Part 3 – Reviewing Your Songs
Darcy Watkins – July 27, 2024
In parts one and two, we covered the mandate and the work involved to write and use your own songs in worship at your church. Here we will cover evaluation and vetting of your songs. This can be tough but is a necessary step. The worship team is a prominent presence during the church service. If off the rails, there can be a tug-of-war within the church leadership. There could be a tug-of-war theologically. We need to get used to this so we don’t get all defensive when a song doesn’t make the list.
With your own songs, you need to do all the vetting at your church. If you vet it theologically using the same criteria as you would use for published works, you should be ok. In fact, the last thing you need is a double standard, letting in the published works but nit-picking over the songs from within your church. On the other hand, judging the craft quality of the song can be tough. It’s subjective. It could be, no! It WILL be, it WILL be based on preferences and biases. It can be totally unfair to the song writer. The lyrics may be great, but the music sounds hokey. I cannot suggest a fair method, so I recommend you just be honest. Maybe each reviewer writes their comments on paper, and someone prints it out as a composite (anonymized) review, or maybe email it. That way a specific remark isn’t attributed to a certain reviewer. It may be a bit brutal at times. Perhaps instruct the reviewers to also provide constructive remarks. Even give them a quota of constructive comments per criticism. This isn’t a TV talent show. No gongs. No room for a rude “Simon” here.
I sat and heard comments about a song I submitted for review at a song writers’ workshop at a regional conference. The two reviewers loved the music overall and especially liked the hook line. But the lyrics were too perfectly rhymed. Too mechanical (today someone rude would say AI generated). They felt that some of the lyrics weren’t innovative enough in terms of craft. Neither gave any comments on theological accuracy. (Maybe you just don’t do that in a group workshop setting). One of the reviewers imagined that with a bit of work, it could be arranged with a big choir. He was a recording artist, worship leader and a song writer. The other reviewer with the harder comments was from a large worship record label in Nashville. Hard comments but hey! I got my song in front of a panel of experts!
Afterwards, I talked about this with someone involved with worship music copyrights. I told him about my experience. He asked me if I disagreed with the assessment. “No, I think they were right!” I conceded in agreement, “But it doesn’t mean I have to like how it made me feel!” He commended me for accepting the criticism despite my feelings about it. So, I took the review as a challenge to continue and grow. I still write songs. And some of them make it into worship sets. Sometimes when writing a song seems too mechanical, I just set it aside for a while (sometimes more than just a while). I’m not a pro, so I don’t have to write to a deadline. Sometimes I come back to it. Other times, a whole different song practically comes at once, like a spark igniting something powerful.
If you write songs and are a worship leader, don’t be afraid to get feedback from your leaders, even your pastor. I’ve done this and I consider myself to be theologically sound. I have been accused of bad grammar, but never heresy, in my lyrics. I think the worse that came out of pastoral review was a minor theological nudge to be more in centre of the theology of the denomination I was with at the time. He didn’t say what to write, just the theological nudge he wanted. The song wasn’t any worse after I revised it, probably a bit better, certainly for use in worship at that church. Is that ever a bad thing?
If you aren’t a worship leader, then perhaps get your worship leader to check out your songs. That worship leader will know quickly whether a song fits their style, and if so, may even go to bat for you getting the song developed. They can short list what goes up for further review (to the pastors). And if that worship leader really likes the song, they just may want to be the one who introduces it to the church in worship. In fact, you could trigger a healthy rivalry among worship leaders at your church to sponsor development of new songs of the Lord.
I believe that it is worthwhile to pursue song writing and to encourage this in your church. God may provide you with some who are really good at the craft. Or you may benefit more from collaborative works. If you pursue this, God will bless you with new songs, songs of praise to the Lord. It won’t always be easy, but it will be a blessing. So going back to the original question in the title, “Should we use our own songs in worship? Just like for God’s promises, I believe the answer is “yes and amen!”