What’s in this Episode?

In this episode of the Church Tips Podcast, Jeff Deyo (former lead singer of Sonicflood) and Dick Hardy talk about equipping and developing the worship team.

---

Show Notes:

Be notified when the Worship Leadership Track by Jeff Deyo is live!
http://leaders.church/worship

PDF’s:
The Pastors Guide to Navigating Generational and Cultural Worship Gaps
The Worship Pastors Guide to Honoring The Lead Pastor

—– Want more free content? —–
Check out this FREE Masterclass on the 4 secrets pastors can use to grow the church: https://leaders.church/4-secrets-masterclass-opportunity/

—– Watch on your favorite platform —–

Spotify | Stitcher | YouTube

Apple Podcasts | Google Podcast

Subscribe & Follow:

• Subscribe on Apple Podcasts
• Follow on Spotify
• Subscribe to YouTube Channel
• Subscribe on Google Podcasts
• Like us on Facebook
• Follow us on Instagram
• Follow us on Twitter

Other Resources:

• Leaders.Church
• Leaders.Church Blog
• Church University
• Take the Free 5 Day Leadership Challenge for Pastors
• Get Free Access to the 4 Secrets Masterclass

Read the Transcript

Dick Hardy 0:05
Hey friends, it’s great to be with you in this episode of the Church Tips Podcast and Jeff Deyo and I are so pumped. This is the final day of the launch of the Worship Leadership Course. And I’m just telling you, it has been a phenomenal response over these last eight days. And we want to be able to talk to you today on the subject of how can we be better at equipping and developing our people.

Dick Hardy 0:30
Jeff’s gonna jump us right into that here in just a minute. But I do want to be sure to say to everyone, this is the final day of the launch of the Worship Leadership Course that we’ve spent months in creating. And we are blessed to have Jeff Deyo with us.

Dick Hardy 0:46
And I think he goes without introduction, but I’m gonna do it anyway. He’s become a very good friend. He’s a professor of worship at North Central University in Minneapolis. And he’s had a piece of claim to fame in his life where he’s the former lead singer of Sonicflood, the Grammy nominated, Dove Award winning group, from back in the day.

Dick Hardy 1:07
And the Lord has just blessed him to be able to resource pastors and churches. He resources and teaches his students right now, but in this course, He’s poured himself out. I was there when he recorded each of these videos. It’s 50 plus videos, plus interviews with leading worship leaders, Sean Feught, John Bevere, Paul and Hannah McClure, who am I going to forget Randall Cartwright? John Bevere?

Jeff Deyo 1:37
Bob Sorge.

Dick Hardy 1:37
I mean to tell you, it’s just absolutely great content. And it retails for $1497, but today, this is the last day you get it for two thirds off. So you get the whole course for $497. Or if you go on the monthly plan, you literally can get it for $47 a month for 12-months. But go to churchuniversity.com, go up to the upper right hand corner, click the blue button, and away you go.

Dick Hardy 2:01
But for today’s episode, we want to pour into you on this very practical topic of equipping and developing people. So Jeff, you ready to jump in? Well, let’s talk about the very practical aspect of training and equipping. Where do you go with that? Jeff?

Jeff Deyo 2:21
Well, first of all, I’ll say this, you know, one of the reasons we saved this one for the last podcast here the day before the the the special goes off, is because there was a lot of questions here, right? Remember, these podcasts are us, not just making up things to tell you. But these are actually questions from real worship leaders and pastors out there who have said, Hey, these are some of the issues that we’re dealing with, can you speak to this? Can you help us in these areas?

Jeff Deyo 2:47
So this is one of the biggest areas that we found so many questions about this area. How can we equip our teams? How can we help them grow, we’re seeing deficiencies, we’re seeing problems in those areas, spiritually, musically, all those things. So we want to get to some of those things and encourage you.

Jeff Deyo 3:03
Now before I jump into the first one, I want to say this, too. I’m asking you right now, pause the video, I’m asking you to, to highlight, to copy the link of this podcast and text it to someone else, or copy the link churchuniversity.com and text it to a friend right now. I’m asking you right now, another pastor, another leader, another worship pastor, a friend that you know that this would help because we need your help to spread the word. Like this isn’t going to happen on our own, right?

