Anyone else feel like criticism can be a mean word? Mostly because people tend to pair the word with negativity. Movie reviews, job interviews, when you really upset your wife for buying that thing that you shouldn’t have bought. Sometimes we find criticism on a worship team. Sure we know the word “constructive” is tagged on to make us feel better about the feedback we are receiving, but where it comes from is another story.
On a worship team, I would primarily seek criticism and except criticism from my leader or pastor. Sure I know we sometimes allow our teammates to chime in on what you are doing on our time. But I would personally seek feedback from someone I wholly trust with my abilities and with our whole team for that matter.
At times we don’t get the kind of feedback that we hoped to hear or we find out that we have been oblivious to what we are doing. What are we to do with this information? I personally would want to crawl into a ball in a dark room with a spotlight on me with the word shame on my forehead. I don’t take criticism all that well, as you might have guessed.
What we should be doing is taking what was shared with us to better ourselves. Practice your criticism. For example; if you are singing a song and before you received any feedback you added way too many adlibs and spoke too much during a song, try and remember what feedback your leader or later shared with you while you are leading again, then ask your leader how you did then. Take mental notes on how much you are improving and use that to gain confidence in yourself. But not so much confidence where you find yourself back in the feedback boat all over again!
Also, when it’s time for you to give criticism, be sure to choose your words carefully. Your duty should be to have your musician or singer to grow and flourish, not to fall and perish. Our words speak life!
I hope this has blessed you and would love to hear stories here, or on Instagram or Twitter @anhonestsound!
-AO
anhonestsound.com 