4

Writing worship songs

Before we delve into the mechanics of songwriting let me clear the air on a couple of things. After reading the previous chapter some readers may think I'm on a nostalgia trip, that I miss the "good old days" and want us to turn back the clock and have us only worship with songs written in the late 70s and early 80s.

 

Well, I do and I don't. Those were exciting times for the Vineyard and other moves of the Spirit happening, and the songs that came out of that season were unique in many ways and are still very much worth singing. But my goal isn't just to reawaken interest in the worship of that period but to instill its values of simplicity and intimacy into the hearts of those of us who write new worship songs. 

Every move of God throughout history has produced a fresh outpouring of new worship music, and that musical outpouring helps empower and sustain what God is doing. But this doesn't mean we should value songs from previous renewals or revivals any less that what God is giving us today. Because every scribe (and worship leader!) who "has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old" (Matthew 13:52). So in principle I advocate making judicious use of both old and new songs when you lead others in worship. But new songs are the best, as it is written: 

Oh sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things! (Psalm 98:1)

He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. (Psalm 40:3)

Sing to him a new song; play skillfully on the strings, with loud shouts. (Psalm 33:3)

I will sing a new song to you, O God; upon a ten-stringed harp I will play to you. (Psalm 144:9)

Even in Scripture we can see examples of how fresh new songs pour forth during seasons when God's power for deliverance is displayed: 

Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the Lord, saying, "I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.

The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father's God, and I will exalt him." (Exodus 15:1-2)

So let's see if we can learn how to write new worship songs that mirror the twin values of simplicity and intimacy that characterized much of the music of the early Vineyard, of its adopted progenitor Calvary Chapel, and even of some earlier moves of the Spirit. We'll do this in two ways: by examining in detail some early Vineyard songs, and by Ingrid and I sharing some of our own worship songs written during times of personal and corporate renewal. Let's begin with the simplest type of song, which I call a verselet. [Note #12: These are usually called choruses (sometimes with a measure of condescension) by those who feel that hymns are the only true form of real worship music.]

Verselets

A verselet is a song that has only one verse and no chorus. A classic example from early Vineyard music is the song Just Like You Promised by Patty Kennedy which was the title song of the third worship cassette tape produced in 1985 by the label Mercy Records which later became Vineyard Music:

Just like you promised, you’ve come;

Just like you told us, you’re here;

And my desire is that you know

I love you, I worship you,

I welcome you here.

Some of the characteristics of this song are:

• It's short, which makes it simple to learn after singing it only a few times.
• It speaks to God instead of about Him by making use of the word "you" which conveys a sense of intimacy. [Note #13: If I told my wife Ingrid that "I love my wife" she would probably punch me and say "You love me, not your wife!"]
• It expresses the singer's heart, not just their mind (as songs about God often seem to do). 
• And although the song doesn't explicitly quote Scripture, it does allude to several things Jesus said (see for example Matthew 18:20, Luke 24:49 and John 14:18).

In my opinion some of the best worship songs ever written were simple verselets like this one. Examples include such well-known songs as:

• Father, I Adore You (Terrye Coelho)
• Jesus, Name Above all Names (Naida Hearn)
• Open Our Eyes, Lord (Robert Cull)
• Jesus What a Wonder You Are (Dave Bolton)
• I Love You Lord (Laurie Klein)
• All Hail King Jesus (David Moody)

Ingrid has also written several beautiful verselets such as this one (see Song #1 in the Appendix [Note #14: The Appendix at the end of this book has lyrics, music and SoundCloud links for some of our worship songs.]):

Jesus in you is life and joy,

In you is peace and rest,

In you is all to life's request;

I worship you, my Lord.

This song is simple and intimate, and its use of words like joy, peace and rest bring various Scriptures to mind as you sing. If you used this song as part of your worship set, you would probably sing it twice and then flow right away into another song in the same key with similar tempo. 

