So you need to create a chord chart, huh? Well, lets dive in and see what that involves. The first thing to do is to check and see if you can find the chords online. And no, I do not mean to hit guitar tab sites (those should definitely be a last resort). Check the artist or group’s website first to see if they have copies of the tab or chord charts for their music. Here are a few I’ve found:

• Sovereign Grace Music – in their online store they have a section for the sheet music where you can download lyric and lead sheets for all the albums (at least the ones I looked at) and even guitar charts for a few. Note that Lead sheets use a music staff with chords on top to show the lead melody line with chord changes.
• Shane and Shane – Shane Barnard (of Shane & Shane) has a site where he has tabs and lyrics of most of their songs.
• Red Mountain Music – they offer lead and guitar sheets for all their music.

So, last resort, if you can’t find music on the particular group/artist’s site for the specific song you need to create a chart for, you can hit the guitar tab sites. Always – ALWAYS! – check the chords yourself. Make sure they are right and you understand how they work in the song. You are responsible for the chord chart you give your team, so make sure you make it as simple and clear as possible. Some charts list moving or transitional chords along with the primary chords of the song – figure out if/how you want to differentiate these, and if your team will even need them. If you’re not going to use them, then don’t put them on the chord sheet you give your team.

And if you haven’t noticed yet, I definitely believe in creating a specific chart for your team, whether or not you can find an official one or not. A little extra work up front yields a chart created specifically with your team in mind. This is a very good thing.

Alrighty, check out this example of a basic chord chart. Consider this your baseline model – it has been stripped of all extraneous items and is just a chord chart.

So here are the basic elements of a chord chart, top to bottom:

• Song title
• song lyrics and chords
• copyright and CCLI info for legal purposes

Yep, pretty simple. If your church has a CCLI license (and they should, no argument), then you can get all the copyright and license info you need from them – in fact, they have a huge database of song lyrics as well. You can download the lyrics and the copyright/license info (specific for your church) from their site and just paste it in a document file – it saves a lot of work! Then all you have to do is format it.

Note in the main portion of the chart, where the lyrics and chords are, how the chords are written (approximately) over top of the words where the changes happen. This is the most simple way of conveying to the band where the changes are – it syncs them up with the singers. There are fancier ways of conveying chord changes which better indicate meter and timing, but that’s another post.

As far as format goes, the sky is the limit, but simplicity is key. This chart is one I created about five or six years ago. The church I minister in now uses a different format. The song title is still at the top, but the copyright/license info is right under the title. Actually, both the Title and copyright/license info is in the page header, so it shows up on multiple pages if the chart extends past the first page. I would suggest including a “page X of Y” section on any header/footer with information so that players can differentiate easily between first and second pages.

This type of chart means that you either have to teach the team the chord changes and rhythms or have them listen and pick it up themselves – which is perfectly acceptable. The sheet serves more as a reminder of how the song goes than a music sheet which tells them how to play.

Okay, after understanding this very basic format of the chord chart you can begin to add other elements, like vocal direction, instrumental entrances and exits, repetition instruction, chord changes, etc. That’ll be coming in my next post!

The Catalyst Music Project is an awesome little album, at least in my mind. The songs are very solid. I think after listening to it I could think of very valid scenarios in which the songs would be relevant and useful, at least as offertory/specials, if not as a song to teach the entire congregation for corporate worship.

In reading the info on their website (and I would suggest that!) they reference this as the “2009 Catalyst Music Project,” which, in my mind, indicates that they will most likely release more albums along the same line. I certainly hope so, because this was a very solid worship album. If their next few albums are as strong as this one the Catalyst Music Projects will begin to line up with Hillsong and Passion CDs on worship leaders shelves all over the the world (okay, my personal opinion…)

Overall the theology seems very solid and the lyrics are very biblical. You need to be sensitive to the specific congregation you serve in to make sure any particular song is relevant to that body and will benefit/bless/challenge them. That said, I’m going to just quickly note a few of the songs and why I liked them (links are to grooveshark.come where you can listen to the individual songs):

Love is the Answer – This is a great opener for an album, and in hearing it I thought about how great it would be to open a service with it. And if it hits it off with your congregation, lyrically, it is also a very solid congregational song. It’s definitely a rockier song (read: electric guitar!) so be mindful of how well your body will respond to a song so wide open (Youth Groups? Absolutely! Contemporary services? Probably… Traditional Service? Not very likely…).