Dick Hardy 3:32
Right

Jeff Deyo 3:33
We know a lot of people, but we don’t know everybody, we need some help. And we’re asking you, if you believe this is encouraging to you, if you’ve found some benefit from this, please don’t keep it to yourself. Please share with others, people that you know and love.

Dick Hardy 3:48
Absolutely

Jeff Deyo 3:48
Alright, so with that, let me just jump into some ideas of how we can be better at training and equipping our people. All right. Our teams, our worship teams, and I will tell you this, if you’re a pastor, this can also you can apply some of these principles to your staff. How do you equip and train your staff? Believe it or not, that is part of your role, right? They’re not supposed to go do their thing and you meet them on the stage. Pastor, your job is to equip and train and bring along with you, your staff. So same with your volunteers, worship pastor, right? So we need to do whatever we can to help equip them.

Jeff Deyo 3:48
A couple ideas, right? Number one is I would encourage you and I’ve said this in an earlier podcast, but I would encourage you to develop your teams spiritually. That means that every rehearsal you need to have, and I would say start with, a spiritual moment. There’s lots of different ways to do that. Number one, you could turn on some worship music in the sanctuary and say everybody put down your instruments and let’s go spread around around the room and begin to worship the Lord. Let’s just forget our work. Forget our rehearsal tonight. Let’s just seek God’s face together.

Jeff Deyo 4:59
You know another thing you could do, is you could invite a worship pastor from another church to come over, Hey, would you come over? And would you bring your acoustic guitar and just lead us in a song or two at our rehearsal? I’ll come and I’ll do the same for you. And so you’re building relationships, you’re building networks, but you’re also allowing yourself to rest and receive while someone else ministers to your team, right?

Jeff Deyo 5:19
Another thing you could do is, is to invite a rotation system where you invite your team members to bring a devotional, each week to your team. This calls them to a higher level, they’ve got to be able to know the word, they’ve got to know what is God saying to me, I want to share that. And then we have a deep conversation for three or four or five minutes about what God’s doing in our lives.

Jeff Deyo 5:43
Okay, another way that we can build and equip our teams is have what I would call team nights. I don’t care what you call them, but it’s just a gathering that happens regularly, outside of the weekly rehearsal, right? Because you need to have this. You’re like, Jeff we can do all this stuff in the weekly rehearsal. You can’t, because there’s a lot of pressure on the day of the rehearsal for Sunday. But when you get together for a team night, you’re free. You’re not planning anything, everybody comes together with a different mentality. So you can grow.

Jeff Deyo 6:13
What I do, and I share this in the course, but I detail what you could do on a monthly basis, or a quarterly basis. When you gather, you emphasize leadership training, you emphasize musical training, you emphasize spiritual growth, and you emphasize fellowship. You create this rotation that goes through every year as you build and equip your teams.

Jeff Deyo 6:13
So another thing you could do would be to get this course. Come on somebody.

Dick Hardy 6:37
BOOM

Jeff Deyo 6:38
And take your team through the course, right? There’s 50 plus videos, and you take one video a week, or you decide to do like a monthly teen night gathering, and you spend, there’s two videos or 12 to 18 minutes long, you watch one video together, and then you have discussion about this, right? Or you get one of my books, you get Spark, or you get Awakening Pure Worship. Or maybe both, get the course and the books. Work through it all together. So you’re using the resources that God has given you to help equip your team.

Dick Hardy 7:17
That is so good. You know, and you mentioned the books that those are a couple of the bonuses that we have in here. We have the digital copy of the book, certainly pick up the hardcopy, which is even better. But there’s part of the bonuses that we’re giving you. Because Jeff has just literally written the book on on how to do worship. You know, dovetailing with this question here. Developing musicians who want to play, but sometimes really need help with their skill level? How do you do that, Jeff?

Jeff Deyo 7:50
Well, it’s so important, Dick. I know that some people would say, Ah, skills not important, the only thing that matters is heart. Hmm. Be careful. Again, as Dick is pointed out, we are looking at the Word of God. We are not saying, hey, whatever we think. So it might sound like a very spiritual thing to say, Oh, God doesn’t care about excellence. God doesn’t care about skill. He just cares about the heart. Well, I gotta tell you, that is false.