Here's another example of a simple verselet, this one written by myself (see Song #2 in the Appendix):

Because you are beautiful,

  I will seek your face.

Because you are wonderful,

  I will stand in awe.

Because you are marvelous,

  I will lift my hands.

Because you are glorious,

  I will praise your name.

This song got a strong positive reaction ("Ooh, that's my most favorite worship song ever!!") when I first introduced it in a house church we started with another couple some years ago. There's only one small problem: I have trouble remembering the order of the words when I lead worship with it—and I wrote the song! Does praise your name come before lift my hands or is it the other way around? And which comes first, beautiful or wonderful? [Note #15: Aha! At least Wimber's song Isn't He comes to my rescue concerning this particular forkful of word salad!]

But my song suffers from a weakness called "word salad". That is, there's no logical reason behind the order of the words. This doesn't make it a bad song of course. In fact some of my favorite Vineyard songs are word salads, beautiful songs whose lyrics I often get mixed up when I sing from memory. Check out the song I Will Worship You by Eddie Espinosa and you'll see what I mean. The answer of course is to sing such songs alone to yourself several hundred times until you finally get the lyrics down pat. 

Pattern songs

By pattern songs I mean songs that have a single verse which you repeat several times by varying one or more words. Eddie Espinosa's song I Only Want To Love You is a good example from the early days of the Vineyard:

I only want to love you (4x)

Jesus, You are my everything,

You are my life,

You are my God. 

I only want to praise you...

I only want to serve you...

Pattern songs are great: you only need to learn one verse and you can sing them for hours without getting bored! 

I exaggerate of course—you only want to sing three or for variations usually before you swing into the next song in your worship set. But in my opinion some of the best and most meaningful worship songs from the days of the Jesus Movement were simple pattern songs like these:

• Peace I Give To Thee (Vic Houser)
• In My Life, Lord, Be Glorified (Bob Kilpatrick)
• The Greatest Thing (Mark Pendergrass)
• Glorify Thy Name (Donna W. Adkins)
• Jesus, I Just Want To Thank You (unknown)
• I Believe In You (Greg Eckler and Randy Thomas)
• I Come To Thee On Bended Knee (unknown)
• I Want To Praise You Lord (Sam Scott and Randy Thomas)

Ingrid has also written a simple pattern song that we've often enjoyed singing in home fellowships (see Song #3 in the Appendix):

Merciful Father, merciful God

Merciful Father, merciful God

  Holy are you

  Oh, holy are you

Oh, holy holy holy is the Lord

Merciful Father, merciful God

Merciful Father, merciful God

  Mighty are you

  Oh, mighty are you

Oh, mighty mighty mighty is the Lord

Additional verses can be sung by using words like faithful, loving, awesome, worthy and so on. Usually we would finish off the song by singing holy again. A song like this is easy to learn and quickly becomes part of your life as you sing it in the shower or while you're making supper. 

I've written several pattern songs myself including the following one which we used to sing in some of our early home fellowships (see Song #4 in the Appendix):

I love you, I love you

I love you so much, my Jesus

Because your gentle touch

  Fills my soul with delight

  As your Spirit and mine unite

  And so I want to sing in the night

That I love you

I need you... I want you... 

The above song is not only simple to learn but also quite intimate in what it conveys about having a personal relationship with the Lord. Some believers have difficulty expressing love for God in such intimate terms, and I understand such concerns. I don't view the Song of Songs as an allegory of Christ's relationship with the church, so I don't much care for songs that are based on this theology (an exception being His Banner Over Me by Kevin Prosch which is a terrific song to get up and dance to the Lord). On the other hand I've had some experiences of God's love that I've tried to put into a song (see Song #5 for example in the Appendix) so who am I to criticize anyways? 

