JCS
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I am always adding new music to the team's repertoire...about 1 per week with some breaks here and there...I am wondering if there will ever be a time that we will have so many songs in our repertoire that we need to rid ourselves of some of the songs; I don't want to be doing each song once per 6 months, you know what I mean? So my question for all of you is, how many songs do you have in your total list of songs, and how often do you repeat them? (Excluding new songs being introduced)
I think 150 strong, regular songs in a repertoire seems about right. We meet for one service every week as a local congregation, have a regular attendance of 50-60 and a worship team of ten with four worship leaders. We usually sing five to seven songs per service.
I think it's a really key responsibility for worship pastors and leaders to be regularly looking at the songs sung in church, what other worship leaders are using, what songs were sung last week, etc. It's important that we have some consistency and continuity in our song selections, I think.
As for new songs, I think a new song every week is way too much. We use the 3-0-1 system of introducing new songs. That means you teach a new song and then use it for three consecutive weeks. You then give it a break for a week and then use it again on the fifth week. I ask all our worship leaders to respect this format and we agree on a selection of new songs to introduce over the coming term. A new song every week will do little but confuse people. You need to teach a new song well and use it regualrly before they become a vehicle that people can use for worship without struggling to remember how it goes. If you teach a new song every week, by the sixth week you'll have a setlist made up entirely of songs that are less than two months old! We probably introduce less than ten new songs a year, which actually helps in choosing the right new songs, rather than just rushing to teach the latest 'in vogue' songs from whatever album or conference.
And just on the repertoire thing: I wouldn't ever 'delete' a song permanently from our repertoire (except on disagreeable theological or thematic grounds) and say that a worship leader cannot use it. It's just that our regular pool of songs is about 150 odd. Also I've found that a 'hot list' of 12-15 songs that are really working well in the congregation in this season and helping people to worship with is a good idea. I ask our worship leaders (where possible) to strongly consider using one or two from this shortlist each week. We then review that list regularly.
EDIT: Just had a look at our records. In 2009 we sang around 125 different songs over the course of the year. So far in 2010, we've used 80 different songs.
It's good to know I'm not that far off; Although I said I try to do one new song a week, it's really more like 3 new per month and I always repeat them two Sundays the first time it's introduced. When our church started 2 years ago, we had just 26-30 songs and they were used ALOT (10 songs per week), so I had a plan to aggressively add new ones (usually songs people would probably already know, just new to the repertoire). But now we are at close to 150 songs and around last Christmas we were so sick of the original 26 songs I was able to take a break from most of them for about 6 months. Your advice confirms what I was concerned about - people not knowing songs well enough. So now I can start to take a little more relaxed approach to adding new songs.
I see your limited repoirtoire predicament, JCS, but as I say, the absolute quickest I would introduce new songs would be one every four or five weeks. Three every month still sounds like a lot to me.
I read somewhere that 60 should be your max for songs that you are doing on a regular basis. This seem like a difficult goal to reach. I know the goal is to do songs often enough that your congregation is comfortable and familiar enough that they can actually worship, but it seems fairly limited if you include some old standards you may pull out occasionally.
We have two separate services each week to plan for and therefore go through about 8-10 songs each week. We recently moved and started leading at our current church and have also introduced a lot of new songs at a fairly rapid pace but are starting to taper off now. We've done 82 different songs since we started mid-January. With our higher number of songs per week I think we'll probably end the year at around 100 (possibly including Christmas songs when we get to that point). This seems to be, in my opinion a good number since we are able to do each song once every few weeks, some more frequently, some less.
My husband, who leads with me, reminds me all the time that while I may be sick of a song from practicing and hearing it numerous times, the congregation usually needs to hear it 3 or 4 times before they are really comfortable with it. It's a tough balance--trying to find fresh songs for that season and keeping the songs alive for the worship leader, while making sure the congregation isn't left behind.
I didn't mean to suggest I was going to continue the way I've been doing things; I value all of the advice given and won't be so aggressive with adding new songs. Thanks!
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I remember reading something a while back about churches which have steady growth and active members tend to have no more than 150 songs in their repertoire. There has to be a balance between not overusing the same song and having so many new songs the congregation don't get the chance to learn them. We had well over 250 and after a lot of discussion we trimmed the dross and got rid of about half of them.
That said, it depends on the church and the format you use. If a church only uses three or four songs a service, you'd expect a more restricted repertoire than one using 12 to 15 songs a service. And there is always the seasonal aspects of carols and easter songs.
My opinion, and the way I used to do it when I was in charge at previous churches, is that for the congregation to know a song it should be used at least every six weeks, though that was across two or three services, and for each new song one should be retired when the repertoire reaches a certain level.
There will still be songs used more regularly and others very occasionally but as worship leaders we should be trying to help the congregation by making it easy for them to focus on God, rather than the words of a song they don't know well enough to be confident singing. A new song every week seems a bit excessive. I'd personally go for one new one a month and use the 3 weeks played, one week not played, one week played and then on the list system to give people a chance to get to know it.