As a very young songwriter my biggest difficulty is always in finishing a song. I have started about 13 different songs, but only completed two of them. I once asked Keith Getty if he ever had this problem, and his response was simply “no – but that’s because I have a team of writers who work with me”. I think songwriting then is always going to be a mixture of inspiration and work – I will always come up with a verse, or a chorus, right there on the spot, write it down, and whether it is a lack of time or musical knowledge I don’t know, but I usually then find it difficult to continue from there.

In terms of the songs that we write, we have to bear in mind the audience. If the intention is for it to be a worship song, it has to be one that isn’t too difficult for people to sing – I remember leading worship at my university chaplaincy centre while “Majesty” by Martin Smith was very popular – but even our trained female lead singer had difficulties reaching the opening top note of the chorus. Perhaps with songs like that, we can do them as performance songs for the congregation to listen to, but without the expectation of the congregation to have to sing them – if a female lead cannot always make the top note, you can guarantee the majority of the congregation won’t either. Similarly, the pace of the song may also be difficult. If you’ve ever sung the lyrics of the verses to “Our God Awesome God”, everyone ends up stumbling over each other to wrap their tongues around the words (which is why most people tend to leave out the verses these days on that song and use just the more slower paced chorus)

Lyrics themselves I have found will have different effects – I don’t think we have enough songs these days about the power of God, the strength of the Holy Spirit, and the amazing abilities that God gives us to be able to fulfill his work on earth – This is what I love about your song “Stronger” as it speaks about just that – a refreshing, for once rather “masculine” taste of what being a christian is all about, instead of a large plethora of love songs that appear in our hymnbooks. With more songs like this, we can bridge the gender gap in Christianity and bring more men back to the church, and make God’s church the house of power and strength that it used to be. I am certainly far more excited to stand up and sing that “Our God is Stronger, than any other, he is the Power that can’t be tamed” than to stand and sing “The Fathers song, The Fathers love, You sung it over me and for eternity”. Because of the power and influence music has in our culture, and even more so I would say in our churches, we have a responsibility in the songs that we write to raise up warriors who will go out and fight for God on the front line, instead of helpless babies who can only stay in the church to be constantly nurtured, without gaining maturity.

I think I might have drifted off course there, but those are my general thoughts on song writing that I have chewed over myself over the past minutes/days/years…

Having never properly taken up a mic and led like you seasoned leaders have done before – mainly because a voice coach is needed – here’s an uber-creative idea from the world of communications, which is definitely more my field, a field in which we need to speak into prophetically as Christians, I might add. And which could inform church set-ups.

I was wondering, have you ever written a song, using Twitter contributions from your followers? Verse by verse? How interactive would THAT be. And what result would you get in terms of a song, product?

I guess, having different premises though, and trying to mash all sides up – things here and there – into something good, could be problematic for those who are on the outside nosying in. Especially if you’ve been led to be on different pages in your faith from the other contributors – whether that is theologically, geographically, demographically, or even, I don’t know – denominationally, by intention or design.

You also wouldn’t want to reduce things down to assumptions poor theology, or give room to, what’s that word? Ah, yes. Heresy! It’s got to be in the Bible – or at least our knowledge of it to-date – after all for we are Christians, and are called to live incarnationally. What do you think? Twitter and social media can be a very interesting source of info – as well yield much nonsense of course. But the format. Ah, the format.

On another point, with these new – or in fact old, if you think about the likes of old school pub missions – ideas of engaging in worship more collaboratively, I find you can often sing a theme you feel the Spirit is leading to see what comes back from the congregation – kind of like a seek and find exercise, using sanctified imagination, in all three dimensions. It’s not a set liturgy. We are not Catholics, are we? Are we? No offence to people who are. It’s just there is so many ways of all being involved in the same setting. It’s not a one man show. We know that since the likes of John Noble pioneered the house church movement. In the 1970s. Every member ministry.

And so to a few ponderings:

- If I sing upwardly to God what I feel the Spirit is saying – what will He say back, in the here and now, and how do I respond?

- If I sing what I feel the congregations is responding to – what direction should we take, in keeping with their experience of the song or art form?

