First-year students have signed on and your group is gelling. You’re praying for more students to be drawn in through God-encountering worship. Are the songs you’re using helping or hurting? The middle of the school year is a good time to evaluate your worship music repertoire.

The songs we choose affect the tone of our fellowships. Music can unify, provide a theme to rally around and shape our group’s identity. Particular songs may become life-long reminders of a certain time in our chapter’s history, a memorable teaching or a significant experience of God’s moving in our midst. Part of our job is to pick songs that give others touchstones in their relationship with God—individually and corporately.

The Urbana 2000 Worship Team sang one particular song among ourselves after nearly every worship leading opportunity. It started: “Your grace and mercy brought us through. We’re living this moment, because of you.” The first time we sang it, we didn’t know how significant it would become, but at the end of Urbana we gathered in a circle and belted out those grateful words. The song gave us a way to say with one voice and heart, “Thank you, God,” and it became, in a sense, our theme song of faith.

One challenge of worship leading in a society with a “throw away” mentality is that music fans have a new favorite song on an average of every nineteen days. Staying up on what songs are connecting and helping people meet God is tough—but also important. Being relevant always requires work. If you’re still doing the worship equivalents of “Stayin’ Alive” (Bee Gees) or “Celebrate” (Kool and the Gang), it’s probably time for an upgrade. See the challenge before you as a continual learning opportunity that will expose you to a variety of music and stretch you to pick it up fast.

At the same time, in a consumer culture we face the pressure to pander to what’s popular. Be careful that you’re not blindly committed to “Top 40” worship and forgetting to look for prophetic lyrics, theological significance, quality song writing (music and words) and ageless hymnody. Don’t dispose of songs simply because they’re old or adopt others just because they’re new. Which songs speak timeless truths that your chapter needs to hear, meditate on, believe, sing? Old songs with significant lyrics can be done in new ways (usually if something has lasted for a while, there’s a good reason).

Here are some practical suggestions for building a repertoire that will build faith and not just familiarity with the latest Christian hits:

• Evaluate your song list by theme. What’s missing? Some topics that are musts for Christian worship: the cross; repentance; grace and forgiveness; the Holy Spirit; loving the poor/doing justice; being witnessing communities (sharing the gospel with others); calling the nations to worship (missions); relationships and reconciliation; God’s holiness and sovereignty; songs quoting Scripture; heaven. Maintain a good balance in your content.

• Consider tempo, voice and eminence/immanence. Have equal amounts of slow, meditative and faster, celebrative songs. Sing songs that are mostly directed to God, but have some that are sung to each other about God, too (for example, “Come, Now is the Time to Worship,” “Shabach” or “He Knows My Name”). Songs in God’s voice, aptly placed, can also be very powerful (for example, try singing the chorus of “Your Beloved” from God’s point of view). Finally, don’t forget to balance songs that speak of God’s closeness and intimate knowledge of us individually (immanence) with those that praise his power and rulership (eminence).

• Make a list of concerns and needs facing you and others in your group this semester. Add to this the various emotions that you or your friends have experienced just this week. Now compare the scope of these issues and feelings to your song list. Do you have a song that could address or relate to each need, each emotion? Choose songs that relate to you and others in your group; have songs at your disposal that reflect a broad scope of emotions and experiences with God. (For a sampling of the range that worship songs can cover, read the psalms that not only praise God, but call out to God from the deepest places of anguish.)

• Consider the demographics of your chapter. Does your music reflect the diversity (not just ethnically, but also denominationally) represented in your group? Seek music that will serve the whole group and not just the majority.

• Read Chapter 28, “Finding and Choosing Music,” in the Worship Team Handbook (InterVarsity Press®) for more tips on selecting songs that will bless your group.

Building an effective repertoire is crucial, because the words we sing contribute directly to the values that characterize us as a Christian community. Choose well!

—Sundee Frazier and her husband, Matt, led the Urbana 2000 worship team. They now live in Pasadena, CA. Sundee is a freelance writer.