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What's the difference between practice and rehearsal and how does how we answer that question impact our teams?
Questions meant to provoke contemplation, and encourage discussion with your team, all in less than 10 minutes. For worship leaders, production directors and anyone involved in making Sunday services happen.
(00:03):
Welcome to volunteer friendly episode seven practice versus rehearsal. Hey everyone. This is will Doggett and welcome to volunteer friendly a from studio to stage show. And in this show, we talk about, uh, questions and topics and things that hopefully are very thought provoked. The goal of the show is not to be a platform for me to share my ministry, personal ministry philosophy. Uh, and it's not a show where I actually answer any questions. That's, that's maybe frustrating if you're the person that's like, just give me the answer. That's not the goal of this show, but the goal is to provoke some tension, to provide some questions, some thoughts, uh, about things that maybe we should start to and stop doing. Or maybe question, why did we do this in the first place anyway, uh, and the goal is to, to provide one topic, one point of discussion, uh, that we talk about for less than 10 minutes, that you can then contemplate individually and then bring to your team and discuss with your team as a whole.
(00:56):
Now last week's episode was pretty heavy. So I'm gonna make this week's episode, highly technical, and this may feel like I'm talking more to worship leaders and maybe perhaps I am, but I think this also really relates to production folks as well. And so today we're talking about practice and rehearsal practice versus rehearsal. Um, I think language matters. I think the words we use matter and what I see a lot of times in church is that we use a term and we think it means one thing when it actually means another thing, or we think this is what this means, whereas our team sees it, uh, as something completely different. And this is a perfect example, the example of practice versus rehearsal, because I do think these are two separate things, but I think a lot of times we use the term to mean both.
(01:38):
Um, and I think a lot of times, some of us walk into a practice thinking a practice, um, um, or walk into a rehearsal thinking it's rehearsal and it ends up being a practice session, uh, which can be kind of frustrating. And so I've seen in years of working with churches, uh, and teaching at worship conferences that this is one of the biggest struggles that worship leaders tend to have. And so the goal of today's episode is really to talk about practice versus rehearsal. What is, what, uh, when do we do either, and again, to provide some, uh, hopefully thought provoking questions that you can contemplate on your own and then discuss with your team that hopefully improves the process for everyone. So let's start at the beginning. Something I, I, uh, used to teach at, uh, previous place I worked at, uh, in a class I taught out for a lot of worship conferences all over the world.
(02:21):
Was this concept here, prac practice is personal. Rehearsal is corporate. It's the idea. Again, I'm giving you some answers, which is what I shouldn't do for this, but I'm gonna start here so that we can walk through this, uh, in practice, we learned the parts in rehearsal. We assembled the parts together to work on those now, um, where's the tension in this? I just gave you the answers. We're done end it we're two and a half minutes into this episode. Why do we keep, keep going? Uh, because there's, I think there's a lot of tension around this. If you, as a musician, walk into a rehearsal and you believe the goal of that rehearsal is to run through the songs and to, uh, put our parts together, see how it works out. And it becomes a practice. You know what I mean, by a practice we go, the, the classic is, um, Hey, uh, alright, we're gonna do this new song.
(03:05):
Uh, let's let's listen to it real quick. Worship leader holds up their cell phone to the mic and we listen through the song and then we go, okay, drums, you're gonna do this basical. You're gonna do that. And that tends to just make, uh, rehearsal run really, really long. And that moment, I, I think that's a opportunity of, uh, we missed expectations, right? Uh, we said we communicated it was gonna be this, but it actually ended up being this. And so people that walk in expecting this get frustrated and they get, uh, annoyed and practice, a rehearsal tends to see I'm even doing it. Now, rehearsal tends to run longer than it should because we're trying to within rehearsal. So something I've always felt like is I feel like practice tends to be something that's a little more personal. Uh, practice is, is a time where as a worship leader, you've gotta like do your part to get your stuff together.
(03:52):
You've gotta get it to people beforehand. You've gotta get the resources that people need to learn the songs to, um, work on their parts, to that, to them far before you're supposed to get together and, and put the parts together. Right. Uh, and so it takes a little bit of work on your part. Um, again, I said, this isn't just for worship leaders. I'm, I'm gonna get to production folks as well, too, as a production person person. Um, a lot of times we're not even in rehearsals with, with, uh, worship leaders and with the ban, we just show up on Sunday and we, we wing, uh, one of the favorite things. One of my favorite things that I've learned from one of my favorite people, uh, my buddy, Ken Mar graves, was the idea of when you walk into a rehearsal, you walk into a service as an audio engineer, you should have listened through every single one of those songs on planning center or whatever method you're using to prepare.
