This sounds very familiar. We have a tendency to beat songs to death, I’d love to give several of them a good break, and to retire some completely.
I imagine many churches are the same. What’s frustrating is that we have a sizeable repertoire, yet still get stuck in the same few songs.
What’s even more frustrating is that there are lots of good songs out there doing the rounds at other churches / events, and many of them we haven’t even tried yet. I’m not sure what’s stopping this happening really.
Another pet hate of mine is doing the same song 2 weeks in a row or more. I’ve sort of get it if it’s a brand new song we’ve just introduced, and they want to familiarise people with it. But then, leave it for a few weeks then go back to it.
We know enough songs that we shouldn’t need to repeat anything we did in the previous couple of weeks, unless there’s a good reason to pick it, such as it fitting in with a theme or message.
What’s interesting here is that it’s not just musicians & singers who get bored of songs, the congregation does too. In fact it’s one the most common things I get told by people from outside the team: “Getting really tired of <insert song name here>, it seems like we do it every week”. That and “Can we please do <insert song>, it’s really popular, why don’t we do it?”
