Practical Tips For Selecting Your Music - Part 1

June 20, 2025•4 min read

"The main thing is knowing what your specific responsibility is, and then seeing it as that - a responsibility, before the Lord, and towards your leaders and fellow church members, as you prayerfully select the most appropriate songs for your worship service."

How do you select your worship music?

Over the next few weeks, we'll be exploring 7 practical tips on how to select music effectively.

The different components we’re going to look at all come under the heading of “Church Music Selection”, and are as follows...

Responsibility
Format
Theme & relevance
Service Structure
Style & genre
Key
Incidental music

So starting with number one...

Responsibility

We have to start here because if you always have the songs chosen for you and you don't have any say in the process at all, then some of these components won’t be as relevant to you. However, many still will, so do keep reading!

Someone always has to be responsible for choosing the songs each Sunday, and in most churches this happens in various ways. It may be the pastor or person preaching choosing the songs, or it might be the worship leader or piano player, or it could even be a combination of both if people prefer to work together on this.

Either way, the responsibility that person has is to prayerfully select the most appropriate songs for that service, which, most of the time will be determined by the passage of scripture that is being preached, and the biblical themes or topics it covers.

Hopefully, you have a good understanding of the way it’s done in your church, and as I've said in earlier posts, if there are challenges you are having with the selection process, such as getting the songs too late, then be sure to have a conversation so you can address these issues and avoid any resentment or conflict down the line.

This process of selecting songs will also vary from church to church, as some will use more or less than others. Some might even have 2, 3 or even 4 services on a Sunday, which means there’s a lot more music that’s going to be required.

The main thing is knowing what your specific responsibility is, and then seeing it as that - a responsibility, before the Lord, and towards your leaders and fellow church members, as you prayerfully select the most appropriate songs for your worship service.

Of course it should go without saying that we also have a responsibility, which we should take very seriously, to pick only biblically sound music.

Let’s look at the next component in the selection process, and that is…

Format

This refers to the different types of music formats you can get, such as full notation, SATB, chord charts, or lead sheets.

Obviously if you are choosing just for yourself as the sole piano player, then you will choose whatever format suits you best, or even a combination of formats according to what allows you to play each song the best you can. However, if you are choosing for other musicians, you obviously have to bear in mind what format of music they are comfortable with and also the skill level that you and other musicians are at so that the music you are following is not too advanced.

The key thing to remember here is choosing the format that you can most easily read and play from. If you are also singing, choose a format that allows you to clearly see the words and the music at the same time.

And next week, we'll be continuing to look at some more components of selecting our music.

[Return to The Church Piano Player Website]

This blog post was written by pastor and pianist Kris Baines, from The Church Piano Player. Kris lives in the UK with his family, having recently moved back from New Zealand where he worked as a pastor for the past 26 years (also leading worship/worship teams). Kris has also spent over 35 years writing, recording, and performing music and is now bringing all that combined experience together to help equip church piano/keyboard players.

Check out the church piano player website for more information on online courses by Kris Baines.