Worship leaders are providing a service to the worshipers by helping their hearts turn toward God. Everyone whose job is to provide a service to others must have feedback so they can get out of themselves enough to know if their service is valuable. They also have to maneuver through constantly shifting cultural contexts to select the right songs and lead them without distracting and dissipating attempts at personal showmanship, with skill levels that don't become more the focus of attention than the songs themselves, either by being bad enough to make the music impossible to realize for the worshipers or by calling attention to the charisma and excellence of the leader.

Very important. The difficulty is that we have to find people who will give us true, and unbiased feedback. Most people will say "you're doing great" no matter what the truth is. I've found that when I go periods of time with no real evaluation, I can let things go that should not be let go. Both in quality of production, and in my own "heart of worship".

Interesting question, and I think the answer can vary significantly. One factor is how self-critical the worship leader is. As a professional musician who spends most days evaluating and critiquing choral groups, the chances are that I will be much harder on myself than others. However a less experienced musician needs some objective feedback to be sure they are not developing habits that undermine their effectiveness. Our church records each service and singing portion comes from ceiling mounted mics that give what it sounds like if you were a person sitting in the congregation. I find this much more helpful than a direct feed of my personal mic, and allows me to hear what the balance is like and whether I am helping the congregation participate enthusiastically, or if I am too loud or not loud enough. (If your system is not set up this way, consider one of the many small digital flash recorders on the market. I have a Zoom H2 - not much money and amazing quality recording.) Setting up a video recorder can also be revealing. Getting feedback is important, but the old adage - consider the source - is critical. Being at a multi-generational church, I know that no matter what songs I pick, no one song will be the favorite of every group. Thus, I am guaranteed to not satisfy some group at all times. (I remember being criticized by one sister for singing all those "half page" songs. That day we had sung "Nearer, Still Nearer" and every other song was a full page or longer. All she could focus on was what she did not like. I choose not to react to such narrow criticism.) However, it is my goal to engage everyone as much as possible at every service. I must have thick skin and weigh the big picture of feedback to be sure I stay balanced and relevant. I am blessed to have a partner who shares the planning responsibilities. This helps avoid the church getting caught in my own personal rut. If you don't have that luxury, maybe sharing worship plans with colleagues at other churches could provide that perspective. Another exercise that can help is to visit other churches as well as have other people lead at your church. We have several hundred at each of our services, and every now and then when I am not leading the worship I wander in the back, balcony and lobby area. This has changed how I plan some things. It's so easy to forget what it's like beyond the front pew. In summary I'd say seek evaluation, winnow out the chaff and continually seek to be effective through adjustments that will make your leadership more relevant to the church's worship experience. RK.

Great thoughts!! I tend to believe that pretty much anything worth doing deserves evaluation... for worship leaders it seems to simply be good stewardship of a gift.

It is extremely important to pursue feedback from people. Every Sunday after I lead I ask several people what they thought I did well and what they thought I could improve on. I think that we as worship leaders should be constantly learning about how to better improve our leading. The best people to tell us how to better ourselves as leaders are the people we are leading.

Just like any skill, the more we can fine-tune it, the better it can become. If we can constructively give advice or criticism to someone to improve their skills, then they can take it into account. On the other hand we need to make sure to encourage the skills in order for that person to pursue a higher level.

I think it's hugely important to get some sort of evaluation, but the source of that evaluation must be at least considered and at most censored. As long as we lead humans, we must respect the constant shifting that occurs as we push one another on. I think if we're committed to great worship leading, then we'll seek evaluation out of a striving for higher excellence.

Robert, I went from sitting in the first pew to sitting very near the back about three weeks ago. I never expected it to, but it did more for my worship leading than anything else. We've got to remember that more than half the congregation sits behind the first pew...

I too, think this is an interesting question. When I think about getting "feedback" from the people in my church after a worship service, two different types of feedback come to mind. 1) How did I, as the worship leader (and rep of the praise team), lead today? Were we too loud, too soft, on key, too "showy", too reserved, etc? All of those types of questions lend themselves to a matter of personal styles, preferences, and opinions.... and 2) How did I, as the worship leader, help the church connect with God today? How did I help the church experience a taste of what heaven will be like?

The second of the two types of feedback is by far and away the most important (in my opinion) so I'm considering generating a survey with some well-thought out questions to randomly sample members and visitors each week to get their input. I'm planning on placing 5-7 of these surveys in random bulletins/service programs that sit at the back of the auditorium so people can pick them up on the way into the sanctuary.

So my question to all of you is: when soliciting feedback of this kind, what types of questions would you include? Things that come to mind are: "What are your thoughts on our worship service today? Did anything in particular help you to connect with God? Did anything we did detract from you connecting with Him?"

So -- any other suggestions? Thanks for your consideration!

Okay, this is going to be very sharp. For me, or as I apply it to myself only, I consider it close to sin status if I do not continually try to improve or change myself with the goal of affecting our congregational singing. My problem has been trying to "make" others see that. I was wrong to do that. So now I have committed myself to my own vision and try to ignor others. I can only hope that the congregation will eventually be able to help the other leaders see. We are to encourage each other to grow. If we do not learn and grow, are we missing the mark? I should have looked up the scriptures. I wish change was not quite so difficult to achieve. I wish I could get the evaluation of my peers. And maybe with the assistance of the AV group at church, and posting it on the web, I can get a good assessment of how to improve /change. That is my next goal.
I SMILE!