Outsourced Worship

I had a fascinating time last week with Jeff Powell, one of the leaders at First Hattiesburg Church in Mississippi. He told me a story that was very interesting...

A little over a year ago their church had an open position for a worship leader and couldn't find the right person to fill the role. So they began to hire worship leaders to come in, a weekend at a time, to lead their band and congregation in worship. It worked so well that they decided to continue doing this--not as a stop-gap measure--but as their intentional strategy. At this time, they have no plans of ever hiring a worship leader. They will continue to outsource.

In the first year they brought in 15 or 20 different leaders, but they have since settled to about 4 or 5 that they continue to bring in to lead their people.

Jeff says this strategy offers several advantages:

• Many worship leaders don't enjoy building teams, managing budgets or organizing departments. They just love to lead worship. This strategy let's them stay in their sweet spot.
• This decision saves money for the church. He is able to pay them really well for a weekend and still save enough money in the church budget to use toward another staff position.
• They love the variety that this brings to their church. Keeping things unpredictable is a plus, says Jeff, to keeping people's attention.
• They have learned so much from these worship leaders that they wouldn't have learned from one person.

It's a very interesting twist on staffing. I think churches are going to have to think creatively about staffing in the future--and this is a very creative method.

What do you think--good strategy or bad idea?