I love my name. Not in the sense that David is all that fabulous, but in the sense that I love to see it.
I love to see my name on the big screen, getting credit as a songwriter.
Matter of fact, if you don’t know that I wrote a certain song, I’m a bit upset. The more I’m recognized and credited and loved and adored, the more I enjoy my life.
If you suggested a fireworks display to honor my songwriting brilliance, I’d be all over that.
These are the confessions of a self-centered songwriter.
How To Be An Unproductive Writer
As I sat down to write last night, I noticed something about myself. I care more about getting recognized than I do being faithful.
I care more about a sweet melody and an amazing arrangement than I do theological accuracy.
I was more preoccupied with loving myself than I was loving Jesus. And that scares me.
You know what that songwriting session resulted in? Nada. It was extremely unproductive. No good ideas.
Want to be more unproductive in your writing? Obsess over yourself.
A Return to the Heart
I want to return to the joy of writing.
I long for the purity of being preoccupied with Jesus.
Not that it will always be easy. Songwriting should feel laborious most of the time.
But I don’t want to waste my energies worrying about how my fame will spread. I have a hard time believing God will bless that. And I have a hard time believing those songs will help anybody worship.
When my songwriting becomes more about promoting myself than it does promoting the glory of Jesus, I’m in trouble.
Nothing will kill your songwriting productivity faster than self-worship.
Let’s return to the heart. Let’s write for the glory of Jesus. Let’s write for the good of the church.
Let’s forget ourselves as we get lost in the majesty of God. I have a feeling the best songs will flow from that place.
Question: What is your greatest songwriting challenge? Let’s discuss in the comments!
Have you signed up for my Worship Leader Newsletter? For a limited time, I’m offering a brand new e-book, “Beyond Sunday: A Step-by-Step Guide To Creating and Sustaining A Vision For Your Worship Team” for FREE to new subscribers. Check it out HERE!
The question I ask myself every Sunday is “am I multitasking in worshipping God?” am I playing this new song I wrote for Him alone, is is some of my own agenda creeping in?
When I lead my church in a song I’ve written I never say I wrote it. When I introduce it to my team during practice I usually say “it’s a rare song… I’m not sure you would have heard it before” so that they dont suspect I wrote it. I personally never “fess up” unless asked directly. That’s my personal MO because I don’t ever want pride to creep in. I have also found that when I lead the song if others know I wrote it I am thinking less about worshipping and more about “I hope this song doesn’t flop… That will be so embarrassing! Everyone knows I wrote it!” It’s just distracting for me. Now there is definitely a case to be made for sharing giftings, letting my place in the body be known, and especially making it known when the Lord gives our congregation a specific song to be sung prophetically (as in, “I feel like the Lord gave me this original song for us to sing because as a church we need to proclaim _______”). But I feel like the instances where someone has to know I wrote it are exceptions. Worship is about God alone, I don’t think I have any right to “multitask.”
I like your perspective, Grace. Thanks for approaching your songwriting with such humble, God centered motives. A deeper question could also be asked, “Is it wrong to take credit for writing a song and even broadcasting it?” Makes me wonder how someone like Chris Tomlin deals with this stuff.
Great post, David! I’ve recently been struggling with this very issue.
I want to write. I don’t care if my name is on it. I just want to create art that honors the Creator.
I would like to ask you a question, though.
Recently, one of our pastors shared some rough lyrics with me that he had been writing for an Advent song. This is the first opportunity I have had at my church to collaborate, so when given the opportunity, I was excited to be part of a process.
I sat down with my guitar, and some of the chords that he had down. I came up with a melody and added a chorus to the verses he had written. Then, spent many hours in the evenings working through the laborious process that you speak of in your post.
The song began to come together.
Then, two months ago, our church hired a full-time worship pastor. (I have been part time on staff for ten years.) The song was handed over to the new guy. I was not contacted to continue as a part of the collaboration or invited to a meeting to work on the song. In fact, I didn’t know that the chords and melody had been completely changed until last week. I am trying to process this.
I want to not be hurt or angry. But, I really don’t know how. I want to believe this is not because of pride, but more because I had invested so much of my own heart in the song. Although, I know that if I am honest, I am really just kind of angry and hurt that so many hours of creative energy have been basically tossed aside.
Am I the only creative person who feels this way? I was excited about the collaboration and how all of us working together could glorify God and produce a heart-cry for our church.
But, it seems I have been shut out completely. The song has now been recorded in its new form with the chorus that I wrote to a different melody without any further input from myself. (Not even and invitation to give input.) What would you do?
Sorry, I know this isn’t “Dear Abby,” but this post really hit a wound that I just suffered this week.
