I received some great comments from a reader and good friend Barrie on my last post about why worship leaders should consider using loops in their worship service. They were so good they each deserve their own post, so here’s the first one.

Have you found any sense in which [using loops] might add to people not engaging since they’ve “been there, done that” exactly the same way last week?

There are quite a few factors that come into play when talking about congregational boredom in worship.

1. How many worship leaders does your church have and how similar or dissimilar are they stylistically?

It would be my hope that churches would raise up leaders to lead with the musical gifting and talent they have and not try and shoe horn every musician into the same musical mold. Sadly this often isn’t the case and week after week, service after service you hear different people singing the same songs with the same inflections, same arrangements, same riffs, same fills, same same same same and that’s neither interesting or inspiring.

2. How large of a rotation does each worship leader have?

I don’t think you need a large rotation, in fact I’d advise against it. In my church I lead every week currently and I have a regular rotation of about 30 songs and we do 5 songs every service. That means we do each song about once a month and I’ve found that to be a pretty good sweet spot. There is still familiarity where people know the song but it hasn’t been beaten into them every other week where they get sick of it.

3. Level of excellence. Quite simply, great music isn’t boring.

Lazy, uninspired, copy cat arrangements with little musical creativity can get very boring very quickly. This is one thing I think loops help address. You can spend a lot of off stage time writing parts, looking for new elements, textures and sounds for a song that you couldn’t do with live instrumentation.

Just looking over my iTunes list at all the great songs I listen to, the play count reaches the hundreds for some. The congregation over the span of a year may sing the same worship song 15-20 times. That’s nothing compared to how we listen to music normally. If anything I’ve noticed the congregation wanting to sing the same songs more often than I do.

After introducing loops to the band and congregation about 10 months ago I’ve noticed an anticipatory attitude in the congregation. They are eager to hear how we’re going to play new songs and how we’re going to remix older ones. They get excited about the new things they hear and are introduced to. I know not all congregations will respond that way and I feel somewhat spoiled in that sense so it’s up to each leader to use wisdom in how they do this. But I hope to encourage you all that stretching yourself in creativity can be done in a way that stays relevant to culture but doesn’t isolate your congregation or lose them to boredom.

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