Songwriting | Our Rising Sound

February 15 2009

Song release: “How I Live” by Kyle Campos (Live)

Tagged Under : audio, Kyle Campos, live, Our Rising Sound, songwriting, worship

I wrote this song about a year and a half ago and it’s been a slow evolution from where it began. Lots of rewriting in every aspect of the song. I feel satisfied with where it’s settled. I’ve been working on a studio demo of it for a long time, so many false starts due to the rewriting. This past Sunday we recorded the set live through our modest FireStudio Project setup mostly for our own internal band uses. You have to listen to yourself to see where you stink.

The mix is pretty rough, lots of stuff we need equipment wise to get a decent live recording setup, but for a rough live demo, it’ll do. The song is about our lives as worship and love for Christ. I was tired of singing about it, praying about certain things and just ready to live it. Lyrics below and you can grab the How I Live loop here.

Song credits(Our Rising Sound band):

Kyle Campos: synth/loop work, guitars, vocals
Josh Dailey: bass
Jonathan Utter: drums
Kendra Rohl: vocals

How I Live (Live) [5:52m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Verse:

I love you Lord
Cause you changed my world
Your son crucified
Be restored to your bride
You’ve come to this dark
And hardened heart
You spoke into night
And your spirit has brought me to life

Pre-Chorus:

And I want to show you more, of my love
And I want to show you more

Chorus:

How I live I love you Lord
You have changed, changed my world
How I live I love you Lord
Though this world might have stole you restore my soul, whole

Bridge:

I can’t believe what you’ve done, done for me
That I could receive all of your love
And your life has set me free

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Letter to pastors: Stop complaining about worship songs

Tagged Under : Bob Kauflin, church, Jonathan Dodson, songwriting, the Resurgence, theology, worship

Recently Jonathan Dodson wrote an article at Resurgence talking about why many worship songs about God’s love are cheap. Jonathan’s main complaint is against “Jesus is my boyfriend” worship songs that in his eyes paint at the very least a narrow and more likely inaccurate view of why God loves us. His contention is we must understand the anger and justice of God to fully understand his love and that God is almighty God, not our boyfriend. I agree 100% with what Jonathan says, I don’t think we know God’s love unless we understand grace and to understand that we need to understand justice and how it meets on the cross.

I also agree with Bob Kauflin when he talked about the importance of theology to musicians and songwriters. There are plenty of bad worship songs theologically, there are plenty I won’t play that are good musically but not lyrically. I think most can agree on that point, maybe not the specific criteria since our theology will differ, but at least that there are bad worship songs that shouldn’t be played.

But here’s the trend and attitude that’s bothering me as a worship leader, elder and songwriter and let me put this in big bold letters and address pastors directly.

Dear pastors,

1 song can’t explain every aspect of God’s character

If given the task to write a 4-5 minute worship song of God’s love I’m not going to be able to explain the full story of original sin, God’s wrath, the incarnation, death on the cross and resurrection. It’s just not possible to hit the entire story of scripture in a song. So please stop evaluating each and every song with the entirety of scripture and God’s character as the measuring stick. If given the opportunity you could find theological omission in every song ever written. And if we followed your critique we wouldn’t have any songs to sing.

I don’t have 45 minutes to go through each hermeneutic method, to explore the greek and hebrew texts and talk about the historical and cultural context inside my song. I know you do every Sunday at your pulpit as you should, that’s what we need you for, to guide, teach and encourage us theologically. But I as a worship leader and songwriter operate under different restrictions, many shared but many not.

Totality of the worship song rotation should bring theological context

Each individual song will only illuminate a very narrow aspect of God’s character, it will direct our worship in a way that seems theologically narrow when viewed in isolation. Just as if I took a 4-5 minute segment of your sermon it may seem theologically narrow. I know you guys complain about You Tube videos taking you out of context, yet you frequently turn around and do the same to your worship leaders.

Let worship leaders build a rotation of worship songs that glorify and exalt Jesus in different ways, all for who He is that together gives the body a faithful representation of Christ and his church. If you think you need a song that talks about justice, don’t tear down the songs about mercy, just have your worship leader write or introduce a song about justice. The problem isn’t too many songs about mercy and grace, it’s too few about justice and propitiation. (there aren’t too many poetic ways to rhyme with propitiation, that may be why)

In conclusion, elders, pastors, theologians, work with your worship pastors, encourage them, pray for them, give them ideas on new songs that will fill in the theological gaps of your worship. Stop making fun of all the songs and let’s write more good ones. Being a critic is cheap, being a faithful artist is challenging and worship leaders need your support.

