How often do you introduce new songs? How long do you take to practice them beforehand?

(Transcript)

Question:

How often do you introduce new songs? And how long do you take to practice them until they are played at a service?

Answer:

Introducing New Songs: Frequency and Practice

Let's talk about how often I think, and this is something I've been thinking about recently, and you guys call me out in the comments here. This is just something that I was processing yesterday. I think that we should introduce a new song as infrequently as possible.

I know that sounds crazy because some people are on like this once a month schedule, every other week's schedule. But if we understand that corporate worship is meant for us to sing these songs together, not performing new songs, not, "Hey, we've got to have a new song to entertain people. Hey, Hillsong just came out with a new album. We've got to do a song from that because my people in my church like this song."

If we understand that corporate worship is about us worshiping together, then the primary bulk of our worship song repertoire, I think, should be songs that people know.

The Importance of Familiar Songs in Corporate Worship

If you're introducing a new song every week and you only do four songs in your service, or if you're introducing it once a month and you only do four songs in your service, a fourth of the songs that you sing are going to be a song that people are not familiar with.

And here's the thing that I was thinking about recently. Once again, I'm just processing these things. I don't have this all figured out, but I was reading what is it in Isaiah or is it Psalms? I don't know. Let me figure out real quick. I have my Bible with me. I was actually right on both counts.

It's in Isaiah and it's in Psalms. But I was reading from Isaiah this morning. My point is, people always say we've got to introduce as many new songs as possible because it says in the Bible, "Sing to the Lord a new song."

Addressing Misinterpretations of Scripture

And this is what it says in Isaiah, and then I'll read the one from Psalms. It says, "Behold, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them." Verse 10: "Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise from the end of the Earth, you who go down to the Sea and all that fills it, the coastlands and their inhabitants." Keep that in mind. Psalm 96: "O sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the Earth. Sing to the Lord, bless his name; tell of his salvation from day to day."  

I hate to break it to you, but those passages, they're not talking about corporate worship. And so, let's stop using them to say that we should sing a new song. The Bible says, "Sing a new song." You know what the Bible also says? I was going to find like 15 weird verses, but I don't have time to do that. You know the Bible says things, and we take them out of context. Yes, we are supposed to sing new songs, but we don't have to use those verses to justify it.

Prioritizing Congregational Participation

I think that the participation of our congregation trumps the command to sing a new song. Singing a new song doesn't mean you sing a new song every single week. These are just the thoughts that I had this morning.

Tell me if I'm crazy. I don't even know if that made sense because it took me a really long time to get out, but this is real talk where we give real answers. These are the things that I'm thinking about.

Answering the Question: How Often Should You Introduce New Songs?

Back to the original question, how often should you introduce a new song?

I think no more than once a month, and if you can help it, once every other month, that would be my preference. But I don't even think that we need a regular routine of introducing new songs.

I know that not a lot of people probably agree with this. Let me know if you don't agree with this down below. But like I said, if our goal is to get our congregation to sing, the easiest way to do that is to give them songs that they already know.

Balancing New and Familiar Songs

I'm not saying that you can never do a new song. I'm just trying to balance out the scale here because I think there's a lot of worship leaders on this end, or I guess the heavier end of the scale goes down, so maybe they're on this end. There's a lot of worship leaders on the heavy end of the scale who are like, "We need to introduce a new song every month, and we need to have 12 new songs by the end of the year."

And then guess what? In four years, you've got 48 new songs in your repertoire, and you never cut out 48 other songs. And so, you've just got now a repertoire of 100 songs in your worship set list that the people in your church, they don't know 100 songs. So, if we want people to participate, let's stop introducing so many new songs.

I don't like to just have a regular rhythm of introducing new songs just to introduce new songs. I want to pick really good songs and pick them because they make sense in what I'm trying to teach my church at that moment or whatever my pastor's sermon series is that I want to remind people of on a regular basis so that we can tie a song to a sermon series and then say, "Hey, we were just in the Book of Judges where we talked about following God and not turning to idols and all of that stuff, and now we have this song which is about that, and we aren't just going to sing it during the sermon series, we're going to sing it for the next year so that it calls back those themes that we talked about in the sermon."

But I don't just pick new songs to pick new songs because I'm bored of the old ones.

Timing and Practice for New Songs

Now, let's answer the other question, which is how far in advance should you let your team know about these new songs? I like to do it maybe three weeks out would be my preference. I guess you have to know your worship team.

I should say that I could give my worship team a song the week of, and they'd probably be fine with it. But out of respect for them, I like to introduce it at least two weeks before, preferably three weeks before, at a rehearsal and say, "Hey, we're going to be doing this song in a couple weeks from now. Let's work on it now."

We'll do like a very rough run through the first rehearsal. The second rehearsal will shape things up even more and spend a lot more time on it, and then the third rehearsal before we lead it on Sunday will be like a normal rehearsal because then they're all they'll already know the song, and we won't need to spend much time on it.

So, at least three weeks out would be the preference, but probably two at the very minimum time frame.