One Who Overcomes – I just love Phil Wickham, and he did an awesome job on this song. It definitely is going on my short list of potential openers and specials. And it would also be great for congregational singing as well. I personally would love to introduce it as part of a series to emphasize a theme of Christ’s overcoming power. Good, good song.

Hallelujah (All I Need) - This is just a great song. I love the lyrics, the line “Christ has come to win” is just awesome. I’m actually going to use this as the opener for a service I’ll be leading next month. And I could see this being used in congregational worship as well.

God of All - This song is another one I really love the lyrics to as well. But, as much as I like the song, I think there are a few things, dynamically, I would change. I’m thinking of using this song as well that service I’ll be leading next month and if I do, then I’m going to do two primary things: first, I’m going to do the first chorus with just acoustic (or maybe electric guitar, I haven’t decided yet…gonna have to test it out with the band), and second, I want to repeat the bridge, building on the quarter notes the second time through. Those lyrics are so awesome I hate to sing them just once…

Won’t You Be My Love – This song was the little jewel hidden in the album. I’m keeping my finger on this song for any service with a missional (or even serving) emphasis. It would not be appropriate for congregational worship (at least in my mind due to the fact that it is sung from the perspective of Christ to the church up until the end). But, wow, what an awesome way to set the tone for a service on serving one’s neighbors or the need to carry the Gospel to the unsaved.

I had an excellent discussion after my last post with a good friend of mine at work. He very wisely perceived one of the implications of what I was arguing for in the post. If a service is to have a focus, which is known far enough beforehand so that everyone involved in the service can plan their portions appropriately, then that plan must be arrived at much earlier than the week of the service. The question arose about whether or not you can be Spirit-led and plan out services weeks and months in advance.

My friend quickly agreed with me that the Spirit could undoubtedly inspire and lead planning, no matter how long in advance it was done. But his reaction evidenced a primary difference I have seen many times between Charismatic/Pentecostal churches and their preparation process and that of other more reserved worship practices, say the Baptists for example. It’s not that Charismatic or Pentecostals do not believe the Spirit can lead them in planning out three months of sermons ahead of time, but rather that they (commonly) conceive of the Spirit’s leading to be more immediate, more “in the moment”.

I would never disparage that perception, but I would challenge it’s scope. I grew up in and lead worship for years within that atmosphere. But it has its limits. You might have noted in my brief list of Chris Tomlin quotes how he stated, “Those who are most prepared are the most led by the Spirit of God.” This is key, in my mind. Planning out a service does not limit the Spirit, at least if it is done with much prayer and true desire for God to be worshiped and encountered as well as the Body to be ministered to.

I have actually found that in services which have been planned rather thoroughly (albeit with much prayer!) that I actually feel very, very free. Why? Since my preparation has been so thorough I am able to focus more on worshiping and leading in worship than I am on what is going on and what might happen next. But even in that the Spirit leads the service, not me (or the Worship Leader). I must still be sensitive to the Spirit and mindful of the congregation. Sometimes a chorus needs to be repeated an extra time, or the congregation needs a little extra exhortation, or there just needs to be a moment of silence between songs, to all the Spirit time to work on the hearts of the people.

My main point in this post is to encourage you not to fear planning ahead. I’m not talking a week in advance, I’m talking weeks and even months in advance. It frees a pastor to be able to dedicate an entire week to developing a message to minister to the Body instead of the last few days of the week. And it offers the Worship Leader the opportunity to have more time to find those songs which will “perfectly” serve and minister to the Body.

When you seek the Lord and truthfully desire and seek his guidance you can proceed with the confidence that he will lead and guide you, whether or not there is writing on the wall or a voice coming from the air. His desire is to use you, and in being willing and available you will surely walk the path he has set for you.

When a church decides it’s service is going to be traditional or contemporary, they unnecessarily box themselves in stylistically. I’ve already commented on the dangers of churches creating separate traditional and contemporary services, so what’s my perspective on this very pressing issue in the church? My answer is simple, really: focus.

That’s it. Focus.

But what does that mean? Well, I’d liken it to some level of purpose-driven worship, but that would be a misnomer in the end, because its less an emphasis upon the purpose of the service and more a focus upon God and what he wants to accomplish in the hearts of the people.

