Naptastic

This is a living document. What follows is a description of a proposed structure, with a logic model of how I expect this structure to accomplish these goals.

FUMC's vision statement is “Turning Closed Doors Into Open Tables Where Everyone Belongs”

What are the roles that worship team plays in fulfilling that vision? What is our mandate? What does it look like for that mandate to be fulfilled completely?

Nap's first thoughts:

• The Open Table is where we…
• …are with God…
• …we express our faith…
• …we profess our beliefs…
• …we amplify…
• God's Word
• …The Holy Spirit is strongly felt

(Does Nap have a plan for everything here? [also yes])

1. Increase regular attendance
2. Become robust against individuals taking over (bullies)
3. Scale up our worship program
4. Become robust against “problematic” pastors

Here is the disclosure and warning right up-front: This is going to require more and longer meetings, espcially at first. Please feel free to push back on that, but be prepared to explain why a specific meeting wasn't necessary.

Many meetings are possible to avoid by using technology to work asynchronously. We do well with that via email. There are other technologies we can employ, if we choose to, and it will move more work out of meetings. However, in my experience, God's promise to be with us when we are gathered in His name makes a big difference in whether you actually get anything done or not. So if the entire committee isn't meeting, and a specific task isn't solitary by nature, it should be done by more than one person.

The worship team will have two divisions: a continuing division, and a project division. The continuing division consists of these people:

• Committee chair(s)
• Pastor
• Music Director or equivalent
• Lay Leader
• A member of the A/V and/or tech team

The scope of their mandate consists of:

• Figuring out what niche our church can grow into successfully
• Ensuring content is always consistent with this being God's house
• Intervening if necessary if it seems like things are going off the rails

The project division is multiple smaller teams. They aren't long-term positions. A small group will be responsible for one or more Sundays and carry them from “I have ideas” through completing the service and a post-service breakdown of what went well and how we might improve.

One such group might be responsible for an ordinary Sunday, a special Sunday, multiple Sundays in a row (e.g., a series for Lent, or Advent), or a set of services happening over the course of a week or weekend.

Each project group needs to have:

• One person who has a clear vision and goals. They have “ultimate decision making power” for their project, other than being checked by the continuing committee.
• sorry, my brain just ran out of juice. Going to lie down. BBL.

All project groups that currently have services “in process” should attend worship meetings. Most of each group's time is going to be spent listening to the continuing division talk to other project groups, but that's how we keep the plate spinning fast enough that there's continuity (not tradition) based in the congregation, rather than coming from the top down.

In short, the structure will be revolutionary instead of patriarchal.

• More services
• Wider variety of flavors
• Different times of day
• Different days of the week*

• Whenever “ultimate decision making power” exists, it's in different hands.
• We delegate, we trust, we communicate, and we support.

• Planning will be timely whether the pastor is timely about it or not.
• We will continue to grow into a niche that has room for us. Apologies for the bluntness, but if a pastor is “more conservative”, we need to basically shut them out of messaging decisions. They can be as conservative as they want at Centenary, but for FUMC, turning right is death.

* (No evening program if there's a game at the Delta Center, or during Movie Night season)