Now Taking Requests

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Permalink Reply by Cincinnati_Musician on June 29, 2009 at 8:27pm

I've gotten out of a few oddball requests that luckily are not in the CCLI database, and so I tell them I don't have the copyrights to do the songs in church. lol

Beyond that, I've been able to take most of the requests offered since they were songs the team's all ready done before, just maybe ones we haven't done in a while.

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Permalink Reply by Rick Cogbill on June 29, 2009 at 8:28pm

I say, "Hey, thanks for the suggestion. I'll give it a listen and see if it's something we can use." I think most people realize that their suggestions are just that...suggestions. It's like when you go up to the pastor after a sermon and say, "Hey, I've got a great story that goes along with your sermon topic..." You don't really expect him to run back to the pulpit and redo the sermon. If he uses it one day, that's great.

However there are a few people that do expect you to drop everything and do exactly what they want. To those ones, I gently help them understand that it doesn't work that way.

If it's a band member who is making the suggetion, that's a different story. Those I take very seriously, because you don't want them thinking that you never listen to them. If the song is valid, then make a point to include it within a reasonable timeframe. If it's not, take the time to discuss it with them, so that hopefully they will see by the end of it all why it doesn't fit.

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Permalink Reply by Robert on June 30, 2009 at 5:04am

Make arragements that submitted songs need to go through the Pastor. (:

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Permalink Reply by wahba on June 30, 2009 at 7:26pm

Great question. At our church (just under 1000 regular attenders), there were so many people making suggestions for new songs, and so many songs that actually made it to our worship services that probably should not have, that we had to develop a process.

I had to sit down with our pastor and select a group of worship team leaders (you could call it a "worship council"). A handful of folks with a solid grip on scripture, the vision of our church, the personality of worship at our church, etc. This worship council meets once a month to discuss the direction of the worship department, sound equipment issues, scheduling, special events, new potential worship members.

At one of our first meetings, we defined criteria for what makes a solid worship song in our specific community. What do they respond to? What styles, topics, qualities of these songs do we need to balance?

After defining the criteria, we developed a simple process for song submission (mostly an email discussion that looks at lyrics, melodies, and where it would fit in our service).

Any new song, whether from a pastor or a lay person, must go through the process before a worship team plays it at our church. Anyone suggesting a song gets the same answer: "email me the MP3 & lyrics and we'll submit it to the song selection process".

This eases the stress on a lot of us who tirelessly take song suggestions that we're sure will NOT work in our community.

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Permalink Reply by Kevin Riner on July 1, 2009 at 12:29am

Definitely love this answer. Kinda goes along with what I'm wanting to do. Starting a core team for writing songs for worship and vision developing.

Thank you!

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Permalink Reply by Dan Camp on July 1, 2009 at 10:08pm

Wow...from the title, I thought you were referring to taking requests during the service, to which my reply was "you're a braver man than I am, Gunga Din!" (yes, misquote is intentional.)

I only rarely get this (actually wish I got it more, rather than "why don't we do more hymns???"), so my take on it is, if they're willing to suggest a song, I'm willing to at least give it a try in rehearsal. If it flies at rehearsal, we'll see about rolling it into our playlist...of course if it dies at rehearsal...'nuff said. ;-)

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Permalink Reply by Kevin Riner on July 2, 2009 at 11:46am

Most of them to me die before they ever make it to rehearsal!, Lol.

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Permalink Reply by Rick Cogbill on July 2, 2009 at 3:39pm

Maybe some of those songs were already dead before they even got to you? Just a thought...:)

On the flip side, sometimes I have to do a reality check on myself, because it's easy to start rejecting song ideas out of hand, but upon deep reflection I discover that I was only putting it through the grid of my own personal preference. We need to remind ourselves that we are there to provide worship music that works for our people. It may or may not always be what's on your ipod...

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Permalink Reply by Wayne Pau on July 3, 2009 at 1:45pm

Kevin,

I think you have to do what is in the best interest of whole congregation (rather than just a select few).

I'm sure a well lead worship set will inspire people to want to get involved, and maybe one of the ways they feel they can is through suggesting new songs. Maybe it's a plea for how can I get more involved and contribute to how God is moving at your church through worship?

On the other hand, I seem to get people who always want to mold worship into exactly how they want it (or at least how they *think* they want it), without necessarily having the congregation's best interest at heart. We have certain criteria for songs. New songs written by lay people without CCLI info (excluding Hymns of course) often have to get approval from our pastors/worship ministry leaders. We're erring on the side of caution, but we'd never want to have a case where we sing a sing and it's really not representative of the church. There is an implicit church leadership endorsement of any song we use on any given Sunday.

For me personally, how we keep everybody happy is that we try to keep a high quality product every Sunday we're up. Powerful, moving and inspired worship is sometimes the best distraction. The goal should always be how can I help move God's people and prepare them to meet with God and hear Him speaking to them. Everything else is just secondary or background decoration. So if you 'never' make it through your new song list, but have inspired worship every week, I'd still count that as a resounding success!

=)

p.s. I do eliminate a lot of suggestions based on the fact I do not think they are appropriate. Either they are too complicated to sing, I don't agree with the words, I don't think they will inspire people. Simply put, when I'm the worship leader, part of my responsibility is to build out the worship set. Their requests are simply suggestions.

IF they really have a problem with that I'd probably suggest for them to come and build up their own worship team and present their own choice of songs one Sunday. It's easy to be a back-seat worshiper. It's much hard when you're the driver and their placing their lives in your hands. ;)

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