How To Evaluate A Worship Song

  Speaker 1 I’m going to evaluate a worship song that I was sent to me from one of our academy students. They were like, What do you think about this song? And I thought, I will evaluate in front of you and go through some of the factors that matter when you’re picking songs for your church. And so stay with me and I’ll explain what I’m looking at and what I’m looking for in the lyrics and in the melody and whether a song is worthy of being included in your service. The first thing that I want to say is there are usually five qualities that I’m looking for in a good congregational worship song because there are lots of good songs out there, but not all of them are good congregational worship songs. A good congregational worship song, in my opinion, has these five qualities. One, it’s biblical. Two, it’s clear. Number three, it’s singable. Number four, it’s God-centered. Heard, and number five, it’s necessary. And pro-tip, when people come to me after service and they’re like, I heard this song on the radio, Alex. Of course, they all talk like that, right? I heard this song on the radio and we should play it in church.

Speaker 1 Well, I actually say, Hey, thanks so much for bringing this to me. I’ll check it out. I do have five criteria that I run all songs through, so I’ll definitely apply those criteria to what you send to me. That is a very nice pressure relief valve so that people can’t just bulldoze their way into getting their songs played in church. That helps them see, Oh, Alex is more thoughtful about this than I realised. Anyway, so that’s a pro tip. Use it to protect yourself from those pushy people pushing their songs on you. Now, let’s get into this song. It’s called Everything That Has Breath. How do I look at a song? Well, the first thing I do is I listen to it, and if I like it, then I will go beyond to really evaluate it. I’ve heard it once, and I was like, I like it. There’s some nice feelings in the verses and the chorus, but let’s really dig in and look at what are the words saying. Let’s look at this song, Let Everything That Has Breath by Jesus Culture. Reading it, We lift our hands to the heavens, we are here for you.

Speaker 1 It is singing to the Lord. That’s good. We reach for the hem your garment. That’s a biblical story. We know what it can do. God is powerful. We refuse to go through the motions when the king is in the room. Hear the sound of our devotion. Let it build a throne for you. Now, this is questionable, and I’ll tell you why. There is some debate among scholars whether or not God inhabits the praises of his people. We’ve all heard that. We, as worship leaders, we all like that, but that might not actually be what that text is saying. And so this, to me, is like, let’s just not judge it too strictly, but let’s also be aware that this is a questionable statement that God inhabits the praises of his people. I’m not going to mark it against this song, but just be aware that you should be putting this type of attention on every single lyrics. The chorus, Let everything that has breath, that’s a biblical line, praise the Lord. Sing a new song, also biblical, Let our praises roar. Not biblical, but who cares? It’s fine. We get it. This song is really a call to worship.

Speaker 1 A call to worship is a, Let’s go up to the mountain of the Lord and praise the Lord. It’s like the Psalms of Ascent that we find in the Book of Psalms. All of these Psalms that are saying, let’s go together and praise God at his Holy temple. This is a gathering song. This would be a good first song of a set, even though it’s slower, which you’ll hear in just a second. I’m going to play it for you. But again, first we want to look at the lyrics. Then verse three, We’ve come to pour out our oil just to wash the savior’s feet. Every drop from every bottle can’t compare to your glory. We refuse to bring an offering that doesn’t cost us anything. Those are all very biblical lines. Now, what I found is that in the bridges, people tend to get lazy. So one of the songs that I don’t like is raise a Hallelujah. Because the verses are great, the chorus is great, but the bridge felt lazy to me. Sing a little louder, sing a little louder. Come on, really? That’s what we’re going to put in the bridge. It feels like they didn’t fight hard enough for great lyrics.

Speaker 1 I also see the same problem in the song We Praise You. It’s got great verses, great chorus, but when it gets to the bridge, it’s like, This is what heaven sounds like, this is what heaven feels like. It’s like, What does that mean? That’s such a weird lyrics and so wasteful. Usually, when I’m evaluating a song, I’m like, Oh, I like this song a lot. I like the verse, I like the course, but I’m always waiting for that bridge to drop and be like, Yeah, that sucks. I’ll tell you the truth, friend, if a song has a weak part of it, don’t play it. Just wait and look and find a better song. Your church deserves great songs, and your sets deserve great songs, and God deserves great songs. I promise you, if you add great songs to your sets, you will have better sets and you’ll have a more engaged church. So don’t settle for weak songs or vague songs or almost good songs, but not quite good songs. Is the bridge lame here? Let’s check it out. If it’s kneeling in reverence, if it’s dancing with joy, we will sing songs never-ending, we love to bring you praise.