Sincerely,

Worship Leaders

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Ryan Delmore Interview - Part 2

Tagged Under : band, interview, Ryan Delmore, songwriting, Vineyard, worship

I had the great pleasure recently of interviewing Ryan Delmore of Vineyard Music and 5 Cities Vineyard. Ryan has a new cd coming out in October entitled The Spirit, the Water and the Blood.

In Part 2 Ryan and I discuss more on his band experience in the church and outside the church, we riff a bit on worship band improvisation and how the Vineyard has cultivated that atmosphere in its worship bands. I also asked Ryan about his songwriting technique and if he has 2 creative avenues, one for the church and another less creatively binding avenue for songs that might not be intended for corporate worship. His answer was humble and profound and I think is something a lot of new young worship leaders should pray on.

“If I get a good melody, or some good chords, I don’t wanna waste them on something that doesn’t point people to God.” -Ryan Delmore

If you’re a worship leader that plays outside the church in other bands I think this statement is a challenging one. There’s much more to that answer in the interview so listen up!

Standard Podcast [11:21m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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John Mark McMillan interview Parts 3 and 4

Tagged Under : interview, John Mark McMillan, music, songwriting, video, worship

In late April John Mark McMillan did a concert at our church and he was nice enough to sit down for a video interview with us. I’ve previously posted part 1 and part 2 of that interview and now, finally, here are the remaining 2 parts.

In part 3 we discuss deeply theological issues like, can you be saved if you use a PC and how bad was I going to woop up on him in Guitar Hero. Incidently John Mark was too scared to pickup the axe(you know that’s true JM). We also discuss all his musical influences.

Part 4 we get a little more serious and discuss what the church is getting right or wrong in our worship, how John Mark remains grounded doctrinally in his writing and what some of the ground breaking worship songs were in his view.

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Congregational Songwriting: the submissions are here

Tagged Under : church, lyrics, songwriting, worship

A few weeks back I wrote a post here about an idea I had for our church and that was to let our congregation write a worship song, literally. This was sort of a group songwriting exercise taken to the extreme. I value worship songs that exposit biblical truth and also draw upon life experience to bring it into context. I see value in both and try not to use one to the exclusion of the other. The problem is that when I’m the only one writing songs for the church the life experience that I write through might not be relateable for others or might not necessarily impact others in the way it impacts me. This is why biblical truth in worship songs should be paramount and not the other way around because the only thing we find true unity in is the Holy Spirit.

So I wanted to give the church a chance to give testimony to the mighty works he’s accomplished in each person’s life that others might not know about. Thus giving glory to God and magnifying Him for the great works right before our eyes. I asked the church a question and requested responses from the congregation. The question was, “How has God’s grace changed your life specifically?” and here are some of the amazing responses I received:

Hearing the cry from the depths of my soul, God met me in my dark place and He saved me with His most honest embrace.
I lived a life full of shame, now God is using me to bring others out of a life of shame through His grace.
God saved me from my self destructive ways and is showing me His way.
I lay weak in the hands of grace and receive His strength.
God showed me His heart and healed a life full of pain, tears and fears.
Shame welcomed my sin, but it was God’s grace that lifted me up.
In my self hate I gave myself away, but God’s grace came softly to me and drew me by love and set me free.
God’s grace for me has drowned out the religious view I had of Him.
A life of mistakes and pain dramatically transformed by a hand of grace, too big to understand, that’s my Jesus that’s my King.
God’s grace has spared my life, literally.

Amen.

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Closing the gap between your taste and ability

Tagged Under : music, songwriting, video

Ira Glass, host of NPR’s This American Life, talks about the process of improving in creative work. His context is primarily video and radio work but I think everything he says here can be applied to songwriting and musicianship in general. There’s 3 major points I want to emphasize that I think are critical to successful songwriting and musicianship.