- If we sing this, what are the band and the other musicians sensing in the moment? How does that shape our liturgy or progression? Who is really leading, anyway? The congregation? God? Us? Someone right at the back with the sound desk? The old lady with a name tag, on the welcome team? Is that a good thing? Can we intercede for other nations on their behalf? Maybe – maybe not. Reductionism – or the range of possibilities – well, that can be a problem. Especially if people begin to monopolise the process.

Perhaps this could make things overly complex, in being more multi-lateral – or cause us to leave the idea behind on reflection. But only if you have not contributed ideas along with others – or hidden your light under a busel, whatever the heck THAT is. I think of, for instance, if we get into topics like going through the motions of Christ in his passion like in eAster to music, where a sinless saviour was butchered for our own recklessness, or the apostles on their missionary journeys through the developing world – these are very serious stories shaping our faith – our world, our economics, and identifying with the right person at the right time is not a one way thing – it involves talking back and interacting. Sharing your voice.

I increasingly believe – for those really involved – a multi-dimensional paradigm for our music in churches will mean we have a less politically live “celebrity-centric culture” in our leaders or bands – “oh it’s really allllll about meeeeeeeeee,” to paraody an modern chorus, ironically written by who? I have no idea – I don’t remember that. And it will be all the more substantial as a worship – and evangelism – experience for all involved.

I guess there’s a time and place for everything, right? I certainly haven’t witnessed this kind of thing i’m talking about here yet – it does seem quite radical, as a model, if you ask me. But there is a common understanding of an escalating progression in this direction, though, again, I haven’t heard anything I could tell you about where to go for more info on this yet, either – ‘honest, guv.’ Stand in my shoes for a moment, with all those excellent voices for one thing: how intimidating. Oh, if only I was like Tim Hughes, with his amazing G# pitching. I ramble. He’s very good, for the record.

Anyway, I found Nicks thoughts definitely cool, here. Especially the idea of Lada Gaga – madness. But I appreciate the idea, that even in evangelism, worship involving an empathy for those we’re seeking to reach is becoming stupidly vital, providing we are able to remember the original revelation of Jesus in the first place, and in our bid to stay relevant, we don’t do anything we shouldn’t be doing. That’s my central value as a conservative. Like referencing the gospel of Judas, or non-canonical literature. That’s a no-no. Matt Redmans, take it to the streets mission-based album was pretty interesting on topic. Oh Matty boy.

My message in summary: we’ve – as Pete once preached – apparently eradicated the clergy laity divide – which was always nonsense from a purely theological and ecclesiological perspective. But how about we now work out ways to eradicate the unhelpfully-exclusive worship leader-to-congregation divide? No offence! At the right time, we could, then, god-forbid it, eradicate the congregation-to-world divide as well, so fresh unity, love for Jesus and his kingdom – and the songs of the revolution – begin to appeal to those who would never set foot in a church in the first place. Yes, like those folks in the world of entertainment and politics.

There’s much still to do isn’t there? So much religion to flush away. But hopefully this is some decent food for thought. I’m all ears to listen about any feedback. Seriously – just let me know.

Good night gentlemen X

It’s the first time I’ve been on your blog – greta stuff you must keep writing. I’m not really a word person so I don’t det hung up on words or always understand them but I see reckless as reeking havok and isn’t that what God’s love does against. the works of the enemy. Personally I dont have probs with the phrase it speaks to me of Gods powerful love that can change all things.

I guess if you look at what songs really stay with people, it usually the simple, worshipful ones. The ones that come from ‘the other place’ as it were! Go to any church and hear the volume of people singing, ‘How Great Is Our God’ – standard pop song structure, theological, poetic, anthemic, yet so simple.

I wonder how many churches across the UK actually use lots of the modern songs for more than a year or two before reverting to the classics (or the one or two ‘You Alone Can Rescue’s that have been penned over the last year or so). I was thinking just this week, why do many contemporary worship leaders who write songs tend to lead, mostly, with their latest songs, neglecting some of their former glories?

I personally think there is a balance needed to be in the culture but not of it. Too much one way and Lady Gaga will be leading worship at all Corinth will break loose! Too much the other way and we’ll be featured on Songs of Praise.

I know that some of the best songs I’ve written have come from a place of personal worship but have then been crafted.