Consider this over-generalization of the elements of a traditional service:

• A choir with a leader (who doesn’t necessarily sing)
• Simple instrumentation – usually organ or piano, rarely a mix thereof
• traditionally led from hymn book, though could be done with lyric display now
• large majority of songs would have been found in a hymn book from 30-40 years ago
• Songs generally have minimal dynamics, with the emphasis being upon singing a specific set of words (verses 1, 2 and 4 – for example)
• high emphasis upon respect and honor (very low on emotionalism and experience)

Yeh, I know that’s a very stereo-typed list. Check out my version of the stereotyped elements of a contemporary service:

• Band-driven – i.e. drums, guitar(s), 1-8 vocalists, and other instruments, sometimes including piano/keys
• most songs sung are less than 15 years old
• songs (if played correctly) have a strong dynamic elements
• emphasis in service upon experience and an encouragement to engage emotions
• more informal atmosphere

There is also the Emergent worship movement, but I consider that a mutated variation of the contemporary service. It’s primary emphasis is upon the experience, and it merges very modern concepts of art with a blending of more liturgical styles with contemporary practices.

In the end, most modern-day takes on the worship service tend towards a purpose-driven model. But the fault here is that the purpose-driven model seeks to bring something about – it has something to accomplish. What I am proposing here is less trying to do something more trying to perceive something. Trying to perceive what, though? To perceive Christ, to perceive the Gospel.

The question to ask when preparing a service is not “What do we want to accomplish in this service?” but rather, “What does God want to say to us – to show us through his Word – in this service?” That is your FOCUS.

Once you know what the Focus of the service is, then you choose songs, as well as styles which complement and reinforce it, which help the congregation contemplate upon it. There are always solid hymns which explore these themes, but the use of them should always be equally evaluated alongside many modern songs/hymns which will also complement and/or reinforce the Focus of the service.

If the Focus is best served by a Gospel song, then use it. If the Focus would best be served by a quieter, simpler set, consider just using an acoustic guitar or two with a djembe (or two!). Maybe you really just need two singers for that set as well.

But maybe the Focus calls for something bigger, and you need to pull out all the stops. Call in that violinist you keep on speed-dial for special occasions. Round up a few extra singers. Make sure you have at least two electric guitarists as well as the acoustic. And challenge the keyboardist with songs that’ll have him/her stretching between two keyboards!

Just realize that hymns are songs just as praise choruses are. Some are more theologically correct than others – but each of them says something and explores something about God and his Gospel. Do not choose a song because it is a hymn or because the congregation likes it. Choose it because the congregation will best be served by singing that song on that day, when the preacher is going to be teaching about that specific topic/passage.

This way, when the service begins, it’s not about ‘doing’ church, it’s about knowing Christ – knowing him within the context of the local body worshiping together. And it’s about focusing on him and what he wants to speak within that body on that day.

I’ve been reading Chris Tomlin’s “Way I Was Made” and he had an excellent chapter on worship leading. You can check out my review of his book, if you so desire. But today I thought I would unashamedly offer up some great quotes which are definitely not my own:

“Being a worship leader means I deeply desire to use the gifts God has given me to lead others in a meaningful response to Him.” (p. 108)

“The worship leader God is after is the one whose heart is captured by Him.” (p. 116)

“Those who are most prepared are the most led by the Spirit of God.” (p. 121) – on why it’s good to plan out services as opposed to playing it by ear.

“New songs breathe life into your ministry.” (p. 126)

The beautiful and wonderful part about teaching exegetically through the Bible is that it forces teachers/pastors to work through and engage more difficult passages. To me, at least, there is almost an exciting challenge to it (when I’m teaching) – how can I open this passage to the body so they really understand and see what the writer and the Spirit are saying through it?

But as a worship leader, in designing services, themes work much, much more easily for us. And if it’s going to be a passage, ones like 1 Corinthians 13 or Ephesians 1:3-14 are near perfect – very straightforward with strong themes to draw upon when making song choices.

But what do you do when the passage is, well, just not so straightforward or thematic?

I was handed a service recently with Galatians 4:12-20 as the passage which the pastor would be teaching from. Verse 20 ends with “…for I am perplexed by you.” (ESV) What does a worship leader do with a passage like this?

