I get the question occasionally about what, if any, secular music we do in our services. We have done a lot recently; here’s the list.
For our series on work entitled Take This Job and Shove It, we did the following:
Take This Job and Shove It, Johnny Paycheck
Bang on the Drum, Todd Rundgren
Sixteen Tons, Tennessee Ernie Ford
Taking Care of Business, BTO
Forty Hour Week, Alabama
For a sermon yesterday on baptism, we opened with:
Come Alive, Foo Fighters
Yes, we do an occasional lyric tweak as required. And, yes, our band is multi-talented.
We also introduced a song that’s a year or so old, but new to us. It’s called Our God Saves, by Paul Baloche. Simple but powerful; worth checking out.
An eclectic collection of music… very nice.
How do you determine which secular music you use?
Comment by Tom Bryant — March 2, 2009 @ 1:09 pm
Tom-
We look for stuff that illuminates a problem the message will be addressing or brings additional light to bear. In the case of the work series, we looked for songs that dealt with routine and repetition which was juxtaposed with the sermons dealing with the meaning and purpose of work. We also use songs that have some familiarity. “Forty Hour Week,” for example, is a popular song at the Stone Mountain Laser Show, while “Sixteen Tons” was popular when our senior adults were in their working years.
I don’t have input to all the song selections, so I’m not sure what thought processes go into all of them. We don’t use songs that are off color or that have foul language.
Comment by Marty Duren — March 2, 2009 @ 1:36 pm