Comments on: i don’t pick the songs

By: Gene

Gene — Sun, 18 May 2008 17:51:30 +0000

That is a sweet spirit and a great deal of insight into the making of an effective leader. I remember a quote I heard many years ago: “He who thinketh he leadeth and noone followeth is only taking a walk.”

By: Peter Park

Peter Park — Sat, 10 May 2008 04:42:43 +0000

We typically have two leaders lead on Sundays. Usually the other leader I work with has another idea about the service and we’re able to combine those ideas together. It’s more work, but it’s awesome.

By: jon

jon — Wed, 07 May 2008 17:40:44 +0000

whomever is leading worship for the service picks out the music, based on the general topic given and the “matrix” of songs that are used for the particular venue. (we have two video venues and two lives.) then if the head pastor wants anything specific done, you make that happen no matter how short the notice.

for the venue that i lead the venue pastor will make suggestions on songs to teach, but otherwise it’s all up to the worship leader for the service.

previously i was at a church where i would pick the music and then the head pastor would have to approve it each week…i had to have two hymns and two “choruses”…if he didn’t like my choice of songs he would choose others…i would then have to figure out transitions…

i’ve never been a part of the committee approach???

i definitely prefer being able to lay out the flow of songs myself…

By: Bobby Gilles

Bobby Gilles — Wed, 07 May 2008 12:56:12 +0000

At Sojourn, Worship Arts Pastor Mike Cosper has the final say on service planning, although he works with his pastoral assistant. Also, we are blessed to have a large group of people on the worship team, and all are encouraged to share their ideas. Occasionally, one will be a “guest planner” for a week.

As one who is primarily a worship songwriter, as well as our church’s songwriting facilitator (and thus, friends with our many writers) I tend not to offer specific suggestions myself. I don’t want to appear to be pushing my own songs or the songs of closer friends.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Wed, 07 May 2008 01:55:40 +0000

Great post. Currently, we are doing a “U-Pick the Music Sunday” at Topeka Bible Church. People go online and vote for the top 3 songs. Then the top 4-5 songs will be slated for a worship weekend in June. You can read about it and check it out at http://tinyurl.com/6zv66d

By: beth

beth — Tue, 06 May 2008 19:33:12 +0000

Mandy –
A lot of the music comes from my influence, but I always leave the door open for suggestions. We have a production team that meets weekly to plan all aspects of the service (tech, video, etc) and often they’ll suggest things far beyond what I would have come up with. Even things I don’t like, sometimes. But they turn out to be really, really good.

I read somewhere a statement like, “Their ideas are always better than your ideas. Get over it.” The emphasis was not on the ‘us vs. them’ but ‘us vs. we’. It was cool.

By: Travis

Travis — Tue, 06 May 2008 19:04:18 +0000

We currently have a planning meeting on Monday mornings. There are currently 4 of us in on it: Pastor, Worship director, an Elder (who is creative) and myself, the Tech Director. In this meeting we review the service from the day before and work on planning ahead. Song selection, sermon topics, set design, sermon content and timing are all up for discussion in there. We are about to expand and have a group meet somewhat regularly to specifically discuss song selection. Our worship director is looking forward to this because it will remove some of the stress of selection and provide a level of protection around him if people get up tight about what we play. There will be a good cross section of our church represented in there. No more people than we have to have though.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Tue, 06 May 2008 18:17:15 +0000

Good thoughts. At my old church I was responsible for picking every song (with some input from the pastor) and for planning services. In hindsight I wish I would have had others giving some input.

We’re in a church plant, so things are still being figured out, but at the moment the pastor and I plan the general service structure together and leave it up to whoever’s leading worship to pick the songs. We collaborate through writeboard (I nifty tool if you’ve never used it) since we don’t have a central location yet and it seems to work well.

I think in the future some sort of planning/creative team would be fantastic to have.