[bradshawm]

I am hoping to generate a little discussion here regarding how many songs a church should have in their repetoire. I know that this will vary based on how many songs a church sings on Sunday Morning, but that is good. I would just like feedback on such things.

With my church, the worship leader does not play an instrument of any kind, she just sings. She has many unwritten, but very strict rules that create both an inflexibility, plus a burden on the instrumentalists. One of her rules is that no song can be used more than once ever 12 weeks. Another rule is that we do three fast songs, followed by three slow songs, and then at the end, we do an "ending" song. Of course the "ending" song has a criteria of it's own but I won't go into that. Here is the issue. To be able to follow these rules, we end up with 140 songs on our list of songs that we rotate through. What that means is that, every week it is like learning the songs all over again because we never play them enough, to really get them down good as individuals. It also means that some songs the group doesn't really play well together for the same reason.

Do you guys have that many songs that you use in your services? I think one of the issues for her is that she sings them so many times during the week when we practice, that it seems like we are doing them much more than we really are because the congregation only sings each song once on Sunday morning. I am not doing this to gripe, I just can't keep up and do a good job although I'm sure that many of you are probably good enough to pull it off. I am considering backing off to playing every other week so that I have a couple weeks in between playing to work on the music.

I'm just curious where all of you are at on this subject. Thanks!

Marshall

 

[bradshawm]

Thank you all for your input. No one in our church gets paid - all volunteers. Obviously, with a 200+ song collection, some of you have it more difficult than I do. I should clarify that I do help the song leader pick out the songs, I just don't control the paremeters that guide the choices. We pick them one to three months in advance. I created a spreadsheet of the songs (thats how I know how many there are), the resource they are from, and a date tracking each time we use them (to make sure we don't violate the 12 week rule).

I really do need to pare my playing down some. I am just not good enough to be able to play that much and do it well. The problem really is two fold, I love to play, and secondly, when I don't, lots of people say something, so I feel kind of guilty sitting in the pews. I also have another issue. I love to sing, but because of throat and sinus problems, I loose my voice and get a sore throat after a song or two. So for me, being able to play is also being able to participate more in the worship than when I am sitting in the pew. It used to be easier because I played melody more when we only had one singer and she needed me to back her up. Now we have three or four singers, and I have moved away from playing melody and am learning how to improvise or write my own harmony. That is much more time consuming and adds to the pressure. I have books for parts for about 20% of our songs, but some of those are pretty lame, or are not in the right key, and thus require transposing (another thing I am learning).

Thanks again to you all, I really do appreciate all of your input, and would like to hear from more of you on this subject and how your church works it.

Marshall

 

[bradshawm]

Straightsax - thanks for the concern on the throat issue, but Its an old issue that has existed since I had my tonsils out at age 15 (I'm 47 now). The doctor messed something up because I was singing in the choir before that, and then I could no longer do it any more. That combined with year round hay fever keeps the singing at bay.