Choosing new songs to add to the regular playlist, and culling old songs off the playlist, will be one of the most important parts of your role. It’s also one of the most enjoyable and painful things you’ll get to do. It’s enjoyable because finding a ripper new song and getting it to the stage where you’re teaching it in church is a real joy. But it’s painful because finding ripper songs usually means sorting through a lot of less-than-ordinary songs, and even then, what you think is a ripper song may not actually be that ripper. You’ll need to add new songs and cull old songs at least once a year. Introducing 1 new song a term is a good norm to aim for – and you shouldn’t keep adding without removing other songs that are no longer helpful.
the priority of words over music
For most people, the thing that stands out the most when you listen to a new CD is the music. Lyrics can take a long time to notice and are easily ignored, but the music is the main thing straight away. This makes choosing new congregational songs a reasonably dangerous activity – and by dangerous I mean really dangerous – good songs with bad theology can have a seriously negative impact on the spiritual health of the church. They say that in church history every heresy that spread accross the world was championed by a song! Bad theology rides on the back of beautiful songs and enters into the hearts and minds of God’s people – like a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Obviously we want to work hard at not letting that happen! But it’s more than not introducing BAD theology – it’s also that we want to introduce GOOD theology – we want to avoid the middle ground too – all those songs that don’t really say much, or are too vague to be beneficial.
Hopefully it’s obvious already that – when you’re choosing new songs for the church family to sing, the most important thing to consider by far is the WORDS/LYRICS of the song. It doesn’t matter how awesome the guitar riff is – if the words aren’t a faithful representation of God’s word then don’t touch it with a 10-foot pole. You might enjoy listening to it, but the church family aren’t going to benefit from singing it. Print up the song words and have a careful read – have them in front of you and weigh them up apart from the music.
Here are some handy questions to ask when you’re choosing a song:
- What part/s of the Bible is this from?
- What does it teach us about God? about us? about the world?
- Is it faithful?
- Is it clear? Are there any unclear parts that could be misinterpreted?
- How will the church family benefit from singing this song?
the big picture Versus ‘praise and worship’
Congregational songs are without a shadow of a doubt a big part of the church’s Bible teaching program. The songs we sing together will very likely be the most memorable Bible teaching the church family will receive each week. It’s not more important than other forms of Bible teaching – but it is more memorable.
“Show me the church song-list, and I’ll show you their theology.” It’s true! The song playlist reveals the theology of a church. What a church sings reveals what a church believes. Which means that choosing songs has to be MORE than just asking “Is this faithful?” We need to ask, “How does this song add to the bigger picture of what we’re teaching at church?”
What sort of ‘Big Picture’ is your church song-list painting at the moment? A very eye-opening exercise is to have a look at the songs you sung last Sunday and ask: “If these song words were all I knew about God, what would be missing? What have we over-emphasised, and what have we under-emphasised?” The person who will notice this most acutely is the preacher – closely followed by you – when you ask the question, “Are there helpful songs to sing that tie in to the part of the Bible being taught this Sunday?” If you can’t find songs to match what’s being taught, then it’s probably because your song-list is unbalanced, and you need to add more songs that complement the part of God’s word that you don’t have songs for.
Ask yourself some ‘Big Picture’ song-list questions:
- Are there parts of God’s word that we’re teaching at church but don’t have songs for? Can we FIND songs, or do we need to WRITE them?
- What parts of God’s word are we under-emphasising? Eg. Are we singing many songs about the cross? about the resurrection? about the second coming? etc
- What parts of God’s word are we over-emphasising? Eg. Do we have too many songs about the glory of God in creation and not enough songs about the glory of God in Jesus?
It’s worth comparing this ‘Big Picture’ model to what most refer to as ‘Praise and Worship’. When most people talk about ‘Praise and Worship’ the ‘Praise’ bit usually means ‘really upbeat songs where clap and get excited’ and the ‘Worship’ bit usually means ‘really emotional songs where i tell God how much I love him and want to do stuff for him.’ Understood this way, ‘Praise and Worship’ has not only become separated from what the Bible actually teaches ‘Praise’ and ‘Worship’ are, ‘Praise and Worship’ has actually become a whole musical genre in itself. It’s more about a musical style than it is about biblical truth.
