What's the point of new songs?

While I was reticent to post another blog on worship-related musings, this seems to be at the core of what I'm currently pondering, so I thought I might as well go ahead, since nothing else was inspiring. In the meantime, my browser crashed and I lost three paragraphs-worth of work. So let's begin again, shall we? (This time in Stickies where the only time I lose stuff is when my hard drive crashes....)

On Sunday afternoon, a lovely young lady (one of my up-and-coming worship leaders) mentioned that she had never introduced a new song and hoped not to. While this did not lower my respect for her or her worship-leading abilities, it did cause me to stop and ponder: what is the point of introducing new songs?

Now, the musician in me, of course, knows the answer to that: old songs get boring very quickly. I have a 300+-song repertoire, but if I only played those songs all the time and never any others (whether new chronologically or just new to my repertoire), I would probably be just done with with worship in, I don't know, like 4 years? Perhaps that's a slight exaggeration, but I'm sure you get my point. But that's just the musician's heart in me speaking (what little there is, I suppose). And, as I know you are all aware of, the music is hardly the core aspect of worship. (In the original version of this paragraph, I elaborated on this point for five or six more sentences, finally deciding that it was useless to elaborate on a point you all would be well familiar with, so I decided NOT to spend my time recreating it.)

So, as far as the worship aspect goes, why should we be introducing new songs? As far as I'm concerned, there are four aspects of worship leading:
1. What God wants to hear
2. What the congregation needs/wants
3. What meets the band's needs
4. What meets the worship leader's needs
(Obviously in order of importance.)


Going from the bottom up, I already addressed my needs, as a worship leader (and I'd assume most worship leaders who play as often as I do would feel similar. Not to the point where you have to play four different songs every set; there obviously should be SOME continuity. But some variety is appreciated by most musicians [from my observation, anyway]).

In similar fashion, I think the band's needs are closely related. They want some variety. Younger/less experienced musicians obviously need more repetition than more experienced musicians. But still, playing the same four songs for six months straight gets tedious even for beginning guitarists (as I heard from my guitar girls when they played Sweetly Broken and Invitacion Fountain every week for three months due to lack of direction from their TEACHER).

The congregation gets a little more sticky as it gets more varied. Non-musicians don't get sick of music NEARLY as often as musicians (in my experience). But if a congregation is fully utilizing the tools of worship songs to worship (as in, gleaning insight/wisdom/whatever from the songs instead of rote repetition of words to tune), there's only so much one song can do in a certain period of time. While "I want to know you" is a valid statement, at a certain point, a dedicated heart yearns for something more. This also gets into the whole idea of seasons of songs. Taking for granted that the vast majority of congregational worship songs (especially Vineyard songs) are inspired by what God is doing with the individual, the group, the church, the denomination, or the body of Christ as a whole, wouldn't this mean that at some point, God moves on to doing/teaching/growing something different, rendering the songs mostly useless? Not necessarily completely useless. Some songs take on a new life or new meaning. Others spark thanksgiving offered in memory of past seasons. But never does a song carry as much weight or life as it did in the season in which it was intended. (At least, that's my thesis.) But perhaps that should be an entirely different blog topic.... or three.

What God wants to hear is obviously the MOST important component in song selection. The obvious Biblical support is the verse "Sing to the Lord a new song." However, I've heard this interpreted so many different ways, it has about the chance of a sieve working to fill a pool as it does of being supportive evidence. I mean, doesn't just singing in the Spirit fulfill this requirement? Not being a Biblical scholar, I'm far from being able to do anything in the way of supporting this Biblically. In following the Spirit-singing line of thought, however, isn't what the Spirit doing at the time the most relevant worship? Considering that most people cannot jump straight into the heart of what the Spirit is doing without any preparation, I'll assume, for the sake of this argument, that worship songs are simply tools to travel down this road where the end destination is knowing what the Spirit of God is doing in the moment. In this case, perhaps the best set is one that incrementally leads the worshipper down this path, ever descending upon this end destination. But this journey surely includes the most relevant songs--those God has inspired most recently based upon what He is doing with His people.

Geez, that had no structure and was a GREAT look into my mind...

In any event, I think this is long enough. It's just what's on my mind right now. How important is introducing new songs to the life of a worshipping congregation?