[This post is part of a series on Your Guide to Selecting and Leading Songs for Worship. Check out the rest here.]

I never knew the phrase “we should do more hymns” would feel like a stab in the heart. It hurts even more when it’s followed up with the leg sweep of “we don’t like your songs”.

So as I lie there bloodied and battered down, I wonder, “Do these people know how much time I put into worship for Sunday morning?” Praying through the setlist, scheduling the band, preparing for a great rehearsal, praying for God to move, showing up early, getting nervous, pouring my heart out.

And then I hear it echoing through my head like an annoying baby toy: “we should do more hymns, we should do more hymns, we should do more…”

I know that was maybe slightly dramatic. But in all honesty, it’s how we as worship leaders feel when it comes to hymns: it’s an all-out war! The elder segment of the church desire the rich theology of the songs they sang when they were saved, while the young people desire the new, fresh expressions of worship because they just don’t “get” the hymns.

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[This post is part of a series on Your Guide to Selecting and Leading Songs for Worship. Check out the rest here.]

Choosing songs for worship is hard. It’s an acquired skill, akin to riding a bike in that you can eventually learn to do it well every time. Over the years I have made some mistakes in choosing a setlist and I hope to spare you the pain.

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[This post is part of a series on Your Guide to Selecting and Leading Songs for Worship. Check out the rest here.]

One thing that worship leaders can never rest from is searching for new songs. Most of us are leading every weekend of the year and, though we may have tried, we can’t do Everlasting God and How Great is Our God every weekend. We’re always looking for the latest hit song that our congregation will respond to. We long for a freshness to permeate our worship experiences. And we want our people to be engaged at the same time.

So where do we look? How do we create a system where we’re constantly inspired by the best songs? Because let me tell you: there is no shortage of worship songs. The hard part is finding the best ones.

Before I give you some practical suggestions, make sure you pray through and ask the question, “God, what do our people need to be singing? What phase of life are they in and what truth do they need to apply?” That will definitely determine which songs you should choose.

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This turned out to be such a great blog series. One of the things we can never rest from is selecting songs and leading them. We do it so often that it becomes a routine where we lose the heart of the matter – encountering God. My goal was to help us maintain vision in the midst of our routines.

We walked through practical steps to selecting songs, leading songs, and moving people into a place of true worship. Here’s some of the topics we covered:

• How to find new songs
• I see songs everywhere. Which ones should I choose?
• Writing songs for your local church
• Common mistakes in choosing songs
• Navigating the “Hymn Wars”
• How to Create Continuity in a Setlist
• How to Move Your Congregation Beyond the “Sing-a-long”

Do you have any ideas of a future series you’d like me to cover? Let me know in the comments.