Andy John Smith has tips to help those who want to provide fresh servant songs for the church.

1 Write from an authentic heart.

Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life Proverbs 4v23

“Whoever believes in me, as scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them” Jesus – John 7v38

I find these two bible verses really helpful when thinking of songwriting. Each verse talks about something life-giving flowing out from the human heart. When songs stream from who we really are, it creates empathy with the listener and in turn, touches their heart. When brought to life by the power of the Holy Spirit, it can be as if the song was written for that very moment in the life of the worshipper. It perfectly expresses their own devotion to Christ or affirms truth that strengthens their faith. If we had just taken phrases or even truths and set them to music, there may not be the same power. You will never write a meaningful worship song unless it flows from a heart of worship. You can’t just cram the theory, you have to be a practitioner. So write from your heart, let the words and music connect with authenticity, to flow out to others as living music. You don’t have the luxury to pretend. Let your guard down, start the creative flow.

2 Write from your pain

I love the Psalms. They are full of the stuff of real life. David wrote many of his Psalms when his back was against the wall: He was on the run, rejected and dejected. At times he felt abandoned by his God. “How long? Why? When? Come Quickly, Defend me, Help me, Rescue me, I’m thirsty, I’m needy, I’ve been betrayed, Cleanse me, Forgive Me”

Check the header notes of the following Psalms:

Psalm 63 – Written in the desert.
Psalm 61 – Written in the midst of battle
Psalm 59 – Written as Saul sent men to kill David
Psalm 57 – Written when David was hiding in a cave
Psalm 56 – When the Philistines had seized him at Garth.
Psalm 54 – When David was in hiding.
Psalm 52 – When David had been betrayed to Saul
Psalm 51 – When David faced up to his sin of adultery

For sure there are songs of great victory too. There are affirmations of the greatness and Majesty of God. In nearly every Psalm, David spells out his trust and hope in God to be able to pull Him through.

There are treasures in dark places (Isaiah 45v3) and songs in the night (Job 35v10) . You don’t have to wait for the joy of the mountain top for your creativity to flow. Start today, even in the midst of your struggle. Pour out you aching and longings to God as music and songs.

3. Keep the melody accessible for regular folk

Worship songs are servants of the Body of Christ. They help God’s people to draw close to Him. Sung worship opens our hearts to be seeded by His word. We need to keep our songs accessible for ordinary people in regular churches. Don’t go for sophisticated melodies, complicated arrangements or put the song in a key only professional singers can manage. Most churches are small to medium and don’t have the luxury of session-standard musicians. Worship (IMHO) needs to be reclaimed for the masses: those who lead ordinary lives and come to church with the burden of family life or finances. They may be lonely, depressed or working through sexual struggles. They could be wrestling with unfulfilled dreams or going through bereavement. They don’t need to be impressed into worship. They are not generally bothered about the licks, the loops, or the worship leader’s latest tattoo. They need the Spirit’s living water to sooth their thirst. They need to be pointed to Jesus, the One in whom is all fulfilment. We should hold open the door and give them a rich welcome into God’s presence. Think about these people when you are writing, not just the cool worship crowd!

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Russ Hutto explains his writing process:

Songwriting, to me, is a discipline. It’s a set of skills that you have to continue to hone. You have to work out your songwriting muscles regularly to keep them from atrophying. I’m sure there are those who write gold and platinum hits with every pen stroke, but for the rest of us songwriting commoners we have to work at it.

I write faith-oriented songs for worship. Well, technically, I write other stuff, too, but for this post it’s all about writing songs to be used in worship settings.

The Approach

Most, if not all of my worship songs come directly from scripture. There’s a plethora of ideas and in my opinion the best source for writing songs for worship. So, I try and read scripture. A lot of it. I don’t mean legalistically, but it’s a great idea to soak in it, to meditate on it. You want to write from a place of experience and familiarity with Scripture. Don’t just throw a dart at a random Psalm and make a song out of it.

The Method

1. Take a short scripture passage
…that has been speaking to you. Boil it down to one theme. I usually try to keep it to 4 verses or less. I’ll be using Psalm 63:1-4:

1 O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you,
in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

2 I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory.

3 Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you.

4 I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands.

Theme that I’ll focus on: God fills, quenches, and satisfies us in desert seasons.

It might take a while to actually boil it down because sometimes you’ll see more than one theme jump out at you. Which is actually a good thing. Use a songwriting notebook and catalog those ideas for later use. You can actually write multiple songs from even the shortest passages.

2. Paraphrase and Rewrite:

You’ll want to reword or paraphrase some of the scripture lines for singability. Sometimes you don’t have to. But for me, I tend to like to actually “write” a song and not just lift* it directly from the pages of Scripture.

