As the worship team, our job is to lead, inspire, and guide people to and through a worshipful experience with God. That’s a huge role. How can we create a culture of worship in our churches? This post is part of the “Culture of Worship Blog Series”, aiming to answer that very question.

Mentoring and discipleship is a biblical principle for EVERY AGE. Every person in your team ought to have the attitude of “inspiring young people;” this is not just for the old guys here. I like to follow the “20 year rule.” The 20 year rule indicates that you will be most effective reaching those 10 years younger than you and 10 years older than you. So if you’re 52 years old, you will be most effective reaching those 42-62 years old. The 26 year old will be most effective in reaching those 16-36. Using this as a guide – start mentoring someone this weekend (and get mentored).

Young people are interested in a relationship. Before you can ever share leadership, you must share relationship. Young people just want to see a genuine and real person caring about them. Be honest! Hold them accountable. I mentored one member of my worship team starting when he was in 6^th grade. After every worship service I would ask him tough questions: “How was your heart?”, “What could you have played better?”, and “Did you ever feel an unholy pride grab your heart?” I shared my own experiences with pride so he could identify the issue easily.

I think the most common mistake leaders and mentors make is trying to bring correction outside the context of relationship. Correction without relationship will breed contempt. If you need to bring correction to someone else on your team but you don’t have a relationship with them – please ask whichever leader DOES have a relationship with them to have the conversation. If this is impossible, at the very least do the correction in an “I-Care-About-You” situation (i.e. buy them coffee).

Sometimes in this process you have to invest in the younger person before you’ll ever begin to see any benefit. It may be quicker and easier for you to do that thing by yourself – but that doesn’t expand the Kingdom. Invite them into what you’re doing. John Maxwell has a four-step system to mentoring someone:

You Do, They Watch
You Do, They Help
You Help, They Do (This is the most difficult, you must relinquish the doing!)
You Watch, They Do

The number one thing here is time and consistency. This is a slow and steady process.

I believe the healthiest worship teams (and churches) are not the ones that pass the torch to the next generation once they get too old to handle the pressure – but rather I believe the healthiest worship teams (and churches) are those that are consistently and continually passing on the torch to other generations. The 25 year old is mentoring, and so is the 65 year old. It takes work – but its worth it.