Up against these very commonly held ideas of ‘Praise and Worship’ are the biblical picture of praise and worship. Biblical praise is telling who God is – what he’s like and what he’s done. Biblical worship is trusting in what Jesus has done for us and responding by offering our whole lives. That means that a lot of what falls into the ‘Praise and Worship’ genre is not actually true praise and worship! A song that tells God how I feel about him and what I want to do for him is not actually praise – since praise is telling who GOD is – what HE’s like and what HE’s done (not me!). A song that offers a response without linking it to what God’s done for us in Jesus is in danger of painting an unbiblical picture of worship.
Here are some more handy questions to ask about potential songs:
- Is this song telling WHO God is – what he’s LIKE and what he’s DONE?
- Is this song heavy on teaching about God, or is it mainly talking about me/us?
- If there are parts of the song that are about OUR response – does it tie our response into what Jesus has done for us? Is the balance on Jesus/us right?
What you’re really asking in these questions is whether or not the song/s are true/biblical praise and true/biblical worship. It’s a big deal.
the importance of good music
Having said all that about the importance of words/lyrics, it’s also very important to choose songs that have good music. Music should always be secondary to the words, but that doesn’t mean it’s unimportant. For better or worse, songs with good music will help teach the words of the song. If the music’s good, people will be drawn to what the lyrics are about. Good music helps good words ‘sink in’, and helps us have an appropriately emotional involvement in what we’re singing. Music is a wonderful gift of God! Work hard to find songs with both good words and good music – it makes such a helpful difference.
Songs with FAITHFUL words and BAD music are a criminal injustice – they make the truth about God both boring and cheesy. If at all possible, keep well away from the blue cheese – it makes God smell bad, and our time singing together painful. If there’s a part of God’s word you need to choose a song about and the only faithful song/s you can find have cheesy/boring music, consider writing a song yourself – you’ll be doing church a big favour! Or consider digging up an older hymn that teaches the subject – it might work well as is, or you might want to ‘modernise’ the music (or find a version someone else has modernised).
keep it simple
A lot of Christian CDs sounds like ‘stadium-rock-church’. It sounds like a U2 concert and would go down really well with an awesome band and 50,000 people. But will it really work in a small congregation, with the talent you have in your band? Think about the people in the music team, and then think about the faces you see in the congregation from the front during the singing each week – can you really see the stadium-rock-songs working?
It’s really important to choose songs that will work well with a smaller congregation, and that the musicians in the music team will be able to play/sing. You want songs that can be sung with only guitar/piano and vocals. One of the biggest implications is actually the melody line – if the melody line goes from really low to really high (like so much Christian music – agh!), then chances are about 95% of the congregation won’t be able to sing it – let alone the song leaders. If the chord changes are so complex or the drum part so confusing that it’ll take the band weeks and weeks to learn, it’s too hard.
Remember: the goal is to get the church family to sing, not to emulate the sound of a U2 or Hillsong concert. ‘Epic’ songs are rarely going to be helpful.
the importance of not choosing alone
The hard thing about doing all of the above is that you’ll be going off your own opinion: what you think are good lyrics might be ordinary to someone else; what you think is good music sounds irritating to someone else, as my favourite CS Lewis quote illustrates:
“I disliked very much their hymns, which I considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music.” CS Lewis
It’s hard to remain objective and choose songs that most people will think have good words/music. You’re going to need someone – or multiple people – to run your song ideas by. The best person for this will be the Pastor – make it your aim to run all your new songs past him before the final decision is made. but run it past other people too. Make sure that you’re not the only person who thinks that getting the church family to sing this song is a good idea. Remember that within the congregation are children, teenagers, young adults, adults, and oldies. Remember that within the congregation are non-Christians and Christians. It’s impossible to please everybody! But you want to work hard at choosing songs that will most help everybody to sing.
culling
When a song is no longer helpful you should cull it off the playlist. Culling can feel quite naughty – you’re getting rid of songs that some people probably still love and want to keep singing. But it’s an important thing to do each year – to sit down with the Pastor, go through the song-list, and decide which songs are no longer helpful. You should be continuing to add new songs, which means you should be culling old ones to make room. It’s actually a healthy thing to do and not something you should feel bad about – you’re serving people by doing it. You can’t have a playlist that’s continually growing – you want the amount of songs the music team and the congregation have to learn to be manageable. You want to keep our time singing together ‘fresh’. Culling songs is both helpful and necessary. And like choosing songs, it’s a job you should never do alone.
