The relationship between a lead pastor and a worship pastor

Lee Stephenson: Welcome, everyone to the Unfiltered podcast. Lee Stephenson here, church planter and overseer of Church Planting for Converge.

Danny Parmelee: I'm Danny Parmelee. And I oversee Church Planting for Converge MidAmerica.

Lee Stephenson: And today, we're going to have a fun conversation that I think is very relevant to our church planters and lead pastors. And I would say even probably our worship pastors. And we're going to talk about that relationship that exists between a lead pastor and a worship pastor. And what should it look like? What can it look like? How to maximize and make sure you're on the same page, as well. So, Danny, when did you as a church plant - when did you actually officially have a worship pastor? Was that right away? Did you kind of work towards that? That would give us some context of kind of how we're talking about this.

Danny Parmelee: Ah, one year before I left is when we officially had a worship pastor. So... But let me back up and say it this way is that my good friend from college ended up moving to be part of the church plant, to be the worship leader. So, as I'm sharing, even in this time, I have limited experience in the sense that I just had one guy that was with me. And his name is Michael Morgan. He's now the executive pastor at EPIKOS Church in Milwaukee. And I am so indebted and thankful for the amount of service. Because he came, he didn't have any paycheck. He was working a full-time job at Hal Leonard doing, you know, music publishing. And with his spare time, you know, helping us to kind of bootstrap and put together the church plant. So, we didn't even give him a stipend. Okay, so this is like, "gratis" type of thing. But I do think that informs, and there's some really, really great things about that. And we worked well together in the sense that we had a friendship. But we also went head-to-head. I mean, sparks would fly on, you know, how service planning should go. What we should do. And those types of things. But because we had this respect, and love for one another. And that's really what allowed us to be able to work together for so many years. Not to say that we didn't have challenges at times. Because like I said, you know, we did and sparks would fly. But it was maybe three years in that we said, "Okay, we'll give you $300 a month." And then eventually, we got to this place where it's like, we need more of your time. And so, we made, for us, for a church that didn't have a ton of financial resources made the leap, to hire him on staff so that he could quit his job and devote full-time to what he was doing.

Lee Stephenson: How did the rhythm work when you didn't necessarily have somebody there 24/7? You know, with you in the office and that kind of thing? How did that rhythm look, when it came to how you planned out weekends and how you thought through special moments?

Danny Parmelee: Yeah, and not only that, we didn't have him there at the office, we didn't have an office period. So, we were you know, renting a facility and I was just kind of working out of my home. And so, everything was done, you know, coffee shops type of thing. But the rhythm for us... I mean, some of this is even hard to remember how he pulled this off. But really would have been through email where it's like, "Hey, you know, I'm finishing up my sermon. Here's what it's on, you know, is there at least somewhat of..."

Lee Stephenson: Saturday night at 10 o'clock? This is actually what I'm going to be preaching on tomorrow.

Danny Parmelee: I mean, seriously. I mean, in the beginning, that's really what it was. It was like, “Hey, I've got Jesus in my message. You're singing about Jesus; it looks like we've got some good congruency here.” But we didn't have this full, like, "Hey, let's get together and get the creative team together and think about all of these different elements." Now, I will say that it did end up speaking to the ethos and culture of our church, where it was simple. We had simple services. It was preaching and worship and announcements. And that was it. And because that's all we knew, and that's all we had time for type of thing. Now, as the church grew, and especially as we, you know, went multi-site and stuff, now you're talking about full on meetings that were evaluation. I know we'll have a special podcast, it's about evaluation. And then looking forward to the next meeting. And then like a full calendar that was kind of, you know, that was connected to the preaching calendar. But you know, are there some artistic elements that we want to do for the worship service that are beyond just the preaching? And, you know, sing three songs and sit-down type of thing. So...

Lee Stephenson: How much freedom did you give the worship leader, when it came to actually service development? Was that, you know, was it like, "Just pick the songs and I'm giving you three songs or four songs this weekend?" Or was there more buy into thinking through all the elements and the flow and transitions?

