Introducing a new song can be challenging. You rehearse, you prepare, and then the people just stare at you when they should be singing. You present it during the offertory the week before and it gets a little better, you keep doing it week after week and after a month the people are starting to pick it up, and you start to get the feeling that maybe this is just how it goes. There is, however, a better way. A way to not only get your people to sing but actually worship to a song they have never heard. We’ve had to learn how to do this because we travel and are in a different church every week, we don’t have any other time than now for people to learn the song and for it to be a meaningful worship experience. The following method is something that not only works for us but many people tell us that it has worked for them after learning it at our National Worship Leader Conferences classes so we thought we’d share with you here how to do it.
- Start on the chorus
The chorus is usually the most important part of the song. Lyrically the chorus has the most important message, it is also the easiest to learn because it’s the ‘catchiest’ part of the melody, and the chorus often makes up about half of the song just because it is repeated again and again. Help yourself and your people by focusing on what’s the easiest and most important first before you do anything else.
- Teach Them
When you start on the chorus don’t just run through it but actually teach it – sometimes even line by line if you can. With very limited instrumentation (just a piano or a guitar) to help you, say to the congregation, “Hey we want to teach you the chorus to a new song and it goes like this…Lord I believe…come on let’s just sing that much…Lord I Believe…” and then move to the next line…every word You speak. Once you’ve completed the full melody line, have them put it all together with you and then sing the complete chorus at least once through.
After you feel like they pretty much have the chorus figured out you then move on to the verses with your regular instrumentation by saying, “the verses go like this…You say that You love…” Now, you will lose the people when you go to the verse, which is to be expected, but by the time the chorus comes around again they should be fully with you because they already know it.
As a side note, if you teach a song to your congregation in this manner and they still can’t get it on the second time through, you probably have selected a song that is not very congregational – which isn’t the end of the world but it does mean you will have to work a bit harder help people get it.
- Don’t do the whole song
You lost the people when you went to the verse for the first time but then you got them back as you went to the chorus again. It is at this point when you have another opportunity to keep the people with you or lose them. If you repeat the first verse again the people will most likely be with you, however, if you go to the second verse you will lose them yet again. I vote keep them with you. So you would say something like, “come on let’s just sing that first verse again…You say that You love…”
One of the biggest mistakes you can make when you intro a new song is to do the entire song – it’s simply too much for anyone to try and learn in one sitting. Save some of the song for another service – leave off the other verses, bridges, modified choruses, tags, etc. no matter how cool or awesome they are till the church has the basic parts of the song down first. By the time you have taught the Chorus, repeated the Chorus, then done Verse 1, Chorus, Verse 1, Chorus, Chorus, you will probably have filled the time of a normal song. You simply end by saying something like, “There’s some more of this song but we’re going to save it for next week” and then move on in your service.
The following week you would start again on the chorus and add another part of the song. Don’t add too much too soon as you have to keep in mind that most people don’t go to church every week and you are not leading the same group of people you did last week.
When we teach this in our classes I will often drive the point home by not singing with them the second time we go through the chorus – I may feed them a few lines but without words on a screen and without music being played the entire group is singing something they just learned a few minutes ago. It’s at that point they realize I have not only taught them a song but I have led them to worship. Hope it works as well for you as it has for us.