Leading the Music Ministry #7 – Choosing and Culling Congregational Songs

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:

Emu Music/Garage Hymnal

Sovereign Grace Music

Hillsong

Soul Survivor

Mars Hill Church

Come&Live