Church Song Library Software: One Library, Built Together

Ekkli's church song library software gives your worship team one shared, editable library of songs that everyone can pull from — instead of rebuilding the same lyric slides from scratch every week. Every song you've ever used lives in one place, formatted the way your team likes it, ready to be dropped into Sunday's service plan in a few clicks rather than retyped.

If your church has ever sung the same worship set three times in a month and typed out the lyrics fresh each time — or lost a volunteer's carefully formatted slide deck when their laptop died — this is the problem a proper song library solves. It's not a projection tool on its own; it's the foundation the projection tool (and everything else your worship team builds) draws from.

What a shared song library actually does

Most churches sing from a working rotation of 40–80 songs across a year, not an endless catalogue. A song library stores each of those songs once — title, lyrics, section labels (verse, chorus, bridge), and your church's preferred formatting — and keeps it available indefinitely. Add a song once, and it's there for every future service, not just this Sunday's.

• Shared, not single-owner. The library lives in your church's account, not on one volunteer's laptop. Anyone on the worship or slides team with access can add a new song, fix a typo, or adjust formatting, and the change is there for the next person who pulls that song into a service.
• Reusable across services. Once "Amazing Grace" or your congregation's current favorite is in the library, it's a search-and-select away for every future Sunday, midweek gathering, or special event — no retyping, no hunting through last month's files.
• Consistent formatting. Line breaks, section labels, and capitalization stay consistent because everyone is editing the same stored song, not each starting from a blank slide.

From library to service plan: how song sets work

The library only earns its keep once songs move into an actual Sunday. Song sets — Ekkli's term for a service plan — are how that happens: pick the songs for this week's worship set from the library, put them in order, and the running order is ready for the tech booth. No copy-pasting lyrics between documents, no rebuilding a deck song by song.

1. Build the set during the week. The worship leader or slides volunteer searches the library, adds each song to this week's set, and puts them in the order the set will run.
2. Reorder freely. Setlists change — a song gets dropped, a new one gets added, the order shifts. Because songs are pulled from the library rather than typed in place, rearranging a song set takes seconds.
3. Hand it to the operator. The finished song set is what actually runs live on display day, alongside sermon slides and any Bible verses for the message — with stage view and phone/tablet remote control available for whoever's operating.
4. Reuse next time. Sang the same set again next month? Pull each song from the library again rather than rebuilding it — the library is what makes that a few clicks instead of a rewrite.

Migrating from OpenLP? Import your library instead of retyping it

A lot of churches already have years of songs typed into another tool — OpenLP is a common one among budget-conscious, self-managed tech teams. Retyping that entire back catalogue by hand is the single biggest reason churches put off switching presentation software, even when they want to. Ekkli supports importing your existing song library from OpenLP, so a church moving over brings its songs with it rather than starting from zero.

That matters for the same reason the library matters in the first place: the value isn't in any one Sunday's slides, it's in years of accumulated, correctly formatted songs. An import path that preserves that work is what makes switching software a realistic option rather than a project nobody has time for.

What's included, and what it costs

The song library and song sets are part of Ekkli's six-month free trial — free for up to 50 people, no card required, not a time-limited trial. They sit alongside the rest of the free trial's worship tools: live display of lyrics and Bible verses, teaching/sermon slide decks, stage view for your worship team, phone and tablet remote control, and offline HTML export so a dropped internet connection during service doesn't mean dark screens.

There's no separate paywall on the library itself or on how many songs you can store — the library is designed to hold your whole working rotation, not a capped shortlist. New Ekkli churches also start with six months of the full Ministry-plan feature set, free, no card required — worth exploring if your church is likely to grow past 50 people or want the higher-tier extras (custom domain, email campaigns, long-term media storage) during that window.

A library isn't the same as a copyright license

Worth saying plainly: a song library stores and displays lyrics — it doesn't handle whether your church has the legal right to display them. Most contemporary worship songs are still under copyright, and a CCLI license is the standard way churches cover public display and reproduction of lyrics during a service. Ekkli's presentation tools include a CCLI Copy Activity reporting aid that reads your display-session history to help a UK/IE CCLI-licensed church self-report at reporting.ccli.com — but it isn't a CCLI API integration or auto-submission, and it doesn't replace holding a license in the first place.

For the fuller picture on CCLI basics, how presentation software fits your worship workflow, and how the major tools in this space compare, see the complete church presentation software guide.

Getting your library set up in week one

A song library doesn't need to be complete before it's useful. Most churches get real value within a week by working through it in order:

1. Import or add your top 20–30 songs first. That's usually most of a working rotation. Get those formatted the way your team likes before worrying about deeper cuts you sing twice a year.
2. Assign more than one editor. Because the library is shared, let more than one trusted volunteer add and fix songs — that's what avoids the single-point-of-failure problem of one person's laptop holding the only copy.
3. Build this week's song set from the library, not from scratch. Even with a partial library, pull what's already in there and only type the handful of songs that aren't yet added.
4. Keep adding as you go. Every new song you sing gets added once and is available for every future service after that — the library grows naturally rather than needing a big upfront project.

Frequently asked questions

Can more than one volunteer edit the song library at the same time?

Yes. The library is shared across your church's account rather than stored on one person's device, so multiple volunteers with access can add songs, fix formatting, or update lyrics, and everyone sees the same up-to-date version.

Does the song library work with OpenLP?

Yes — Ekkli supports importing an existing song library from OpenLP, so churches switching over can bring their songs with them instead of retyping years of accumulated lyrics.

Is there a limit to how many songs I can store?

The song library is designed to hold your church's full working rotation, not a capped shortlist, and it's included on the six-month free trial along with the rest of Ekkli's worship display tools.

Do I still need a CCLI license if I use a song library?

Yes. A song library stores and displays lyrics; it doesn't grant the legal right to display copyrighted songs. Most contemporary worship songs need a CCLI license regardless of which software displays them.

How do songs from the library get into a Sunday service?

You build a song set — Ekkli's service plan — by selecting songs from the library and putting them in order for that service. The finished song set is what runs live, alongside sermon slides and any Bible verses for the message.

This guide is maintained by the Ekkli team, who build the church song library software described above. Migrating from OpenLP or another tool and want to talk through the import process first? Reach out — we're happy to help, whether or not you end up using Ekkli.