Week 10 • Season 3 • Worship Team Devotionals
If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over.
Matthew 18:15 (NIV)
What’s actually going on
Worship teams are uniquely positioned for conflict. You have artists with strong opinions, theology under the surface of every song choice, varying levels of musical maturity, volunteers who give their time and feel ownership over decisions, and the whole thing happens in a high-stakes weekly performance environment that everyone in the church watches.
And so conflict happens. Often. Sometimes it’s loud. More often it’s quiet. The vocalist who started agreeing less. The bass player who’s been ghosting Planning Center. The volunteer who used to text you and stopped.
Most worship leaders we know would rather do almost anything than have a hard conversation. We’d rather replan a setlist three times. We’d rather work through a difficult arrangement. We’d rather rehearse extra hours. Anything but the meeting.
And so we let the conflict become the air. We work around it. We schedule around it. We manage symptoms while the actual issue keeps getting bigger underneath.
What’s true
Jesus doesn’t leave us guessing here. Matthew 18 lays out a specific process. Go to the person. Have the conversation directly. Just the two of you. If they listen, the relationship is restored.
The first step is the hardest one and the one we skip the most. We talk about the conflict with everyone except the person we’re in conflict with. That’s not biblical. It’s also not effective. It poisons the team and never resolves the issue.
Going directly is hard but it’s clean. It dignifies the other person. It assumes they want the relationship as much as you do. It honors them by giving them a chance to respond before the situation calcifies.
If the meeting goes poorly, you have options laid out in the rest of Matthew 18. But the first move, before any of those, is just two of you in a room.
The longer you wait, the harder it gets. Have the conversation this week.
For your team
Three discussion questions for your pre-rehearsal team huddle.
- Is there a conflict on our team that we’ve been managing instead of addressing?
- Who needs to have a Matthew 18 conversation this month?
- What gets in the way of us being honest with each other early?
Pray this
Jesus, give me the courage to go directly to the people I’m avoiding. Soften my words. Soften their reception. Restore relationships before they break. Amen.
This Sunday
Identify one conversation you’ve been putting off. Schedule it for this week. Don’t wait for a better moment.
Go deeper
In the network: Search “Growing Through Conflict” in the TCC community for the live training on hard team conversations done well. Free at thechurchcollective.mn.co.
This is Week 10 of 52 Weekly Worship Team Devotionals from The Church Collective. The first 12 (including this one) are available now — grab them as a free PDF. New devotionals drop every Monday morning. Free, denominationally diverse, 501(c)(3). Made possible by our Supporters: become a Supporter or give one-time.
← Week 9: Loving the Difficult One | Week 11: Discipleship Is Not Recruitment →
Back to all 52 worship team devotionals
Loving the Difficult One