If the lyrics are archaic and hard to understand then it’s time to get rid of it. For example we recently culled ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’, which, although it has some precious words, was causing a lot of people to scratch their heads at what ‘Cherubim and Seraphim falling down before thee’ meant.
Most of the time the reason you cull a song is for a musical reason – the song is in a musical style that has become outdated to the point of being embarrassingly unhelpful. Once again – don’t make this decision on your own: something you find cheesy may still be helping the majority of the congregation. But it’s a wisdom decision – talk about it with the Pastor, and cull away.
some helpful places to find songs
In the music folder on the network is a spreadsheet called ‘Potential Congregational Songs for Church’ that I highly recommend you use regularly. There are many songs on there already that would be great to introduce. Whenever you find a new song you think could work well at SCPC, you should add it to the spreadsheet. There is room on the spreadsheet for kids songs, items, and Lord’s Supper songs too. Any SCPC staff members can add songs to the spreadsheet, but it will be you and the Pastor’s role to choose which ones actually get used.
The best way to find new Christian music is to actually sing it in another church to see if it’s working well. Talk to people from other churches about what’s working well, and make the most of finding new songs when you go to Christian conferences. Here are a few places to keep your ears on:
It’s your responsibility as the leader of a ministry team to be well prepared and to communicate well. You’ll need to communicate with everyone on the team, as well as communicate with both the church/staff team and the sound ministry team. That means making sure that everyone who needs to know anything knows – with perfect clarity – what they need to know (if you know what i mean). It also means knowing how best to communicate what you’re communicating – most things are best communicated by email or sms, but other things should be communicated in person, over the phone, or by newsletter.
In all of your communication, it’s important to remain humble, helpful, patient, and clear.
I highly recommend you set aside a regular hour each week for ‘preparation and communication’. It’s something you’ll always need to fit in – so you may as well make a regular time for it rather than trying to squeeze it around other things. Friday or Saturday are a good time for ‘preparation and communication’ – by then you will have the ‘Same Page/Leading Notes’ and you will hopefully know if anyone on the team will be away on the coming Sunday/s. Use your ‘preparation and communication’ hour to:
- Prepare your music folder
- Organise personnel (for when people are away)
- Communicate any changes to everyone who needs to know
- Speak to staff/sound/music team members about any issues
- Notify staff and sound team about item details
- Encourage the team (send an email, make a call, write a letter, etc)
When it comes to Sunday services, the most important piece of communication you’ll receive each week is the ‘Same Page/Leading Notes’. Usually there isn’t too much variation in what happens during the service, but it’s well worth keeping on top of all the details so as to not interrupt the flow of the service. This is especially the case when something different to normal is happening – such as an item, the Lord’s Supper, a Baptism, or anything else irregular to a standard Sunday. When in doubt the Ministry Coordinator should be your first point of contact to clarify what’s happening – preferably before Sunday. Also make sure that song leaders are on top of their song intros and know who’s doing what and when.
rehearsing well
During rehearsals make sure that everyone can hear you without needing to raise your voice. In other words, make sure you always have a microphone, and that people stop playing/talking and pay attention whenever you are saying something to them. It’s OK to gently ask someone to hold their conversation for later for the sake of communicating clearly to the whole team.
Here are some tips on running a good rehearsal:
- Punctuality is important – set the example and encourage others to follow. Arriving 10 minutes before the start of rehearsal gives you opportunity to fix up any last-minute set-up issues, tune up, and start on the ball.
- Be encouraging to people as they arrive, and all through rehearsal
- Stop after the 1st and 2nd songs to check foldbacks, and give each person time to make any requests. Ask the sound team if they’d like the music team to make any volume changes too.
