Value Added IP in a Church Setting

If you are just joining us, we started by identifying just exactly what church musicians and worship leaders actually do…create IP. Then we explored how IP can be valued in the marketplace…including a description of the 1000 true fan economic model. Then we looked at how to value IP in a church setting.

The unfortunate conclusion I left you with last time is that a musician in a church situation is most often playing “second fiddle.” One of the realities of the modern church is that the church musician/worship leader can produce all the wonderful creative IP in the world, but if the priorities of the church (or the church’s leadership) change, the church musician/worship leader is generally the first one out the door.

But let’s take a step back for a moment and look at other areas where the church musician/worship leader adds IP value to the church. We talked about the CD/DVD/Book sales model, and the percentage of budget model in an earlier post, but there are more. Here are a few:

Outreach/publicity/marketing IP

That is, how much does having the person associated with the church add value to the church’s standing in the community? We’ll talk more about this one in an upcoming post.

“Focus” IP

That is, how adept is the person in enabling worshipers to move from the horizontal plane of worldly concerns to the vertical plane of being focused upon being in the presence of God?

Leadership IP

That is, how much does the person contribute in casting vision, motivating volunteers, interacting with peers and congregation in a leadership role?

Growth IP

That is, how much demonstrable or potential growth in membership/attendance/giving does the person bring to the church?

Teamwork IP

That is, how well does the person work with others, and contribute toward the shared goals of the team?

Pastoral IP

That is, how capable and willing is the person to take on pastoral responsibilities for the people that he/she leads, and how successful is that person in that role?

The problem is that everything in this list can be interpreted subjectively. And notice that nowhere above do you see “musical quality” or “musical style” — two things a church musician/worship leader often puts at the top of their personal list of what is important.

Next time, we’ll draw some sad but true conclusions to our story, with some good news and some bad news. In the meantime, please leave a comment and tell me what you think. Should there be more items in the “other IP” list? Have you or your church ever assigned a metric to any of these items?