Song usage analysis: St. John's & Emmanuel

Based on 230 distinct songs (by CCLI number) logged across 628 total song entries, 3 Aug 2025 – 16 Aug 2026.

Overview

Over the period covered by this data (August 2025 to July 2026), St. John's logged 381 song entries across 48 services and Emmanuel logged 247 across 43 services — St. John's sings roughly eight songs a week to Emmanuel's five to six. Between them the two churches drew on 230 distinct songs (matched by CCLI number rather than title text, since the same song is sometimes logged with different spelling or arrangement labels, e.g. "Come and See (We Worship at His feet)" vs. "Come and See"). Despite singing fewer songs overall, St. John's repertoire is markedly broader: 195 distinct songs across 381 entries, an average of about two outings per song. Emmanuel's 95 distinct songs across 247 entries average two and a half outings per song, and lean more heavily on a smaller, more repeated set.

Only 60 songs — just over a quarter of the combined repertoire — are sung at both churches. But that overlap means very different things at each: it accounts for 63% of Emmanuel's repertoire (60 of 95 songs) against just 31% of St. John's (60 of 195). In practice, Emmanuel's song list sits mostly inside St. John's much larger one, while St. John's carries a long tail of 135 songs — hymns, communion pieces, seasonal material — that never turn up at Emmanuel at all.

Where the two churches overlap

The shared repertoire: what unites the two churches

The most-used song across the whole dataset is "God is good – Drake" (Rend Collective), sung 16 times combined (6 at St. John's, 10 at Emmanuel) — it's Emmanuel's single most-repeated song and comfortably a St. John's favourite too. "In Christ Alone" follows close behind at 13 combined outings, and "The Splendour of the King (How Great Is Our God)" and "Build Your Kingdom Here" both appear ten or more times across the two congregations. These are the backbone songs both music teams reach for most often.

What sets each church apart

St. John's exclusive list (135 songs) is dominated by traditional and modern hymnody used nowhere at Emmanuel in this period: "Lord the Light of Your Love (Shine Jesus Shine)" led the way with 10 outings, alongside "And Can It Be," "Our Father in Heaven," "I Will Offer Up My Life," and communion- and Lent-season pieces such as "When I Survey (Celtic Version)" and "Come and See." Many of these read as material for a more liturgical, hymn-and-classic-worship-song service pattern, and several (the Christmas carols, Palm Sunday and Good Friday pieces) reflect St. John's fuller coverage of the church calendar.

Emmanuel's exclusive list (35 songs) skews toward contemporary congregational worship: "King of Kings," "Come Let Us Worship Our King (Great Things)," "We Shall Stand," "Glorious Day," "Great Are You Lord," "Yahweh," and "The Lion and the Lamb" all appear only in Emmanuel's set list. It's a shorter list than St. John's exclusives, consistent with Emmanuel's narrower, more repeat-heavy overall repertoire, but it points to a distinct musical identity leaning toward newer worship writing (Hillsong, Bethel, CityAlight-style material) that St. John's hasn't drawn on in this window.

Seasonal patterns

Christmas is where the two song lists converge most visibly: both churches sang "Joy to the World," "O Come All Ye Faithful," "See Him Lying on a Bed of Straw," and "Away in a Manger" during the December period, and Emmanuel additionally repeated "Light of the World" and "God Is Good – Drake" across three services in a fortnight, suggesting a compressed carol-service schedule around 14–25 December. Easter shows a similar but smaller convergence, with both churches using resurrection-themed songs like "He Has Risen," "See What a Morning," and "Come People of the Risen King" in the same week (5 April 2026).

Takeaways

The overall picture is of two churches with a real but partial shared musical language: a core of about 60 well-loved songs — led by "God Is Good," "In Christ Alone," and "The Splendour of the King" — that both congregations know, sitting alongside two quite different "long tails." St. John's carries a much larger and more traditional/hymn-inflected repertoire that reflects a fuller liturgical calendar, while Emmanuel operates a tighter, more repetition-driven, contemporary-leaning set list. If the two churches are looking to build more shared repertoire (for combined services or resource-sharing, for example), the 60 songs already common to both — and especially the ten most-used among them — are the natural starting point.