Jive Monkey Gold: Worship Writing Community, pt. 6

For this week's repeat column, we delve into part six of the worship songwriting series. It was cool for me to reread this one because I can see how things have been developing at Sojourn since I first wrote this piece in early January.

I made a reference to an upcoming CD by Chad Lewis. That record is done and will be released Sunday, July 23. I've been listening to it for awhile -- I wrote a review on it and conducted an extensive interview with Chad for an edition of Travelogue -- Sojourn's news magazine. It will also be out the 23rd, and eventually serialized here.

The song he and I wrote that I printed in this column, "Precious Jesus Lord Of All" has been picked up by the Sojourn Worship band (we've shortened the title to "Lord Of All"). They've done it as a stripped-down folk song and a head-on pop rock number. I like it both ways.

I mentioned that the workshop detailed below was the first one in which Lorie performed a song she wrote by herself (although she had submitted fragments before). Since then she's also written one that the Sojourn worship band has been doing recently. It's an original melody to the great hymn, "There Is A Fountain."

It's good to look back frequently to check for progress. Although it doesn't always seem like it to me, when I live strictly in the here-and-now, when I stop and look back, I see that we HAVE been making progress. That's encouraging. And now, here it is, "Jive Monkey Gold:"


Sojourn Worship Songwriting Workshop, pt. 6

The November workshop brought several firsts: it was our first time to meet on a Saturday, and our first time to meet outside of the Highland Christian Fellowship facilities where Sojourn meets for weekly worship.

We met in Lorie's home and gained the participation of her room-mate Christa. Christa has a great, timeless voice -- the kind that can sing pop songs, jazz standards or old show tunes. She's written some good poems, too, and unlike a lot of artists I've known in the past, has a servant heart. She reminds me of this quote from Rory Noland: "In Nehemiah's day the musicians were in charge of maintenance for the house of God (Neh. 11:22-23). These janitors-by-day/ artists-by-night had a strict, disciplined, daily routine that included doing the custodial work needed for the upkeep of God's house. They were servant artists, and that's what we need to be." Christa is always serving, whether it's mentoring students in her church youth group, running the sound system, or just doing grunt-work around the house she shares with the other girls.

Several other first-timers came as well. I had exchanged some emails with Chad Lewis, giving him ideas for polishing some of his original songs for his upcoming CD project. I've mentioned his rich, powerful voice before in this series. Another thing about Chad is that he's a balladeer, in the original sense of the word. Our culture has come to think of ballads as slow love songs. Whenever we hear something that sounds like it's going to end up on "Delilah After Dark" in the end, we think, "Oh, that's a ballad." And of course, a slow song with heavy guitar is a "power ballad."

A ballad is actually a story song. It's an element of folk music, a remnant of the days when traveling minstrels would entertain at an Inn, singing stories of loves lost and won in far off lands. Chad tells stories in his songs, as do I. That's where we're kindred spirits. Many of our songs are visual -- you can see the MTV video as you hear the lyrics.

Anyway, I had told Chad about our worship writing workshops. He hadn't written many worship songs, but he was interested in coming so I gave him directions. We had two other first timers: Will Kottheimer and Chandi Plummer. Will is an amateur film-maker who had written one or two songs and was looking for advice, inspiration, and community with other writers. He has keen insights too, the kind that can really help a writer when he's seeking critiques.

Chandi has an extensive music background, both in voice and piano. She is steeped in Church music -- hymns, benedictions, you name it. She brings a unique perspective in that her advice usually centers around the music -- the melody, the rhythm, things of that nature. She appreciates a good lyric but her main knack is for pointing out different ways of making the song "click" musically. I've learned a lot from her comments.

Chandi has her own style, and she often writes things that no one else in our group writes. For the November meeting, she played a song she'd composed for children's worship. Pretty good -- not condescending (as songs written for kids can sometimes be).

All six participants shared songs at the November meeting. This isn't always the case. Sometimes people will simply audit the workshop -- they want to see what we're all about and get a glimpse into the process, to see if worship songwriting is something they could do. Other times, writers will come to hear what their colleagues are doing, and to offer critiques, even if they don't have any new songs to present to the group themselves. This is welcome, and in fact is something I encourage. Many times, workshops fail because no one is concerned about doing anything but having forum to do their stuff. In fact, I've participated in online poetry and fiction workshops that had instituted rules such as "You can't submit your own piece for review until you've critiqued five other pieces." We've been blessed to have not had to deal with situations like that. Everyone wants to help the others grow.

This was a cool month for me because it was the first month that my buddy, my cohort, my partner-in-crime Lorie presented a complete song -- words and music -- that she'd written alone. It was called "All Things New," and had some very good lines in it. It is very rewarding to watch someone develop and start climbing the ladder, start doing something they've never done before. Lorie has a ton of experience singing and leading worship, along with a Masters in Worship from SBTS, and she plays piano. She's also very much a wordsmith, so she had all the necessary tools to become a songwriter. Just needed to develop them.

I showed the group a modern hymn I'd written called "Precious Jesus, Lord of All." It's written in "8-7" meter (refering to the number of syllables on alternating lines), which, although not one of the most common hymn meters, shows up in quite a few good hymns, including "My Redeemer," "I Surrender All," and "There Shall Be Showers Of Blessing."

There is another old song with a similar meter -- I think it's called "He's The Oak And I'm The Ivy." I've never heard it, but I saw the lyrics in a hymnal years ago, in my childhood, and I had developed a melody for it way back then. I saw that the melody would fit for my new song, even though I wasn't crazy about how well it worked together with my lyrics to convey emotion. There is a difference between something that fits metrically and something that fits psychologically or emotionally. But I wanted to have a song to present to the group, so I used that melody. I told them if anyone wanted to collaborate with me on this and come up with their own melody, they were welcome to it. The lyrics (including a chorus with a different metrical scheme) were:

Jesus, more than lowly servant. More than teacher of the law.
More than sacrificial hero. Nothing less than lord of all.
Three days gone inside a cavern, sealed in with a heavy stone.
By his death made sinners welcome to the altar of God’s throne.

(chorus)
Lord of all. Lord of all. Precious Jesus, Lord of all.
Lord of all. Lord of all. Precious Jesus, Lord, Lord of all.

Body raised on Easter morning. Seen by friends for forty days.
Hundreds marveled as he taught them. Proved his claim over the grave.
Servant-teacher, hero risen -- God Who Saves and God Who Reigns.
Ascended to the clouds of heaven just as He had preordained.

Repeat Chorus


Surer than each morning’s sunrise is Messiah’s glad return.
Vainly will His foes assemble; vainly will the devil run.
Jesus and the saints of heaven will crush the forces of decay.
Then, an everlasting kingdom. Perfect love and endless day.


Repeat Chorus

Chad took up the challenge, and the very next evening presented me with a CD recording he'd made, just himself and his guitar, with a new melody. I played it for everyone at the December workshop, which was our most well-attended meeting to that point ....

TO BE CONTINUED