Structured songs

By structured songs I mean songs that have at least one verse (V) and a chorus (C), or several verses, maybe some repetition of a verse or chorus, and occasionally even a bridge (B). Lots of good worship songs are of this category and their structures can range from the simple to fairly complex. The table below illustrates the structure of some well-known early Vineyard songs: 

The goal when writing worship songs that are structurally complex is to try and keep them simple and intimate so they can be learned easily by people. To achieve this, the songwriter should keep the following guidelines in mind:

• Keep the chords simple so that even a novice guitarist can play the song without difficulty. 
• Use "You" instead of "He" when referring to God so the song is sung to God instead of about Him. Doing this instills intimacy in the song. 
• Consider using "I" instead of "we" when the song is designed to express the heart of the worshipper (e.g. "I love you Jesus..."). Using "we" may be better though if the song is also intended to express truth (e.g. "We are your servants...")
• Use repetition wherever possible, especially in choruses, to make them easier to memorize.
• Include language that alludes to familiar Scripture verses as this too will make the song easier for people to memorize. 
• For songs with several verses there should usually be some kind of thematic thread linking together the verses. Doing this makes it easier to remember what comes next when singing through the song. 

To see these guidelines in action let's examine one particular song (All The Earth Shall Worship by Carl Tuttle) which IMO is the Best. Worship. Song. Ever. 

First, the chords of the song are E B C#m7 A Bsus D which are all fairly easy to play. Except B which I find difficult as someone who is still a novice guitarist, so I sometimes substitute B7 for B. (Full disclosure: I usually transpose the song from the key of E Major to G Major as that way the chords of the song are even simpler, namely G D Em7 C Dsus and F. Oh wait, there's that darn F chord again...)

Next, the song speaks to God:

Father, we adore You

You've drawn us to this place

We bow down before You

Humbly on our face

The word "we" seems more appropriate here than "I" because of the reference in this verse to a corporate "place" of worship where the people have gathered. 

Next, although there is no repetition in the words of this verse, the melody of the second pair of lines is the same as for the first pair of lines. Using repetition like this helps people quickly learn a melody. 

The above verse also brings Scriptures to mind as you sing it. The one that immediately comes to my own mind is John 12:32 where Jesus says "And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself."

Finally, there is a clear connecting thread linking the three verses together:

Father, we adore You...

Jesus, we love You...

Spirit, we need You...

The progression through invocation of the Triune God, the allusions to the work of each person in the Trinity, the simple chords, and the melodic repetition all make it easy to learn this powerful, intimate worship song. 

Here's a song Ingrid wrote that has a simple structure of verse-chorus (VC) but is profound in how it helps us express our love and longing for God (see Song #6 in the Appenxi):

I love you Lord

Your presence gives me life

Like a river in the night

Like a river in the night

I see your face

Your glory shining bright

Like a river in the night

Like a river in the night

Come, sweet Spirit, come

Holy Spirit, come

Examining the lyrics (and chords in the Appendix) we see that:

• the song alludes to Scripture (John 7:38).
• uses "you" which makes it intimate.
• is easy to play (it uses only basic Guitar chords).
• employs repetition making it easy to learn.

It's a good worship song! 

I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to examine the next song which has a verse-bridge-chorus (VBC) structure (see Song #7 in the Appendix) and see whether it follows the guidelines I've espoused. I wrote the song several years ago during a time of personal renewal when I gained a better understanding of what it means to be a servant (Mark 10:44):

You're the King most high

And I bow before your throne

You're the Lord of all

And I worship you alone

Here I am to do your will

Jesus use me for your glory

You can use me as you will

Jesus use me for your glory

I belong to you

Master I belong to you

Modding songs

Worship leaders should be free to mod (modify) worship songs to adapt them to meet the specific needs of their congregation, or even to improve on them. 

The above is just my opinion, but I believe it aligns with Scripture, for "the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof" (Psalm 42:1). This means everything belongs to God, including the songs you write. Songwriters should view their worship songs as gifts given by God to the church, not vehicles for their own personal fame or reputation. 

