Well, it’s that time of year again. You know that time that Worship Leaders dread because you’ve gotta break THOSE tunes out again.
Most Worship Leaders that I talk to either LOVE or HATE doing Christmas music. I mean, depending on your church, your setlist might already be prescribed for you with 5 or 6 songs that you only bring out this time of year.
I hear lots of complaints about difficult it can be to lead these traditional songs. Not that they are hard to sing, but that helping people to be led in worship can be hard because people tend to go into “sing-a-long mode” with those tunes. I know I’ve definitely felt that tension.
There is an element I like to call the “Warm & Fuzzy” that you don’t want to mess with at Christmas time. But does that mean we have to sacrifice the time we normally use to worship with song together just so that we can get these classics in the setlist?
My Advice: Learn to Manage the Tension.
A few years ago, some of the music team at Cross Point Church in Nashville shared something they had tried out that year by mashing up some of the Christmas classics that were more worship oriented with some of their popular worship tunes.
For instance, they did a mash up of Silent Night & How He Loves, where they used melodies, verses and chord changes from Silent Night, but the overall feel, choruses, and hooks from How He Loves.
This is a GREAT solution! It doesn’t “ruin” or change the traditional songs too much for the traditionalists, but it give you the hooks of a worship song to weave in with it. Also, using these songs like this will give your church new perspective on these songs they’ve sung all their lives.
This is something we have done in the past and it works really well! Here’s a couple of the mash ups that have worked for us:
Joy to the World / Shout for Joy
O Come All Ye Faithful / This is Amazing Grace
Angels We Have Heard on High / Be Lifted High
Silent Night / How He Loves
Thanks to Cross Point Church Worship for turning me on to such a great idea!
