I am curious how the congregation where you worship introduces new songs. It is difficult to sing a brand new song on Sunday morning that no one knows. I am guessing that most either try it that way or else have a small group of people learn the song first (praise team or otherwise) that can carry the congregation through the parts on Sunday morning.
What ways has your congregation introduced new songs into worship?
Has it been effective, why or why not?
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As a loose rule, we try to do more song teaching in our evening services, which are a bit more flexible and informal. We’ve also had times (before evening worship or on weeknights) where people came specifically to learn new songs. That’s helped, and been fun for those groups, I think.
Our congregation does two things. We have a sing night every first Sunday night of the month. We often sing new songs then, and when a song leader feels like enough of us are comfortable with the song, he might have the courage to try it on a Sunday morning. :o) Before the sing nights, however, we have a small group of people who enjoy learning new songs that meet together on a Thursday night before our Sing Night.
I usually have enough going on during the week that I don’t go to the practice nights on Thursdays. However, if we got a group together for 15 minutes or so before Bible class or something, I’d probably try to make that.
We in Saxony, Germany have an “area-wide” singing once a month that is passed around the churches in Saxony. The first half is dedicated to learning new songs or learning known songs better. Either the men from the hosting congregation will choose or someone will request a song ahead of time. It has worked fairly well, even though not everyone can attend every time, due to difficulty of travel. The advantage is that our congregations are small enough to be able to have just one or two know the song well and the congregation can pick it up gradually on a Sunday morning.
In both New York and Minnesota, the churches (both small 50-60 members) welcomed me introducing new songs to them. My practice was to begin by teaching to our small group on Wednesay evening and once they knew it well, then I would introduce at the beginning of the Sunday morning adult Bible study (which proceeded our worship time) where there would be others to learn from the group who already knew the song. After those in the adult Bible class knew the songs (usually about 25 members) which took a couple of Sunday’s, then our worship leader for the Sunday would lead that new song during our worship.
Grace and peace,
Rex
These are some really helpful ideas! Thanks to all for sharing and keep them coming.
We’ve been using a Wednesday night singing class as the place to introduce new songs. Our youth minister has picked out a set of 12 songs or so that they have been singing the past few weeks. I think he will rotate through to another set in a week or two. The class itself is periodic, I think it will probably run about 12 weeks this year. Then, he introduces the songs on Sunday morning. It has also been a neat chance for parents and teens to have a class together.
When I worked in New York, we played an a cappella version of it before and after worship several weeks before we attempted it. We would then introduce it on Wednesday night. first we would play the song while we looked at the words and then we would attempt to sing it ourselves. After we seemed to get the hang of it on Wednesdays, we introduced it to Sunday night. After we got the hang of it on Sunday nights, we introduced it on Sunday mornings. This seemed to work well for us.