Beyond the Bridge

S1, E2: The Worship Setlist (Song Selection)

• Josh Erisman, Darren White • Season 1 • Episode 2

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In this episode, we take a behind-the-scenes look at how worship songs are chosen each week and the intentional process that goes into crafting a meaningful Sunday experience. From aligning music with the sermon to considering the spiritual needs of the congregation, we discuss the balance between theology, flow, and familiarity. We also share practical insights on evaluating new songs, honoring well-loved favorites, and creating a setlist that helps lead people into authentic worship. Whether you’re part of a worship team or simply curious about what goes into a Sunday service, this conversation offers a thoughtful glimpse into the heart and strategy behind every song selection.

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SPEAKER_02

Songs can have a verse, a chorus, and a bridge. But worship does not end there. This is Beyond the Bridge.

SPEAKER_01

I'm Josh, and I'm Darren. Each episode we step into the real joys and challenges of leading worship teams and choirs.

SPEAKER_00

Exploring the moments, the people, and the songs that shape the heart of worship.

SPEAKER_02

Whether you're on the platform, in rehearsal, or behind the scenes, this is the place where your heart, your team, and your ministry come alive to go.

SPEAKER_01

Beyond the bridge and into the heart behind the music. Welcome to episode two of Beyond the Bridge. I'm Josh Erzman here with my good friend Darren White. Darren, how are you? I'm doing pretty good tonight. How are you? I'm doing great. Doing great. We are uh excited to be back with you. If you have not heard episode one, you need to go back and listen to that. That needs to be the first thing that you do. You'll hear a little bit about our backgrounds and history and how we connected with one another. Uh, but long story short, we are both worship leaders at two different churches in the same small town in southwest Missouri. One is um my church, First Baptist, is more uh on the kind of blended side, uh more traditional Southern Baptist Church. We're celebrating 150 years this year. Darren serves at Harvest Hill Baptist Church.

SPEAKER_00

It is on the other side of town. Other side of the tracks, as I like to be. The other side of the tracks, the other side of the leader state the other side of the bridge. Yep. Beyond the bridge.

SPEAKER_01

But yeah, here we are. All right, and uh Harvest Hill's a little more on the contemporary side, um, more worship band uh focus. We have a worship band too, but we also have choir and orchestra. So two very different feels, but both churches value singing, value worshiping together. Absolutely. And so uh we you know come from different perspectives, but what we're looking forward to with this podcast is kind of connecting some of the dots uh that are really more uniform across all churches. Um, and so today's topic is gonna be choosing congregational songs, choosing congregational songs. How do we choose good congregational music? And then once we've chosen that music, what do we do with it? How do we choose specific songs for a specific service? So, Darren, talk to us just a little bit about your process for choosing music. How do you go about doing that for your context?

SPEAKER_00

Well, I have a set of darts. Not really. Almost kinda, but not really. It may not be as in-depth as others, for you as yourself, maybe even. We'll find out here soon enough. I keep a list of all the songs we've ever done. When was the last time we played them? How many times have we played it? Have we retired it, so to speak? Because we want to keep everything fresh. Once in a while through throughout the week, the pastor will send me a text, hey, can you guys play this song this week? Or whatever the case may be. In those cases, we always throw that song in. Even if we've retired it, whatever, because we know it goes with his sermon. Besides that, let me preface it with this. As we said in the first episode during our introduction, I'm a volunteer worship leader. So when I go to pick out a song or s do the set list for the week or the next week, whatever length of time I'm able to get it done, it may be a lot of throwing the dart at the wall. I take all those things into consideration when was the last time we played it and all that. And did it get a good response in the past? We've played maybe a handful of songs over the years that didn't necessarily get a very good response. They didn't connect. Didn't connect. Sure. I can think of one right now that we've done fairly recently. It didn't connect with the worship team. And that's a problem. Right.

SPEAKER_02

When you walk into rehearsal and you walk out saying, I don't know if this is gonna work.

SPEAKER_00

That's that's not a good feeling. It wasn't a bad practice, it wasn't a bad worship service. I just and maybe it was just me. But I just didn't feel like it connected with us. And then if that doesn't, if you don't have that connection there, how do you expect to lead the congregation in worship? So it's still on the list, but it's just kind of sitting there hanging out. So my way of doing set list and coming up with songs for congregational singing is a very laid-back approach. And I am looking forward to finding out what the doctor sitting across from me, how he goes about it.

SPEAKER_01

We'll we'll get to that in just a minute, but I I've got a few kind of clarifying questions I want to ask about you. So you talked about, you know, you you sometimes will retire songs, right? So in any given period, how many songs would you say are on your kind of active rotation that you're drawing from? Uh, you know, and it doesn't have to be exact, but just a even though I do know that you like spreadsheets a lot, and I do. And I have a feeling that you probably could tell me the exact number, but uh about what number of songs are you like? These are our this is our active roster right now.