Jeff Deyo 8:15
Biblically, I know I’m being direct here, but look, I mean, one of my favorite verses on this is Psalm 78:72. I love this. It sums up David’s leadership in one verse. It literally says that David led the people with skilled hands and a true heart. There it is, we need both. We don’t just need authenticity. Because if you if you don’t know how to play your instrument, or sing, but you’re authentic, it can be really bad, right?

Jeff Deyo 8:44
We have a lot of that. We have people, in fact, we have both sides. We have people who are very skilled, but don’t love the Lord. But then we also have people who love the Lord with all their heart, but they haven’t been in the practice room. They haven’t been good stewards with what God’s given them. Look at First Chronicles 25. The Bible calls us to be trained and accomplished in our areas of ministry of music, it actually is the duties of the musicians to be trained and accomplished, I Chronicles 25. Look at that.

Jeff Deyo 9:15
Now, some practical things that you can do is, first of all, you have to impart that, that your expectation is that your team would be growing in both areas, both in authenticity and spirituality, but also in musical excellence. And that musical excellence is not non-spiritual, or unspiritual, that being musically excellent in your area that God’s called you to be is actually part of walking in what God has called us to do. So, but practically, there’s some things you can do.

Jeff Deyo 9:43
One would be, as we were talking about teen nights, you can actually bring in some experts, right? Okay. You bring in a vocal coach. What you can do is you have a team night where you do breakout groups. You bring in a vocal coach to work with all of your, because the I’m not a vocal coach. Like I think I know how to sing pretty good, but I’m not a teacher of voice. I’m a teacher of songwriting, of worship leadership.

Jeff Deyo 10:10
But you bring in a vocal coach, it’s excellent that they work with your singers. They teach them some practical things, how to save their voice, how to warm up, all that stuff. Then you bring in somebody that can work with the band. How to play together, how to listen to each other, when not to play, when to play, how to play off each other, how to listen to the Holy Spirit, right? Then you bring in somebody that knows tech. And they work with your lyric people and with your sound engineer and all those things. And so, and you have this rotation, you you bring in and you do all these breakouts. This is one way that you can equip your people, right?

Jeff Deyo 10:42
And then there’s also the worship conference way to go, right? There are worship conferences out there where you can take your team. I know that sometimes this stuff gets expensive, but again, just like investing in this course, you need to invest. You will reap a harvest, you will grow, you will grow together as a team, if you invest in that. And so you can take them to a conference where they’re training you in musical excellence and all that stuff.

Dick Hardy 11:06
Oh, that’s good. That is so good. Jeff. You know, I want to hit one last question here that really strikes at the varying levels of churches. The quality of what is offered in the Worship Leadership Course, can be used at mega church, and its small church.

Jeff Deyo 11:26
That’s so important.

Dick Hardy 11:26
And we’ve had questions come in from people that they’re in wonderful, smaller churches, a limited number of worship leaders, and they’re saying, Okay, how can I really help this small group in our smaller church really be effective. And I just appreciate it so much, when I listened to Jeff in the recording of this, I thought, you know, you could be a church of 50, you can be a church of 5000 or 15,000. And this all applies. So Jeff, let’s talk a little bit to the smaller church setting and that pastor. How does he How does he make this thing work?

Jeff Deyo 12:04
Yeah, and I kind of want to touch on both sides, right? Because there’s, there’s a tendency to assume that, as you mentioned, that some of these things are not applicable to my church because it’s either big, or because it’s small. And as you said so eloquently, all of these biblical principles are meant for the entire body of Christ.

Jeff Deyo 12:26
Now, we’re not all going to look the same. But I’ve had people say, Dick, to me, Jeff, like we can’t use spontaneous worship, obviously, big churches, obviously, mega churches can’t do that because we’re on a schedule. We have TV issues, we’re on, we’re live, where we’ve got these schedules and all this stuff. I gotta tell you guys, that is not true. No matter what. I’m a schedule guy. I love schedules. But within the schedule, there’s always space for the movement of the Spirit of God.

