I retired over a decade ago, but our new pastor recently asked me my thoughts on worship music. Here's what I gave him.
Trinitarian. I get uncomfortable if all the worship music focuses on the same member of the Trinity. I do best if there’s a mix. And some songs lift the Trinity itself.
Music genre. Sometimes, Linda (our worship leader at the time) would lead us in a Black Gospel song, sometimes in an 18th-century hymn, as respites from the commonly popular praise songs. Also, sometimes it’s good to sing music that Christians sing in Scotland, Ireland, France, Germany, the Caribbean, South America, etc. Some weeks, some of our most committed Christians come into worship heartbroken over a straying child or a scary health prognosis, etc. Let’s sing some songs they can sing, too. Churches like ours seldom sing lament songs, but our people need them. The Porters Gate does lots of great Black gospel. They even have an album of lament music, such as Wake Up Jesus.
Minimize personal pronouns. Too many popular worship songs are full of personal pronouns. Believers embrace community better through songs that use plural pronouns. Also, it’s inappropriate for us to invite visitors into worship and expect them to join in singing songs that expect them to attest to their status as believers. They rightly see that as inviting them into hypocrisy. Maybe one song with personal pronouns is okay, but not a whole playlist.
Copyright dates. Now and then, I’d look at the copyrights on the songs we’re singing. If they’re all 20 years old, I’d ask Linda to find some from the past 5 years or maybe reach back into a past century or two.
Beware discredited publishing houses. Some of the “best” music comes from sources that have fallen into disgrace in the Christian world or are antithetical to our theological leaning.
Connect the music with the sermon. The world has its calendar. Nations have their special days. We want our people to live in the kingdoms of this world but do so as citizens of God’s Kingdom. So, my practice was to keep national symbols and cultural holidays out of worship to every extent possible - except for Thanksgiving, which is easy to turn Christian. It's dangerous theology to tie Christian worship, which centers on the Kingdom of God, into something that directs praise to the country we live in. These are the reasons why I used the Revised Common Lectionary so much. (Another reason was that I got our Mandarin and Cantonese pastors to join me in lectionary preaching, one of our “secret” ways to connect the three pieces of our church). One of the advantages of following the RCL was that Linda knew where I was leading us far into the future. She factored that into our music without me doing anything; the Spirit "connected the dots," even when the sermon didn't. Sometimes, I’d preach a series such as on the Powers of Darkness, but even those I anchored to a time when they’d at least partially tie to lectionary readings. Linda seldom knew whether I’d preach from the gospel, epistle, Old Testament history/prophecy, or Wisdom literature. The RCL chooses each week’s passages to compare or contrast with each other, so it was an asset on a Sunday if I was preaching from a gospel and we sang a song based on a lectionary-related psalm. The last and most important reason I used the RCL was to ensure our services offered balanced teaching to our people for a long period.