Wow, that’s intense. I probably don’t know the whole story. Did the new worship pastor know you were one of the writers?
Hey there:
I know you didn’t ask me but I couldn’t help but be touched by your vulnerability and authenticity in sharing. I love how you identify your thoughts and feelings and get right in there and wade through them.
Of couse you are hurt. Of course you are feeling the way you feel. You have life, and creativity, and love, and effort wrapped up in a vulnerable creation that was wrested away from you.
You are NOT the only one who feels that way. You are not bad, or wrong, or self-centered, or selfish, or whatever to feel the way you feel.
You are normal. Welcome to the human race. 🙂
The cool thing about Christianity is that we have the distinct blessing of being sharpened through conflict. God does not throw us into a plotless story, He uses conflict and ickiness to shape His image bearers – me and you.
You are so brave to be processing the way you are, and I will believe and pray in faith that you will come to see the best way for you to work through this, and I hope you will keep us updated.
Blessings to you and your ministry.
Sarah, you rock! Thanks for sharing your gift of encouragement with us here. We’re all better for it.
2nd week into his hiring, I played the song for him, told him we had been working on it 4 Advent. So, he had heard the original, and knew of my excitement at the idea of songwriting finally coming out of our local body.
I guess I need to bring this up to our WP and the pastor who started the song. I’m just so hurt right now, I don’t know how to approach it. I’m having a hard time deciding how to do it. It’s hard for me to imagine that he didn’t know what he was doing. I’m praying God will help me give him the benefit of the doubt and grace to give grace when I bring it up.
I pray that when i do, God will somehow redeem this situation.
Please know that your blog has challenged me and taught me and reminded me. I’m thankful for it.
Thanks so much for reading. I agree, I think it’s probably good to bring up and talk it out. Situations always seem to get better when the secret things are brought out into the open. I’ll be praying for you.
Hi David, regarding your question, I think those are two very separate issues. I believe songwriting is a gift from the Lord and a way to worship Him. Should we broadcast music? While I don’t like how industrialized “worship” has become, I am led into worship everyday by worship leaders from around the globe, so yes, broadcasting has immense benefits. Wouldn’t someone who can bake cookies only really be using their baking gift if they shared their cookies? As for the question of should a songwriter get credit, I guess my question is “why should they care?” like I said before, you can’t multitask while you worship God. Songwriting (and the purpose of song writing: using the song in worship) is worship to God. I don’t know why having another purpose (self glory, retaining visitors in church, etc) is even a possibility. God blesses whatever He wants. If he wants to make Chris Tomlin famous so that I can listen to his CD and worship too, awesome. If he wants to make ME famous thats cool too. But worship music is NOT worship music if it is serving any other purpose than worshipping God. (I hope I am not sounding too harsh! I just feel like there is only one “person” who I care in this entire world that they know I did anything. If I die in obscurity or if I die memorialized on the Dove charts, who cares! And what a freeing feeling it is!)
Well said, Grace. I really love your purity of heart. Keep challenging us!
I think when God has done something in your heart and you express it through music, it’s entirely appropriate to shout it, provided u give the glory to the One to whom it rightfully belongs.
@grace, I think I’m just reiterating your point
you kidding? my worship demos are an exercise in vanity…
@ Sarah, you have no idea how much I needed someone to speak that encouragement to me. Thank you so much my new friend! I love how God uses people we’ve never met in ways we could never imagine to speak joy into our hearts!
God bless you!
Isn’t that cool! Thank you for the tweet btw. Despite the bad things (porn, massive amounts of porn – stay away from porn), the internet has been such a huge blessing to me to be able to meet kindred spirits all over the world, share ideas, empathize, and walk the journey together.
So thankful for our moderator here as well – yay David!
🙂 – I’m obsessed with the emoticons 🙂
Ok..now the challenge in songwriting:
Making something that people will want to listen to. Or writing something that comes out the same way twice. LOL. My best songwriting comes when I am driving alone, and the spirit is just flowing and writing new music, but that stuff is for me and God.
Are you sure it’s just for you and God? I think a lot of people might benefit from it as well?
For some reason I cannot write anything if God isn’t there.
The only times I’ve gotten songs is when I’m deeply into His presence and worship songs flows out of that intimate time with Him and Holy Spirit actually helps me sing beautiful melodies to God. Outside of His presence I write wack stuff because I’m just doing it just to do it. It’s crazy
David, come on! For real!?! Why you got ta be nailin me to the wall like this all the dang time?
But seriously, I think this is the best post I have ever read on songwriting for worship! And I may have obsessively read a few.
Keep it up!
Haha! Thanks Aubrey. I’ll try not to nail you next time 😉