“Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.”
Ephesians 4:29 (NIV)
I had a Sunday I’m not proud of.
It wasn’t on stage. It was in the green room about 22 minutes after the service ended. Two volunteers were already gone. Three were still there packing in-ear cases. The drummer was breaking down his kit and joking with the audio guy.
A vocalist had missed an entrance on the third song. Not a small one. The kind where the whole band lands somewhere they hadn’t agreed on because the leader didn’t come in when she was supposed to.
I stood with the kid running keys and I said, yeah, that was rough. She just isn’t ready.
The kid laughed.
The vocalist was three steps behind me. She heard the whole thing.
She didn’t say anything. Just packed her bag and left. I noticed her bag being on the rack and her not being there to pick it up, and I knew. I sat in the green room for ten minutes after everyone else was gone and I thought, that is who I am when I forget the people I’m leading can hear me.
Paul’s instruction to the Ephesians is one of those verses I used to read as a vague principle. Don’t let unwholesome talk come out of your mouths. Sure. Be nice. I got it.
I read it differently after that Sunday. Paul is naming something specific. He’s saying that the words you say about people, especially the people you lead, are doing one of two things. They are either building up or they are something else. There is no third category. The off-handed comment. The sigh-with-a-name-attached in the green room. The text to your spouse complaining about the volunteer who keeps not learning the bridge. The brief eye-roll to your co-leader when the new audio guy asks the obvious question.
Every word is doing something. There is no neutral category.
What it sounds like when no one is listening
Pay attention to what comes out of your mouth this week when you don’t think anyone is listening.
Not on stage. On stage you’re polished. You know who you’re speaking to. You know the room is listening. You curate.
Listen for the things you say in three places.
The car on the way home from rehearsal. Who comes up in that conversation? In what tone?
The kitchen at home with your spouse on a Tuesday night. When you’re decompressing about the day, which volunteer’s name gets the sigh attached to it? Which name gets the laugh? Which name gets the I just can’t with that guy?
The text thread with your worship-leader friend at the other church. The honest one. The one where you don’t curate. What do you say about your own team there?
That is who you are as a leader.
Stage talk is curated. Green-room talk and car talk and Tuesday-kitchen talk are not. The team feels what you said about them in those places, even when they were not there. They feel it on Sunday. The room feels it on Sunday. You can’t fake it.
Why this matters more for worship leaders
A lot of leaders can compartmentalize this. They can be cutting about their team in private and warm in public and the public mode is professional enough that the room cannot tell.
Worship leaders can’t, because the job is too embodied. You are leading worship. You are inviting people to come before God with you. The thing in your chest that says, that vocalist isn’t ready, is the same thing in your chest that’s about to say, let’s sing this song to God together. You can’t run two engines at the same time.
The room can tell when you’re running both. They can’t name what they’re feeling, but they feel it. The team can definitely tell. They’ve been with you in the car. They’ve heard the sigh. They’ve felt how you talked about the volunteer who isn’t there this week.
When you talk down about your team behind their backs, you build a culture where every volunteer wonders what you say about them when they’re not in the room. And then they show up Saturday morning protecting themselves instead of bringing themselves. And then you wonder why the rehearsal feels stiff. And then you tell your spouse on Tuesday night that the rehearsal felt stiff. And the cycle keeps going.
The fix is not better self-policing
I don’t want to leave you with the idea that the work is just to bite your tongue more.
If the work is policing what comes out of your mouth, it will fail. You’ll get tired and frustrated and the sigh-with-a-name-attached will show up again, and then you’ll feel guilty about it on top of being frustrated about the original thing. The policing approach makes the problem worse over time.
The work is upstream. The work is what you think about your team when you’re not interacting with them at all.
What thoughts are you carrying through the week about each person? What story have you written about each volunteer in your own head? When you walk in to Saturday rehearsal, do you walk in expecting the bass player to be lazy, the vocalist to be unprepared, the kid on lighting to need everything written down? You will get what you expected, because expectation is a leadership tool. You hand it to them with your face and your shoulders and the tone you use to say good morning on Saturday.
The fix is not a fix to your speech. It’s a fix to your thought life about your team.
Paul writes a few verses later, be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. The order matters. He starts with what comes out of your mouth, then he goes upstream to what is in your heart.
A heart that is genuinely formed in compassion for the team produces a mouth that builds them up. A mouth that is policed without a heart change will leak. Eventually.
A practice for the week
Pick three names from your team. Three people you lead.
For each name, write down three sentences. The first sentence is, here is what I have actually said about this person to someone else in the last 30 days. The second sentence is, here is what I want to be true about how I lead this person. The third sentence is, here is one specific thing I will do to build them up this week.
That third sentence is the work. It’s not, I’ll think nicer thoughts. It’s, I will text Jamie on Tuesday morning and tell her specifically what she did in last week’s set that I’m grateful for. It’s, I will pull Marcus aside before rehearsal and ask him how his job interview went, the one he told me about three weeks ago. It’s, I will write the new audio guy a one-paragraph note saying I’m glad he’s on the team.
Do those three things this week.
Then watch the next Sunday.
The question for the week
How do you talk about your team when no one on your team is listening?
If the answer is honest and gentle and protective of them, lead with confidence.
If the answer is sigh-with-a-name-attached, the work is not on the team. The work is upstream of your mouth. It is in your heart about the people God placed in the room with you.
Let your words this week be a small mercy.
Ryan
Going deeper: for the words worth saying out loud to them, read Five Things Your Worship Team Needs to Hear From You.
This devotional is part of The Church Collective’s free 52-week worship team devotional series. Get the first 12 as a free PDF and a fresh devotional in your inbox every Monday morning.