Dick Hardy 12:56
Right

Jeff Deyo 12:56
Right? And we’ve got, we cannot throw out what God wants to do for our schedule. I do believe you can plan, you can have schedules, but let’s say there’s 20 minutes of musical worship. Well, maybe we’re trying to squeeze too many songs in that space. So as a mega church, maybe we need to start planning fewer songs and we need to realize that we want to let the Holy Spirit move. You can still get done at 19 minutes and 59 seconds, you know? But you got to open it up and let there be some space and be open to the moving of the Spirir.

Jeff Deyo 13:27
So, the small church might look at us and go, Oh, you’re just talking about click and tracks and technology and lighting and all that stuff. But we don’t have to do that stuff, so none of this is applicable to us. No, I’m not, you gotta help me out here, okay, guys? Now look, we’re not saying you have to use all those technology things. We want to help you. I think those tools will help.

Jeff Deyo 13:47
You know, I never want to say to the lighting engineer, you’re irrelevant. You don’t get to use your skills to worship God. Right? So if there is a lighting system, and we have a lighting engineer, I love for him to be able to use, or her, to be able to use his skills, her skills, to be able to glorify God. However, if you have a small church of like 12 people, of 50 people, whatever it is, you may not have all those things. You barely have a sound system, you have like three microphones, you know? I’m telling you, the most important thing is that you apply these principles that are from the Bible.

Jeff Deyo 14:19
Number one is that you are authentic, right. And again, it starts in the secret place. So as a small church, if you want to increase the anointing and the power of your public gatherings, you need to encourage those involved in leadership to increase in their connection with God in the private setting. So that applies to big church or small church.

Dick Hardy 14:42
Right

Jeff Deyo 14:42
How do you, how can you make it so that your service is more powerful? You got to get alone with God. And then you bring that to the church service. Any church can do that.

Jeff Deyo 14:54
Then also things like spontaneous worship. I told you earlier, Part of the deal with this is is is handing the baton to the congregation. When we talk about spontaneous worship, what you’re doing is you’re giving the people an opportunity to take leadership into their own hands. Right?

Jeff Deyo 15:11
You’re actually relinquishing leadership to help empower others. And that means that when you say, Hey, I want you right now, so you teach on this small church or big church, you say, biblically, there’s a word called Tehilah. And that word is a Hebrew word for the word praise. And what it means is to sing a spontaneous song to the Lord. Oh, so there’s biblical precedent for singing a spontaneous song to the Lord. There’s something about when you step out and begin to sing your song.

Jeff Deyo 15:39
So as a leader, in big church, or small church, you get to a point, you sung a song that we all know, and you get to that spot between the second chorus and the bridge, and you tell the team, the band, just begin to vamp on that bridge progression before we start singing. And then you invite the congregation, after you teach them about Tehilah. And you say, now let’s begin to not just be hearers of the word, come on somebody, and you begin to be doers of the word. And I would like to invite you to begin to Tehilah to the Lord, begin to sing out your own song.

Jeff Deyo 16:11
Say, Jeff, I’m not a singer. What do you mean? How am I supposed to do that? I might be embarrassed. Guys. The Bible doesn’t require you to be a perfect singer, to sing on pitch, it just requires you to make a joyful, what does it say, Dick?

Dick Hardy 16:24
Joyful Noise.

Jeff Deyo 16:26
That’s it. Just got to make a noise. Come on somebody make a noise unto God. Show Him, praise Him. Who cares if it sounds great, who cares if it’s poetic, just begin with I love you, Jesus. I worship you God. Those simple little lyrics. What you’re doing leader, when you do that, is you’re empowering people. Now, people start going, Oh, I can even do that at home. I can do that in my car. No longer is worship regulated to the church building only, it’s also something I can do by myself. And you’re empowering people. When you empower people, things grow. And that’s what you’re doing. You’re trying to help people grow in their walk with God. So you can do that big church, of course small church.

Dick Hardy 17:12
Absolutely. Absolutely. Jeff, this has just been an outstanding episode. I am so grateful that you talked about the whole equipping and developing of leaders, because that’s exactly where the worship leader or pastor who’s watching this podcast is living. So, thank you. Give us a parting shot. What do you want people to remember out of this episode?

Jeff Deyo 17:33
Yeah, for sure. I mean, here’s the thing. I know, it can be daunting. I can’t do it all. I can’t do all these things that you’re telling me. I don’t have time, I have a full time job. Here, that’s the other issue, right, with small church. And we understand that we’re talking about by vocational, right. You’re like, Jeff, you’re talking to the full time worship leader.

