GUIDELINES
Celebrate Recovery Worship Team Guidelines – Start with the Basics:
1. Everyone on the worship team must know Christ as their personal Savior and have an active relationship with Him.
2. They must have one year of verifiable sobriety. Serving on the worship team is a public ministry position. If a person has not been sober for at least one year, they are not ready to be an example for others – they must have that established track record. A person who wants to be on the worship team must be willing to have the CR pastor or Team leader call their sponsor and verify that they are truly walking the walk.
3. Worship team members are required to sit through the entire Large Group Meeting. This is not a gig where they can just come in, play their music, and leave. At CR, we are ministering to people who are, many times, at the lowest point in their life, so it’s important that we stand alongside them as brothers and sisters in Christ. As we all know, the more Large Group Meetings a person sits through, the more they see themselves in the testimonies and the lessons they hear every week. This allows them to minister with much more compassion, humility, and understanding, realizing that they too have many of the same issues.
4. When a new Celebrate Recovery is starting up, it is sometimes impossible to start with people who have already been through the one-year Step Study. However, the goal is to get the members of the worship team started on their CR Step Study as soon as it is possible, and eventually, for all members to have completed their Step Study.
Many people find the new Audition form very helpful when going through this process. Our goal is to make this ministry safe and healthy for everyone.
To download your free copy, just click on this name:
“Celebrate Recovery Music Ministry Audition” form.
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
This Q & A section is where we post the answers to questions that are asked on a regular basis.
Subject: Live worship music or videos?
Question or Comment:
I enjoy the songs the CR band plays weekly. Are all of the ones listed played by them, or are there videos that are played also?
Answer:
The CR band does play all the songs we use during worship. We do not use videos for worship, although there are many CR’s that do use videos during their worship time. If you want to know what songs we do every Friday, we have a “Weekly Song List” on our www.celebraterecoveryworship.com website, which tells you the name of each song and which artist originally recorded it. That list is found on the menu bar under the tab “Worship Notes”, just scroll down to “Weekly Song List”.
Also, if you go to our website, you can see what songs the band has actually recorded and made available on CD and download. “Worship III – Choices” is our newest cd and our downloads are great.
Subject: Using musicians from your church worship teams to augment worship.
Question or Comment:
I was at summit this last year and was so impressed with the things you had to say. I’ve been so much more confident as a worship leader and have been able to deal with “egos” etc. in a more effective way. My question for you is this … I was speaking to my ministry leader regarding the fact that I am the only musician in our worship team. (I play guitar). This has made things quite trying during our practices in preparation for leading live worship later this month. Up until now, the ministry leader’s policy has been that if you are not a member of CR, having completed the 12 steps, you cannot be in the worship team. I remember some of what you shared regarding bringing in musicians from the church worship teams to augment the instrumentation. With my ministry leader’s blessing, we are asking for your input. I have five singers: two experienced, one who has been singing in the worship team for the last year or so and is just beginning to learn harmony, and two novices who can sing but are not musicians, and of course, only me as the leader.
So if you were me, what would you do to augment your team? Would you seek out more musicians? And if so, specifically what instruments would you look for. I need drums or some rhythm for sure, I’d like piano, bass and one more guitar. At this point, we kind of have an acoustic unplugged sound which is really nice, but it’s hard to lead when my hands can’t leave my guitar. I also would like to know the specific guidelines they are under, i.e., attendance at CR, worship leaders in the church already, etc.
Answer:
Thanks for the kind words regarding the Summit CR Worship Workshop. I’m so glad that it has made it easier to deal with everything with more confidence! Praise God!…sometimes that’s half the battle.
If you get a chance to go to www.celebraterecoveryworship.com and click on the “Guidelines” category on the menu bar, you will find your answer. When John Baker started Celebrate Recovery he started with musicians and singers that he borrowed from Saddleback’s regular worship team. This is allowed, but we require that everyone sit through the entire CR Large Group meeting (they can’t just lead worship and then leave – for details, please read the Guidelines section at the website). Then after they have been there for a little while and had a chance to learn what it’s all about … and if it looks like it’s a good ministry fit (for example, they don’t think they are better than anyone that they are ministering to, etc.), then we ask them to take the next step and go through a step study.
When you go to www.celebraterecoveryworship.com under Guidelines, you can download a CR Worship Team Audition Form. This form is great because it asks the questions that need to be considered when you are putting someone up in front at CR. Please go to the website and download the free audition form – it’s so helpful! Our goal is to make this ministry safe and healthy for everyone.
Subject: Former prison inmates playing on worship team when they get out of prison.
Question or Comment:
I have a couple of potential musicians who have been in prison and are now released in the HAT program for eight weeks.
I know we have a one-year sobriety requirement but how does that work with a former prisoner since they were obviously not allowed to partake in their drug of choice while incarcerated?
Answer:
So glad you asked about the CR one-year sobriety requirement in regards to someone who has recently been released from prison. I talked this over with Hector, the CR National Rep. for CR in prisons and jails and he and I both agree that you still need a one-year track record before you put someone up front in a ministry position. You need to see how a person handles themselves now that they are on the outside and subject to the pressures that will come. How will they respond if and when things get tough – that’s the true test that tells each one of us where we really are in our sobriety.
Hector and I both believe it’s important to see how he or she does the first few months that they are out. We both agreed that you can tell a lot about where a person’s attitude is by how well they handle being told to wait awhile before they are put in any kind of position. I sometimes suggest that a person can help out with the graphics/PowerPoint presentations for the Large Group meetings or serve in other ways that aren’t public while they are waiting to establish their one-year sobriety track record. But the most important thing is that the person who is just out of prison really get established in their recovery now that they are on the outside. Do they have a good network of support established, i.e., an accountability partner, a sponsor, and safe and encouraging CR friends? If a person is too impatient, that’s usually not a good sign.
I hope this is of some help. I will be praying for you and for our brothers and sisters in Christ as they are establishing their new life on the outside. If you can, please let me know how it goes and how everything turns out. God bless you and guide you with His great wisdom.
Subject: The song “Our God.”
Question or Comment:
I am introducing “Our God”, at CR worship this week, and I am wondering what you sing instead of ” Water you turned into wine” (Our God) I was thinking of using ” into the darkness you shine ” twice.
Answer:
You’ve got it exactly right. When we introduced “Our God” at the CR Summit (and of course, at our regular weekly CR meetings) we used the “Into the darkness You shine” line twice. It works perfectly and it’s such an encouraging song, I hated to not use it just because it mentioned wine.