Well, I’m going to let you stew over it for a week or so (as ::cough:: I am as well…). Here’s a couple of clues, though:

• context is very important (context of the book, the passage in relation to the rest of the book, the book and passage in relation to the New Testament as well as the rest of the Bible)
• The thematic movement you use for the service you develop will not directly mimic the theme or direction of the passage – remember, you are setting the stage for the exploration of this passage.

That’s all I’m going to give you for now – I’ll break down how I am addressing and working with this passage next week!

“I don’t see why the praise team needs to practice during the week. Before you came they only practiced before the Sunday Morning service and it was okay. Do they really need to practice during the week?” It was my pastor (at the time) asking me this (well, an approximation thereof). My response? Well, to tell the truth, I was speechless. Flabergasted. This was an issue I had never even considered coming up. And when the question was asked, I sadly fumbled through an answer which should not have been hard at all.

So, should a praise team practice during the week? Absolutely. Point blank, end of story.

But why? Ah, there’s the rub, isn’t it? If your musicians are good enough to wing it, why can’t you just skip the mid-week practice and just have everyone show up early on Sunday morning? (note, in this latter argument, I find less fault in the argument and more in the motivation behind it)

First, though, let me delineate the difference between a small, growing church wherein the praise team is less a “team” and more a single leader with one or two (or even three) followers. Having a single leader who is accompanied by one person on drums and maybe a single vocalist is much different than a full team consisting of 4+ instrumentalists as well as vocalists. When you are a single leader who has a few “helpers” in the wings, all you have to do is make sure you have all your ducks in a row beforehand and you can usually “get away” without a midweek practice. Yet still, note that there is practice happening – it’s just you doing it by yourself, because you consist of a majority of the band (and also realize that when you do things this way you are relegating anyone who helps you to a secondary role which emphasizes unimportance and very minor involvement/ownership).

So practice happens in virtually every situation because wherever there is any level of preparation that preparation (at least in my mind, no matter how inconsequential) is practice. If you do not want your team to develop much beyond a single or dual instrument setup you can probably “get by” with this type of preparation. But if your motivation is to find some level of preparation you can “get by” with, then my response is that you shouldn’t be in the worship ministry in the first place, specifically in its leadership.

Here is why a mid-week practice is – in my mind, at least – an unarguable fact of reality: preparation to minister effectively, excellently and without distraction is an integral part of serving the local body. In a more commonsense approach, a musician must practice. Without practice there is stagnation. The same applies to a band or a team of players. They need time playing together to learn to play together.

(Warning: rabbit trail and soapbox to follow:)

Now, if you have the same team you’ve had for the last 10 years, and are playing the same 100 or so songs you’ve always played, then you might feel like you could cut that mid-week practice out and not lose much at all. Well, I would say you’ve already lost so much it probably wouldn’t matter. Why? If there has been no change in your team, then there has been no development of new talent and there has been no integration of new members and talent to the local body. Your team is closed. Is Christ closed? Is the Church closed?

And if you are using the same songs you’ve used for for the last five or ten years, then there is theological stagnation at work as well. Why do worship leaders seek out new songs? To find a new way to manipulate the congregations emotions? Well, there may be some who do so – which is sad as well as disastrous for the body. But the real motivation is to find/discover new ways of articulating the Gospel in theologically sound ways, so the local body is challenged to contemplate, consider and apply the Gospel continually, sometimes in differing ways.

And to introduce new material, there must be practice.

Finally, for your team to effectively eliminate distractions during the service there must be practice.

In short, the mid-week practice is an integral part of the worship team’s service of the local church body.

The last post on perfecting your praise team practice focused more on general organization and planning. Basically how you approach the practices and what you hope to accomplish. Now we’re going to focus more on getting (almost) everything accomplished in the time you have available for practice.

2 Hour Perfection

So how long should a practice be? I have noticed that while experienced musicians are fine for a full two hours of practice, less experienced ones tend to start to drift and lose momentum around the 90 minute mark. Personally, I like to aim for the two hour mark, planning things out so that I have a chance (however slight) that I will finish early, but realistically aiming for no more than 120 minutes. The team I am on right now actually has practices which err on the other side of 120 minutes, usually hitting the 130-40 mark. But our team only plays every other week and and practices once for that service, so one 2.5 hour practice every other week is more tolerable in our situation.

