worship ministry thoughts - evaluating worship songs

i recently took a risk and introduced a worship song that our creative team had reservations about. the main concern was that the song was a little “young” stylistically for our crowd. with that in mind, we decided to give it a go anyway. honestly, i thought that people might be a bit hesitant, but that they’d come around. well….you win some, you lose some, right?

typically, for new songs i’ve developed the practice of repeating it for two or three weeks in a row, giving it a week or two break, then bringing it back into a somewhat regular rotation depending on how it “takes” in our context.

so, here’s how it went for this song……week one: introduced the song. as expected, participation was kind of low, maybe some hesitation, new song, trying to get the melody. week two: repeated song, better reception, more participation and energy. at this point i’m thinking that it’s going to “take”. different, but good. we took a week off because we had a special guest speaker. week 4 (third time for song): dead. very little participation. oh well, nice try, but probably won’t bring it back again.

i’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to evaluate a worship song. how do you know if a particular song is “working” in your context?

here are some thoughts in no particular order:

- i’ve appreciated evaluating songs in a team context. i rely on the way my fellow pastors and staff “read the room” as well as my own read.

- participation. first, there are a variety of ways that people participate in corporate worship ranging from hands-in-the-air-singing-your-guts-out to stoic, intellectual thought. but in our context, for the most part people tend to sing along, clap hands, move a bit. especially on an upbeat song, as in my example at the top, if i’m not seeing the participation, it’s probably a no go. on to another song.

- facial expressions and body language. as i said in a previous post, i feel as though god is teaching me to allow him to lead me as a worship leader by observing the people i’m leading. i won’t go into that whole thing again…but really, at some point, you have to trust that if god has placed you in a position to lead people, he’ll give you the sensitivity to “read” those people.

- do people seem more engaged when the song is finished and we go into the next song? or are they less engaged than when we started the song?

- feedback. do you ever hear comments on the song in particular? direct personal feedback is a tricky thing, especially if you don’t know the person. but are there trends? do you hear positive comments from multiple people about the same song?

so, what about you? i’d love to hear some other perspectives on this.