SPEAKER_00

On our current roster, current list of songs, we've got about sixty. Okay. On the retired list, we have it's gonna be about a hundred. Okay. And that's over the past eight, nine, ten years, something like that. Okay. And once in a while, for fun, in a sense, I I I have always said we don't do this to have fun, but I'm sure glad God allows us to have fun when we do it. So for fun, once in a while, I'll go back and grab an old song. A throwback Sunday. Old meaning 10 to 15 years ago and throw it into the set list. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01

So I guess my second follow-up to that would be how does a song end up on your active roster in the first place? When you're, you know, there's literally hundreds of thousands of songs out there. I think the last time I consulted the CCLI database, I think it's like something like 750,000 songs. And you know, newer new songs are being written every day. I could write a song today, and thanks to the miracle of the internet, you know, they could be singing it in across the the ocean next week, right? But what specific criteria are you looking for? Uh as you're listening to the radio, as you're getting, you know, and I'm sure you do just like I do, you get requests from people, not just your pastor, but constant. I had one this morning that came, a text that came from a church member that said, you know, hey, I've been listening to this song, and I really think this song would be great for us to sing on Sundays. So what are the criteria? What are you filtering that through to decide if that's going to be a song that makes it to your set list?

SPEAKER_00

Well, recommendations is usually where it starts with me. Members of the church, the pastor may recommend a song to go into our rotation. Worship team members may do so. I may hear a song on the radio or at a concert, whatever the case is. We use worshipteam.com. So I've got a permanent set list in there that I put all those songs in. And every so often I'll I'll look at it. Okay, we can introduce a new one this week. Which one of these would I like to introduce? So I kind of leave it up to that as far as introduction of newer songs for us. Now, a new song here may still be five years old, or it may be one that was written yesterday and played on the radio and we heard it. That's always fun when you get recommendations. Because somebody will come up, hey, I really like this song. And sometimes I don't know the song. And what do you do? How do you react with that person with that request? It can be a challenge at times, is what I've found out. Right. I don't know how to handle that. I'm a volunteer worship leader. Sure. You know.

SPEAKER_01

You don't want to you don't want to seem too eager. Exactly. In case you listen to it and you're like, this is never gonna work in our context. And then you have to tell that person, you know, after you've said, Oh yeah, we can totally do that, and then you have to go back and have that conversation of, you know, upon further reflection, this isn't gonna work out.

SPEAKER_00

Then what I do from there, I look at the lyrics, listen to the lyrics. Is it biblically sound? First of all, worship team helps me out some with that because they'll and other applications may as well, but they'll list Bible verses that that song was written in reference to. That really helps me, because I'm not a pastor either. I did not go to seminary. So I take that step. If I have any question about it, I'll send it to the pastor and get his opinion. I've done that a few times. Hey, what do you think of this song? And he may reply back, Well, I don't really like the music, but the lyrics are fine. Yeah. You know? Yeah. So that's kind of how I go about it. It started off when I was asked to fill in in this role, in all honesty, flying by the seat of my pants. Sure. Well what do I do?

SPEAKER_01

And you already at that point had a set list or a list of songs that had already been curated. And that I think is a common thing with worship leaders. You know, we're not, unless you're, you know, a worship leader for a church plant or something that has no history behind it, you're walking into, you know, whether it's you're taking over a church that you've been a part of like you did, or whether you're stepping into a brand new ministry like I did 15 years ago. Right. You're inheriting a set list that was generated before you. Now, if you're anything like me, there were some songs on there that I wouldn't have put on there in the first place, and those were quietly retired. But you know, you're you're not trying to come up with this in a vacuum, yeah, in a sense.

SPEAKER_00

Our previous worship leader started in that position since our church came into existence. We we were a church plant, we have since gone on to become our own church. We were a plant off of a church out of Springfield. And he came from that church as well, where he also led music. So he had his own toolbox to bring with him. But when he stepped down, and he still goes to church here, but when he stepped down and they asked me to fill in how many years ago? Eight, nine, ten, whatever it's been, I quickly understood why he would react to me at certain times with certain things I would take to him. A request for a song. Hey, I heard this song, can we do it? Yeah, yeah, okay. Well, we'll listen to that and yeah. And then may never hear it again. I was like, why does he do that to me?

SPEAKER_01

It's because now I understand it's because it's it literally, it's overwhelming. I mean, it's it's one thing to say, you know, have a request, you know, once every few months somebody comes up to you. Hey, absolutely, I can throw that in. But when you're trying to plan, and I don't know how many songs every Sunday you guys do, we usually have, you know, in the around five-ish, um, including, you know, a response song after the sermon. So when I've only got five slots for songs, and I'm not, you know, one of the principles we'll talk about is not repeating songs so much that they get, you know, tired, but also not introducing new songs at a pace where it's just like you're just constantly, you never know what's going to happen, right? So when you're faced with that, those choices of trying to decide if I've only got five slots for songs and I'm trying to balance all of these different factors, what's the pastor preaching on? What's the song he's requested for the week? I mean, that usually will take priority because I believe the pastor is the true worship leader of the church. Uh, that could be a whole separate episode. But, you know, you're trying to balance a bunch of different things. And so when somebody comes up to you and and makes a request and they're just meaning it very well-meaning, well-intentioned, hey, I heard this on the radio on the way to church this morning. We should sing this song. It can kind of it's almost like the straw that breaks the camel's back because you've spent all this time invested in building your your set list, and it's just like I can't handle one more thing to have to factor in. Right. So that's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_00

You mentioned when a song gets old, or I think you said tired. At what point do you decide that it's old or that it's tired? Because I've heard I'll answer my own question first. Sorry. Go ahead. I've heard people say when the worship team gets tired of playing a song, the congregation is probably just now catching on to it and being familiar with it.