Danny Parmelee: Um, yeah. Again, ours was so probably bland. If you were to look at it, there wasn't a lot to do. And I would like to think that I gave a lot of freedom to Michael to be able to do those different things. And I think it would be later on that there was even thoughts to do other things like, hey, let's, you know, insert whatever video or testimony. Or let's do something musically different. Now, yes, it was totally different for, you know, Easter Sunday, and for even our good Friday services, where I would just literally say, "Okay, you know, Michael, do something." And he would do just, I mean, we're talking extraordinary things like write full orchestra pieces. And, like, we would just blow it out of the water, those type of things. But we could not do that for every single week, you know, type of thing. And I would say that, for the most part, just generally answering the question, I kind of let him run with it, and just had a certain amount of trust. But of course, I'd always be like, "Hey, it seems like we're just doing this same song over and over and over again." Or I would always say, which this would just irritate him so much. And I hope he's gonna listen to this, because that'll be kind of funny. Maybe you should have him back on and have him correct it. But I would say, "We always need one K-LOVE song." So, K-LOVE... I don't like K-LOVE. It's not...it's like banned from my radio.

Lee Stephenson: Oh, you just ruined our sponsor, man.

Danny Parmelee: Sorry, sorry. Um, but the reason that I would say that is what I recognized is that worship teams and worship leaders, they want to be on the front end of things. They're sometimes getting sick of doing the same song. So, they always want to do something new and unique. And they don't want to seem the same. However, they just need to remember that they need at least some songs where someone goes, "I know that song. And I can sing along." And I say that for non-believers as well, too. Because there would be non-believers that they've heard the song because they've been flipping through the stations. Or they just maybe started going to church or just dipping their toe in that they can get involved in it. So that would be my one thing that I constantly... like, "Hey, where's our K-LOVE song?" Even though I don't like K-LOVE, but it just meant the one song that everyone could just kind of sing along with type of thing.

Lee Stephenson: Yeah, makes sense.

Danny Parmelee: What about you? Share a little bit of some of the rhythm, creative planning. How much leeway you think is appropriate to give or not give?

Lee Stephenson: Yeah, we were similar early on in the first church plant where we had volunteers that just were very talented and gifted. And I knew him, well, that kind of filled the gap. And we try to meet maybe once a month and just kind of plan out kind of in advance, hey, this is where we're going. And this is, if we hey, have you thought about this? Can we do a special thing? But the reality is like when we were in the movie theater, I mean, it was a 50-minute service. So, there was no time for anything extra. No fluff or, "Hey, we're going to do an eight-minute song." Like that just couldn't do it. So that did probably help us in some of that, that we… just the demand wasn't there to be crazy innovative, because we just didn't have the time to be innovative. Once we got to a place where we had a hired worship pastor, I just think it's important for the lead pastor have a good working relationship with them. Because most of the time, you're two main people on the stage that people see the most, hear the most. And if you're not in unity, and working together, it will show. It'll be obvious. And so, I'd like to just relationally stay well connected to the worship pastor. And so, when I was, you know, full-time church planter, and pastor, our rhythm was every Tuesday afternoon, we'd actually sit down and we just kind of work through a little bit. Okay, where are we at? Everything set for this Sunday? But we'd work probably about two weeks in advance. So, we just take about an hour and a half. "How're you doing?" We'd pray together. We'd talk about what God's doing in our personal lives. Just to make sure that, you know, we were on the same page, both relationally but also from a standpoint of what we were putting together on the Sunday. Now, it's a little bit more email. I'd say like Joel...he's not the stage presence worship pastor. He works behind the scenes. But he and I connect, usually at least once a month in person where we'll go grab lunch, just chat and kind of think through. But then it's just constant phone calls, emails, you know, quick meetings here or there. Kind of, "Hey, what about this Sunday? What do we think?" And so far, that's working pretty well. But, you know, we're launching another congregation and they have their worship pastor and stuff of that sort. And so now it's... the demands are going to be a little bit different. And honestly, I'm putting more of that on Joel to think through service structure. And so, he actually puts together the entire hour experience. Thinking through what song leads to what song. How the transitions are going to look. How we can tie in the Scripture. I give him the main passages of kind of, "Hey, this is where I'm going. This is where I'm going to land the plane." And if I'm sitting there going, "Hey, I think this song would work really well to close out the morning." Or something of that sort, I'll voice that and then he'll pop that in. And you know, then we'll talk through communion. How are we going to do communion? And we vary it up. So sometimes we put it at the front half before the sermon. Other times I lead into it from the sermon. And so we plan. We do communion once a month. And so, he just will follow up, like the week before and kind of go, "Hey, how do you think you're gonna wrap up? Do you want to lead into communion from the sermon? Or do you want us to put it in the front half?" And that's helpful.

