There’s no hiding that I’m a fan of worship leaders writing original worship songs.
I wouldn’t say it’s a distinguishing, necessary skill for all worship leaders. You can still be an incredible worship leader in your church without ever writing a song.
However, I encourage everyone to try. You never know if there may be a gift inside that you’ve never allowed to grow.
With that being said, leading your own songs can be a sticky situation. So many doubts rush through our minds:
- What if no one likes it?
- What if another writer has written a better song on this theme?
- How do I even introduce it?
- If I start leading my songs, should I do an album?
- I’m the worst songwriter ever.
- I’m the best songwriter ever.
While I encourage everyone to try writing, just because you wrote a song doesn’t make it great, ready, or even a good congregational worship song. This is an important step. You have to be willing to step and back and approach it objectively.
Writing songs begins with a heart of humility and service – wanting to equip your church with songs for certain seasons. As soon as it becomes about making a name for yourself, you’ve lost your effectiveness. The songs lose their punch.
For some tips on making your songs ready for congregational use, check out this post.
In this post I want to outline a process I use before I introduce an original song to my church. This will help you think strategically about the song, your people, your church’s mission, and keeping it congregational.
5 Steps for Introducing Your Worship Songs
Provided your song is “done” to the best of your knowledge, here are some next steps:
Here we go:
1. Get Some Trusted Feedback – Before you start leading your song, I would get some trusted feedback from a couple people. First, share your song with a trusted pastor or theologian. This is helpful for making sure your song is theologically correct. It’s easy to write worship songs that sound cool and feel good, but if there’s not substantial truth in the song, it’s just not worth it. Have this pastor/theologian friend analyze the song and see if there might be better, truer ways of expression. Also, I’d get some feedback from a trusted singer/musician to make sure the song is catchy and singable for average folks.
2. Test It – Before you place the song as a full, official song in your worship set, test the chorus of the song at different flow moments when you lead worship. Try it at the end of the service, in a small group, or medley it with another song. This is a great way to gauge if the main part of your song is connecting with people and engaging them.
3. Tweak it – I believe many of us songwriters settle on our original, first ideas too quickly. Songs need space to develop and evolve. Take some time to try new ideas. Experiment with harmonic and melodic changes. Speed up or slow down the tempo. Spend more time pruning the song rather than adding to it. The strength of great songs is their simplicity. It’s not what you add it’s what you take away that makes all the difference. Prune away so the essential elements can speak loud and clear.
4. Compare It – I want you to be careful here. By “compare” I don’t mean that you should plagiarize another writer or lose all sense of originality. I’m referring to how your song can be made stronger by learning from other writers. For example, I love the songwriting of Matt Redman. Oftentimes, I’ll mimic his song structure and writing style because I know his songs work really well in a corporate singing environment. Even the most “original” art has its influences. Don’t focus on being original, focus on being accessible.
5. Introduce it Intentionally – I find songs have the greatest impact when they are introduced intentionally. When you’ve received feedback, made tweaks, and tested it, don’t just randomly throw it into a set. Introduce it as a closer to a sermon. Play it as a “special” song during the offering. Medley the chorus with a familiar hymn. Share the story behind it before you sing it. These type of factors prepare people to receive it.
Songwriting Coaching (& Giveaway)
It’s one of my greatest passions to equip local church songwriters in the craft of writing for their local church. It can be scary to even think about writing a song, let alone leading it on Sunday. But I’d like to help. If you’re interested, I offer songwriting coaching sessions.
This is where you and I would get together on Skype and work on your song for an hour, twice a month (or longer, if you’d like). This is a great way to get some feedback from another writer to help make your song as strong as it can be.
I want to help you get your song ready for Sundays. Go ahead and email me for more details!
To celebrate this launch, I’ve decided to give away one session to a commenter on this post. You’ll also increase your chances if you share the post on social media.
So let’s talk about it.
Do you lead original worship songs? What has helped you in getting your songs ready to lead? If not, what is holding you back? You can leave a comment by clicking here.
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Thanks for sharing David, step one is huge! And was a tough lesson for me at first.
The Creator of Heaven and Earth is my Daddy. ♫Oh to be like Him♫ Give all I have just to know Him….♫ Many other songs come to my mind as I read this posting…. Thank You!
G
Just starting something
C G
Not sure, not clear
G C G
can’t have courage, without fear
D C
And can’t know strength like you are near ♫
G
Just starting something
D G
Not sure, not clear.
Some song lyrics of mine – its a stretch to put yourself out there for sure. My family likes my music, but they are my family.
Hey David! I’m on the Writing Team at New Life Community Church in Chicago. Thanks for sharing at the Great Thou Art conference this year, lots of nuggets of gold! We’ve been writing songs for each message series since sometime last year. It’s been a cool experience working together with so many creative minds. I’m gonna share this with the rest of the team. I like the practicality and straightforwardness behind it. It’s tricky, because we usually have deadlines for our songs, but I have some ideas in my back pocket for how we can apply some of these steps in our process. Sounds groovy! Are you a fan of “oh’s” in songs? We always joke around about how every new worship song has oh’s in it, we just recently added some “oh’s” to one of Gabe’s songs and it went suuuuuper well at the Worship Collective, and it’s still ringing in my head. So catchy, such a cry of praise.
Hey David, Thanks for the post!
Probably the scariest thing I have done at my new church was introduce a chorus I wrote to the hymn ‘take my life.’ It was really weird teaching it to the band, cause they didn’t have any recording to go from. But I went ahead and played it for them (they had the music ahead of time), and just invited them to come and play it along with me. We probably played the chorus 10-12 times, building it up, taking it down, going full throttle and letting it go quiet. It was great! and the church Loved it! It probably gets one of the biggest responses of any of our songs which is SUPER humbling. It’s given me the thirst to begin singing more of my songs on sunday mornings.
Jim – that is so awesome! Definitely keep up the writing. There’s nothing like seeing people respond to truth.
I think I have a tendency to sit too long on step 3 (tweaking)… I just introduced my first original song to my congregation (with a really good response) but after sitting on it “finished” for about 7 months. I just didn’t feel like it was ready, or the right service didn’t come up. Or… Maybe the arranger in me wasn’t happy yet… I’m sure other people fall in this category too. Perhaps sometimes, it’s better to let it get refined in the fire of regular use than to present my perfect, finished creation…. Haha. I would love a writing session with you!
David I have been writing songs for quite a while and have a team in place to help refine them. Currently getting ready to release some of them. Any Tips?