Choosing Songs for a Worship Service

I've been the Worship Pastor and the primary worship leader at Greenridge Baptist Church for over 10 years. In that time, I've prayed through and thought through the theological foundation for what I think our Worship Ministry should be built on. That includes our primary guiding verse (John 3:30), and our primary conceptual framework (we minimize distractions through practice and prayer in order to make much of Jesus).

That theological foundation also includes how I approach choosing songs that we sing corporately in our Worship Services. There are tons of really good Christian songs out there, but not every Christian song is suitable as a song for a worship service. So, here are the criteria (in no particular order) I usually think through when putting another song on our roster to sing for Sunday morning.

1. The song needs to be sing-able for the average person: Internationally known Christian bands have singers that are unbelievably talented and can do crazy things with their voices. The people that we lead in worship on Sunday mornings are normal. Even our best singers at church can't do what professionals can do with their voices. So a song that has a complex melody or that has a wider-than-normal range may not be good for a normal worshiper. We don't want folks in our worship services to be distracted from worshiping God because the song’s difficulty is outside of what they can do.

2. The songs need to be playable for our current band: Some modern Christian songs utilize heavily synthesized instrumentation or other specialized means to produce the sounds that make them sound good. A question I often ask is does our church’s band have the ability to produce these sounds or good substitutes for them? For example, at Greenridge we don't have a strings section (violins, cellos, etc.), so we just can't make a song with a lot of strings sound like it should. Unless we can approximate the sound of the song with something else, I'm inclined to say we shouldn't use it in a worship service. Again, we want to minimize distractions when we lead worship, and playing a song that's outside of our ability only increases distractions.

3. The song shouldn't be too repetitive: Repetition in a song can be a great way to reinforce a solid point. In fact, repetition is a tool God used in the Bible to drive a point home. But sometimes it feels like some Christian songs rely on repetition of key phrases to fill up the majority of the songs runtime. I believe that this, too, can be distracting to the worshiper because the power of the repeated line can be overwhelmed by boredom at singing the same thing too many times. I think repetition can actually cheapen the impact of a powerful phrase, so I try to avoid songs with too much repetition.

4. The song must be theologically sound: Part of my responsibility to God and to our congregation is to play songs that are accurate theologically. Songs are teaching tools that many people carry around with them day-in and day-out. They sing them throughout the day and think about their lyrics deeply. Songs that have lyrics that are questionable theologically can lead our congregation to believe things that are not true about God or his Word. If I can't comfortably defend what the song is saying theologically with solid appeals to the Bible, I tend to avoid it as a song in the worship service.

5. The songs should be more about what God does than about what I do: Our time together on Sunday is called worship. The songs that we sing on Sunday are going to be worshiping something, and I think most (if not all!) folks in my church would say that we should be worshiping God on Sundays with our songs. Sadly, I find that a fair number of Christian songs talk a whole lot about me and what I do instead of about God and what he does. I think I can see how those songs might be meaningful Christian songs, but I want Sunday's songs to be about God. During our worship services, I want our songs to help us zero in on who God is and how he has worked to love us. I usually stay away from playing songs in the worship service that talk more about me than about God.

Most of the songs I choose for Sunday Mornings fit most of these criteria, but every now and then I'll let a song through that is a little iffy on one of these. None of this is to say that songs I leave out of Sunday worship are bad songs. They might be awesome Christian songs, but in my estimation they aren't good for the worship service.