And I think that’s all I have to say about that… for now!

2)you (and I) grew up with short songs because the Charismatic church (or whatever you wish to call it) was in a different place to where it is now. 15 years ago it was big news that Mr Jesus wanted to be close, personal and intimate with us – meditative music was a new and exciting concept from the rather more ‘hymn book’ type churches many of us came from.
Ironically, i believe it is the hymn book-type lyrics that the church is now hungry for: songs with more engaging theological content. Your tune ‘Standing at the cross’ is quite a good example of this – it uses various structural devices which allow you to tell a story through the lyrics, making the song feel like a journey (it has a narrative in academic-speak).
As you identify, the difficulty the modern worship song writer faces is that congregations still require relatively simple melody lines and structures (because of the data projector; hymn books could have music written in them so harder melodies could be communicated) and refuse to be ‘performed’ at.
Don’t forget that this is really only a problem for the predominately white middle-class charismatic church; the Gospel church write and perform fantastically complex and theologically rich music as there is no fear of being accused of ‘performing’.

that’s a very quick summary of what i think – feel free to stone me a heretic…

Great blog! I think it’s good to challenge our mindset about God’s heart towards us because so often we just presume that He can only love us in the ways that we know how to love (which is missing out on a lot of love that He’s got for us!)

I’ve been having a little ponder about what you’ve said. In some ways it doesn’t surprise me that there’s a split opinion about using the word ‘reckless’. When you look at the meaning of it I think there are two sides to it going on. On the one side you’ve got the ‘reckless extravagance’ which reflects God’s unrestrained and unnecessary expenditure of love upon us – shown most powerfully on the cross. The dictionary uses words like ‘incautious’ and ‘imprudent’ to described ‘reckless’, which fits with this.

But on the other side there are words like ‘rash’, negligent’, ‘unconcerned’ and ‘careless’, in the dictionary. If we take ‘reckless’ to mean these things then applying it to God’s love could make Him seem a bit of a megalomaniac! Although His love is recklessly extravagant, it is also totally concerned and full of care for us at the same time.

I think this poses a bigger question about our interpretation of language within the church. As Christians we can get so caught up with what’s ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, drawing clear boundaries of what we can and can’t do – and this seems to be an example of needing to use the ‘right’ words in a worship song. But in reality, words often have lots of meanings which can depending on culture, history and context.

I think that if you want to use the word ‘reckless’ in one of your songs then that’s about what it means for you as you worship the Lord. I’m not a song writer, but when I use other people’s songs in worship the words are unique to me because of my personal relationship with God. When I sing “our God is stronger” – that line means something significant and personal in my relationship with God, which may be different from someone else singing it.

As a worship leader you want to bring people to a place of connection with Him. But as worshippers we are each responsible for our hearts when we use your songs to worship. So when we next sing about God’s recklessness, I’ll personally be singing about God’s unrestrained and extravagant love – and I think that’s a great thing for us to all thank the Lord for!

Also, in our culture, when someone describes an action as reckless, it’s really a criticism of someone, so could the worshipper read it as we don’t really think Jesus should have done it?

God loves us because he IS love and can do nothing else and it’s his great, constant and limitless love that prompts US to be reckless in OUR response to him, hence the family who gives up everything to spread the gospel. We should be the reckless ones. When we’re worshipping, we don’t have the time to study what we’re singing, and though I agree with what you’re trying to say, I just wonder whether using ‘reckless’ could be more of a stumbling block to some and actually, if you can find an equally powerful word, you may still be able to impact people’s thinking about Jesus.

Thanks for asking for feedback. I really like the ‘feel’ of your lyric and totally get what it’s trying to say. I hope this has helped and not confused you . Words are powerful and it’s good to talk about all of them, even the uncomfortable ones. In the end, it’s up to you and what you feel God’s saying, held up to scripture. Having said all this, you may be able to get away with it as being more poetic than theologically correct. I will pray that God speaks clearly to you about this one.

God bless,
Kathryn

I promised to send Sam’s details(from ICMP) if ever you need a drummer at all your events. Have a look at his latest video (maybe not the best promo for a drummer but good music I believe)
http://apps.facebook.com/greenpoll/index/band/id/115