Ever wish you could help choose which songs are sung at church each Sunday?
As someone who especially loves to worship through music, one of my favorite (or least favorite) parts of the service is seeing which songs we are going to sing. Some weeks I love the songs we sing and they speak right to my heart. Other weeks I’m just going through the motions. It can be very hit or miss.
Chances are that unless you’re part of the worship team, you really don’t have much say in the songs that get sung each week at your church. As I considered this, I couldn’t help but remember the Sunday evening service in the small CRC church where I grew up. On Sunday nights, a member of the church (often an elder or deacon) would go up front and take song requests from the gray psalter hymnal. The pseudo-worship-leader would walk around with a mic but most times people would just shout out a page number.
From my perspective as a kid, it was a big deal to pick a song and have the whole church sing it. Too shy to speak up myself, I’d pass along my song requests to be shared by my dad. I loved hearing which songs others chose and this time of worship became my favorite part of the service.
Though many things are different today (i.e. fewer Sunday evening services and hymnals), might there be a fresh new way churches could take song requests? Can you envision a modern way to do this (i.e. social media)? Does your church invite members outside of the worship team to give input on song selection? What are the benefits or drawbacks to more input?