SPEAKER_01

That's absolutely my experience. Absolutely. And I think even you can even add an extra layer to that, which is when the worship leader is tired of the song, the worship team is just starting to grasp onto it. And at that point, the congregation is still in the oh, this is new and fresh stage, right? So it's it's a progression. So I think it's one of those things where you've just got to be you've got exercising discernment what is the the right number of reps to do for a particular song for a particular, you know, season of of ministry. I very rarely retire songs, and that's probably a flaw of mine, in that I tend to go back to the same standards over and over and over. Just because I think they're songs that everybody knows. Right. They've been they've been vetted. It's not, you know, we're not trying to reinvent the wheel, and we really don't do new songs that often, maybe once a month, if that. So I might only introduce, you know, six or eight, maybe ten new songs in a year's time, which doesn't seem like a lot, but for our congregation, that it that is quite a bit. Um, and they they tend to, it takes them about a month, six weeks before they really can grasp on to a new song and make it part of our worship vocabulary.

SPEAKER_00

That's kind of where I'm at. About six to eight new songs a year. Because every time I go to introduce a new song, something comes up. Here's this new song that I want our male lead vocalist to sing. Well, he gets sick. Yeah. Or, hey, I'm not gonna be there Sunday, I've got a family thing out of state, whatever. So then I have to push it to the next week and then push it to the next week. And there was I can remember one song I tried to introduce, man, I think it was three or four weeks in a row, and it just kept getting pushed off because of various things. You know, this Sunday might not be a good one to good Sunday to introduce a new song, so I just keep pushing it off. So I'm I'm probably at about six to eight new ones a year as well.

SPEAKER_01

How do you introduce new songs? Like what is your what is your method for doing that as far as and there there's lots of different layers to this, but you know, how many times do you repeat that song within, you know, a month, six weeks, eight weeks to get it kind of in everyone's vocabulary? Do you do any kind of you know, how how do you even introduce? Do you just launch into the new song one Sunday? Is there, you know, does somebody say, We're gonna teach you a new song this morning, give kind of some kind of introduction, or is it literally just you just launch into it and if people don't know it, they're gonna learn it after we've sung it a few times.

SPEAKER_00

We just play it. Okay, and we'll do it two Sundays in a row, and then I usually give it a two or three week break and then do it again. Okay. So that they can kind of go, Oh, yeah, I remember this song from a couple of weeks ago. We will do it two Sundays back to back. Uh, very seldom do I not do that if something else gets in the way of that.

SPEAKER_01

I like that method, and that's very similar to what I do. I do, you know, we'll introduce it one week, and I even will go so far I lead from the piano. I know leading from drums, it's a little more complicated for you because you're not, you know, in a position where you're mic'd and able to talk to the congregation.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, I oh I am. Oh, you are in can. Oh, goodness. I have a talk back mic for our practices for our rehearsal, whichever you want to call it. And it goes out front of house. Oh, nice. Okay, so you could speak if you wanted to. So that each person on the worship team can hear it, each instrumentalist and vocalist, the sound guy, the video video guy. So it does go out front of house. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01

So I could talk if I will I will normally I will normally explain, verbally introduce, say we're gonna teach you a new song this morning, and leading from the piano makes it easy because I will usually say, I'm gonna teach you the chorus of this song. So even if you don't know any of the rest of it, you don't know the verses, you don't know the bridge, that's fine. I'm gonna teach you the chorus, and so even if you're just listening to the rest of it, just trying to get to know it, when we get to the chorus, you now are able to participate. And I'll do a very similar um strategy to yours, which is we'll introduce it one week, we'll sing it again the second week. I'll take a week off because three weeks in a row is a little repetitive, even though this week, because of the uh this coming Sunday, because of some snow that we recently experienced, it threw our schedule off. So I actually am doing this uh we we introduced the Joy uh by Belonging Co. Okay. And uh so we're actually doing it for the third week in a row this Sunday, and it just kind of gnaws at me because I don't like doing that. But we do two weeks and then take a third week off, and then the fourth week I go ahead and do it. So really we can have a pattern of a particular month, we will sing a new song three out of the four Sundays, and then it at that point it just becomes part of our regular, you know. I don't want to say rotation because I don't, you know, pick it out like that, but it's it's in my, as you said earlier, toolkit where I can pull it out at any point and we can we can use it if it fits the surface.

SPEAKER_00

So going back to the beginning of this conversation, selecting those songs, yeah. How do you go about that?