- Be the middle-man on your microphone – between the music team to each other, and between the sound team and the music team
- Play each song once through. Work hard on tempo. Stop and start again if you need to communicate anything mid-song. Play songs that people are struggling with at least twice.
post-rehearsal huddle
You should pre-plan what you want to say to the team at the end of each rehearsal. It’s your only opportunity to communicate in person with the whole music/sound team each week, so it’s well worth planning to use that time well. Make sure the sound team can join you, and wait for them if they need to set something up after music practice. Communicate reminders about stuff coming up (eg. new songs, items, changes, etc), remind them of any changes during today’s service, and do what you can to point them to Jesus before you lead them in prayer. Prayer is important – it’s God who will use the songs to help people grow. Make that your prayer every time, and pray for any concerns or joys to do with the music team that are relevant for the time.
Recruiting new team members is one of the more tricky parts of leading the music ministry team. It’s tricky because quite often people will offer their services to you, wanting to join the team and they may or may not be wanting to join the team for the right motivations. In fact, hardly anyone wants to joins ministry teams for the right motivations! But you will need to use your wisdom to decide if they meet the criteria for joining the team or not.
Often the people you actually ask to join the music ministry team will be people who haven’t offered their services to you, but they meet the criteria for joining the team more than some who might be more eager to join. It will be a part of your role to convince them that music ministry is worth being devoted to. This is an important an enjoyable part of the recruiting process too – a great opportunity to teach and train people in what the Bible says about singing.
Of course, nobody’s perfect, and your role is to train, encourage, and bear with the frustrations of each member of the team. But if you use wisdom when recruiting new team members, making sure they meet important criteria first, then you will be saving yourself a lot of potential grief later. It’s a sad thing to recruit someone to the team only to ask them to step down 6 months down the track.
the criteria for joining the music ministry team
Here’s what you need to think through before asking or allowing someone to join to team:
1) Are they a committed Christian? It might seem obvious – but it’s not. Being at church doesn’t mean you’re a Christian. Ask someone who will know. If nobody’s sure there is reason for concern, and it mightn’t be a good time for them to join the team.
2) Are they devoted to church? Are they there every Sunday? Do they skip church for other things? Do they still come at exam time? Do they only attend SCPC, or is their devotion to church divided?
3) Are they devoted to their Small Group? Often the most helpful conversation you will have will be with their Small Group Leader – make that conversation a priority. Are they sure this person’s a Christian? Do they think it’s a good idea for this person to join the ministry team?
4) Does the Pastor agree it’s a good idea for this person to join the team?
5) Is there any other reason you’re aware of that means it wouldn’t be good for this person to join the team? Are they already serving in other ministries? Are they trying to flirt with someone on the team? Will they be humble and submit to your leadership? Are they pushing their own agenda? Why do they want to join?
6) Are they a good enough musician? It can be difficult to find out, but obviously very important! The best way forward may be for you to get together with them and have a play/sing. They don’t need to be perfect, but they need to be good enough so that they’re not distracting.
It’s very important to think all of this stuff through and talk about it with their Small Group Leader and the Pastor before recruiting someone to the team. But, having said all that, it’s rarely as clear-cut as being able to say “Yes” to a list of questions. Often it can be difficult to know the answers. Often wisdom is involved amidst uncertainty. For example, it’s often difficult to tell whether a 15-year-old is a committed Christian or not – and it may be some time before it becomes obvious. Ordinarily you want someone to be devoted to church before they join the team, but in some circumstances asking someone to join the team might help them to be devoted to church attendance in a way they haven’t been before. Talk all of this through with their Small Group Leader and the Pastor before making the decision.
recruiting the new team member
Once you’ve been through the above ‘behind the scenes’ process, it’s now time to have the recruiting conversation. If at all possible you should do this in person, and with enough time for the person to be able to think about it for a week or two before having to respond. Here’s what you should do:
1) Ask them to consider joining the team. Tell them why you are asking them – use the opportunity to encourage them! But make clear that it’s a decision you want them to prayerfully consider, and not say yes to straight away
2) Communicate what the expectations will be:
- Being at church every week and serving every Sunday
- Time requirements (when will rehearsals be, how much practice is involved, how much time being involved will take out of their week, etc)
3) Give them the Music Ministry Paper
- Encourage them to read it through on their own
- Make a time in the next week to get together with them and work through it together. Make sure you talk through all of your concerns, and give them an opportunity to do so too
By the time you’ve taken them through the music ministry paper, hopefully they will be prepared to give you a response. It usually takes some time for a new team member to get the hang of everything, but persevere with them, encourage them, train them, and bear with them. You’re helping them to serve in a vital ministry that builds up the church family in a unique way. We cannot afford to wait for already-gifted and already-switched-on Christian musicians to show up at church and willingly offer their humble services. It will rarely happen. Far more important will be raising up servant-hearted musicians yourself, who will look to you for guidance, training and encouragement. It’s a real privilege – make the most of it.
