Ministering to the Music Minister

August 27, 2007

PRACTICAL TOOLS

Vernon Sanders, Editor

PRACTICAL TOOLS – Each month this "fourth week" MME will deal with very specific things to help you in the practical side of ministry. You'll find proven techniques to do your ministry better.

THIS MONTH

USE PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Project Overload

So you have a pretty good handle on the week-to-week tasks that are part of the typical worship ministry. Your choirs, ensembles, instrumentalists, librarians, and staff are motivated, welltrained, and operating with a high degree of stability. But there...off on the horizon is the challenge of doing a larger project. It can be a concert of gospel music, a fully staged presentation of Jesus Christ Superstar, an Easter pageant, or a performance of Messiah with an orchestra of period instruments. Whatever it is, or for whatever reasons it is to be done, it is out there lurking...not yet looming...and you know that if you don’t plan for it, the finely tuned worship ministry machine will suffer.

What to do...

There is a whole discipline devoted to your problem, grouped loosely under the heading of project management. There is software to help, and the usual quantity of books (generally in the “business” section of your local bookstore), but it all comes down to a few simple principles:

• Set an overall goal
• Set a deadline
• Define working blocks and tasks
• Assign the tasks
• Set target dates and benchmarks
• Monitor and follow through

The list itself is fairly self-evident. It is in the application of the principles that people often lose their way. Here are a few tips.

Set an overall goal

Stephen Covey said it best: Know the end before you begin. Many people start a project for all the wrong reasons...the most common of which are:

• Everybody else is doing it
• (fill in the blank here) thinks we should
•We’ve always done it that way

One of the best ways to approach any project, especially if you are new to the ministry, is from a “zero-based” perspective. This is most often applied to budgeting, but the principles apply to any project. Ask the questions “Why are we doing this?” and, most importantly, “What should the end result be?” Don’t be satisfied with fuzzy answers. Always set a concrete objective. Instead of “The choir needs a challenge,” establish a specific goal such as “Provide musical outreach to 1,000 members of the community.” With a specific goal, it forces all decisions to be made with the goal in mind and to serve the objectives of the goal.

Set a deadline

For a given concert this seems obvious. But, to take the goal outlined above (1000 outreach), let’s say that your current attendance at your event is 250. Deadlines have an impact on the length of the project. Increasing attendance from 250 to 1000 in three years is a different project than achieving the same gain in one year. If you don’t have a deadline, you’ll have no way to plan for or evaluate your success.

Define working blocks and subtasks

This is where it gets interesting. Without defining the ingredients the recipe is complete guesswork. There is no single way to accomplish this step, but in a general sense the project leader individually and with the leadership team needs to sit down and mentally walk through everything that must be done along the way, breaking the project down into the steps needed to achieve the goal. Then, reorganize the steps/tasks into “working blocks” based upon categories. For instance, let’s take our outreach example. You may decide that the tasks organize themselves into these working blocks:

• Research
• Musical preparation
• Staging preparation
• Administrative issues
• Publicity

Research might entail the discovery and identification of particular repertoire that will achieve your goal. Musical preparation will include a rehearsal plan (long-range and rehearsal by rehearsal) and such issues as finding instrumentalists, vocal coaches for soloists, and marking parts.

Staging preparation might center around building sets, finding a choreographer and a stage director, assigning roles and preparing scripts, and, again a rehearsal plan. Administrative issues might include gaining royalty and performance rights clearances, the impact that the project will have on shared administrative staff, printing tickets, and establishing lines of communication. Finally, publicity tasks might entail designing door hangers, contacting local media and preparing public service announcements, doing a “preview” for seniors and/or students, and lining up speaking appearances at local service clubs. Once you have divided your tasks into categories, it should be easy to put them into the best sequence in order to achieve the stated overall goal.

Assign tasks

While every step is important, this is where the rubber hits the road. Each task needs to be assigned to a person or team that will do the best toward accomplishing the task in a way that achieves the overall goal. If a task at the beginning of the process is fumbled, it can have “domino effect” consequences on everything that follows in sequence. It is also helpful to keep in mind that the more people who work on the project, the more people who have a stake in its success. If nothing else, this will have an impact on the publicity part of the process.

Set target dates and benchmarks

As part of the task assignments, indicate “ballpark” deadlines. Schedule a “report back” meeting within a week or so for the individual or team to bring an action plan to accomplish the assigned task. At this second meeting, everyone will need to “sign off” on the action plan as presented or modifi ed, including precise deadlines and benchmarks. This way everyone agrees to a realistic timeframe and understands how meeting deadlines and benchmarks affects the entire project.

Monitor and follow-through

It is critical for one person to oversee the project as a whole. This might not be the music director or worship leader, by the way. If a capable person can be found to shepherd this process to the end of the project, the artistic director is free to solely concentrate on artistic issues. This can be a wonderfully freeing experience. In any event, monitoring a project needn’t be a chore. Because of the nature of such a project in a church setting and the reliance almost solely on volunteers, regular meetings are critical sothat team members can share any problems, raise issues, or report unavoidable delays that impact others. Just as in health care, regular check-ups can also serve as preventative medicine. If one individual or team consistently is having trouble accomplishing goals or meeting deadlines it is better to fi nd that out as early as possible in order to take any necessary action to keep the entire project running smoothly. Regular meetings also provide momentum and help to ensure that the entire project accomplishes the original goal.