SPEAKER_01

So, and again, I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna cheat here just a little bit. In addition to my church responsibilities, I also serve on the music faculty at uh Mission University in Springfield. And this is a topic I lecture on. Oh boy. So here we go. I've thought through I've thought through this quite a bit. Um, and so I'm I'm even just in full full transparency, full disclosure. Get your pens and notebooks ready. Exactly. Now, uh, you're actually this is a free education. You don't have to pay for this. This is great. You can get this for free. But just looking at at some of the notes from from lectures that I've that I've done over the years, you already actually mentioned the first one, which is biblically, scripturally sound lyrics, right? Everything that we sing needs to be in line with scripture. And there's actually a great tool uh that I'm going to tell you about, and I'm a little hesitant to mention it. And here's the reason. I recently found out that the website is actually was on the verge of closing down, and then another person picked it up because the original manager of the site was basically getting out of the business of keeping it updated, but another person's taking it over. It's a site called the Berean Test.com. Berean, just like from scripture, B-E-R-E-A-N.

SPEAKER_00

Hold on, instructor. I'm gonna type that into your phone there.

SPEAKER_01

So the Berean Test.com. And what I want to say about this is obviously you as the worship leader need to be vetting the songs that you are introducing to your people. However, I don't have a lot of free time in my in my week to begin with. And so if there's a resource out there where I can, you know, someone else can do some of the grunt work for me, then I'm taking advantage of that. So just like you mentioned earlier, the the planning site that you use, it lists scriptures that back up the song that you're introducing. The Berean test, what he does, and whoever's taking it over from him, he actually will run every song that he does on the site. Not every song is on there, but most of the kind of newest, current, most current songs are on this site. He runs it basically through a filter for you. And so the first question that he asks is, is this song biblical? Is it is it in line with scripture? And what he will then do is he will go through line by line the lyrics of the song and will show you exactly why. And it, you know, it's even in paragraph form where he'll say, you know, the first line of the of the verse, you know, is drawn from, you know, 1 Peter, whatever. And he will actually go through and line up and make sure that there are scriptural bases for all of the lyrics in the song. If there's not, he calls it out and says, you know, this statement is made in the song, and I'm not really, you know, sure where they're getting this from, but I can't find anywhere in scripture that lines up with this particular lyric.

SPEAKER_00

So do you have to just use whatever songs he's already done, or can you upload one or send him an email asking him to look at a song?

SPEAKER_01

I I'm sure he probably does take requests, uh, but I mean you're basically limited to. But I will say I talk about this, you know, almost every semester. And when I ask my students to, you know, give me a song title to look at, there's several hundred there. If when I've asked them to give Me a song title, nine times out of ten, the song title they give me is one that he's covered on his site. So, and he's got, you know, even there's some hymns on there. It's not just modern contemporary songs, it's uh he's got hymns on there and different things, but it's just a great resource. I would not rely on it in the same way that you know you would look at scripture. I'm not, I'm not saying, oh, if the Berean test guy says it's fine, then it must be fine for us. But for me, it's a good first glance. If it's a song, especially that I don't know, it's a first good place to look to say, am I on the right track with this song? So he asks about, you know, is it scripture? But then he also asks other questions like, you know, how would an unbeliever see this song? Would they, you know, is there so much churchy language in this song that an unbeliever's not going to have any idea what what they're what we're singing about as we sing? Um, which again shouldn't be the only factor, but that should be something that we're thinking about. Is how how would someone who knows nothing of our faith, how would they understand and perceive this song if we're using the worship?

SPEAKER_00

I have to ask this question, and this could lead to a an entirely different conversation that could last for hours because there's already conversation on the internet about it. Are there any Hillsong, Bethel, Elevation Worship, are any of those songs on his website? They are. And do any of them pass his test?

SPEAKER_01

So here's the interesting thing. And and I if I if memory serves, he actually has a section where he talks about that particular controversy, and he kind of walks through his thinking on those. His view, if I'm and I hope I'm uh representing him correctly, is the same view that I hold. And and I I do want I do think we should do an episode about this in the future. But the view that I hold is the lyrics are what primarily matter. Correct.

SPEAKER_00

That's that's what I think.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, so it's it's one of those things where, you know, and I've gotten a lot of flack from that from people over the years, because they'll say, well, by using one of these songs from one of these ministries that have views that are not necessarily, we'll just say, reflected in the you know, the Southern Baptist Convention, by using material from those churches, we are indirectly supporting them. If we're reporting to CCLI that we're using those songs, they're getting a commission from our use of those songs. There's all you know, we're we're pointing people. Oh, if somebody says, hey, I really like that song that we did on Sunday, and they go and Google the title of that song, this ministry is going to get pulled up. I understand all those arguments, but for me, my pushback to that would be look at the Baptist hymnal. Uh, and I know we don't use physical hymnals a lot anymore, but when you look at the the kind of core songs that we think of as Baptists as being the great hymns of our faith that we've used for hundreds of years, a lot of those were written by non-Baptists and were actually written in some cases by people whose theological views are absolutely not congruent with our own. You know, that you've got examples like It Is Well with My Soul, Horatio Spafford, you know, had some very strange views about some things that toward the end of his life, and yet we use, you know, It Is Well with My Soul is one of the great hymns of the faith. You sing that in any Southern Baptist church anywhere, and people are gonna respond to it. I think that that opens up a whole can of worms that we can talk about. But he does include songs from there, and on the lyrics check, he basically just says, I'm not going to take into account the source of the song. I'm just gonna look at what do the lyrics say and do the lyrics line up with scripture. So I think that is the first kind of big point, which is it needs to be scripturally sound. In the same vein, it needs to be theologically accurate, right? There are um in some cases, and I'll I'll struggle to come up with an example right now, but there are songs that we might say, oh well, yeah, I can see in scripture how that that particular word is mentioned or something, but it's we're not using it in the song in a way that necessarily reflects our theology. I I think both of those are kind of wedded together that it needs to be needs to be scripturally sound but also theologically accurate.

