A friend of mine has been church shopping and is visiting his local megachurch. In the past 4 Sundays he says he has not heard a song repeated one time.
A guitarist friend who plays at a famous megachurch is so sick and tired of having to learn a praise set of completely new songs… every week… that he’s ready to quit.
And then worship leaders wonder why nobody is singing – they simply don’t know the songs.
The harsh truth is that in the vast body of Christendom only a tiny percentage of Believers ever darken the door of a Christian bookstore or listen to Christian radio (or even have a station in their area.)
This means they don’t know the latest Chris Tomlin song.
Since we worship leaders are up on the latest tunes we assume everyone else is, too. In fact, we’re probably sick of the new songs before our congregations even know they exist.
When I was on the worship staff at a church a few years ago we counted about 100 praise songs and 100 hymns in our rotation. And we wondered why the congregation wouldn’t sing. Of course they wouldn’t sing – no one could remember all that music!
At this rate, if we managed to sing 4 songs each week, we’d only do each song 1 time a year. (4 songs each week X 52 weeks in a year = 208.) Even though this church had an established congregation familiar with many of the songs, they still had a crop of new members that didn’t know the music. Keeping a smaller song list would help everyone, newcomers and old timers alike, be familiar with the worship.
Bottom Line: Are you singing too many songs? Take a hard look this week at your song list, start pruning and don’t be afraid to repeat songs to aid learning.
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