Speaker 1 Fine. If it’s face down before you or a victory shout with our hands raised to heaven. So it’s basically all the postures of worship, which is awesome. It’s a great training song, teaching people to come worship the Lord, bring your praise to him, and do all these different postures. I’m totally fine with this song so far. Now let’s listen to this song and let’s see about singability and congregational friendliness. If it feels like it will work in our church. One thing I want to say is I chose an acoustic version of the song to listen to because sometimes the production can hide the garbage. The the garbage of the content. I’m not saying that in this song. I’m just saying if you can listen to a song acoustically and it still works, then you know it’s a great song. If you can play a song with just your guitar or just your piano and your voice and it still is beautiful and powerful, then you know you have a great song. They didn’t just polish a turd, excuse the term, but they actually had a great song and then they produced on top of it.

Speaker 1 So don’t be wowed by great production, cool guitar lines, cool synth parts, sick mixing. Don’t be wowed or fooled by that. Don’t focus on that. Focus on the content and the core of the song. And so I found an acoustic version of this song to really get a sense for, Is this a great song?

Speaker 2 When the king is in the room, hear the sound of our default. Let it build a song for you.

Speaker 1 So could an average person sing those melodies? I think so. Even though she has this nice artistic feeling to it, I think it’s pretty straightforward that most people could sing it. And the chorus is even simpler to sing. Here we go. Let it build a song.

Speaker 2 Let everything it has brand. Grace, grace. Let everything it has brand.

Speaker 1 Those little simple, anybody can do that. Praise, praise, let everything. Even if they’re not musical, they can feel the downbeat. They can feel when they’re supposed to say that. So that’s the verse, that’s the chorus. Now, a question to consider is, is this song necessary for my church? Will my people resonate with this? Where could I put this in a set? And is it worth all the time of investing into actually pushing that song deep into my church’s worship vocabulary? The strange thing about this song is it’s a call to worship song, which is usually going to be the first song of the set, but it’s slower or more mid-tempo, whereas I usually like those first songs to be upbeat, energetic, get the people engaged, get them clapping, get them excited. And this is this call to worship that’s slow. And that could work. That might work in your church. I’m not sure if it would work in my church. I’m not sure if it’s worth the effort to really put the work in to teach the band, to teach the church, to sing this multiple weeks in a row, to really push this deep into my church’s worship vocabulary.

Speaker 1 I don’t know about you. Let me know in the comments if you think this is a great song or not. But I don’t know if it’s worth that effort. I probably personally would pass. Even though it’s a good song, even though it’s a decent song, I don’t know if it’s a great song. You don’t want to have so many songs that your church can’t keep up with how many that you’re singing. Again, this is going to be case by case. I don’t know what you would do. I think I know what I would do, but I’d like to know in the comments. If you want to see my list of 101 congregationally friendly worship songs, songs that I personally vetted and said, yes, these are worth introducing, you can grab that list right below this video. You can just put your email in and I’ll send it to you. You can start to find some songs that maybe you had never heard of before that really have a lot of these qualities that I’m discussing in this video. If you’re serious about developing as a worship leader and you want to perhaps get help building better worship sets and finding better set flow, I’m going to encourage you to check out our Set Building course, which you can get in the academy.

Speaker 1 You can try the academy for free for 15 days, and you can go through that course, Set Building course, and learn how to really pick great songs and then weave them into this beautiful, cohesive, Christ-centered worship set. You can try that for free at worshipministrytraining. Com. But let me know what you think about my tactics here. Leave a comment below, and I look forward to learning from you as well. But thanks for watching this video, and I’ll see you in the next one or inside the Worship Ministry Training Academy. Make sure you grab that 101 Congregationally friendly worship songs list below.

Speaker 2 God bless.