This doesn't mean of course that you shouldn't copyright your worship songs, or even earn royalties from them, for "those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel" also applies to being in the worship ministry profession. But in my opinion when you lead worship and are not recording for commercial reasons, you should feel free to make any modifications you want to the songs you're using as long as your intention is the edification of those worshipping. 

Let's look at a few ways you might do this. 

Changing He to You

When we first learned about the Vineyard approach to worship, we wanted to rigorously apply its principles to all of the songs we used in our worship times. This even applied to songs that originated from within the Vineyard. For example, one of the songs we loved worshipping with in our first home fellowship was Exodus XV by Frank Gallio whose melody makes beautiful use of sustained notes and repetition. The words start like this:

The Lord is my strength and my song

And He is become my salvation

He is my God

And I shall prepare Him my heart (3x)

We loved singing this song! But after singing it a few times one of us said, "Wait a minute. Vineyard songs should be sung to God not about Him, right? Let's change the words." Everyone nodded in agreement, so we changed the words to the following:

O Lord, you are my strength and my song

And You are become my salvation

You are my God

And I shall prepare You my heart (3x)

Looking back at this exercise in artistic presumptuousness, I don't think changing the words like this made the song any more meaningful for us or made us any more spiritual, but in the early days we often tried to diligently weed out any third-person references to God or Jesus in our songs and replace them with the second-person pronoun (and in Capital Letters). We don't do that so much anymore, but there's no harm—and possibly some good—in doing this for those who are just beginning to learn how to worship. 

Changing We to I

Another change we often made (and still make) is to replace "we" in songs with "I" to make the words more personal. An example would be changing the words of the song Come Right Now by Bill Dobrenen from its original words:

Lord we ask that you would come right now

Jesus come and heal us now

Spirit come and fill us now

We love You, we love You

We love You, yes we do

to the following:

Lord I ask that you would come right now

Jesus come and heal me now

Spirit come and fill me now

I love You, I love You

I love You, yes I do

Actually what we would usually do with this beautiful song is sing it a few times with "we" first and then switch to "I" as we moved from worship into ministry time in our home fellowship gatherings. 

Another song which came out of Calvary Chapel that we often sang (and still sing sometimes) is Open Our Eyes by Bob Cull. This familiar worship song goes:

Open our eyes, Lord

We want to see Jesus

To reach out and touch Him

And say that we love Him

Open our ears, Lord

And help us to listen

Open our eyes, Lord

We want to see Jesus

But we always sing the song like this instead:

Open my eyes, Lord

I want to see Jesus

To reach out and touch Him

And say that I love Him...

In my opinion this small change makes the song much more expressive and impactful. 

Adding to songs

A few years ago when we were singing Bob Cull's song Open Our Eyes during worship time, a thought came to me: "This song isn't complete—there's no mention of our mouths." So I wrote a chorus to be sung after the verse (see Song #8 in the Appendix). The chorus goes like this:

Open my mouth Lord

And help me say "Jesus "

Open my mouth Lord

And help me say "Jesus"

I want to love him

I want to serve him

I want to know him

And make him known

In my opinion this chorus gives the song an evangelistic feeling of "Let's do it, let's go tell people about Jesus" that lifts and energizes the perhaps somewhat introspective quality of the original song. 

I've occasionally added extra verses to some Vineyard songs as well when I've used them, for example My Delight by Andy Park whose two verses begin like this:

Father, You are my portion in this life

And You are my hope and my delight...

Jesus, You are my treasure in this life

And You are so pure and so kind...

As I was playing the song one day, I thought "What about the Holy Spirit?" So I wrote a third verse:

Spirit, You are my helper in this life

And you are always walking by my side

Those words might not be perfect (maybe change walking to present in second line?) but somehow adding a third verse like this makes the song feel more complete. 

