Being the music director in my church, I like to try to find songs that will be useful to teach. Obviously one option is to buy every album that comes out from Hillsong, Planet Shakers, Parachute Band, Soul Survivor, Passion, etc... and to sift through them to find ones that seem good. If the other option is to pray for inspiration and to write my own, then I'm all for getting the songs from elsewhere. Writing music is something I seem to struggle with. Mostly it's the words though - despite have 66 books of great lyrics right there. But that's for another post. This post is about trying to find songs out there that I can teach the church.

Another area of this which will be covered in a separate post is the copyright side of things. For now, I'm going to assume that you the reader are covered to be able to use any song you find, but please check that you actually do have those rights.

I don't actually buy much music on CD though. And here's why... there's this fantastic resource for finding songs. It's called the Internet. You know, that thing that causes people to fall into sin by providing easy access to pictures they shouldn't be looking at, and where your kids can meet people you really don't want them to ever meet. But for someone trying to find songs for their church, it can be invaluable.

More on how it can be so useful soon...