Jon Manna

Lately, Pris and I have had many conversations on worship and we’ve been evaluating why we do what we do when we lead worship. Out of these honest discussions we’ve realized a few things.

For starters, we realized that I’m apt to lead the whole band. I play multiple instruments and it is obvious to me when a musician is lost (in his/her music) or playing wrong notes. For Priscilla, on the other hand, harmonies and vocal phrasing are very prominent in her listening and she often will stop and want to go over some parts with them.

With that being said, another discussion we had was based on stage layout. In many churches I’ve been to, the “back-up” singers are backed up to the deepest part of the stage and off to the side. Many times, they are not even a part of the official sound check and their role gets minimized even more.

When we lead with our Young Adults, we’ve made a change. We now have our singers on the front line.

4 reasons Why We Moved Our Back-up Singers to the Front of the Stage

• People in the congregation relate more to singers than musicians. This is quite possibly the most important point. The people in your congregation who play an instrument are probably a minority. Thus having all your musicians on the front line doesn’t help much when we are trying to eliminate distractions and facilitate worship. Instead we realized that (almost) everyone walking in to church can sing, clap, and raise their hands. Naturally then, it makes perfect sense to have our singers at the forefront. We noticed that as our singers would sing, clap, and raise their hands in worship, the congregation would feel the freedom to do the same.
• It builds confidence in them. At the back of the stage, they felt insignificant, overlooked, and undervalued. One singer told me, “What’s the point in coming? I’m almost better off worshiping with my husband and children in the pew.” We’ve started to be more intentional with our singers and so now they understand that people in the congregation are also looking to them too for leadership. We are also doing our best to make sure they get a good soundcheck and that their monitor levels are where they need them to be. What’s also helped boost their confidence is the fact that Pris will spend some time with them on mapping out their parts. This has given them a purpose on the worship team.
• Our worship leaders can easily rely on them during songs. Often times, worship leaders will lead but not necessarily sing every line. They might also not want to start every song. We’ve found that in having the singers up at the front of the stage, the worship leader can easily rely on the singers to maintain the melody if he/she wants to stop for a moment and communicate something to the band or pastor. Also, if a back-up singer is to start a song, it’s not as awkward for the people in the congregation who used to look around and wonder “where is that voice coming from?”
• The stage is being used proportionately. This is a simple point. Before, the forefront of the stage was completely empty. The band seemed very far from the people. Now with our singers up at the front, it has balanced it out nicely.

I know that these aren’t earth-shattering discoveries. Hillsong does a great job of this type of thing, but it can go unnoticed if you are not listening to what your back-up singers are saying under their breath.

Worship leaders, this week/end, I challenge you to have a chat with them and so you can hear their heart on this. After all, people in the congregation will relate more to them than to your musicians.

Thoughts?