I would argue that in a team that practices every week, the leader should strive to never exceed the two hour mark. You must guard your people against burnout!

Simple Trick for High Spirits

One of the hardest things to do is manage your practice so that it doesn’t feel ‘grinding’. Like you’re just plowing through material and doing the best you can (though, in effect, that is sometimes what you are doing…). A very simple way to help with keeping the attitude up and the ‘grinding’-mindset down is to use familiar songs to offset more difficult ones.

This can be done very easily, the only drawback is that to do this the team will have to practice stuff out of the order it will be done in the service (usually). Clear communication usually keeps that from being a major obstacle. Look over the list of material to be covered in practice and pick out the song the team should know the best, the one you should really spend the least amount of time on. Start with this song! This will give you the opportunity to set a positive attitude for the rest of the practice and encourage your team about how great they are.

A related trick is to save songs which use only one or two instruments (usually guitar or piano) or less vocalists until the end, so some of the team gets to go home ‘early’. If your time management is on task, then the people who are involved in the song should still be leaving about the time they expected, while everyone else gets a nice little surprise of being able to leave early.

Time Management – Figure out how much time you have for each song!

This is key to finishing within the time frame you want to. Unless your instrumentalists are disciplined  in getting to practice early, you need to set aside at least 15-20 minutes at the beginning of practice just for instrument setup, sound check, and prayer. As a side note, I would suggest leaving the prayer until you are ready to start (right before the sound check).

So if you are aiming for a 120 minute practice, and you have 7 songs to go over (in 105 minutes!) that leaves you roughly 15 minutes for each song. Keep an eye on the clock as you practice. Assuming practice starts at 7pm, then around 8pm you should be finishing your third song or starting your fourth one. If you’re still on your second song then you need to stop and move on. Period. If the song needs more work tell your team that they are going to have to work on the trouble spots on their own. If the song is still exceptionally horrible you can start with that song in the pre-service practice the day of the service to iron out any lingering problems.

What must be understood is that you cannot make every song perfect. You need to fix problems, but if its something someone can work out on their own, it is okay to tell them they need to do so for the sake of practice time management.

Bits and pieces do not a quick practice make

This sounds a little counter-intuitive to many musicians but you should run the songs all the way through unless something catastrophic happens. This was a hard lesson for me to swallow, because – being a classically trained pianist – I have spent 30 minutes working on a four or five measure phrase. But you can’t do that with your team (though you can suggest they do so on their own). Any decent musician realizes when they are doing things wrong. Going completely through the song once gives them a chance to figure out what they are doing wrong on their own. Give them a chance to ask questions. If the questions do not address all the issues you noted in the run-through, then quickly and efficiently go over what needs to happen in the trouble spots. Then play the song through again.

Most songs will take at least two or three runs to get right – which is fine. Most songs you can run through three times in about 15 minutes, if you don’t dally around in between runs. Sometimes there are specific spots which should be focused on separately (like the primary crescendo of a song, or the transition into the instrumental and then the instrumental section itself), and this is fine, just be very efficient.

This is how starting with an easier song can help some as well. If you only spend 10 minutes on the first song, then you have 5 extra minutes for the second song or another song later on. Some songs need 20-25 minutes worth of work done on them – just pace yourself well with your other songs so the practice doesn’t ‘accidentally’ slip past the 2.5 hour mark (a definite ‘no-no’).

Realistic Standards and Expectations

In the end, it boils down to understanding that things will not be perfect. With time and experience every leader develops his own rhythm for practicing and “getting things done.” Some teams require different methods – these are just ones I have found to work in most every environment I’ve lead in.

That said, always remember the old adage, “Less is more”. In the end, if something is not working to the point that it most likely will be distracting in the service, consider cutting it out or simplifying it. You are not required to perfectly replicate a song, you are required to enable and empower your congregation to worship God.

Know that most songs will never be perfect, and some will be done much better than others. Just make sure that you push the team to an acceptable point in practice and then direct them on the portions to work out on their own before the service (if it’s exceptionally rough around the edges).

You can have an effective practice within the 120 minute time limit, you just have to be practical and disciplined.

Okay, I apologize. The “Perfect Praise Team Practice” title might be a little exaggerated - I’m not sure what I’m going to discuss in this and the next post will help your practice be perfect, but it should help it get much closer.

