September 04 2009
Poll Results: Majority of leaders have over 60 songs in rotation
Tagged Under : leadership, poll, worship
The number of songs a worship leader has in regular rotation can really make a huge difference in how easily a congregation enters into worship, how bored the congregation and band are with the songs, how well the band performs, etc… It’s an area of worship I hope leaders put thought into and not just leave as an afterthought. In an attempt to find out how many songs worship leaders have in their rotation I began a poll that asked simply how many songs are in your worship rotation? Here are the results.
The value in bold is how many I have in my rotation. I understand that 78 worship leaders is not a huge sample so there’s probably a large margin of error here. But just play along and lets assume this is an accurate representation.
When I saw over 60 in rotation I was blown away, if that’s the case that means you’re only playing certain songs once or twice a year. At that point I’m not sure why you’d even have those songs in “rotation”. Sure maybe you bring them out for a specific purpose, but rotation? Maybe others are just way more talented than I, and that’s not hard to believe. But here are the problems I see with rotations that large:
- The congregation spends more time reading words and remembering the melody than worshipping.
- The arrangement isn’t all that tight and tends to be simplistic because it would be extremely difficult to have over 60 songs arranged in creative ways and not struggle to pull it off.
- You end up keeping old (possible stale) songs in rotation longer because you play them so infrequently they seem fresh, though years have passed.
Some benefits I see:
- Lots of material to be able to build more content focused sets that support message series and such.
- Keeps the band on their toes.
What benefits and drawbacks do you see from having such large worship song rotations?
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Wow, good post Kyle
I've been thinking about this and planning to blog on it for a while.
Our situation is a little different from most, as we generally do two songs and then the congregation will spontaneously start songs which we pick up (so we're always 'on our toes'!). To faciliate that we have a 'songbook' (rather than a rotation) that has between 175-200 songs which is used for mid week groups aswell as being our master list for sundays.
We slowly introduce new songs and every couple of years revise the list and drop 20-30.
The important things are
As you said people need a lot of time to get familiar worshipping with new songs. Leaders/bands often get bored with a song just as a congregation starts engaging with it. By the time you get to that first sunday, stop and think how many times you've heard the song, and how many times you've played it. Personally, if it's a 'cover' – 20-30 times. If I've written it – 200+!
A leader of a team needs to see the big picture with regard to what the church is singing. By way of an analogy, if you're planning next sunday all you're thinking about is the next meal. Somebody has got to be thinking about whether the church is getting a healthy diet. The best way to do that is through the master songlist…
but hey, I think I'm writing my post on your blog! sorry!
You made some great points. I'd like to know how you think the fact that people are listening to all sorts of worship music on thier own factors into this?
Would doing lots of new songs be a problem if we posted them on our websites for the congregation to download (or links to streaming services) before we introduced them?
What about older songs that 'everyone' knows – or is there even such a thing?
I think providing the music in form of cd, live recordings or downloads on your site is a great way to get your congregation more familiar with the songs you are playing. That's primarily the reason I do the "Sunday Set List" posts.
But this really depends on your context and congregation. I don't know that a lot of my congregation is listening to worship music outside of Sunday. Not that that is a good thing, it's just we don't have a lot of raised in the church people who are used to that being part of the music. So in my context I can't really depend on that at all. I always assume nobody's heard the new song I'm bringing in, even if it's hugely popular in the Christian music scene.
I definitely try to mix in older songs, hymns and such but not primarily for familiarity sake, usually for the richness in the song lyrically. But again, in my context, very few people in my church know any hymns.
Looking forward to your post.
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