NewPointe Songwriting Session

Every other Tuesday afternoon... I will be meeting with our other two worship leaders to write. It is something that we have been wanting to do for a long time... but have never actually "scheduled" the time to do it. The plan is to write "something" every time we meet (even if it's not very good). The idea is to make ourselves create, shape and craft lyric and melodies as long as it takes... until a song is formed. Along the way... we believe that God is going to take that effort... and bless it... and use it to create original worship songs. Songs that we can incorporate into NewPointe's worship experience... and then (maybe even later this year) record them.

This was our first time to write together... so we did a lot of brainstorming and talking about how we might approach the writing process. Here is a little snapshot of our session yesterday.

Step 1: We prayed. Our prayer was that there were no selfish motives for writing and that what came up with would be for God's glory not our own.
Step 2: We talked about the "concept" for the song that were going to be working on. For yesterday... it was worship song to go along with a message about Jesus - The Shepherd that will be included a series that starts on Easter Sunday.
Step 3: We began to write words and phrases (anything that came to mind) on a huge mirror in the room that we were working in. They were words that describe Jesus (our shepherd)... words that reflect how we feel knowing that He is our shepherd... words that represent the opposite (or why we NEED a shepherd). These words may... or may not ever be a part of the lyric. It was just an exercise to get the creativity flowing. I also poll-ed my FaceBook friends for some thoughts before we met.
Step 4: We read scripture. We wanted to make sure that our inspiration was coming from the right source. : ) We read mostly from The Message translation of the Bible. Great stuff! It became the foundation for everything else that took place in that meeting.
Step 5: Then we began to share ideas. For this particular song... it became sort of a "lyric first" composition. It doesn't always happen that way. We could have started out with a really great melody or a single musical riff... but it just naturally flowed this way. We talked about the flow of the lyric... and the story that it would tell... and about how we are going to "set up" the chorus. It wasn't long before a melody and chord progressions were forming... and we we began to see something that resembled a song.

I am excited about what will come out of these sessions. Please pray for us as we continue to write songs that will reflect the hearts of our NewPointe family... and songs that will invite people into God's presence. Someday... we hope to have a whole community of NewPointe songwriters. Wouldn't that be AMAZING?!?