This is part one of a two-part conversation with Sean Bennett about leading worship and production teams. Be sure to check out part two for more on discipleship, systems, and avoiding burnout.
Sean Bennett is one of the newer members of our team at Churchfront. If you were at our conference back in November, you saw him on stage moderating several sessions. Sean has been in vocational ministry since 2010—so he’s coming up on 16 years. He’s worked at four different churches and has experienced both healthy and unhealthy ministry contexts.
I wanted to sit down with Sean because he was most recently a worship pastor—more recently than I was. Both of us have led in large churches, small churches, and multi-site churches. We’ve both been the worship pastor who also somehow had to lead the tech team. We know what it’s like trying to care for production volunteers while you’re literally on stage during the service.
We’ve also lived in the tension between excellence and authenticity, between planning and spontaneity, and between “making it better” and burning yourself out.
This conversation is for worship pastors, production leaders, and anyone trying to figure out how to lead volunteers in a church context. Because at the end of the day, it’s not just about the music, the lights, or the systems—it’s about people.
1) See People at Their Worst Before You Take the Job
If Sean were stepping into a new worship pastor role today, he’d do a few things differently—not because he made massive mistakes, but because there are lessons you only learn through experience.
The biggest one: try to see the people you’re interviewing with at their worst.
That sounds strange, but it matters. During interviews, you get the best version of everyone. The lead pastor is on his A-game. The executive pastor is selling you on the vision. Everyone is polished and professional.
But you’ll be working with these people when things go wrong—when they’re stressed, frustrated, or under pressure. How they handle chaos matters a lot more than how they handle a carefully orchestrated interview.
One of the things that drew Sean to Churchfront was having dinner at Jake’s house and sitting next to his two-year-old for the whole meal. He got to see both the best and hardest parts of being a dad and a company owner at the same time. It actually made him want to work here more because he saw how Jake handled real life in real time.
So during the interview process, try to get into less formal settings. Have dinner. See how they interact with their family. Notice how they respond when they’re not “performing.”
Do deeper research than you think you need
The second thing Sean wishes he had done differently is researching theological leanings and leadership tendencies more deeply before accepting a position.
It’s hard to know where a church will be in five years. Sean joined his most recent church when it was in a healthy spot. Five years later, it was a very different place. Things change. You change. The church changes.
But there are often yellow or red flags you can pick up earlier—if you’re looking for them. The problem is, when you’ve got a family to feed and a job offer that pays well at a church you think you align with, it’s easy to put blinders on.
Here’s the reality: there are some churches that could not pay you enough to work there. Knowing that ahead of time is a good thing. If you’re young and this is your first worship pastor role, take extra time to identify what could be difficult down the road—and decide in advance what you’re willing (and not willing) to endure.
2) The Working Interview Goes Both Ways
A lot of churches will invite you to do a working interview where you lead worship before they hire you. That’s great for them—but don’t forget: you’re interviewing them too.
Don’t get so focused on making yourself look good that you miss what’s happening around you.
Pay attention to:
- how leaders react under pressure
- how the team communicates
- the tone of rehearsal
- the systems (or lack of systems)
- the culture behind the scenes
If you could, you’d want to say, “Give me your worst team this Sunday.” Obviously, no church is going to do that. But what you do want to see is how leaders respond when things don’t go as planned.
When someone starts a song in the wrong key. When the ProPresenter operator misses a slide. When lights don’t come up on time.
It’s easy to do ministry with someone when everything is going well. It’s a lot harder when things go poorly—and you need to know how the people you’ll report to handle that reality.
3) Excellence Is Doing the Best You Can With What You Have
The tension between excellence and authenticity is real—and there’s a thin line between excellence and perfectionism.
The most helpful definition Sean has found is simple:
Excellence is doing the best you can with what you have.
That starts with being honest about what you actually have. If you’ve got an amazing vocalist who can lead once a month, great. But you can’t expect the other three weeks to be at that same level.