Good Taste - This is where so many Christian artists struggle. Whether it’s because they only listen to Christian music and have no creative influences beyond Tomlin and Michael W. Smith or just that they weren’t blessed with an ear for creative music it results in bad songs and bad playing. I’ve known a lot of worship leaders that knew nothing of music, were part of a great worship service and then desired to lead it. Read a chord chart, practiced a couple weeks and off they went writing and playing really bad music, but because they didn’t have good taste, they were satisfied.
Accurate Self Assessment - Assuming you have good taste now you need to be able to be critical and have accurate elf assessment so that you can accurately measure how well you’re doing or how much you need to improve. Without this good taste is meaningless because you assume that whatever you write or play is great. You’re off in la-la land and any critical thought is shoved out of your head as an attack from the devil himself. Self assessment is important in any role in our lives so that we can measure and have a road map for improvement, but this becomes more difficult in the arts because people get offended when their “artistic expression” is criticized. Rubbish! You can see a post here I wrote on proper perspective of creativity and why worship band members are so easily offended.
Perseverance and dedication - If you have good taste and you see that what you’re doing isn’t up to the level you desire you may, like many, get discouraged and quit. It’s important that we realize every successful writer and musician goes through this phase, some never get out of it, but we need to persevere and keep writing and playing. That’s the only way you get better. I know it’s hard when you feel like you’re writing a bunch of garbage, but learn from the garbage. Our mistakes are the best learning tools we have, but if you’re afraid to make them it’s going to be hard to improve.

With all that in mind, here’s the video.

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U.S. religion: even “Christians” see other ways to heaven

Tagged Under : church, culture, songwriting, theology, worship

Heaven There has been a lot of mention in various blogs about the recent survey report from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. It was incredibly revealing, maybe not shocking though as many have seen the clear trends nationally and globally. But never the less, it was painful to be confronted with some of the facts. Here’s a few that caught my eye:

66% of Protestants believe there are other ways to heaven than through Christ
11% of Protestants who claim the existence of God is an absolute certainty, say it isn’t very important to their lives
27% of Protestants do not believe in hell

The survey results should be sobering for church leadership and certainly is for me. A professor from Rice University summed up the report in an article well by saying,

“The survey shows America is, indeed, 3,000 miles wide and only 3 inches deep.”

That is just a beautiful way of describing a horrific reality. It makes me examine what I’m doing as a worship leader to either contribute or combat this. Am I leading hundreds of people every week in singing a wide variety of songs that only go 3 inches deep? Do we sing songs that confront the notion that there is no hell, that there is a way to heaven besides Christ, or that Christ life, death and resurrection shouldn’t be that important to our lives? I sure hope so.

I think the important thing as a worship leader is to get prayerful and purposeful not just in our sets but in our leadership of our teams and songwriting. We focus a lot on unity, singability, melody which are all important, but what good is unity without truth? More specifically, essential truth. What the findings in this report tell me is not just that 66% believe in other ways to Christ, but that 66% feel comfortable showing up to church with that lie and aren’t confronted by truth.

I have no desire to lead such weak and sanitized worship that the flesh and lies of the enemy aren’t offended. In the coming weeks I’m going to start a series of posts on how our phrasing and word choices in worship lyrics can contribute to essential biblical truth. No ambiguous language, no vague interpretation, no confusing imagery.

If you have any examples of worship songs you feel do this I’d love to hear them in the comments.

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Letting the congregation write worship songs…literally

Tagged Under : church, grace, Life Connection Church, songwriting, worship

John Mark McMillan at Life Connection Church At Life Connection Church we very much value songs written specifically for the local congregation. That doesn’t mean that they won’t have any relevance outside of our church, but just that it was written with our body prayerfully in mind. I believe that’s not only how the best songs are written musically, but spiritually I think that’s where the greatest gift is to the kingdom, in building of the local church.

Recently I’ve been examining ways to get my church body even more involved in our songwriting process. As a worship leader and elder I’m aware of the larger spiritual issues impacting the body, and as my role as discipleship leader I’m privy to more personal issues on a smaller scale as well. But in order to bring in everyone something else had to be done.

The idea is this. We will write a song around a theme and ask everyone in the body to submit a 1 sentence response to a question around that theme. The song’s lyrics will predominantly be made up of these responses. First up we will tackle grace. The question to the body is this…

How has God’s grace changed your life specifically?

Huge question I know, so many aspects to grace so I expect a wonderful wide spectrum of answers. The goal is to answer personally(can be anonymously) and not generally. An example of a general response would be, “He took this sinner and made me clean“, a personal response would be, “He took my life of drugs and death, and gave me a life of purity and hope.”

I’ll then take these answers and shape them poetically to fit musically, rhyme etc… I’ll probably write a chorus that captures the entirety of the submissions, but if someone submits something that God puts heavy on our hearts then we may very well use it for the chorus as well. I don’t really know what to expect out of this exercise, this is new ground for me.

By God’s grace at the end we’ll have a skillfully crafted song of worship that glorifies God by demonstrating the life saving, transforming, empowering impact of God’s grace in our church body, by our church body. I’m incredibly excited to get started on this. I’ll keep everyone up to date on how well or poorly this experiment goes, should be fun.

Let me know what you guys think, am I nuts?