Can you say a prayer in your own words?
Yes?
Congratulations, you are a worship songwriter!
For at the heart of it all, worship songs are prayers set to melodies.
Having said that, writing songs for the Church at large is a ministry by itself requiring all the key qualities of any other ministry: the gift of the Holy Spirit, willingness to develop the skills to operate the gift and a passion to embrace the calling regardless of the cost.
If you believe you have a calling in this ministry, here are 5 quick tips to write your best songs:
1. Ideate
I am guilty of losing dozens of good song ideas partly due to personal laziness and partly because of not having a tool to note them down before forgetting. But that was before I got my hands on a Smartphone. Inspiration strikes at odd times and/or places and songwriters need to be ready. The Smartphone, with so many songwriter-friendly apps around, is an ideal device to ensure the conception of an idea and its capture for posterity happens almost simultaneously.
2. Fix the Intent
It’s worthwhile to decide the purpose of the song at the outset: will it be a congregational song for public usage or will it be a personal worship song? Will it be a joyful praise prayer or a lament? And so on. This helps to bring focus into the writing process.
3. Wait
Invariably, the songs that I am most happy with are those that took the longest to finish. Unless you have a record deal, you probably don’t have a pressing timeline to meet anyways. What I’ve found effective is to allow the song to come to me gradually instead of running after it and trying to force the outcome. Patience leads to better songs.
4. Re-write
Yes I know the Holy Spirit has a big hand in the creation of worship songs. But song ideas are only song ideas, not final versions to be introduced publicly just like that. Re-writing involves deciding song structure, lyric-crunching, paying attention to technique etc. I believe that while the Holy Spirit gives the gift and the idea, it’s the songwriter’s effort to shape it prayerfully into an actual song. There are of course exceptions to this, but generally as a rule, songwriting requires hard work.
5. Critique
Despite the best of efforts, your work of art can be torn apart when used in public. There are two things to do to manage this:
- Take the song to a person who you trust to provide candid feedback and make changes if required before going public.
- Develop a thick (really thick) skin to swallow negative feedback without taking it personally!
Also, it’s good practice to check the song for qualities like these:
- Does the song have a clear, consistent theme or is it all over the place?
- Are the lyrics in line with Biblical and Traditional teaching/theology?
- Is the melody singable for a general congregation?
- Is it a ‘me’ song or a ‘we’ song?
- Is it horizontal (about God) or vertical (to God)?
- Does it say something fresh or is it full of lyrics that have already been used in other songs?
“If I could give you one line about writing worship songs, it would be ‘sing your prayers.'” - Paul Baloche