Jeff Deyo 17:51
Okay, I’m not. I understand that you may have a full time job, and you’re trying to lead worship. Come on, guys. I’m just asking you to spend daily time with God.

Dick Hardy 18:02
Yup.

Jeff Deyo 18:01
That’s going to help you in your leadership, You’re just going to be authentic, you’re going to be anointed, you’re going to walk in the authority of Christ, rather than ministering out of your soul. Right? So it’s so important worship leader, don’t be overwhelmed. Don’t be overwhelmed to say, I’m going to take one thing that Jeff said. You don’t have to do all of them. I gave you a bunch of ideas. You’re like, oh, I can’t do all that stuff. You’re right. You can’t do all that. Start with one, today.

Dick Hardy 18:27
Yup

Jeff Deyo 18:27
Make a plan and start with one thing and slowly begin implementing that thing. I’m telling you, there’s 52 Sundays in a year. If you will try one thing, then over the course of 52 Sundays, and you begin to implement that, your church will be changed.

Dick Hardy 18:44
Exactly right. Exactly. Right. You know, we’ve been privileged to partner up with Jeff Deyo, who’s just given of himself to pastors and worship leaders all over the country and around the world, frankly. And this course, the Worship Leadership Track is available to you. This is the final day of the sale, the two thirds off sale ends at midnight tonight. And so jump right in there and grab this course. It retails for $1497. You can get it for 497. Or you can even use the discount codes. No, there’s a discount code. You just click in the monthly the 12-month plan and you can get it for $47 a month.

Dick Hardy 19:23
I just tell you, that kind of investment is going to yield tremendous returns. And you’re going to watch not only the worship leader, and the pastor, you’re going to watch the congregation come alive in worship. So we encourage you to do that. There are a boatload of bonuses. I think we valued those bonuses at something just pennies over $2,100 in bonuses that you get, just for jumping into the course.

Dick Hardy 19:47
And as Jeff has said, go to churchuniversity.com/worship and send that link far and wide. Because we you know you have friends ones that are in ministry, leading worship, volunteers, that really could benefit from this course. Jeff, is there anything else that I forgot to say about this? As we wrap up in the next number of hours, this discount goes away. And we want you to take advantage of the discount.

Jeff Deyo 20:15
Yeah, I would say this, I know that every worship leader and every pastor out there has looked at their congregation and thought, Oh, I wish that they would, blank. Or I wish they wouldn’t, blank.

Jeff Deyo 20:28
Right

Jeff Deyo 20:29
Worsip leaders, you’ve looked at your team and said, Uh, I wish that they were stronger musicians. Oh, I wish that they love the Lord more. This is the heart behind this core.

Dick Hardy 20:39
Yup

Jeff Deyo 20:39
We understand that every team, every staff needs to grow. We want to provide a resource to help you get from wishing you had an anointed team to actually having an anointed team. We want to move you from having a dead congregation, who doesn’t participate and watches the show, to having a congregation that is engaged, that loves the Lord, that is pursuing God with their life.

Dick Hardy 21:06
Absolutely.

Jeff Deyo 21:07
Come on

Dick Hardy 21:07
Absolutely. Well, thanks for watching and listening to this episode today. Again, go to churchuniversity.com, go up to the upper right corner, the blue button, and you can click and get all the details you want. If you have any questions, of course, send us an email and we’ll be glad to get you answers on any question you might have. Thanks again, Jeff, for investing yourself in this way. Make it a great one today and be blessed.

Jeff Deyo 21:33
God bless you guys.

Jonathan Hardy 21:35
Hey, Jonathan here real quick before you go. Everything in your ministry rises and falls on your leadership. So investing in your leadership is essential to staying healthy and growing the ministry. And that’s why I want to invite you to join us inside the Leaders.Church membership. This online streaming service for pastors gives you access to more than 300 videos plus training material to level up your leadership and improve your ministry skills. If you’d like to do that I want to invite you to go to Leaders.Church/Boost. Again, that’s Leaders.Church/Boost. Well, thanks again for joining us on the church tips podcast. We’ll look forward to seeing you next time.

Share This Article

---