Songs

I’ve decided to start keeping a track of songs I’m currently working on. I’ll try to make notes about ideas or themes, and where possible I’ll upload demos.

These songs are generally written to be sung by our church, as part of our worship of God. I try to make them based on Scripture, so as to encourage the church with the truth of God’s Word. I believe that (for better or for worse) with the current trend of shorter attention spans and simplified education systems, many people walk out of the average church worship service having already forgotten most of what the sermon was about. The wonderful thing about music is that we might find ourselves humming the words of a song we’ve heard hours (or even days) later. If we can fill songs with good theological truths, then we’re giving people an extra chance to be edified (as long as the words and melody are memorable enough to be ‘hummable’).

These songs are written about God, to communicate truth to each other, but they are also written to Him. We know that God is awesomely (in the fullest sense of the word)powerful, but that He is also deeply caring, and desires an intimate relationship with each of us. To reflect this, I try to include an aspect of personal response in the songs that I write. They may be written entirely from a personal perspective, or it may be that the chorus of a song is a response to the truth that has been proclaimed during the verse(s).

Some people seem to have decided that to include any sense of emotion in our times of corporate worship might be manipulative or shallow. Although I’m sure this has been the case in some times / places, I think that to suggest that God prefers us to be ‘cold and clinical’ at all times when we’re thinking about Him would be a fairly long bow to draw. I believe that He has given us music (and emotion) as a wonderful gift, and that we should consider carefully how we use it, but that we should definitely not ‘bury it’ for fear that it might be used wrongly (see Matthew 25). It makes me very sad that because of the sin that is so evident in the world, people sometimes feel the need to react by fleeing from an idea so far that they ‘throw out the baby with the bathwater’ in this way.

Hopefully this sheds some light on some of the factors I’m trying to consider when I write songs. I often write with friends, so some of their songs may end up featuring here also. At the end of the day, our goal is not to create a ‘legacy’ or ‘career’, but to honour God with the abilities that He has given us, and to live our lives as ‘living sacrifices’ (Romans 12).

-peter