(04:39):
You should have listened to all the, those before you even show up. So this for production folks, this isn't just for worship bleeding musician types. This applies to us too. Are we walking into service on Sunday morning? And the first time we've ever heard the songs are Sunday morning, like that's not super helpful. And again, I don't want to present this as the 35 year old guy. Who's been in ministry for 15 years, that to everything, because I surely do not. I have done the same thing. I'm guilty of that. I'm guilty of walking on stage as a worship leader, as a musician and showing up as a production person and not practicing and trying to morph rehearsal into my practice. And I've been the guy let's get honest here, let's have some moments of truth and honesty. I have been the guy that has in charge and not practice and turned rehearsal into a practice for myself.
(05:25):
You know, the holding your phone up to the microphone to hear it. I've been the guy that's done that because I needed to do that because I hadn't prepared. So I think that idea of practice versus rehearsals important because it's gonna set expectations for us. And, um, we need to Def to define, is this thing, a rehearsal, or is this thing a practice? Uh, and if this thing is a rehearsal, then let's make it a rehearsal in order for it to be a rehearsal. We gotta do our work as the leader, as a worship leader, as a production person and make sure our team has all the tools and resources, our volunteers, uh, whether they're production folks or musicians have all the tools and resources, they need to learn the content to be prepared, to feel prepared. Uh, before we walk into rehearsal, another concept I wanna throw out here before we hit those processing questions is, um, as a worship leader, as a production person, are you communicating before the service about what's happening?
(06:16):
Um, uh, is the production team, is the production person in your, uh, prac in your rehearsal? See, again, I'm doing it again, is the production person in your rehearsal. Now it's very possible. You're listening to this and you're going, whoa, we don't rehearse until Sunday mornings. And then we just show up and we do the thing. If you are a Sunday only, or day only rehearsal kind of set up for you and you're not rehearsing on a separate day, say Thursday beforehand, then it's very important that your practice is right. It's very important that all the materials you need for your team are correct, but even then, even in those moments, I think it's super important that the production team is a part of your rehearsal. Because if we go back a couple episodes and this was, let me check to make sure Taylor the right one episode five we're, we talked about leading worship through technology, leading worship, uh, as a production person, is that even possible?
(07:02):
That's what we discussed in episode five. Um, if that's possible and production, people can lead worship, then they should be at rehearsal because we're all working together to lead worship. Something I learned as a audio engineer is you go to a show and go, man, that was really great sounding. The band sounded great that the doesn't mean the band was great. That means the band was great and the audio engineer was great in order for that to happen. There has to be this cohesion. There has to be this coming together, this, this, this unity that occurs and that only can happen if everyone is a part of rehearsal. So as a worship leader, think, um, should you be inviting your production people? Is there something you need to communicate to your production people beforehand, so that rehearsals will more effective and then as production people, do you, are you listening to the songs?
(07:43):
Are you preparing for service, uh, as if you're leading worship or are you just showing up to do a technical thing? Now let's wrap up this episode with three processing questions as we always do. Uh, and if you want a PDF download of these questions, so you can process these with you, uh, to contemplate them one by yourself, and then two, discuss them with your team. Then head to volunteer, friendly.com search for episode seven that's today's episode. And you'll find these three questions. Here's our questions for today. Number one, how do we currently define practice? And I'm gonna do a bonus number one question here. How do we currently define practice? And then also, how do we currently define rehearsal within your current context? Maybe you're the leader. Maybe you're someone that's just a part of it. How do you currently define practice and how do you currently define rehearsal?
(08:30):
Number two, are we mistaking rehearsal for practice? Are we mistaking rehearsal for practice? Number three, final question here, what changes do we need to make to our language? Two things here? What qu uh, what changes do we need to make to our language and then to our systems to better prepare to lead worship. And again, I really hope as a production person, you're paying attention to this and listening and watching to today's episode as well too. Cause that question goes to you as a production person. What changes do you need to make to your language that you use with your team and your systems, like not showing up to rehearsal and just showing up for service. What changes do you need to make to your language and your systems to better prepared, lead worship, either as a worship leader, either as a musician or as a production person.
(09:19):
Again, as a reminder, if you want a PDF download of those questions to process, uh, contemplate on your own and process with your team, then head to volunteer, friendly.com search for episode seven, and you'll find those questions that you can download there. Hey, thanks for being with me. We've made it to seven episodes. This is a I've enjoyed the conversation again. If you want to, uh, join in on the conversation, you can go to volunteer friendly.com. Uh, and look at each episode, you can comment. You can engage in conversation, friendly conversation. I hope not. You'll get banned, uh, from the site or not from the site, but I'll hide your comment. So don't be a jerk, uh, but would, uh, love to have you go there. Volunteer friendly.com. I'm gonna engage in those episodes, download those processing questions, and I will see you next week, Thursday, 10:00 AM central. Thanks for hanging out and see you next week, everybody.