of the worship teams he’s a part of. Here are the 7 values with a brief description of each:

1. Excellence – “Doing the best with what you have. Which means a small church can actually be more excellent than a mega church because they’re doing the best with what they have.”
   
2. Creativity – “This starts in scripture. God created, and we were made in the image of God. So we were made in the image of the Creator. So if we don’t do creative things when we serve him, we aren’t living up to the potential that God gave us.”
   
3. Unity – “A lot of people consider unity to be relationships. But unity is based on mission. What is our shared mission? Then our relationships come around that mission and unity emerges.”
   
4. Humility – “This is rooted in Philippians 2. Serve one another, give someone else the good parts, turn things down to lift others up. I think that church bands are an incubator of pride. Something about the stage, lights, accolades, etc. We need to remember it’s not about us. Wake up every day and remember that it’s not about you and believe it.”
   
5. Authenticity – “Authenticity is words matching life. Be honest and be true. We aren’t being authentic to God if we’re singing songs about surrender and yielding when our lives aren’t matching up. As worship leaders and teams have to have this value and be honest to God and honest with each other. Be authentic horizontally and vertically.”
   
6. Evangelism – “A majority of people that die are not going to know Christ. Does that weigh on us? If it does, what can we do about it? When Jesus left Earth he said was that we’re going to be his witness, make disciples, baptize them. He never said “be a worship leader”. So how does worship and worship ministry play into the role of evangelism? If that’s not a value, then we kind of left the calling God gave us in the first place.”
   
7. Party – “If I’m going to be doing ministry for 5 to 10 years with the same people and make memories together, it’s going to be because we had a good time together. There’s a million places where people can sing and play music. If you want them to sing and play on your team, they need to have a good time doing it.”

To hear Austin dive deeper into these values, check out the full interview below! Take time this week to think about if you can add in some, or all, of these values to your team.