Transposition

I usually play songs in whatever key they were originally composed in whenever I lead worship. But not always. Sometimes I change the key signature for one or more of the following reasons:

• When I'm having difficulty with one or more of the guitar chords in the song. Although I'm a pretty good keyboardist, I'm still a novice guitarist even though I've almost always used guitar for leading worship in our home fellowships over the years. 
• When I or the people I'm leading are having trouble singing the song because it's pitched too high or too low. Young people can usually sing high easily, but for older people a high-pitched song can sound screechy. The male/female mix of your group is also a factor to consider when pitching songs appropriately. 
• When we're singing the song and we've sung the chorus a couple of times and I want to get us to sing it more expressively, I'll play a transition chord that allows me to raise the pitch of the song by a tone, a third or a fourth. This usually has the effect of waking everyone up so they consider more clearly the meaning of the words they've been singing. 

When you transpose a song for any reason, you need to be careful that you stay within the register (range of musical notes) that people can sing without straining. One of the exercises I once performed in order to improve my ability to lead worship was to analyze the melodic range of notes in the vocal lines of 70 songs in a Vineyard songbook from the early days of the Movement. What I discovered was that most of the songs had lead lines for singing that lay between C4 (middle C) and C5 (the first C above middle C) with many of them having even smaller vocal ranges. Only a few songs dipped down to B3 or hit D5, and very rarely did any of the songs go below or above these two notes. 

Not having any vocal training, this was quite a discovery for me and it has helped me choose better key signatures for the songs I write. It was only afterwards through further research that I discovered that this vocal range (B3 to D4) found in early Vineyard songs can be comfortably sung by baritones and mezzo sopranos but can be difficult at either the high or low end for basses, tenors, altos and sopranos. I guess you can't please everybody! 

Another thing I discovered by doing this exercise is that my own singing ranges comfortably only from G2 to C4. This characterizes me as a baritone who has trouble reaching high notes, which explains why I sometimes pitch songs too low for the people I'm leading in worship. I have to deliberately pitch songs towards the high end of my range to enable the majority of the people to sing comfortably. 

So now you know why my voice sometimes sounds strained in the recordings of our worship songs on our SoundCloud page. 

Finding inspiration

Anyone who writes worship songs or does any other type of creative writing or other artistic endeavor knows that songs (or whatever you're creating) tend to either come into being easily or with great difficulty. I suppose this is due to whether inspiration is present or not. 

When I was studying a collection of songs from the earliest days of the Vineyard, I discovered something interesting. Many of the songs were written by people I had never heard of before, and when I queried their names in the CCLI SoundSelect database I discovered that most of these individuals have only written one song—or at least had only copyrighted one song. A few of these individuals had two or three songs attributed to them, but that's nothing compared to the corpus of such prolific Vineyard songwriters like Carl Tuttle, Danny Daniels, Eddie Espinosa, Andy Park, Brian Doerksen and several others. 

Why is that? Why would some write only one or two worship songs in their life while others write dozens and dozens of them? Inspiration and diligence are probably the twin answers. And from my own experience inspiration seems to pretty much be available to any of us all the time (Remember Wimber's "Vision of the Honeycomb"?) [Note #16: See pages 69-70 of The Quest for the Radical Middle by Bill Jackson (Vineyard International Publishing, 1999).] But diligence—careful and persistent hard work and effort—requires a commitment that few seem willing to make and time that not many are prepared to set aside. 

Does this then make the multitude of songs written by Andy Park more valuable to us than the single or small handful of worship songs attributed to Bill Dobrenen, Scott Palazzo, Sally Beck, Victor Rubbo, Peggy Wagner, Frank Gallio or Patty Kennedy? Actually I think it's just the opposite! 

