The UMC evaluates the CCLI Top 100

Do you worship in a congregation that includes a CCLI number in its bulletins or on the slides of its projected lyrics? Ever wonder what it means? CCLI stands for Christian Copyright Licensing International. It is an organization that licenses music to congregations so that they can legally sing and duplicate lyrics of popular contemporary worship songs. Back in the days when Christians only sang out of hymnals (or from memory), churches did not have to worry about copyright

infringement. If you bought enough hymnals for everyone to sing from, then you were covered by law. These days, when churches want to use new songs -- ones that are composed and distributed more quickly than they can be published in a book, the temptation is to simply copy the words in a bulletin or put them up on a projector screen. Unfortunately, doing so without the permission of the composer (or owner) is against the law. CCLI offers a service (for a fee, of course) that lets churches use the lyrics of many songs, published by many different companies, all through one single licensing agreement. This allows churches to live within the requirements of the law, and it provides compensation to the folks who compose and produce new worship music.

By keeping track of which songs all these congregations sing from week to week, CCLI provides valuable insight for those who study trends in church music. Each year they release the most popular songs that were reported to them, and this gets distributed as a "Top 100" list. Recently the United Methodist Church decided to assess all 100 songs on this list, thereby helping church leaders discern which songs might work best in their congregations by working through a consistent vetting tool. The committee of musicians and theologians evaluates each song according to three major categories:

• Wesleyan theology
• Terms used for God
• Singability of the tune

The results are published here, listed according to "green" and "yellow" categories, to match the "go" and "caution" signals of a traffic light. Here is an example of each kind: "Shout to the Lord" from the Green list, and "How Great is Our God" from the Yellow list.

Shout to the Lord by Darlene Zschech received a cumulative score of 3.37583 (out of 5). Its strong biblical connection to the Psalms is noted by the committee, especially in its descriptions of God's love. It lost some points when it comes to language for God, because there is no mention of God the Father or God the Spirit. In terms of musical qualities, the melodic range of this song is a bit broader than most amateur singers can handle. No song is perfect, but according to this committee, Shout to the Lord could probably be used most places with very few reservations.

How Great is Our God by Chris Tomlin did not fare so well, with a score of 3.35. While this song actually mentions all three persons of the Trinity (a rare feat in contemporary worship music), it did not score as highly in theology because it never mentions God's love. The committee was also concerned that "darkness" might imply racism in some situations. In spite of these concerns, a "yellow" score means that committee would still use the song, with some caution.

I love that this committee has published its rankings and comments. Our local churches can learn a lot from these categories, even if they don't agree with these assessors' conclusions. This tool from the UMC's Discipleship Ministries provides a framework for how a worship team could work through some of the important issues concerning their own song choices. The process of discerning which songs to use in your worship service should involve more than deciding whether or not the musicians are able to perform them.