Have you ever been scheduled to sing or play on a Sunday and felt a little disappointed when you looked at the set list?
I have — and I’m often the one who builds the set list.
I’ve been putting together worship sets for the South Fellowship Church community for almost fifteen years, and over that time I’ve created plenty of set lists I wasn’t personally excited about. That may sound strange, but the reason behind it has actually shaped me deeply as a worshiper. I thought it might be worth sharing.
When the church gathers, we bring a wide range of stories into the room. Some people arrive full of joy and celebration. Others come grieving, exhausted, or carrying anger and unanswered questions. One of my hopes in choosing the songs we sing is to serve all of those realities — not just the one I happen to be living in that week.
That means there are Sundays when we sing songs that don’t resonate with my personal circumstances. The aim of corporate worship isn’t simply artistic expression — as meaningful as that can be — it’s worship. As worship leaders, we often make pastoral choices about what we sing, choosing songs that may not reflect our own emotional state but might be exactly what someone else in the room needs to sing.
Paul, in his letter to the Colossians, encourages the church to teach and admonish one another “in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” Many scholars suggest that the different types of music named in this passage reflect different styles or genres. I can’t imagine everyone in the early church shared the same musical preferences — and yet Paul calls them to sing all of them. There is a deep joy and gratitude that serves God’s church when we learn to live into texts like this one.
This posture has also led me to play musical styles I wouldn’t naturally gravitate toward. Over time, something surprising has happened: I’ve grown to love more kinds of music because of it.
It’s a bit like a parent who gets into baseball simply because their child loves it. What begins as accommodation slowly becomes affection. I’ve come to deeply value the communal good that comes from making these kinds of choices.
That’s why, from time to time, we’ll sing songs we don’t personally love. When that happens, I’d encourage you to lean in — not by forcing enthusiasm, but by finding joy in the joy of our community. Worship, after all, is something we offer together.
