The beginning of a new year is always a good time to reflect and take inventory of the past 12 months. No doubt you may have noticed top 10 lists popping up all over. I was curious myself as to what the top 10 worship songs were for 2010 and so I did some web research but ran into some roadblocks.
The first issue I realized is that only the more contemporary songs show up on any of these lists as those are the ones that people are tracking. (How would you even go about discerning how many times Amazing Grace is sung in churches?)
The second issue is that anyone can make a top 10 list based on just about any criteria including personal preference so how scientifically accurate are they?
The third issue is finding a list that deals solely with music used in worship. CCLI is one of the first places to look and you can find the latest list of their top 25 songs for Canada or the US (By the way there top 4 are identical and they have 21 songs in common though in different order). Of course this site only lists songs covered under CCLI.
WorshipTogether.com provides yet another list but again only material that is found on their website.
So in the end I came up empty handed but it made me wonder, what are your church’s top 5-10 songs/hymns? How do you decide what makes that list; the number of times a song is sung or whether it is a heart song that is requested at significant occasions (i.e. weddings, funerals)? Eager to hear what makes your list!