Tips on Choosing Choir and Congregation Songs

By Kristine Davis

There are a few points that one should keep in mind when choosing music for a church choir or for corporate worship. Here are a few pointers to help with the process:

• Listen carefully to the lyrics of the songs you are considering and make sure that they reflect what is right and good. Anything that you sing will represent to your listeners what you believe and stand for. Singing doubtful lyrics could cause people to think wrongly of you, your choir, or your congregation as a whole, and who God is.
• Make sure that the lyrics make a clear point. Some songs can be so full that the meaning is blurred or unclear. People could go away confused. This is especially important when a group is singing, as words are harder to understand when sung by more then one person.
• Be careful with songs that were originally done by a solo singer or written for a soloist. Often songs that sound great when sung by one person sound wrong or off when sung by a large group of people, and sometimes they are too complicated for a group. Try to choose songs that are simple enough for many people in many parts.
• Pay attention to the musical elements as well. Don’t choose a song that includes instruments or sounds that you don’t have access to. Sometimes changing an instrument in a song could change that feel of the song entirely. This often depends on the song you are considering. For some songs replacing one instrument with another works fine. Also, don’t forget to consider what the musicians are able to play, and comfortable with playing.
• Keep in mind when you are choosing a song for a congregation to sing, and even for a choir to sing, that the people have come to worship God. Worship leaders have a responsibility to help them do that as best they can.
• Choose songs that don’t try to fit a lot of words into a short amount of singing time. The fewer words there are the better. This does not have to be the case with every song, but it helps people to remember the song and to grasp the meaning better.
• Choose songs with words that have meaning.
• It also helps to have a tune that is memorable. You do this for basically the same reasons that you choose songs with fewer and simpler words; the more simple it is the easier it is to learn and remember, and the easier it is to focus on God and not the song.
• It is good for both choir and congregation songs to try songs that use different types of music. It is always good to broaden your options and at the same time appeal to different people in the congregation and in the community. However, when you consider songs remember that the glory of God comes first, before anything else. Just because a song is a certain type of music doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use it, and just because it is a certain type of music doesn’t mean that you have to use it either.