Impulsive Joy

Uploaded to Flickr by purplelime

This summer, our church has been combining age groups into one Large Group time since attendance (and volunteers) tend to take a dip during these months.  After promotion Sunday, our strategy for large group will be to divide back into a lower and upper elementary large group time to allow for us to tailor our presentation (and music) to the developmental differences these age groups bring to the table.

Earlier this summer, I posted our upper elementary worship set and so far, all of the kids are loving all the new worship songs!

This past week, I sat down and selected our lower elementary worship songs and thought I would post it for those that need a little strategic help with a solid worship set.

When selecting lower elementary songs, I always recommend that you aim for the oldest grade in the room.  (For our church, 3rd grade is the oldest demographic in the lower elementary environment.)  I also select music that has a slightly more moderate tempo with simple lyrics.

Great children’s worship song selections do not have to have kids singing on the track.  While having the right young voices can enhance a track, it can also make the song sound much younger than it is intended to be.  Ultimately, you should select family friendly music –songs that you would enjoy playing in your car with your entire family.  After all, you want parents to WANT to play these songs at home!

Thankfully, I have two elementary age boys who are great guinea pigs for any music that I have a hunch would work well during our praise and worship time.  If they will sing along or play air guitar in the car, chances are pretty good that the other kids in ministry will connect as well.

What is your process for selecting music?  Do you use a core playlist and track how often you sing the songs or do you “wing it”?