Using Psalm 63:1-4 and the theme of “satisfied” as my example:

I might rewrite this phrase: Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you

as

Your love is so amazing, I can’t help but praise You with my song

or

Because of Your amazing love, I’ll sing my praise to You

or

We will sing our praise to You, You’ve loved us more than we could know

The point is that you can say basically the same thing many different ways. I believe, that depending on the translation you start from, it might actually benefit you and those that hear your songs to actually hear different versions of the same concept. Why? Well, for one thing if you’re writing for an environment that hopes to include those who are far from God, you don’t want to be “churchy” sounding with all of your songs.

There’s a time and a place to sing “Majesty, worship his majesty, unto Jesus be all glory, honor and praise…” but there’s also a time and a place to sing the same concept but more like “We’ve come to celebrate the greatness (majesty) of Jesus, we give him all of our praise!” Now, don’t get me wrong, I love Majesty, it’s a great song. Probably one of the most popular contemporary worship songs of the 20th century (and with good reason).

Just make sure that you are conveying the concept in a clear and concise way.

Question to ask yourself when writing from Scripture: If I didn’t grow up in church, wasn’t on staff (paid or volunteer), or had only been in church for a very short time would I still understand the wording of this song?

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Rob Carona says worship music culture is starting to stagnate because of our fear of releasing our own sound.

As I meet with more and more worship leaders and teams, teaching them about songwriting, I have noticed a certain mentality amongst musicians and in worship services that troubles me. It’s the notion that they should limit the amount of original material they present to their congregation for fear of being prideful/self-seeking and also that the congregation will not engage with an “amateur” song.

I am here to state loud and clear that this is the most ridiculous thing I have heard in regards to corporate worship. I can already see how the worship music culture is starting to stagnate because of our fear of releasing our own sound. Songs are coming from a few select “popular” sources and we are allowing them to dictate what our worship sounds like.

Lets break this down in a comparison on a practical level. When Matt Redman, for example, sits down and pours out his heart into an original worship song, it began in his heart, and was birthed in either his private time with God, or with his worship community. Is he being prideful? Is he seeking his own popularity instead of God’s? Of course not. If he was, we would see right through his ambition, and his songs would not be sung for decades in churches throughout the world. They have allowed themselves the freedom to express their musical gift to the world, and that confidence has given us a relevant sound to our worship.

My question to worship leaders would be “why are you so different?” Whether it comes from inside your mind or the outside pressure of your church leadership, why do you think you fall into a lower class of worship leader? We hold these global worship artists on such a high pedestal simply because they have gained the church stamp of approval by having that golden record deal and CCLI recognition. When it comes down to it, they are just as human as the rest of us and they struggle with the same pride/ambition problems that we do, probably even more because they are famous.

We have to embrace the fact that every song was original at some point. Who it comes from is irrelevant. Every songwriter at some point had to make the decision between fear of the flesh and faith in their identity in Christ, as they got up for the first time to present their song to their congregation. The strange paradox is that we encourage, even more than that, we require preachers to bring original and fresh material to the pulpit with every message…why would we do any less in our worship.

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Fascinating statistics from Michael Bell:

You may have heard people say that the “average” sized church in the U.S. or Canada is about 75 people. You also may have heard someone say that the “average” sized church in North America is about 185 people. Who is right? It all depends how you define “average”.

Statisticians use three terms when describing populations. “Mean”, “Median”, and a third term that won’t really enter our discussion today called “Mode”.

I have borrowed, and expanded upon, an analogy from the The National Congregations Study that was released last month, to help us understand the differences in these terms and why they are important to our understanding of churches in North America. What you will read here is U.S. data, but the numbers are very similar for the Canadian situation as well.

Imagine you are looking down a very, very long street, and all the churches of U.S. are lined up along the left side of the street from smallest to largest. In behind each church are all their Sunday morning attenders.

If you counted the grand total of everyone standing behind each church and then divided this number by the total number of churches that you see on this very long street, you would come up with a “mean” or “average” size of 184. “Mean” is usually what we mean of when we think of “average”. But this number of 184 is a very misleading number.

Lets say you start walking down the street, passing the churches with 5 people on a Sunday morning, 10 people, 15 people, 20 people. You continue walking until you have passed half of all the churches in America. Half of the churches in the U.S. are now behind you, half are still in front. The “average” church that you are standing in front of is called the “median” church. You look to see how many people are lined up behind it, and you see 75 people. That is right, half the churches in the United States have less than 75 people.

The average or “mean” church at 184 is 2.45 times the size of the average median church at 75. Why is this so? If you continue walking, you will get a better understanding of how skewed church numbers are within the United States.

