Hitting the "Reset" button on Song Selection

As worship leaders, it can be easy to get a head of your congregation. You're exposed to volumes of brand-new, quality worship material and can get caught up in the idea that they should know and experience the great truth and power of these songs as well. The problem with this is that we lose sight of our first calling... giving people an opportunity to worship and be changed by their God.

When I became the volunteer music director at my church in January of 2012 a few months after arriving, I noticed a big problem in song selection. In 2011, my church did over 200 unique worship songs. Think about that... In a 52 week period in which we did 6 songs per week, the repeat rate was just over 1.5. That means, the average song was only done once over the course of the year. How can we expect to build up the meaning and experience of these songs within the community when we don't even repeat them? The new songs weren't gaining enough traction to become meaningful and the older songs were the only thing that united the church; ultimately, making the new songs the scapegoat for disharmony and disjointedness. We decided that we needed to hit the reset button on our song selection and create a more intentional and effective song selection process.

With a new leadership team in place, we rallied around a brand new vision for song selection. We built a list of 45 songs that we felt were worth investing in in 2012 - songs that we wanted done at least 6 times in 2012. We drew from songs that had gained recent traction, mixed in a few classics that we saw value in and added brand new songs that we believed would be meaningful for years to come. We also made a provision that leaders could chose up to one well-known, older song not on the list (hymn, classic praise song) per set. No more one-and-done songs.

Here are the guidelines (straight from the email sent to the worship leaders) we built our list with...

• Relevant - 80% of our songs should be less than 10 years old. I'd like to see the other 20% be a mix of hymns and slightly older praise songs.

• Consistent - all of the songs should fit into a similar music style; Praise and Worship CCM. We're not doing grunge, gospel or Gaither. ;)

• Personal -  the songs should be in first person and provide an opportunity for the congregation to sing praises or surrender directly to God.

• Authenticity - the songs should include a variation of emotion that are inherent in the Christian experience and should speak to the human condition.

Each of the leaders created a list of about 30 songs that they felt met the criteria. I then compiled all of those lists into one document and found that we had about 70 that had been mentioned by two or more leaders on their list. That made narrowing them down easier. Since there was already some unity on those 70 songs, we got together in person and went through that list, eventually narrowing it down to about 45. It took humility, understanding and a lot of prayer, but we walked away with a list of songs and a purpose that united us as a team of leaders.

Since the list consisted of mostly new songs, we also took time to discuss how to effectively introduce new material and how to build up the congregations grasp of it. In the first couple of months, there were a handful of complaints that we were doing too many new songs, but it only took a couple months for those new songs to not only catch on, but become beloved. Since we made that change in our process, we have seen continued growth. 

Now that we are almost 9 months into this experiment, its exciting to look at the journey God had us on. Our congregation has grasped onto these songs and we have continued to move forward as a collective, congregation and worship team - singing these song in unity and for His Kingdom's glory.