Narrative and Theology in Songwriting

Well it’s been a while since I last posted on my blog. Thanks for not giving up on me. Being a school teacher (yes, that is my day job!) means that the weeks leading up to Christmas are packed full of every activity imaginable. And volunteering for a Church means pretty much the same – Christmas gets very busy! Anyway, I have now finished writing my reports so am able to take a little time to update my blog.

Last night a few of us from our church travelled to Peterborough (our nearest city) for ‘The Big Church Night In’ with Rend Collective Experiment and Matt Redman playing. We had a fantastic evening as I’m sure you can imagine. The lighting was awesome, the bands sounded brilliant – most importantly Jesus was glorified!

During one of Rend Collective’s songs ‘Build Your Kingdom Here’, whilst standing in the 2000 strong crowd, I started thinking again about something that I had pondered over the summer: the songs we write need to

1) be full of the truth of God’s word – to be theologically accurate

2) tell a story or at least explore a theme in a logical way

During the summer my wife and I visited a church where the songs being sung had no narrative to them. The dots weren’t joined up. We sung over and over again bridges and snippets from various songs without ever singing one in completion. As well as making me a bit frustrated and itching for the song to develop or to move on in the narrative it made me realise how important it is for us as songwriters to fulfil the two statements above.

Songs carry a mnemonic power (this means that they are easily remembered). They wriggle their way inside your brain and you just can’t stop singing them – the good ones that is! People are far more likely to remember the songs they sing at church than they are to remember the sermon – If you are a preacher, I apologise. You guys do a very important job, but it’s a fact. Songs are remembered more easily than sermons.

The danger is if the songs we write (and the songs we choose to sing at church) are not theologically sound, we are not doing the people we serve any favours. We are teaching them lies.

Good songs take the singer/listener/church goer on a journey. There should be a clear beginning. The narrative should develop into the chorus. The story should continue into the next verse and so on, or at least another aspect of the general theme be explored. Rend Collective’s song ‘Build Your Kingdom’ does exactly this. It is a great example. Another completely different style of song, ‘In Christ Alone’ is a fantastic narrative song. It has a clear beginning and progression through to the ultimate conclusion of the theme / the story being told.

So avoid singing endless, mindless bridges or one liners over and over again. They may be truthful, but taken out of context could be misunderstood - or not understood at all. Put a little substance back into the songs you chose / write. Take the great opportunity to feed truth to the people you serve. Yes – come, let us reason together! Let us sing truth with understanding!