Goals

So what makes one practice better than another? I would suggest three elements: quality, efficiency and quantity. Let’s look at those in reverse order.

• Quantity – you want to cover everything that needs to be covered
• Efficiency – you want to use your time wisely so that in covering all your material your practices do not run much past the 2 hour mark
• Quality – in the time spent on what you need to go over you want to get the material to be as excellent as possible

Of course, there may be other things which are also important to accomplish in a practice, but these stick out to me as the most important. I am going to spend an entire post on streamlining your time management in practice, so I won’t really cover that in this post. But before we get to that point, there are some more general points of planning that need to be addressed.

Material to be covered

As I have experienced there are two types of practices. I would venture to call them “long-term” and “short-term”. As opposed to other types of musical practicing, in the Praise and Worship arena, both types are almost equally relevant and effective. Both also have their pros and cons. Which type you choose depends on the way you have your team(s) organized and how talented your people are.

Long-Term oriented practices

These practices spend at least the first 45-60 minutes on new material. The general concept treats your praise team members as a single band. This works if you have a very consistent team (you use the same people almost every week). With this type of practice session, team members are expected to be at every practice because this is where they will learn new material. The primary drawback to this type of practice is that it leaves a little over 10 minutes for each song that needs to be gone over for the upcoming service (figuring roughly 5-7 songs in that service).

But the positive of this type of practice (which I did for several years at my last church) is that less skilled musicians are given more time to learn and practice new material (I would start introducing them to new material a month before we played it, sometimes more).

Short-Term oriented practices

For these practices the entire time is spent on material for the upcoming service. The positive point is that you have more time to spend on each individual song. Another positive is that this type of practice is great for large teams where there are many different musicians (I consider vocalists musicians as well) rotating or multiple teams. If the Worship Leader/Pastor can plan several weeks ahead as far as his music is concerned he can get a songlist and even listening material to his teams a week or so before a particular service’s practice so they have plenty of time to prepare. With disciplined musicians and a bit of planning on the Worship Leader/Pastor’s part this is an excellent way to structure practices because you can introduce and do much more new material.

The primary drawback is that the musicians need to have a decent level of personal motivation (to prepare at least some on their own). And it seems to work much more smoothly if there is a higher level of musicianship on the team (talent+training+discipline). Though there is time for a bit of tweaking, this scenario does not give you a chance to teach each musician their part individually – they have to prepare it beforehand (to some extent, or be able to generate it on the spot!).

So, while it is called “short-term” it takes a bit of long-term planning on the part of the Worship Leader/Pastor so he can get the materials in the hands of his people a decent amount of time beforehand. I would suggest using a blog or even (if your budget can afford it) a subscription-based service such as The Planning Center Online to help with this.

Preparing the Material for Practice

Once you have figured out how the general structure of your practice is going to be, you need to prepare all your materials and get your brain in gear so you know what’s going on in each song. For new songs, I’ve blogged about how to go about learning them and then teaching them to your team (Learning a New Song Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3). For other material which the team should know already, make sure the day of the practice you go over the entire service, planning how each song fits into it and the transitions between each. The more you figure out ahead of time the less you have to make up on the spot (and admit it – you do it, I do it, we all fly by the seat of our pants when we don’t plan well…). If you can, check over your chord charts to make sure the chords and keys are. The best way to do this is play through the songs according to the chord charts on guitar or piano.

Coming up next!

Next time I’ll go over these points as well as a few others:

• Time Management – how to get through those songs effectively in 90-120 minutes…hopefully…
• Why 90-120 minutes is the perfect practice length (at least in my mind)
• The simplest trick/technique to keeping your team’s spirits up while you work them hard

“How He Loves” is probably one of my newest favorite songs. It is written by John Mark McMillan, but I think it is being made much more popular by the David Crowder Band, in both their “Church Music” album as well as Passion’s latest, “Awakening.” In checking on Grooveshark.com, I found even more people who had covered the song. I put a few in a playlist if you haven’t heard the song before, and here’s a copy of the lyrics (pdf).

