When you're trying to find good songs for church, the internet is incredibly useful. I've already written that in a previous post. But generally when you're using the internet to find songs, you already know the song from hearing it on a CD or something, and you're just trying to find a copy of the lyrics, or the chords, something like that. But still this requires buying a lot of CDs. And I know as well as the next worship leader that even the best albums have only a couple of good candidates for teaching in church. (Although it has to be said that I remember an album called All Around The World which seemed to have an unending supply of songs - hard to believe you can buy it for £2 now).

Hearing the songs is obviously a major part of choosing the songs to teach. It's not just about lyrics, it's about hearing songs and letting God speak to you about whether the song will suit or not. You can spend a long time in Christian music stores (or if you're in the US, in the Christian music section of your local music store), or you can listen to the radio. But not everywhere has a good Christian radio - particularly not one that plays new praise and worship music.

On the internet though, there are plenty of radio stations to choose from. My personal favourite is Praise 106.5 (at praise1065.com), a station based in Washington state, near the Canadian border. They have a list of songs they have just played, which makes it easy to find out what that song was. But as well as this, you can help influence the music they play by filling out occasional surveys. I've found many songs by listening to this station, and I find it's a tremendous resource. There are many others as well, including SHOUTcast stations, which are tailored even more to particular tastes.

Even if your internet connection isn't very fast, consider listening to internet radio instead of your local one. You may just find that by altering the stations you listen you, the song that your church has been crying out for may just be there.