So, you continue walking, past the churches of 80, 90, 100, 110. You walk until you have passed 90% of all the churches. You look to your left and you see 350 people lined up behind this church. Much to your surprise, although you have passed 90% of all the churches, over half of the churchgoers are still in front of you! This is why the “mean” is so much higher than the “median”. While most of the churches in the United States are small, most of the attenders go to large churches.

You keep walking, past the churches of 360, 370, 380. It isn’t until you reach a church of size 400 that you will have the same number of people behind you as in front of you. This means that half of church attenders in the U.S. go to churches larger than 400. If we were to use the word “average” again, we would see that the “average” or “median” churchgoer was in a church of 400. Not only that, but this means that half of all those who attend church are in less that 10% of the churches!

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Jamie Brown offers tips for surviving as a worship leader in a small group setting:

I wonder if some worship leaders who have become accustomed to leading large numbers of people in worship (and by “large” I mean “any number too large to fit in a living room”) have gotten the wrong impression that the rules that apply to encourage people singing in a living room don’t apply in a sanctuary or auditorium. While the trappings, instrumentation, volume, etc., might change from the living room to the church building, the principles you learn in a circle of 5-10 people don’t/shouldn’t change at all when you find yourself on a stage with a sound system.

Here’s what you have to learn in order to survive as a worship leader in a small group setting:

1. The songs need to be singable
Hard melodies, intricate rhythms, and weird syncopations won’t fly in a small group. You might cover them up a bit better in a large setting, but they’re just as hard for people.

2. The key is key
You’ll learn really quickly in a small group that if you’re hanging around Ds and Es and (please, no) Fs or Gs, things get awkward really fast. You might mask this with the amplification and anonymity in a larger setting, but it still makes Joe the Plumber give up singing just as much. (I’ve written on this in detail before. And here too.)

3. Show offs are turn offs
Try pulling a guitar solo while leading worship in a small group. You might not notice the weird glares as much in a large group as you would in a small group, but epic musical moments with no other purpose than to showcase an epic musical moment leave just as large a percentage of people scratching their heads.

4. Competence begets confidence
The best kind of small group worship leader is competent. He or she doesn’t need to be amazing, know more than three chords, or even just know how to press “play” or put together a song list/play list. He or she needs to be competent in their calling. People respond well to competence. They are scared by weakness and they’re turned off by arrogance.

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JULY 2014

Jul 8 :: North American Christian Convention (Indianapolis, IN)
Speakers: Vince Antonucci, Craig Groeschel, Tim Harlow, Tim Hawkins, Liz Curtis Higgins, Kevin Holland, Cal Jernigan, David Kinnaman, Ben Merold, Daryl Reed, Lee Strobel, Rick Warren, Brian “Head” Welch
Length: 4 days
Cost: $10-$250

Jul 11 :: 001 Reorient Intensive (Pampa, TX)
Speakers: Kevin Weaver
Length: 1 day
Cost: $150

Jul 12 :: 002 Reorient Intensive (Pampa, TX)
Speakers: Kevin Weaver
Length: 1 day
Cost: $650

Jul 14 :: National Worship Leader Conference (Kansas City, KS)
Length: 4 days
Cost: $250-$450

Jul 16 :: North Coast Training Preaching & Teaching Workshop (Vista, CA)
Speakers: Chris Brown, Larry Osborne
Length: 2 days
Cost: $249-$399

Jul 16 :: WorshipGod14 (Santa Ana, CA)
Speakers: Rick Gamache, Bob Kauflin, Jon Payne, Mike Reeves, Bruce Ware
Length: 4 days
Cost: $75-$200

Jul 21 :: INSPIRE (Redding, CA)
Speakers: Brant Cryder, Havilah Cunnington, Ryan Hall, Sarah Hall, Candace Johnson, Eric Johnson, Banning Liebscher, Martin Smith
Length: 3 days
Cost: $

Jul 23 :: Hillsong Conference (London, England)
Speakers: Craig Groeschel, Bobbie Houston, Brian Houston, Robert Madu
Length: 3 days
Cost: £108-£120

Jul 25 :: Creative Church Conference (Boise, ID)
Speakers: Dave Blakeslee, Bryn Gillette, Colin Harbinson, Jason Leith, Manuel Luz, J. Scott McElroy, Andrew Nemr, Jessie Nilo, Cecilia Brie Tschoepe
Length: 3 days
Cost: $75

AUGUST 2014

Aug 4 :: Team Church (Tacoma, WA)
Speakers: Jentezen Franklin, Steven Furtick, Kevin Gerald, Chris Hodges
Length: 2 days
Cost: $49-$79

Aug 6 :: Wave Conference (Virginia Beach, VA)
Speakers: Charlotte Gambill, Steve Gambill, Rick Godwin, Israel Houghton, Sharon Kelly, Steve Kelly, Grant Pankratz, Ed Young
Length: 3 days
Cost: $119

