Planning Song Sets for Worship

As a slight change of direction, I thought I would wax a bit about my processes for putting together song sets at Momentum from week to week. While I'm sure methodologies here vary widely, from the super-spiritual (i.e. "what songs does God like this week?") to the overly-mechanical (i.e. "these songs are all in A, let's do them!"), I try to make as many practical and spiritual considerations as possible, then move forward from there. Some weeks, practical considerations weigh more heavily, other weeks, spiritual matters are most important.

Here are some of my criterion in programming out song sets, and the accompanying questions I ask myself for each criterion:

Function
What is the energy of the song?
Is this song more celebratory/horizontal, or introspective/vertical?

This is a major consideration for me. In my experience, kicking off your service with an engaging, high-energy pick-me-up song ("Awesome is the Lord", "Happy Day") is an absolute necessity. By the same token, a powerful, singing-straight-to-God-from-the-top-of-my-lungs type of song ("How Great is Our God," "Jesus Paid it All") can be the best way to close out a song set, especially one that leads right into the teaching time.

The energy of a song is determined by a number of factors, namely tempo, dynamics, and what I like to call the "clapability factor." Ultimately this is a subjective thing, but it's a useful exercise to characterize the overall energy of a song.

This is where having a well-catalogued music library can be a huge help. I have all the songs in our planningcenteronline.com database labeled as one of three "feels":

• High energy
• Medium drive
• Contemplative

This way, all I have to do is filter by any one of these feels, and I can see which songs I have available to kick off a service, or to close it out.

While this may sound a bit mechanical, it's actually one of the most artful considerations to make in song planning. This is because it requires that you rehearse the song in your head, to test how it will function, how people might respond, and how the different feels might flow from one to another. You'll probably lose your audience if you move too quickly to a super introspective song, because you haven't given them time to really orient their hearts in that direction. You also don't want to juxtapose too many slow songs with fast songs right after.

It is in thinking through the feel and energy of a song that you can give your sets the greatest sense of "flow," where one songs seems to naturally flow to another - a high energy song to a mid-tempo, medium energy song, and finally to a contemplative, focused, vertical (singing directly to God) type of song, or something close to that. This consideration requires a lot of sensitivity on the part of the song planner.

Frequency
When was the last time we did this song?
How many times have we done this song in the last year?

For newer songs, I like to introduce them one week by putting them in a low-pressure slot in the service, like during communion where most people are preoccupied doing things other than singing. Then we'll make sure to do them a second week in a row, to really help with recognition and retention, take a week off, then do it a third time the next week. Introducing songs this way ensures that people feel comfortable with them by the end of the third repetition, and that song is then ready to be put into your regular rotation

I try to avoid doing any one song more than 7 times in a year, as anymore than this and the band starts getting bored with it. This is a little bit selfish, since ultimately our job as the worship leaders is not just to keep ourselves entertained but to help our community praise God, but it's a worthwhile consideration because if your band is bored with it, they're not going to bring much enthusiasm or energy to it, nor are they going to prepare as well for it during the week.

Content
Is this song pertinent to what's being taught about?
Is this a song that our people really need to be challenged with?

This is ultimately the most important consideration in song planning. It's where you have to learn to use your "spiritual radar" to determine how best to edify/encourage/challenge the body through song. If you sense that your community needs to be challenged in the area of giving, you might build your set around Matt Redman's "Breathing the Breath." If your people are particularly timid about raising hands, you might build around Chris Tomlin's "Unchanging," teaching through the idea that we are instructed to "raise up holy hands in prayer" (1 Tim. 2:8). If you know that the teaching is going to be focused on how we use our tongues, it would be a good idea to plan a song like "Take My Life" post-teaching, as a moment for the body to respond to the teaching through song.

Songselect.com's "theme" search can be an invaluable tool for this sort of planning, because in just seconds you can search for all the songs in their database that pertain to any particular keyword, like "thanksgiving" or "missions." You'll inevitably have to wade through a lot of really bad songs, but if you keep in mind that most of the songs that are worth doing are marked with a little icon for Audio, Chords, Leads, and/or Hymns, you can quickly navigate to the songs that are actually decent (i.e. widely performed).

The lyrical content and subject matter, as well as its applicability and benefit to your congregation is one of the most important factors in song selection - and one that's accomplished best through prayerful consideration.


This is just a little glimpse into my process for planning song sets. Hopefully it provides you with a start for purposeful, creative, tasteful song planning.

How do you plan song sets?