Song Talks

Happy Thanksgiving! This is one of those holidays that I wish was more like Christmas ya know? Beginning this Sunday we will get a steady diet of four straight weeks of Christmas songs, carols and some new music that you are going to love, but we will have only sung one week of Thanksgiving. There is just never enough of being thankful. Especially for the believer. According to Billy Graham, "nothing turns us into bitter, selfish, dissatisfied people more quickly than an ungrateful heart. And nothing will do more to restore contentment and the joy of our salvation than a true spirit of thankfulness." Read the lyrics of the last verse of this great Thanksgiving hymn by Keith and Kristyn Getty: My heart is filled with thankfulness to Him who reigns above, whose wisdom is my perfect peace, whose ev'ry thought is love. For ev'ry day I have on earth, is given by the King; So I will give my life, my all, to love and follow Him. As a Christian, thankful...

Hey ya'll! Last week I attempted to comment on an article that I posted on Facebook regarding a specific church that provided a list of "didn't do's" that affected their congregational singing in a positive way. I didn't get through all ten, so this week I will tackle the last four points. Point 7 and 9 deal with not "greatly" expanding the song library and the number of songs in a worship service. While I agree that too many songs are just too many, guys in this field differ on an appropriate song diet for the congregation in a given year. This article states 40 to 50 songs. I would disagree. Most guys I know say 200. That seems a bit like overkill to me. So just to give you a gauge, at the 9:30 service since November of last year to November of this year, we have sung 144 different songs. 45 of those songs have been "new" which means that they are new arrangements, not necessarily new chronologically. At 11:00, we have sung 77 songs...

Hey everyone! This week I thought I would try something we haven't done before. I re-posted an article earlier today on Facebook. The basic gist of the article is about congregational singing and what this particular worship leader has observed over the last year in his ministry. He is not advocating that his concepts are universal, but they seem to have worked in his context to improve the singing in his church. He lists them from the negative, as things he "did not" do.   They are as follows: 1)     He didn't turn down the lights 2)     He didn't turn up the sound 3)     He didn't try to sound like the YouTube video 4)     He didn't try lengthy, frequent instrumental solos 5)     He didn't try all the newest songs 6)     He didn't try to get rid of all their older favorite songs 7)     He didn't try to greatly expand the musical library 8) ...