Danny Parmelee: Yeah, I think a point that you made there that's really good is just even speaking through some of the transitions and the feel. Which can't always be captured by the sermon title. So you may be doing something, it's like, how's that ending? Like, if all sudden, they're coming up behind you, and they're just, you know, blowing out this amazing song, but it was just this super introspective sermon conviction. It's like, yeah, you probably need something that, you know, matches that, you know, a little bit. The other thing is, that you said, it just reminded me. Yes, the more services you add, or sites that you add, the complexity gets much more because of the timing of things. So that's where it's like, "Okay, well, you know, you need to be done by this time." Because you know, whether there's going to be, you know, video feed or whatever, those types of things. There's just so much that goes into minute by minute. And yes, there's still room for the Holy Spirit. And it's not all produced. But you have to think through all of those little things, you know, so that you create the best worship experience for those that are participating.

Lee Stephenson: Yeah, absolutely. And, I mean, it comes down to part of it when it comes to your Sunday experience, like, people don't invite people to average. They never do. And so you do need to do a level of work and think through and plan. What are we trying to accomplish this weekend? And making sure the components fit together. You know, and so like, if you go to a restaurant, and you just have an average experience, you're not going to come home, and tell the rest your family, "Hey, we need to go to this place!" You know, you're not going to recommend that for me to go to next time I come to Nashville. And I think there's an element, same thing. It's true with church. And I'm not saying you have to have haze machines and crazy lights and all this other stuff. But there needs to be a plan that's put in place and executed when it comes to what we're trying to accomplish. Where are we try to lead people in that that morning experience? And I think there's only one way to get there. And that's you as a lead pastor and whoever's overseeing worship, like you need to spend time fine tuning and thinking through each element in order to maximize that hour experience that you have.

Danny Parmelee: Yeah, your original question was, when did we have an official worship pastor? And I answered it by saying not till the year before I left. Which is true, because Michael never wanted that title. He just wanted to be worship leader because he didn't feel qualified. Which speaks to a little bit, that as you're considering who you might hire for that it is more than a music performer. And I've seen a lot of church planters, they look for, you know, "I'm just going to look at people's resume based on their YouTube. Can they shred on guitar? What are their vocals like?" And to understand that there is that other pastoral part, whether they have the title or not. Because Michael, clearly was operating that for years, and people looked up to him as a pastor, not just someone who was singing songs from the front. That is so important. So not only just your working relationship, but how how are they pastoring even their worship teams and developing other leaders on the worship team?

Lee Stephenson: Yeah, do they have a heart of a worshipper themselves? And I think there's only one way to really figure that out and you got to spend time with them.

Danny Parmelee: Yeah, that's great.

Lee Stephenson: Thanks for tuning in, everyone. And a fun conversation just talking about that worship and lead pastor relationship. Maximize it as you move forward and spend time together. And make sure you like each other as you kinda move forward. So, this has been the Unfiltered podcast. Till next time, keep it real.