You might have Kari Jobe-level singing one Sunday, and normal human singing the next three Sundays. Both can still be excellent if you’re doing the best you can with what you have.
As a leader, you need to understand that reality—and communicate it clearly to your senior pastor. You need to be able to say:
“Here’s our goal. We want to get here. Right now, one out of every four Sundays we hit that. We hope eventually it’s four out of four, but this is who we have right now.”
Then you decide together what’s expected:
- Do you only put the A-team on stage?
- Or do you build a broader team, serve with who God has given you, and grow people over time?
There’s no universal “right” answer. It depends on your context, your vision, and your church culture. The key is clarity and honest expectations.
Interview tip: give your potential leader a scenario:
“We’ve got one excellent singer and three mediocre singers, and they can each lead once a month. What are your expectations?”
Their answer tells you a lot.
4) You Can’t Be in Two Places at Once
Here’s Sean’s pet peeve—and I agree with him: churches need to stop hiring worship/production leaders and expecting them to be the same person.
I get why it happens. In smaller or mid-sized churches, hiring someone part-time often doesn’t meet the need. So you try to make it a full-time role by combining worship and production.
But worship and production happen at the same time, and they require wildly different skill sets.
Sean has met amazing worship leaders who can’t drag and drop on a computer. He’s met amazing production leaders who are terrible musicians. The skills gap between worship and production is huge.
Now, a lot of us on the Churchfront team became worship-and-production people—not because we were born that way, but because we had to be. Sean was a worship leader who had to get good at production, and now he’d say production is actually his stronger skill set simply because he’s done it longer out of necessity.
But if you’re hiring externally, understand what you’re asking for: most people will be better at one than the other.
And if your worship/production leader is on stage and something breaks during worship, it’s going to stay broken longer than if that person were backstage.
So if you’re in a dual role (or you’re a church that requires one), the standard has to be: do the best you can with what you have. Train your team for the common issues, but understand there will always be something that breaks for the first time while you’re on stage.
5) You’re a Pastor First, Everything Else Second
Whether “pastor” is in your title or not—whether you’re 40 or 20—if you’re leading people, you’re doing pastoral leadership.
Your primary objective is discipleship: helping someone become more like Jesus.
Here’s where it gets tricky: helping someone get better at guitar isn’t automatically discipleship.
But helping them get better at guitar so they can serve the church faithfully and lead people in worship effectively can absolutely be discipleship. Same action, different intent.
If all you’re doing is improving someone’s musical skill without teaching the theology and philosophy behind what you’re doing, you’re failing as a leader. From the outside, it might look like you’re succeeding—but you’re not forming disciples.
This is the paradox of leadership: sometimes the outcomes look great while the ministry is unhealthy. And sometimes it looks unimpressive while God is doing something deep.
If you’ve got a vocalist who isn’t any better than six months ago, but they’re a lot closer to Jesus, you’ve succeeded as a worship pastor—even if their singing hasn’t improved. And if they’re growing spiritually, they’ll receive hard conversations with more maturity too.
Sean shared a practice from his last church. They met in a movie theater, which meant showing up at 5 AM to unload trailers. Sean would be up at 3 AM because he needed coffee and time to think—and he had the keys, so he had to be there first.
Some Sundays, he simply didn’t want to be there.
So as he walked into the theater, he would intentionally pray—not over every seat (there wasn’t time), but while walking down to the front to start unloading.
“God, I want You to be the focus. I want people to meet You here today. Make this about You and not about me.”
He had to pray that every week because if he didn’t, it would become about him—about performance, execution, and whether the service “went well.”
At the end of the day, it isn’t about any of that. We can care about quality and clarity and excellence—but only with the heart posture that says:
“God, this isn’t about me. This is about You. How do I make this more about You and less about me?”
Make sure to watch part two, where Sean and I dive into practical systems for discipling your team, how production can support worship without becoming the focus, and how to avoid burning out trying to “make it better” every single week.
