The Anatomy of a Worship Song

What makes a song really great for using in a corporate worship setting?  If you have any responsibilities for planning or leading worship you've had the following experience.  You hear a song.  You like the song.  It is musically and lyrically interesting, maybe even inspiring.  So you plan to use it in a worship service, thinking, "This is gonna be great," and hopefully assured that this will facilitate one of those worship moments when God is glorified in a big way.  Then to your utter dismay, it falls flat.  No one sings.  No one really "gets it" like you do.  There's just no energy or life in it.  You're left to wonder, "What went wrong?"

Then you get those songs that seem to simply work.  For some reason they are in your church's worship sweet spot.  It will be different songs for different churches, but those great songs seem to have a few things in common.  I want to dissect one of those songs and see what makes it such a great worship song.

At North Park, our people love to sing Tommy Walker's, "We Will Remember."  What makes this song work for us?  Here are few reasons.

1. It's singable for most people.  I don't think you can underestimate the importance of this.  Only the most ardent of worshipers will continue to sing when the melodic range goes through the roof.  And when they do the people around them wish they hadn't.  Contemporary Americans probably sing less often and with poorer results than any culture in recent history. (But I digress, that is a different post)  As a worship planner you must accommodate this.  Which means that you probably shouldn't sing the songs of popular recording artists (Tomlin, Crowder, Fee, Brewster and the gang) without seriously considering a key change.  It's not only the range that makes it singable, but the melody is also relatively simple.  Here's one for the music nerds.  It should have an acceptable tessitura.

2. It's universally testimonial.  That's a fancy way of saying, it tells the story of every believer.  Look at verse four -

I still remember the day You saved me
The day I heard You call out my name
You said You loved me and would never leave me
And I've never been the same

Every follower of Christ has a story that follows this outline.  Add in the words of the chorus, and it becomes both very personal and very corporate at the same time.

3.  It's responsorial.  Yes, it is a real word.  I didn't just make it up.  Did you go to one of those churches when you were a kid (or maybe you still do), where you opened to the back of the hymnal to do responsive readings?  Talk about killing the mood.  Nothing says exciting like a roomful of stiffs and swells reading in monotone unison.  But the problem wasn't conceptual, it was in the execution.  It is good and appropriate for God's people to respond to His word with praise.  All worship is, at it's core, a response to God's work and character.  I love the words of the chorus.

We will remember we will remember
We will remember the works of Your hands
We will stop and give You praise
For great is Thy faithfulness


4. The music is texturally varied.  Even though it is a relatively long song for modern standards, it doesn't get boring.  There are rapid changes in dynamics and harmonic texture.  And the arrangement that we use contains a key change as well.

5. It combines the new with the familiar. Pretend for a minute that you could somehow get this song out of your head, and you heard this phrase, "Great is Thy Faithfulness."  What kind of association would that have for you?  What about, "From Whom All Blessings Flow," or "Peace in the Midst of the Storm?"  All phrases that many of us are very comfortable with, and would probably match with a familiar hymn.  Yet they seem to flow in a new and fresh way here.

What would you add to this list?