From Performance to Participation

The situation

I joined First Baptist Church Powell as Worship Pastor in December 2019. The Senior Pastor retired during my interview process, so I arrived into a leadership transition already underway. Three months later COVID-19 suspended in-person services; for a period I led the gathering alone from the piano. A new Senior Pastor arrived in July 2020.

The role carried real scope. I supervised three employees, led a volunteer system of more than 65 people, managed an annual ministry budget, and served on the elder board, where operational decisions met organizational governance. As the work developed my role expanded from Worship Pastor to Pastor of Liturgy, adding responsibility for learning, communications, and team leadership.

I helped lead this change alongside the Senior Pastor, elders, staff, volunteer leaders, and congregants; the organizational outcomes belong to that shared effort.

What I recognized

The presenting question was about worship style. I did not think that was the real one. Watching how the gathering actually worked, I recognized that attention, responsibility, and value had concentrated on the platform. The congregation had been positioned as an audience — not by anyone’s decision, but by an accumulation of small ones.

That reframing changed what kind of problem this was. If the issue were preference, a new format would solve it. People understood what happened on a Sunday; what was unclear was what was expected of them and why it mattered. The barriers sat in roles, shared understanding, weekly workflow, and the room itself — not in anyone’s knowledge. Changing the format alone would have altered the surface and left the pattern intact.

How I led the change

With the new Senior Pastor I helped develop a shared organizing model: a seven-part weekly rhythm running from Call to Worship through Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Receiving Instruction, Response, and Sending. It gave every week a stable logic independent of the sermon topic, and gave leaders common language for planning and for explaining the experience.

I proposed reducing platform emphasis and increasing responsive participation — more shared readings, fewer singers and instrumentalists where extra people did not strengthen the congregation’s part, and removing the regular choir from weekly services. Because those decisions affected real roles, I made the reasoning public rather than presenting them as preferences.

I designed communication that taught rather than announced, giving each channel a job: bulletin explanations for interpretation at the point of use, a two-year long-form educational podcast I hosted for depth a Sunday morning could not hold, a short-form social-media teaching series for wider historical practice, and a booklet, calendar, and membership class for seasonal rhythm and expectation. I repeated messages deliberately, because people met the change at different moments and with different questions.

Capability mattered more than instruction. I established monthly leadership development nights, structured the weekly rehearsal so practice happened close to performance, and coached leaders and volunteers directly — then handed the teaching to others, because a system depending on one interpreter has a single point of failure.

I standardized the weekly operation as well. I introduced worship-planning software as a single source for musical resources, edited click tracks in audio-production software, synchronized presentation and lighting cues, moved distribution to the cloud, and deployed tablet-based tools so support sat within reach at performance. Standardizing repeatable work freed attention for judgment and made coaching precise.

Finally, the environment. A proposal for a new sound system prompted a larger question, and I raised it: new technology in the existing room would reinforce the pattern we were trying to change. I recommended remodeling first, initiated that direction in 2021, and carried it into leadership presentations, architect meetings, design decisions, congregational communication, and fundraising.

What continued

The most useful test of this work is what survived the person who started it.

• The seven-part organizing structure remained in use after my departure in September 2023.
• Leaders and volunteers continued carrying the work without me.
• The renovation direction continued.
• Participants increasingly described confession, prayer, and responsive readings as meaningful rather than as additions.
• Attendance and membership increased during the broader period.

Attendance and membership grew during this period, but those results reflected shared leadership and several organizational initiatives. Participation and workflow changes were assessed through observation and stakeholder feedback rather than a formal before-and-after study.

What this demonstrates

Most organizations run on people who do not report to whoever is leading the change. Authority can secure compliance in those conditions; it cannot produce understanding or discretionary effort.

The setting was ministry, but the work required capabilities that transfer directly to instructional design and performance improvement: identifying the real barrier, defining what people needed to do differently, building understanding and practice, developing leaders, and aligning tools and workflows with the desired behavior.