SPEAKER_00

I just did a quick Google search. I wasn't trying to ignore you, I was just doing some research on the fly here. What's the first hymn? Our church doesn't have hymn books, so it may be different now. Okay. But when I was growing up, what was the first hymn in the hymn book? Hymn number one. Holy, holy, holy. Yeah. Who wrote it? Reginald Heber, I believe, wrote Holy, Holy, Holy. He was a bishop. That goes back to the Baptist hymnal. You said a lot of those hymns were not written by Baptists. Right. Now, because he was a bishop, we can I I would assume he was well grounded in his faith. But Reginald, who who is that guy? You know, pick any other hymn. Right. Who is that guy? The song's good, the hymn's good. But who is that? Exactly. He may have been a terrible person. I don't know. That's right. And I'm not saying the people of the aforementioned churches are terrible people. Maybe they are, but that's a different conversation. But I I agree with the same thing that you've just said. Are the lyrics biblically sound? And if they're not, we're not gonna do it.

SPEAKER_01

And I and I also think that for me, the advice I would give to other worship leaders would be if at all possible, in a lot of cases it's not, because we've heard the song on the radio or we've you know heard it's you know, it's played on Spotify or something, and we've come across it. But my urging would be if if a song is recommended to you by somebody, before you listen to it, my recommendation would be pull up the lyrics and just read them. Just read them. Just read them. We perceive the written word differently than we do hearing it through music. Because what'll happen is if it has a you know a cool, you know, lead guitar part, or for me, it's always the you know, the cool piano part in the intro. That little they literally in Nashville they call it the hook, right? Where it's it's literally the thing that kind of gets you into the song. We'll hear those things, or we'll hear, you know, a pretty melody or something, and that locks us in, and we're suddenly like, oh, I love this song. And then we're like, oh, but man, the lyrics aren't really you know that great. I would always try to start if you can, try to start by reading the lyrics through and then add the musical layer on top of that.

SPEAKER_00

So there was one song we played, and we we played it fairly often. It's been a few years ago. It had one phrase in it that was not biblically sound. And the pastor pointed that out to us. That that was back when I was early in. And I guess what it was. Sure. Was it so a lie? Nope. No, okay. Nope. Okay. Should I name it? Yeah, please do. Still Rolling Stones by Lauren Daigle. Okay. It's a neat song. Yeah, oh yeah, great song. But there's one phrase, and I'd have to look up the lyrics to get it exactly right because I haven't heard them for so long, that we didn't think was biblically sound. So we changed it a little bit. That will start a controversy of a lot of people that may listen to this podcast. You can't change the lyrics. I've seen this in social media. But we would. We'd do it. It's now a good time to talk about copyright law. Well, yeah, because okay. I used to do some work for ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. But uh, we just don't do it anymore. Yeah. It's one of the retired ones. I won't even pull it out of retirement. We just don't do it anymore.

SPEAKER_01

And it's and it's really it's not worth the fight, honestly. There are so many, like we said, there's so many hundreds of thousands of songs out there that if there's a song that you're like, this one line, I'm not really sure about it, you know, or you know, there's some other issue, just don't use the song. Yeah. Just because it works in your church context doesn't mean it has to work in mine. Uh, you know, I hate the the idea of because a song is on the radio that it must automatically transfer over into a worship school.

SPEAKER_00

Well, it's a Christian radio school.

SPEAKER_01

Of course, it's Christian radio, right? But I I just I hate that mindset of just because it works there, it would work in church. Corporate worship is a different environment than when I'm jamming out in my car driving down the interstate, right? It's completely, completely different vibe.

SPEAKER_00

I say something very similar with concerts.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00

There's really good songs for Christian concerts. Yep. Are we going to play them in church on a Sunday morning? No. Right.

SPEAKER_01

And in a lot of cases, leaving theological considerations and things like that aside, your average church worship team cannot, cannot do justice to some of the intricacies of the music, right? And and honestly, I don't even think we should try. This is this I know, and I apologize to our listeners for us constantly saying that's a whole nother episode, because really we're we're trying to condense a huge amount of information into these little short podcasts, and it always is going to launch us in another direction. But you know, the idea of churches saying, well, because the recording sounds this way, because the vocalist sings the song this way, I need to try and duplicate that myself in my church setting. Okay. Well, if you don't have, you know, a lead guitar player that can play that really difficult riff, just leave it out. Yeah. Right?

