Hello Brothers and Sisters in the Lord

We all know the power of singing together in worship. It is one of the things that makes Sunday so special and sacred.

So let me share with you a story about the day a small music publisher sued a church over worship songs, and how that single moment quietly changed the way Christians sing together around the world.

Jackson Wong

In April 1984, a Federal District Court jury in Chicago returned a verdict of more than $3.1 million against the Archdiocese of Chicago.

The charge was copyright infringement. A small Los Angeles publisher called F.E.L. Publications had spent years watching parishes type up song lyrics onto sheets and reproduce them for congregations; without permission, without payment. He eventually sued. The jury agreed with him.

The verdict landed in newspapers across the United States. Including Portland, Oregon.A pastor there named Dick Iverson read the story. Then he walked into his music minister's office, dropped the paper on the desk, and asked a simple question: what are we doing that we could be liable for?

His music minister, Howard Rachinski, went looking for the answer. What he found stopped him cold.

Their church was using 400 overhead projector transparencies of song lyrics. They were distributing 60,000 worship service tapes every year. Under the law, every reproduction was an act of infringement. Nobody had known. Nobody had thought to ask.

Rachinski spent the next three and a half years trying to solve the problem. He wrote letters to publishers. Some took six weeks to reply. Some said the songs were free to use. Others quoted $60 per song. There was no system, no standard, no consistent way for a church to simply do the right thing.

The problem was not bad intent. It was that no mechanism existed to do it properly. So Rachinski built one.

In 1988, what had started as a small compliance project at one Portland church became Christian Copyright Licensing International. CCLI launched with 1,600 churches and 120 publishers. It now serves more than 230,000 churches worldwide, and arrived in Australia in 1993.

One lawsuit. One verdict. One music minister who could not let the question go. An industry built on the answer.

One of the songs at the centre of the original lawsuit, by the way, was "And They'll Know We Are Christians By Our Love." Rachinski noted the irony in his own memoir.

Most Australian churches have a CCLI licence. Fewer know exactly what it covers; and fewer still know about the reporting obligation that comes with it. CCLI is the most common starting point for Australian churches, but it is not the whole picture. Depending on what your church does, you may need licences from other providers too. More on that in the Toolbox.

Reporting matters because it is how songwriters get paid. When your church reports the songs it uses, CCLI distributes royalties back to the writers and publishers. In Australia, that distribution runs through APRA AMCOS. If your church holds a licence but never reports, the licence is technically active, but the people who wrote the songs you sing on Sunday are not receiving what they are owed. Reporting is not optional. It is part of the agreement.

A few other things that catch small churches out:

Buying sheet music covers the copy you bought. It does not cover photocopying it for your band or choir. That requires a separate add-on called the Music Reproduction Licence.

Finding a song on YouTube does not mean you can project it, print it, or stream it. Online availability is not permission.

If you livestream to YouTube or Facebook, your CCLI Streaming Licence covers your own musicians performing live. It does not cover commercially released recordings, a backing track from Spotify, or a CD playing during the offering. There is currently no Australian licence that covers that scenario on public social media. The practical answer is to use live performance only in your streamed feed.

If your church holds events outside regular services: a carol night, a youth concert, a community fundraiser with live music, your standard CCLI licence does not cover it. A separate Public Performance Licence exists for exactly this.

None of this is meant to alarm you. The people running your projector on Sunday are not trying to do the wrong thing. Neither was Rachinski's church in 1984. And that is what today's email is here to help with.

Log in at ccli.com/au and check which licences your church currently holds.

If your presentation software connects to CCLI (several common ones do) you can turn on auto-reporting. It takes about two minutes and means your song usage reports itself going forward. If your software does not connect, manual reporting through CCLI's website takes about ten minutes twice a year.

The Plain English Guide in the Toolbox below covers every licence that applies to Australian churches, not just CCLI. It is the most complete resource we have put together so far.

Church licensing in Australia involves up to six different licences, from four different providers, covering different activities. Most churches only know about one of them. We have built two resources to help.

The first is the Australian Church Licensing Audit. It’s a two-page audit checklist: four steps, takes under ten minutes, tells you whether your current licences match what your church actually does.

The second is Australian Church Licensing: A Plain English Guide. It’s a guide to every licence that applies to Australian churches: what each covers, what it costs, who needs it, and where to get it. It covers CCLI and its add-ons, OneLicense for Catholic and liturgical repertoire, the APRA AMCOS worship service exemption (broader than most people realise), background music for foyers and cafés, and film screening licences for movie nights.

Neither resource is sponsored. Church Support Australia has no commercial relationship with any of the providers mentioned.

We have also been tinkering with an interactive Licence Checker tool. Answer a few questions about what your church does, and it works out which licences apply to you. You can access the Licence Checker here.