I Hate that song

I was reading Ragamuffin Soul the other day about his attempts to make Brenton Brown’s song “Everlasting God” sound like it belongs in 2007. He was frustrated it was sounding very 1990’s and didn’t like it. I made some comments and so did a bunch of others, but one comment stuck out. “Try it with your congregation and see if they like it” one guy said. Interesting…It made me think how many songs do I do in church that I hate, but do because the congregation loves them and they are brought into worship by them.

This is a tough one. It is in the same vein as “How many times are we going to do a TOMLIN song!”, and you know what I’m talking about. As Musicians we get sick of music and we have major opinions on it, but as worship leaders we need to take a back seat and look at the big picture. We need to sometimes put our preferences aside and see what does and doesn’t fit for the congregation. This may require changing songs, changing keys and even eliminating songs from set list that are really cool.

Comments

9 responses to “I Hate that song”

  1. Grits n' Grace Avatar

    Hey, thanks for stopping my blog. I’m enjoying browsing around yours. I thought of focusing my blog on worship leading/guitar/music, but there are already so many good ones, that I decided to stay fairly random, but stick in the occassional guitar/music post. Looks like you’ve got a good one here, so I’ll be adding it to my blogroll for sure.

    I attend a very conservative Episcopal Church and it’s been a bit of a struggle bringing in the new P&W music. Right now the whole worship team is just me and my Taylor 814-CE LTD. We have a blended service with Hymns and P&W. The P&W is sung during communion. I run into the “I hate this song” syndrome quite a bit because I’m limited on how quickly I can bring in new music. I could make this a post in its own right! I’ll just wrap it up by saying as long as I remember who I’m really serving, I can get past the “stuff” that comes with the territory.

    Blessings,
    David.

  2. worshipcity Avatar

    Yeah especially for us worship leaders and worship leaders wives! I mean by the time I’ve introduced a song to the congregation, I played it at home several weeks and listened to it. Then gave it to the band, the practiced it with them for a few weeks. By the time it gets to the front of the congregation sometimes I’m already sick of it!! My wife is the best/worst too b/c she’s been knowing about it for weeks and the newness has worn off already! HAHAHA.

    Its tough but I think that’s why its so important to have a great team (I rarely call my guys a band) to work with and some honest and opinionated people to get feedback from.

  3. klampert Avatar

    Oh yeah…my wife is in my team/band…and she gets sick of stuff also and then there is the..”joel why are you doing that song…it stinks” LOL

    Most of my team is’nt really up on todays worship and are being introduced to it by me..Even so they are very excited about the direction we are headed.

  4. klampert Avatar

    grits…i totally see where your at and have been there and on the opposite spectrum as well…church i was in in Oregon didnt allow hymns…they were banned because they were too old. LOL.

  5. Darren Avatar
    Darren

    Good post. I have to remind myself of this again and again.

  6. worshipcity Avatar

    Yeah my team is a good mix. Regardless of how ‘up to date’ they are in ‘modern praise and worship’ though they’re all pretty up to date with music in general, so that helps.

    As far as my wife goes being ‘ON’ the team or band, she said if I ever got famous she’d shake the tambourine on a stool in the back corner and enjoy the view! HAHAHAHA. She’s not one to get in front of people and such.

  7. klampert Avatar

    tambourines rock though…SOme of my favorite bands used them….monkees for one…

  8. […] interesting post was done on the song Everlasting God, by Brenton Brown, on both my blog and on Ragamuffin Soul. Los over there said the song wasn’t very 2007 and wondered how he […]

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