SPEAKER_00

Have the piano player play it instead. I change my drum parts fairly often. I try to play what's in the original because that's what people are familiar with. Right. But it's not necessary. Yeah. If I play something completely different, they're gonna be standing out there going, This doesn't sound right to me. Yeah. But there's times I will leave things out that I would like to play as a as a drummer. You know, listen to this. Yeah. But to me, it's distracting to worship. Absolutely. Now, if it was a concert, you'd go all 100%. We'll do it. I adjust my playing for that. Going down another rabbit hole that probably yet you've already said, we've both said probably many times another podcast. What do you think about churches that will take secular music, change the lyrics to be biblical? I'll give them that stretch. Maybe they are, maybe they're not. Yeah. And play that song Sunday morning during worship service.

SPEAKER_01

I'm not as familiar with them changing the lyrics. The circumstances that I've heard about are where, okay, let's say, you know, I'll I'll use one example. There was a fairly well-known church that their pastor was preaching a message. I think it I honest to goodness, I think it was on Easter Sunday. And he was preaching on hell, the existence of hell. For some reason that feels odd on Easter Sunday, so maybe it wasn't Easter Sunday, but I feel like it was. But the band opened the service with Highway to Hell. Oh, okay. Right?

SPEAKER_00

I was gonna say AC DC, but I was gonna say Hell's Bells.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, well, and so that's my thing. So, you know, I I have heard of that where it's like we have the secular song that fits with the message or the series that we're doing or whatever. So we're gonna play that. And and the the reasoning, the rationale they give for that is it's a way of transitioning people from that that may not be church folks, right? Transitioning them from what they're listening to on the radio on the way into church into a worship setting, right? They're they're using that song as a pivot, and then they move into other worship songs later in the service. I'm not a huge fan. I'm not in my context. I probably get fired for doing that.

SPEAKER_00

I I've heard of that as well. That one, in fact, one video I saw, it was a local church. Actually, I don't think that church is in existence anymore. Pretty sure they're not because I know where they were located, and it's another church there now. Yeah. But they started their worship team started in the video playing Hell's Bells. And I'm like, okay, surely they'll change the lyric. No, no, they played the ACDC song in church, and I was blown away that they did it because I wouldn't even think about it. Yeah. So I'm a I'm a big classic rock fan. I'm a Rush is the best band ever. Neil Peart's the best drummer. It is pronounced Peart, not Pert.

SPEAKER_01

We'll we'll dispute that later. But you know, I think that the um, you know, that that first principle we talked about of being biblically, scripturally sound, theologically accurate, to me, that stops a lot of what we just talked about at the door, right? Because those those songs would not fit in that in that particular context. You asked about criteria. So biblically sound is the first one. I think and uh a lot of what I do with choosing music is driven by one particular scripture verse. I'm gonna read that. It's Colossians 3.16, and it says, let me find it here. I'm actually gonna start at um, so it's verse 16, uh, Colossians 3.16, and then I'm gonna read uh down to 17. And it says this Let the word of Christ dwell richly among you in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another through psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts, and whatever you do, in word or indeed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. So to me, that idea of teaching and admonishing one another through psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, my students at the university probably get tired of hearing me say that phrase. But I think that that's so key and so central to what we're trying to do. And it factors into everything from our conversation right now about song selection. To me, it factors into the discussion of lights up or down during the service, right? Because how do you teach and admonish one another if you can't see and hear one another? Right? You know, it it involves the volume of the sound system. How how can you teach and admonish someone if you can't hear them, right? So it feeds into all of that. But when we think about psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, and there's you know some theological debate out there about exactly what is the differentiation. Psalms we kind of understand, right? But there's differentiation between what is a hymn and what is a spiritual song. So a lot of scholars have written a bunch of different things about that. I I I think it was Bob Coughlin from Sovereign Grace Music that that said this several years ago, and I it really stuck with me that what Paul is really saying there is whatever songs you use, fast, slow, short, long, odd, even, you know, whatever songs you're using, use them to glorify God. So that idea of using a variety of songs. I don't think that using the same sources of songs, the same style of songs over and over and over again on repeat is necessarily healthy. So I think there should be a variety of um of music, a variety of themes. That's the one thing that I think we we sometimes struggle with as Baptists, is we kind of have our sugar stick themes that we want to hit over and over again with our songs. And I actually use this as an example with one of my students the other day. You know, I the 2008 Baptist hymnal, which is the most recent hymnal that was published uh by the by Lifeway. When you open up the index, the table of contents, you look at it, and you know, they've got everything nicely labeled into little theological categories, and you look at God the Father. There's like 140 songs labeled under the category of God the Father. God the Son, Jesus Christ, 200 or so songs that are under that category of God the God the Son. God the Holy Spirit. I said, how many songs do you think are under that category? Six. Six. Because we as Baptists, we're kind of afraid of talking about the Holy Spirit, right? We don't want to be perceived as being, you know, Pentecostal, charismatic, you know, we're we're just we have kind of a sore spot about, you know, we don't want to talk about the Holy Spirit too much because that will in in worship. Now we'll we'll preach about the Holy Spirit and do, but as far as singing, we kind of tend to stay away from the topic of the Holy Spirit. We sing a lot, uh, or we used to sing a lot about heaven, almost every song. If you think about some of the classic, you know, hymns and gospel songs of the last 50 to 100 years, it was, you know, I'll fly away when we all get to heaven, you know, when when the role is called up yonder, I'll be there. You don't hear as many worship songs now about heaven. And so I think it was also Bob Coughl that talked about something called the 20-year rule, which is if someone grows up in our church listening to the songs that we're singing in corporate worship, and that is the only theological input that they have. When they leave our church, you know, they graduate high school, they they graduate college, they leave and go off on their own. If they leave our church, what do they know about God based on those songs that we sang on Sunday morning? That's a to me as a worship leader, that's a convicting thought. Oh, yeah. Of we've we've got to have a variety. So I think having a variety of songs, obviously we sing songs of worship to God, and we need to have those moments of worship where our songs are directed to God. But if there's anything that Colossians 3.16 and in uh teaches us, and even Ephesians 5.19, it's that idea of teaching and admonishing one another. So we need to sing songs to one another, songs of testimony, not just directed to God, but also songs of testimony about God and about what He has done for us, right? And then just some practical things. You know, the idea of the melody needs to be singable. Musicians love to complicate things wherever we can. So just a melody that is singable, that it's congregationally singable, making sure that the range of the song is such that the average male vocalist, the average female vocalist can sing the song and sing it well.

