Songwriting: The Tribute

From the time I was very young, I found my most satisfying purpose for songwriting was to write a tribute. This is a little embarrassing, but I think my first official tribute song was to the graduating seniors in my high school choir.  I got up during rehearsal one day, nervous and awkward, and played and sang my little song about how awesome they were and how much we underlings would miss them when they graduate.  I wonder if I found a rhyme for graduation.  Adulation?  I'm glad I've forgotten!  If the seniors thought I was a geek, they disguised their feelings, and thanked me for my song.

Over the years, I have written poignant songs for suffering friends, good-bye songs for teachers, funny songs for showers and birthdays, romantic songs for weddings, sentimental ones for my kids.  I love the process of personalizing a lyric, especially if it is like a secret wink that no one else sees.

Over the last couple of months, I painstakingly composed a song for my niece's wedding.  I had to write it for guitar because we could not fit my keyboard into the van with all the sound equipment, unless we left the kids and grandma behind, and the lodge where she got married had no piano.  I practiced the heck out of my guitar and have the finger callouses to prove it.

I knew Jenna and Alex would not want a sappy love song like The Rose or a traditional Ave Maria-type of song.  This is the couple who sent out a "save the date" wedding video that was worthy of a Target Commercial award for cuteness and joy.  My favorite engagement photo of them was on the tandem bike that they actually ride around in their neighborhood, always garnering hoots and hollers.

So when I wrote the song, I knew it had to have a nod to the bike.  And to their playful romance.  And to their faith in Christ.  Probably the first wedding song ever about riding a bicycle, but it brought a big smile to the adorable couple, and that's what it's all about.

Chorus:

Let's go ride a bicycle together

And let's go make a lovely life forever

We'll build it on the ROCK that will not falter

I give my heart here at the altar

Now if I only had a picture to share of Dave and me dancing Gangnam-style at the reception.  

Ring Side View from a Worship Leader

A man recently blogged that the only true worship music is Gregorian chant; that all modern worship music is inadequate to magnify our great King.  I chuckle, because when Pope Gregory reformed the church music in the Middle Ages, he shook up the Roman Catholic music scene with his "modern worship."  I don't know what people sang before that, but his chant style was NEW.

Paradox:  Sing to the Lord a NEW song (Psalm 96:1.)  There is nothing NEW under the sun (Eccl. 1:9.)

Wisdom says worship is not about new or old, or about the style, or the volume, or the quality of musicianship, or the acoustics, or the instruments.  One of the first lessons I learned as a worship leader was to lay my song and style preferences down at the altar.  A song that makes me want to yawn may be the exact song that heals another's relationship with God and draws him or her into the holy of holies.

Many Sundays I stand before the people of our church and ache for those who can't seem to cross that threshold into worship.  They don't realize the veil has been torn and they can enter into the throne room.  You can see it in their glazed eyes and bored countenance.

Worship is not a complicated mystery created for musicians and mystics.  It is a command for everyone and can be improved by considering a few important things:

• Come into corporate worship with expectancy.  Read what went on in the early church in Acts.  God was ACTIVE!  People were keenly aware of his spirit moving.  I venture to guess that God has not changed.  We have.  We've taken needle and thread and stitched the veil back together because it's more comfortable.  We don't want to REALLY see his glory.  We don't want to REALLY know his calling on our lives.

• Confess your unbelief and milquetoast attitude.  Ask for a fresh encounter with God.

• Don't be so cerebral about your worship.  The Hebrew word for worship means to prostrate.  That sounds like the body should be involved.  Let's stop picking apart temperaments and personalities and instead think about what it really means to bring a sacrifice of praise.  Could part of that mean sacrificing self-consciousness?

• Worship is not an escape or an opiate that is supposed to send us into some Zen ecstasy.  It is meant to open our hearts to hear and respond to the Kol Yahweh, the voice of God.  It allows us to be receptive to the scripture and sermon to follow.  Does your pastor's sermon ever fall flat on your ears?  How was your worship that day?  

Can you tell I'm fresh off of leading worship this past Sunday and that I just read the chapter on worship in Celebration of Disciplines by Richard Foster?  Some day, I just want to know what happens when every single heart in the room is tuned to worship, when every body is engaged, and every ear is listening.  What would God do with that kind of reception?