Sushi, Sweatshirts & Sofas: Why Your Song List Might Resemble a Kroger Store

By Jon Nicol

I was in my friendly neighborhood Kroger the other day. They’ve renovated recently (again), to provide (even) more products. You can now buy everything from sofas and sweatshirts to sweet potatoes and sushi. Not to mention they have an in-house Starbucks and jewelry store. I think the daycare, auto center and waterpark is going in next.

Kroger used to be a grocery store. But it’s become a quasi-mall. Now when I just need to grab one or two things, I weigh it out: a trip to the local village grocery store with their typical only-store-in-town prices...or...save a few dollars but have to wander around Kroger for 20 minutes trying to find the products? And maybe walk out with some ½ price day-old sushi. (Tends to have more flavor after sitting for 26 hours.)

All of us love options. But given too many, those options become overwhelming. As you're looking at your songs that you've done over the last year (or more), how many are still fair game to use on a Sunday?

Likely all of them. But if you want to add new songs, simple math tells you that you need to purge. If you don't, you can't rotate the songs enough for people to know them. Too many options. Our song lists have become Kroger stores.

It's never that easy, however, to let go of the old…
…it's someone's favorite...
…it was sung at someone's grandmother's funeral…
…it's got good lyrics…
…my senior pastor likes it to close out certain sermons…
…the team likes playing it…
…it personally ministered to me during a significant time...

I'm not suggesting you scrap everything old. No, there is value in hanging on to our liturgical heritage in certain ways. But as you're looking out over the fresh landscape of 2013, it might be time to purge to make room for new songs this year.

I'm working on a new ebook to help you do that (and more), due out later this year. But in the meantime, you can start with this blog post that will give you 10 suggestions to know when to say goodbye to a song.

You can also check out the two free resources that will continue to be available until the book is complete:

SongCycle - a on-demand webinar
What's in Your Playlist - a brief ebook explaining the SongCycle concept.

So talk to me and the other readers in the comment section:
How big is your "active" song list - that is, how many songs you can select from on any given week? What do you think is a more manageable number for your church? And, what's your process for purging songs?

January 4, 2013