SPEAKER_00

You bring that up. I played in a worship band. It was put together by a guy, it was a one-time thing. It was a marriage conference in Branson. They had to ask him to put a band together to provide some music during that conference. That's all we ever did. That was the sole purpose of it. It was just a bunch of random musicians and me, the drummer. Joke joke. Yeah. Just to do that one thing. One of the songs we played was by Cece. Everybody knows Cece. I love Cece. And I can remember one of those guys saying, I don't know if a Cece song is friendly to the congregation or not, but we're gonna do it anyway. And and that's true. We play Holy Forever here, and it that seems to be a song of hers that's a little easier for the congregation to sing than some others. But yeah. So it made me think of that.

SPEAKER_01

Well, and there's and there's resources that can be really helpful. I would say a good majority of worship bands use, you know, sites like Song Select, CCLA Song Select, for their their charts to get their chord charts and and stuff for their bands. Well, the great thing about Song Select is you can adjust the key to really anything that you want. So if you're saying, well, you know, Josh, I'm I'm I'm not impugning drummers here, but if you're someone that you're like, I never took music theory, or I just barely squeaked by, yeah, Darren's raising his hand. I just barely squeak by music theory. So I you're like, I don't know what key to choose that would be appropriate. Another resource. So I gave you the Breen test earlier. I'm gonna give you another great resource that I use all the time. Praisecharts.com has a key range finder on their website. So if you go to Praise Charts, you look up the worship song that you're wanting to do, it will show you. You have to scroll down a little bit on the song page, but you'll eventually see like a piano keyboard. And what they do on there is they will give you the ability to adjust the range that you're wanting. I think the default range is what I would consider to be kind of an average congregational range, which is for women, it would be the A below middle C up to the D above high C, and then for the men it's an octave below that. But kind of a traditional range for and you, you know, and even if you're saying, Josh, I don't know what those notes are.

SPEAKER_00

Josh, I play the drums. Okay. I took a theory class in college, started. Okay. And the instructor tried to make me sing the Dorami Fasolati Do in class, in front of people. And you walked out. And I said, I don't sing. He goes, Well, just sing this. I said, I don't sing. Yeah. And it got to the point he really embarrassed me, and I never went back.

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Well, we'll play the drums.

SPEAKER_01

We'll work on work on addressing that trauma and processing that here in a future episode. But, you know, so that key finder. So let's just say I'm what I'm saying. Is it defaults to what I think is a is a good congregational range. And what will then happen is it will show you the range of the song that you've chosen. So let's say Holy Forever, for example, it will show you here are the notes that in the original key that the artist is singing it in. Here are the notes, the lowest note and the highest note, and all the notes in between, it'll highlight those, right? So if there are notes that the original key uses that fall too high for the average congregant or too low for the average congregant, those will show up in red and it'll say, these are notes that are not accessible to the average person. And then what it'll allow you to do is it'll allow you to adjust the key of the song. There's a little button at the bottom. You can adjust the key. And if you see one that's highlighted in green, that means every note in that song is in the range for the average congregation member to sing in. If it's yellow, it's like, well, this may be a little high or a little low for the average person. But if you if you shoot for that green, on some cases, I'm trying to think there was a worship song recently I looked at that in every single key, all 12 keys, the the range was so small that you could literally sing it in any key and it would be appropriate. But for you know, a song that has a pretty wide range, which Holy Forever does, it will identify specific keys that you can do that in that will make it friendly for the average person.

SPEAKER_00

So if you're looking for new members on the worship team, new vocalists, yeah. You could do that. Pick a song that's got a lot of red, yep, and Sunday morning listen to the the congregation and the ones that hit those notes, you want to exactly. That's a great strategy.

