The third of the 12 Days of Free Christmas Songs is one that I put on my Lullaby CD called “Starlight”. It is an instrumental version of a song I co-wrote back in High School.
You can listen to the song using the Sound Cloud player below. To download go to www.volummonster.com and enter the code 12dayschristmas3
Click here to catch up on the previous 12 Days of Free Christmas Songs
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I have been all over the place in my years as a worship leader when it comes to choosing the music we use. I have spent countless hours writing out praise charts. I used packaged material like S.P.I.N. which combines chord charts, rehearsal CDs and powerpoint slides. I have bought song books, chord books and scoured the internet for tabs and chords.
Working with adult and youth worship teams, I have decided that it doesn’t matter so much how you get your songs, but use the same versions with each. Here are 3 reasons why:
1. Organization- When you have several versions, from several sources, of different songs it makes it hard to keep track of which song is used with which group.
2. Mentoring- When you use the same versions of songs, it makes a learning partnership possible. I can have my keyboard player from the adult team work with our keyboard players from the youth team and they are both working from the same reference music.
3. Fill In- From time to time members of our Sunday morning team are out of town. Since we use the same versions of the songs for our youth band it makes it easy to have one fill in when needed without having to learn all new songs.
I will note that we do not do all of the same songs with both groups, however we have enough overlap that it works most of the time.
So how about your groups.. Do you use the same music? What resources do you use?
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I used to choose songs the week before, night before or even sometimes the morning of our weekly worship service. I used to think that was the way to do it because I could get a feel for where the Holy Spirit was leading that week. Over time I have come to learn that, while you always need to be flexible to change songs, having a long range method of planning songs works much better.
So I thought I’d share a little bit of how we choose songs for our services.
1. Choosing a set for a season- There are literally hundreds of thousands of worship songs that you could use at any given time. We try to bring that down to a list of about 90 songs that we will use for a season. This gives us a manageable list to be able to look at and choose from. We try to make sure that the songs in the list have a variety of keys, tempos, and can be sung by a variety of people. The set is a suggestion that helps keep us focused, however if a song fits well in a particular service that is not in our set, we’ll go ahead and use it. At the end of a season (3-4 months) we will look at the songs and see what new ones we want to add, or which ones we need to give a rest for a while. (see organizing your worship libraries)
2. Lectionary and Worship Planner- Our preachers choose their sermons from the lectionary scriptures. This means at any point in the future I know the scriptures that will be used on that Sunday. Our pastors choose the scripture and sermon titles at least 3-4 months out. I might not know exactly where the sermon is going, but I have a good idea of a general direction. We will then look at our songs for the season and choose ones that match the overall message for that week. We also use the Music and Worship Planner from the Methodist Church. It contains the lectionary scriptures, along with hymn and contemporary song suggestions for each week. We might not have the specific songs each week, but they help us find other songs that we know, that would fit with the service.
3. The White Board- I installed a 6×4 foot white board in my office. We will write up 4-8 weeks worth of dates on the board. Then using inspiration from the worship planner, scriptures, sermon title, and prayer we will begin filling in songs for each Sunday. We try to make sure that there are no more than one new song each week, there is a variety speed, and variety of leaders for the songs. Recently we have been trying to include an original song, and a hymn in each list.
4. The Monthly Rehearsal- Creating our songlists this way also helps with our big monthly rehearsal. We can look at the upcoming weeks and pick out the new songs, or unfamiliar ones and use that rehearsal to work over those. Since we can only really do 4-5 songs at the rehearsal that helps keep us from choosing too many new ones. Weekly we rehearse for about an hour before the service. We’ll go over the songs we are about to sing, then review some of the up coming songs.
So that’s how we do it. How do you choose your songlists?
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I was invited to a google wave “post” or “blip” or whatever it is called, where my friend was writing a blog post, and wanted some fresh eyes to read over it. He posted his thoughts and what happened next was amazing. About ten other people started sharing thoughts, finding spelling mistakes and making corrections, giving alternate ideas and collaborating on the post.
After watching this for a few minutes I wondered if it could be used for planning worship services? What would happen if someone could start a wave with the sermon and scripture, then let people from all over comment, make song suggestions, give links to videos or tell about a skit they wrote that would fit the topic?
Well let’s find out. First let me say that I know not everyone has Google Wave, and I know this process won’t fully work until it is available everywhere, so hurry up Google! But I think there are enough to give this experiment a try.
I have created a wave for a service we are doing on November 8th. If you have wave add me to your contact list and I will invite you to the wave.
My contact is rgmmusic@googlewave.com
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