The song has a pretty interesting story behind it, and if you heard John’s recording off his “The Song Inside the Sounds of Breaking Down” album, then you may have gotten a glimpse of it by what he finishes the song with. I think Integrity Music snagged this incredible musician up, and they’ve released a single of the song on iTunes, and while the song costs $.99, if you’re willing to fork over another $.30 they’ll graciously include a five minute video about the song. Personally, I thought it was worth the extra cash. The arrangement in the single is pretty cool, and the video was very insightful. John wrote the song as he was working through the grief of losing a very close friend. I like where he talks about how the song is not about pretty love, but how God loves us when we are at our messiest. It sounded as though the song had come out of his realization of the anger and plain old sin in his heart which were coming out in his grief (anger, frustration, etc.) at losing his friend. And then he realized that God loved him in spite of that.

What I love about the song is how it never justifies sin, or excuses it, but the emphasis in the song is upon losing one’s self in the love of God, a love that is glorious and gracious, and in beholding it we lose sight of (and our grip upon) our regrets and afflictions. The song really does focus upon God and his love.

The Structure

The song is pretty simple, structure-wise. There are a few variations between different recordings. In his “The Song Inside…” album, John does a Verse 1 -> Pre-Chorus twice before going into the full-blown chorus, as does the David Crowder Band in “Church Music”. But in the single he recently released through Integrity, John only does his Verse 1 and Pre-Chorus once before hitting the Chorus. I’m not so sure I like the latter option – it builds too quickly. In the single he starts dynamically much stronger, and I think it sounds so much nicer to start with just acoustic (as in “The Sound Inside…”) or even as Jared Anderson does in his version (of course I love starting on the piano…I’m a pianist!). But, then again, on the single John also throws in a pretty fun “Who-o-o-ah!” section at the end of his arrangement for the single.

The Dynamics

This is a song which is closely tied to its dynamics – if you can not get the contrast of quiet, build, and all-out working, the song is almost not worth it. However you structure it, the climax of the build is the chorus, you want it to explode dynamically on the first words of the chorus. If you are going to do the first verse and pre-chorus twice before going into the chorus, then you definitely need to start on a single instrument (be it guitar or piano).

A neat example of the way dynamics can shape the song differently is to compare how the David Crowder Band handles the second verse versus how John handles it. DCB makes it into a bridge of sorts, actually dynamically making that the climax of the song (which could have some pretty neat theological emphasis as well), while John always treats the second verse as the first until the last two lines, starting with “I don’t have time…” where the band begins pounding on the eighth-note – which is so much fun to play!

Instrumentation

This is an excellent song for a minimal band as well as a full-blown one. You can pretty much pull it off on acoustic guitar by itself (and probably piano, though I haven’t played around with creating an arrangement yet). But if you can at least have a guitar, bass and drums you can really draw out the dynamics. Of course, having an electric guitar on rhythm to fill out the arrangement wouldn’t hurt, and another to nail that lead line would be gravy, right?

Speaking of the lead line, we’ve done it at our church with a violin taking it. Beautiful, simply beautiful. It’s one of those lines which you could give to just about any instrument, especially woodwinds or strings. A Cello would probably give the line a little darker tone than the violin had. A clarinet would be different, and probably also add a dark tone with a touch of wistfulness. A Saxophone would probably contrast the tone of the elctric guitars nicely. But I’m not sure how a brass instrument (trumpet, French horn, trombone) would work with the line – though if you have one, I’d say give a whirl and let me know how it works!

As far as piano/keys, this song really lends itself to a deep, strong pad. I will admit, though, whenever I play the song I always switch over to our B3 organ for the build in the second verse and just jam out there until the end of the song. That adds a nice change in dynamic as well, if you have a good b3 sound in your keys (or are fortunate enough, as we are, to have someone who lets us use his B3!).

Special Issue: Lyric adaptation

This came as a little surprise to me. One of my favorite lines is “And Heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss.” DCB changed the lyrics to “And Heaven meets earth like an unforseen kiss,” which is close, but not the same. Our [very wise] Worship Pastor chose to use DCB’s version. His decision was guided on the difference between performance and worship. As a special or offertory, he pointed out, the phrase would be perfectly fine. But during worship the language is a little crass, to be honest. And while the congregation would probably get used to it very quickly, any visitor would be distracted by the words. This logic seems to line up very strongly with Paul’s discussion on order in worship in 1 Cor 14. Something to consider as you teach your team and congregation the song.