SPEAKER_01

I love that. I love that. But anyway, so but it's you know, it's as simple as finding songs that that are are set in keys or setting them in keys that fit the congregation. There are some songs that I don't think are even appropriate for congregational singing for that very reason. There are some songs that are out there that the range might be, you know, an octave and a half or more, where you're and you know, you and we know what those songs are. The songs where you sing at one verse super low, and then the next time you sing the verse, you jump up an octave and do it, right? The average, especially men in the church, and I think it's important as male worship leaders, one of our things that we should be thinking about actively is how do we engage the men in our church? The women, on average, you know, statistics will back me up here. On average, the women in your church are more likely to sing on Sunday morning than the men are. So, how do we engage men? One of the ways is by not singing songs that are so dadgum high or or have such a dadgum wide range that they make the the men in the congregation uncomfortable to sing them.

SPEAKER_00

Well, with the uh thought of time, keeping time in mind, so that our wives don't have a little conversation with us yet again after the first one. Unless you've got more, I kind of want to wrap this up. Sure. And I want to wrap it up by asking another question. Okay.

SPEAKER_01

So it may it may lead it to who knows what. I I just want our wives to know this is Darren's fault.

SPEAKER_00

But we're we're trying here. We mentioned early on about connecting with the congregation. If a song connects with the congregation, we'll play it again. If it doesn't connect, we'll scrap it. How do you know it connects? Because with me being the drummer, I'm in a cage, custom built, by the way. But uh we've got, thankfully, people in our church that have those talents. As one young boy calls it, my cabin. I prefer to refer to it as my cabin. I can't hear the congregation singing, plus I wear headphones, that's my monitor. So the only way I can tell is reaction. Yeah. Are people raising their hands? And you know, we are a Baptist church, but people do raise their hands. Sure. I think it was that famous Christian comedian, Tim Hawkins. Are they carrying the TV with their touchdowns straight out and palms upright, or is it a touchdown? You know, different versions. That's all I can tell from the congregation. So I know if I see a lot of that going on, it's connecting. Doesn't mean that if it's not happening, it's not connecting. So then I have to use other means, and sometimes it's just talking to people. Yeah. You know, someone may come up, hey, I really enjoyed that song. Okay, thanks for letting me know. Or I don't think anybody's ever told us they didn't like a song, but I kind of go off that and then what the uh other members of the worship team, how they kind of felt through that, if if that's the case.

SPEAKER_01

So I would say to echo a few things that you said. One is I think you do look for those reactions. When I talk about the reaction of the congregation, I'm more looking at are they singing? Which, you know, not being in a drum cage, I can gauge that more accurately. Cabin. Sorry, excuse me, your cabin. But uh, you know, I can gauge that more accurately because I can actually hear them. And that's one reason I don't want to beat this drum. I don't love in-ear monitors. I feel like I'm trapped. Like I love the live acoustics of a room. I just have always been that way. So, you know, that's that's one one reason is I can actually hear the congregation in the live setting. So I can tell if they're singing or not. That doesn't always, you know, give you a complete indicator, especially if it's a song that you've only introduced one time. People, it may be that they want to sing it, they're just not familiar enough with it yet to sing. So, with that, you've kind of got to wait a few weeks and and then gauge whether they're singing. I do put a lot of stock in what our worship team thinks of a song when I introduce it. This is another reason why I'm such a big proponent of choirs, because choirs give you a broad representation, a sampling of the congregation. And so you're gonna know if you've got, you know, even a relatively small choir. I mean, ours on a Sunday morning, we're around at this point post-COVID 15-ish in the choir. We might go up to 20, 25, but it's a it's a smattering of our congregation. I've got senior adults, I've got younger, you know, my sixth-grade daughter sings in our choir. I've got every every age in between. I've got men, I've got women. And so if I introduce a song to the choir, I can tell pretty quickly how a song is connecting. And that is a pretty good representation of how it's going to connect with the greater congregation. Uh, you know, I'll consult with my pastor, I'll ask him how he thinks it went. I'll go back and look at the live stream to see if there are things that that you know, the camera and the microphones caught that maybe I didn't catch when I was trying to lead the song. So it's very subjective art deciding if something's connecting with your congregation. But, you know, like you said, those comments, people coming up to you, oh, that song really blessed me, or, you know, that really, you know, that touched my heart, it made me think of, you know, or it really ministered to a particular situation that's going on in my life. Those are the comments that I'm like, okay, great, this is connecting. Um, so it's it's it's subjective, but you just you do the best you can, and I really that applies to all areas of worship leading, is you just do the best you can and leave the results to God. That's what I've found out, that's for sure. So I think that um in a neat little package, neat little bow, kind of bookends our our discussion on choosing congregational songs. How do you uh put those uh together for an individual service? So, Darren, I think that's a great place to stop, and we'll come back next next time with our next episode of Beyond the Bridge.

SPEAKER_00

The only other thing I would add is that there's just so much. And one topic can lead to the next, can lead to the next, and we could continue for the next three hours, I'm sure. But just a touch, a smattering, as you said. All right, we'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_01

See ya. Thanks for joining us for this episode of Beyond the Bridge. If today's conversation spoke to you, be sure to subscribe, share it with your team or a friend, and join us next time as we grow together in how we lead and how we worship.