Aug 11 :: Catholic Communication & Collaboration – C3 Technology Conference (Los Angeles, CA)
Speakers: Sergio Aguilar, Laura Arceneaux, Annabelle Baltierra, Roseanne Belpedio, Ed Benioff, Molly Casanova, Joyce Cluess, Eva Cohen, Rosa Cumare, Megan Daze, Rich Dixon, Jose Carlos De Vera, David Estrada, Derrick Fernando, Jennifer Gibson, Peter Glenn, Thomas Greaves, John Harrington, Anita Kreide, David Lopez, Charlotte McCorquodale, Matt Meeks, Timothy Monreal, Alexis Moore, Nancy Moore, Eileen O’Brien, Jose Ornelas, Jim Pike, John Reyes, Liz Saroki, Josh Simmons, Shannon Tabaldo, Paul Tighe, Victor Valenzuela, Brandon Vogt, Matthew Warner, Tracy Webb, Christine Whelan, Dan White, Lisa Zimmerman
Length: 4 days
Cost: FREE

Aug 14 :: The Global Leadership Summit (South Barrington, IL)
Length: 2 days
Cost: $79-$249

Aug 21 :: A Day in the Sticks (Lakeland, FL)
Length: 1 day
Cost: $29

Aug 21 :: Catalyst One Day (Austin, TX)
Speakers: Craig Groeschel, Andy Stanley
Length: 1 day
Cost: $79-$149

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Scott Corbin examines the methods of one of the great hymn writers:

I love hymns. Hymns have ministered to my life in a number of ways when I was feeling broken or downtrodden. And one of the things I look forward to most on Sundays is getting to sing with my brothers and sisters in the faith. I also love history. I love knowing the “why” behind characters in the past. Thus, my curiosity spiked at the thought of getting to know the man behind some of the world’s most famous hymns, including “Amazing Grace.” Meet John Newton.

John Newton: Life & Background

John Newton was born on July 25th, 1725 to John Sr. and Elizabeth Newton. Elzabeth Newton died while our John Newton was still very young, and John Sr., as a captain, would eventually get John Jr. on the water as early as 10 years of age. Ultimately, through a variety of providential circumstances John Newton became a seaman and ultimately would become the captain of a slave ship.

Newton’s life prior to conversion was hedonism and licentiousness at its finest. Outside of operating a slave ship, he was known to partake in immoralities that would make many of us blush today, as well as being infamous on some of his early transatlantic journeys for his blasphemies. And like a good songwriter, he would craft songs vilifying his captain. If the apostle Paul was the chief of sinners, then John Newton was certainly very close in the running.

However, through a conversion not dissimilar to Jonah or the Apostle Paul, Newton would eventually come to trust in the Lord in the midst of a very terrifying storm on the sea. Soon after this conversion experience, Newton would quit slave trading and ultimately sense a call to pastoral ministry. After some time in the Anglican system, Newton would eventually be placed as a pastor of a small parish in Olney, a town Northwest of London.

While Newton said of Olney that the people “are mostly poor — the country low and dirty,” he would eventually come to love the parish community. He began several ministries, but the one that he flourished at was his hymn writing ministry.

In Olney, Newton would create and compile one of his life’s greatest works, the Olney Hymnbook, alongside his beloved friend William Cowper. The Olney hymnbook has given us hymns like Newton’s “I Asked the Lord,” “How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds” and even “Amazing Grace.” Cowper himself, the greater poet of the two, would write and publish hymns like “There is a Fountain Filled With Blood” and the magisterial “God Moves In Mysterious Ways.” It is a gold mine of rich Christ-centered, gospel-saturated hymns.

However, for our purposes, the story of how many of these hymns took their shape is of particular significance. Let’s now look at three things we can learn from Newton’s hymn writing and pastoral ministry.

3 Things We Learn From Newton’s Hymn Writing and Pastoral Ministry

1. He wrote hymns as a pastoral aide for the congregation.

Newton began writing hymns originally for children. He would read them Bible stories, write them poems, and craft hymns for them to sing that aimed to take the truths of God and impact their hearts. While his friend William Cowper far exceeded him in poetic skill, Newton was a master of writing hymns that were both easy to remember and Scripturally true. He would eventually start writing hymns that would accompany his sermons and, utilizing his and Cowper’s creative mind, they would shepherd their congregation through the power of song.

It’s important to remember that Newton, before a hymn writer, was a pastor. The hymns existed as an aide for the congregation to help them remember and implant scriptural truths in creative and poetic ways. He knew that, like the apostle Paul, theology should not start and stop at the mind, but ultimately affect the heart and result in praise on the lips of God’s people. Hymns were that such means that could act as a mediating agent between the head and the heart.

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