New for us, anyway.
I've been working on putting together a 6 month playlist for a church. The more you sing a song, the more the congregation gets into it, so I want to really limit what we sing at first to just 20 or so songs.
I've gone for easy to pull off songs. Ones that people will learn quickly, ones that I know I can get a music team to play well, ones that will get a conservative group singing.
What do you think? Would this list work in your setting or would your people be bored senseless?
Hymns
How Great Thou Art
When I Survey
Be Thou My Vision
Amazing Grace
Great Is Your Faithfulness
Come, Christians Join To Sing
Re-tuned Hymns
May The Mind of Christ My Saviour
Rock Of Ages
My Hope Is Built
Before the Throne Of God Above
Modern Hymns
In Christ Alone (Townend/Getty)
How Deep The Father's Love For Us (Townend)
Come People Of The Risen King (Townend/Getty)
My Heart Is Filled With Thankfulness (Townend/Getty)
O Great God (SG)
This Life I Live (Morrow)
Songs
Never Alone (Percival/Richardson)
You Never Change (Smith)
We Belong To The Day (Morrow)
No Other Name (Hodge)
The Heavens Sing (Percival/Richardson)
Jesus, Thank You (SG)
Grace Unmeasured (SG)
Let Your Kingdom Come (SG)
We do most of those. I think it's a pretty good list.
ReplyDeleteWhat about "And Can It Be" on your hymn list? I think most people can belt that one out pretty easily...
A great list.
ReplyDeleteSome of them I don't know.
I would definitely add As Surely as the Dawn.
You need more Hillsong, Chris Tomlin etc. Have they asked you to do a "renew" on their corporate singing?
ReplyDeleteBTW I think more songs is better than less. Personally I find it boring just singing the same small set of songs all the time, but that's just my opinion :)
DeleteSorry, "boring" is the wrong word. If they are good songs I still enjoy it. I'm just disappointed we don't get to sing other good songs as well.
DeleteThat sounds like a great list. Off the top of the head you might want to find a little more rhythmic variety - I don't know all of them but the ones I know are 90% "stately and measured". Some really up-tempo numbers, or down-tempo meditative pieces?
ReplyDeleteOH and BTW I agree with you on keeping the numbers small. When we reviewed our music stuff a little while ago we realised that if you do four songs per service like we usually do, that makes 208 incidences of singing per year. So if you have 50 songs on your list, they get sung on average four times a year. For your average person with limited musical ability, that's hardly enough for them to learn anything new, and certainly not enough for people to get bored with the songs. I'd want to know that the congregation knew a good number on your list, but they probably will as you have a lot of standards here.
DeleteWell, we use 16 or so of these so it's hard to say.
ReplyDeleteWe also use six songs in the course of a Sunday morning as well.
It's a good list.
Were you given some sort of idea of what was already known/used?
Have they asked for it to be weighted toward the last ten to fifteen years to bring them up to date?
Can I just say I love the lyrics you write? Keep meaning to tell you, and this seemed like a good time! Thanks for serving us in this way.
ReplyDeleteI'm trying to come up with my own list... hard!! I already have 25 songs on my 'possibly introduce' list..
ReplyDelete