The more you practice together the more you will become a "unit" and things will come naturally. Communicate with each other. Once we did that in my church we really started to click. We began to know what each person's strengths and weeknesses were. Mine was dealing with alot of changes throughout the song because my ear had not developed at the time so my organist and MOM would work with me on that, helping me to understand the progressions and how to identify when a change was coming and to always be thinking ahead. Once we did that our music ministry and my playing personally went to a whole new level. Now when we do a song and the orgnanist or keyboard person decides to go off into left field, I can hang with him and come back to "home base"....
Listen to all types of songs and learn their styles...You can pretty much figure out Israel Houghtons progressions on both his fast and slow songs....Fred Hammond, John P. Kee, Norman Hutchins, etc...As mentioned before know your keys.....the main thing is to learn the progression even if it means playing whole notes and half notes...the fill in stuff with come with practice and time.
I had a bass player ( been playing for 15 years) show me what he does. He will listen to a song several times and just plays whole notes and half notes to get the progression and key changes in the songs. Once he has that down he will then begin to fill in with the licks and flavor..some stuff he plays like the cd and some stuff he adds his own flavor to it but he does that consistantly.