Consider for example the next two songs which were composed by an individual named Jude Del Hierro way back in the early days of the Vineyard:

Alleluia (Jude Del Hierro)

Jesus, I love You

I bow down before You

Praises and worship to the King

Alleluia, alleluia

Alleluia, allelu

More Love, More Power (Jude Del Hierro)

More love, more power

More of You in my life (repeat)

And I will worship You

  with all of my heart

And I will worship You

  with all of my mind

And I will worship You

  with all of my strength

For You are my Lord

  You are my Lord

Del Hierro's first song is one of the sweetest and most intimate worship songs ever written; we used to sing it often in our first home fellowships. And his second song practically became the anthem of the Vineyard during the first decade of its existence; the song was recorded almost a dozen times on various Vineyard CDs and it's been translated into several other languages. And it's also a wonderful pattern song as you can sing additional verses like "I will honor you... seek your face... sing your praise... bless your name... follow you..." and so on.

Yet despite the perfection of his two classic worship songs, Del Hierro seems to have never become prolific as a songwriter. Why is that? Did he fail to develop and apply his musical talents? Or did he just luck out on a couple of occasions and come up with two all-time hits? 

I believe what likely happened is that the Holy Spirit just gave him these songs as a gift for the church, probably all at once in finished form like a sudden download from heaven, and perhaps even during a time of corporate worship. I suspect this happened partly because of the stories recorded in Carol Wimber's book [Note #17: See pages 143-4 of John Wimber: The Way it Was by Carol Wimber (Hodder & Stoughton, 1999)] about how God gave John songs like Spirit Song and Isn't He and partly because of what has personally happened to us on several occasions. Let me share a story to illustrate. 

Some years ago Ingrid was reading Mary's story from the Gospels in preparation for Advent. When she read the words "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God" in Luke 1:30, she felt the Holy Spirit telling her strongly that we too are favored by God. She immediately wrote out some words for a song that expressed this truth—the words just flowed from her pen. Then she came upstairs where I was reading, explained what God had told her, and said "I want you to compose some music for this song." 

"Sure, will do!" I said as I groaned inwardly. Yikes, it's hard enough to write your own song, but writing a song to someone else's words? There goes my weekend. But I gritted my teeth [Note #18: Or girded my loins if you want to get Biblical] and found some blank manuscript paper and started strumming my guitar—and in fifteen minutes I had the whole song written out with melody and chords. We played the song at our Advent gathering and everyone loved it, so I made a rough recording for our SoundCloud page and it got many more hits than any of my own songs I had recorded. The words go like this (see Song #9 in the Appendix):

Washed in his blood

Changed by his Spirit

Cleansed thru his Word

We are favored by God

Filled with his love

Sharing his mercy

Sent in his name

We are favored by God

Not for what we have done

But for what he has done for us

In the gift of his Son

We are favored by God

Does having a song fall from heaven into your lap like this negate the hard work that the craft of songwriting often entails? Not at all, but it does show that the ultimate source of good worship songs is God, and that our primary job as songwriters is to attune our hearts to His Spirit. 

So while it's good to apply yourself diligently to developing your talent, in the end we should be like Jesus who said that "the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing" (John 5:19). And that applies to writing worship songs too. So by all means work hard at writing worship songs, but be content that probably only a couple of them will be gold, a few of them silver, most of them copper, and a bunch of them chaff. 

And in the end what really matters anyways is that God gets all the glory, not us. Right?

A final word of advice

Let me finish this chapter by quoting Carol Wimber once again from her book. She writes that John said [Note #19: See page 33 of John Wimber: The Way it Was by Carol Wimber (Hodder & Stoughton, 1999)]:

"What good is it ultimately if we produce worship songs that only the experienced musician can play? What will the little churches do?" He [John] hated 'elitism' in whatever form it took, spiritual, as well as musical, and he also understood that it takes legitimate acumen and craftsmanship to write simply. He especially loved the guys who put aside what they had the ability to produce, and chose, instead, to write simple love songs to Jesus that anyone could sing or play on the guitar.

Copy out that last sentence on a small piece of paper and glue it onto the side of your guitar as a reminder to yourself whenever you're trying to write a new worship song. 

---> Go to chapter 5