Why do we sing those songs?
Because of the sometimes eclectic song choice at Engaging Life, I've had quite a few people at the church ask about how I find songs and why we sing the songs we do.
How do I choose songs?
It may seem obvious, but God is first because He is the one we are singing to. Our primary goal as a church in worship is to honor God. If God isn't happy with our worship we should stop and fix that.
Here are some of the other things I'm thinking about when choosing songs:
- Does this song clearly communicate how we feel about God and what we hear Him speaking back to us?
- Does this song support this week's message?
- Does the church know this song, or is it one we want the church to learn?
- Does this song speak to our church's personality and flavor?
It's also important that we do songs that our musicians and vocalists can pull off, which leads me to...
Why don't we do more hymns or older songs?
One question I hear quite a bit is why we don't do many hymns or older songs. One of the problems that we run into with hymns specifically is that our band and musicians are really much more capable with modern rock style songs. Playing hymns can sometimes require a level of musicianship that we don't always have.
Another core reason that we don't do many older songs is that while we acknowledge and celebrate the things God has done in the past, we want to look to the future both in vision and in music. As a church, we don't think God is done moving on the earth yet, so we're doing our best to operate like He's still speaking to His people by singing new songs. (See Psalm 96:1, Psalm 33:3, Psalm 144:8, Psalm 98:1, Isa. 42:10, Rev. 5:9, Rev. 14:3 )
Where do the songs we sing come from?
Another question I regularly field is about the sources for some of our songs. Generally speaking my favorite place to get songs is from other churches that are writing them for their congregation, or from songwriters working within the context of the local church and a personal relationship with Jesus. Here's a brief list of a few of the churches and songwriters where I've found some of the songs I like the most:
- Cannons, Beautiful - Phil Wickham
- House of God forever, Your love is strong - Jon Foreman, (on Twitter)
- Skeleton bones, Dress us up, How He loves - John Mark Mcmillan, (on Twitter)
- Home (is heaven), You deserve, Fire fall down, None but Jesus (and lots of other songs) - Hillsong
- My hope, Our God is love - NewSpring Church
- You are holy - Elevation Church
- Beautiful things, The earth is Yours - Gungor, (on Twitter)
I think it's also important to note that as a church we love creativity and art, and we want to be the best representation of who God has called us to be. A huge part of that for my role as the worship leader is writing songs, which I'm working on diligently. So far we've only had one song (Love, love, love) come out of the effort, but we're hoping for more and if anyone else is interested in songwriting or working with me to write songs, let me know!
How can I send you a song I'd like us to sing at Engaging Life?
The easiest way to get me to sing a song at church is to email me a link to a video of the song. That saves me the time of looking around for the song, and makes sure that I'm listening to the song you wanted (you'd be surprised at how many worship songs have very similar names!).
I can't promise we'll actually end up playing the song, but I can promise that I'll listen to it and think about it.