Leading the Music Ministry means working to deadlines. I’m not sure why they’re called ‘DEADlines’ – but it may well have something to do with the fact that it’s hard to meet them and not kill yourself in the process. Of course, the main guts of leading music ministry is the ‘every-week’ stuff – the preparation and running of music practices, and the actual leading of the congregation in singing during Church or Youth. But a significant amount of the hard yacka will be meeting the term deadlines – the behind-the-scenes administrative work that goes into meeting deadlines every term. That usually looks like having a whole stack of stuff ready all at the same time:
- Church music program (a mammoth task)
- Youth music program
- new charts written and photocopied
- new lyric sheets typed up in correct format and photocopied
- newsletter to the music and sound teams
- Bible study booklet page
- CDs of new songs burnt for all the team
- all of the above saved to the network at church and distributed to everyone as needed
- communication to everyone as needed (email and sms galore)
- other stuff that comes up
Looking over the above list – there’s NO WAY you’re going to be able to do all that work in a week, or even a couple of weeks, without either killing yourself or scraping through it all and doing an ordinary job. And that’s especially the case because it’ll all be on top of your own work or study, and on top of your normal day-to-day relationships and much-needed rest. If you know you haven’t done anything yet and all of the above stuff is due in a month’s time, then you’ve probably already left it too long to get started. And let’s face it – it’s not like you didn’t know it was coming!
It’s important to ‘get’ this early on. It’s a lot of work, and it has the potential to make you seriously frustrated and discouraged. If you don’t plan well you’ll start to suffer: late nights kick in… quiet times start to drop off… your work/study suffers… you start to resent having to do it… people on the team become more of a frustration than anything because you’re slogging away behind the scenes… you wish you didn’t have to do it anymore…
You get the picture. And it’s an ugly picture that you want to avoid. But the good news is that you can avoid it. Just plan well.
Ultimately you’re the only one who can get yourself organised. But here are a few tips that’ll help you be prepared for those deadlines:
- Use a diary. It’s absolutely essential that you learn to use it well, and that you stick to it. Write stuff in like ‘night for chart-writing’ and ‘song-choosing day’. Plan time to get all the work done in a way that won’t make your quiet times suffer, and in a way that won’t stop you resting a day a week.
- Don’t underestimate how long each task takes. Sometimes a chart takes half an hour, but sometime it takes half a day to get it right. The term music program is always a big job that can take several sessions of work over several days.
- Keep a constant list of stuff that will be useful at crunch-time: song ideas, newsletter ideas, BS booklet ideas, Lord’s supper song ideas, links to helpful articles, etc. It doesn’t matter if you’ve just finished a term program – that idea that just came to you will come in handy in 12 weeks time – write it down!
- Bounce your ideas off others. Talk to people on the team, talk to a Pastor, talk to a mate.
- Listen to new Christian music, as much as you can. Buy or borrow new CDs. Download stuff from places like Mars Hill Church and Sovereign Grace. It’ll be helpful for your relationship with God as well as for your ministry planning.
- Read Christian blogs and books on music ministry.
- Rip off other people. Find out what songs are working at other churches; steal some ideas – often what other people have done will be better than what takes us hours to figure out anyway.
- Ask for help when you need it.
- Pray that God would help you to get through all the work and help you to be diligent with your time
- Do whatever you can to do it all without your quiet times and fellowship with other Christians suffer. Remember: teaching and admonishing one another in song is what happens when the peace of Christ rules your heart. If you lose that central focus from the peace of Christ won for us at the cross, then everything else will start to suffer. Quiet times and fellowship with brothers and sisters in Christ is so vital that you don’t want to do anything that will make them suffer. And if being disciplined about your use of a diary can help to make that happen, it’s well worth doing.
