Communication and the ministry of songwriting (essay)

I recently wrote the following article about communication and ministry for the Fall 2014 edition of ESR Reports, whose theme was "The Power of Communication." You can hear the two songs I discuss on my Soundcloud.


I graduated from ESR in May as a student in the Ministry of Writing program. I wrote fiction and non-fiction, but discovered my main form of ministry to be songwriting. While a student, I tried to become a better songwriter and musician by taking various writing classes, including a songwriting class. My Supervised Ministry involved performing songs at Roscoe’s Coffee Bar and Tap Room and Common Grounds Coffeehouse at West Richmond Friends Meeting, and volunteering as a musician at the Iona Abbey, Scotland. Since graduating, I have continued practicing and writing music, playing the guitar, and sharing songs. 

Two songs I have written recently illustrate how communication is essential to the ministry of songwriting and singing. “As you led your people in the wilderness” is a hymn, and one which my local church sang during one Sunday service. I wanted to write a song to help the church (local and global) express some fears, joys, and petitions to God. I felt that an appropriate corresponding story to the church today was the Israelites’ journey through the wilderness as told in the book of Exodus.

Hymns are different than other kinds of songs because, rather than being sung by a performer to an audience of listeners, a community of people sings hymns together. Thus, I made the first lines of each verse parallel so that people could quickly follow along and understand the hymn’s direction: “As you led your people in the wilderness. . . / As you fed your people in the wilderness. . . / As you gave your people in the wilderness. . . / As you saved your people in the wilderness. . . . “ I employed rhyme schemes to make the singing more enjoyable and to help singers remember the words. (Besides, rhyming is customary in most song writing.)

Although this hymn is addressed to God, I was also aware that the words we recite shape us, so I considered what I wanted to communicate to people through the lyrics. Hymn writers often focus on either the spiritual or the physical side of our existence, and I wanted to balance both. So, I compared manna to both the “daily bread” with which God satisfies our hunger and “[God’s] Word which makes us whole,” and I compared the water that flowed from a stone to both “living water that will not run dry” and nourishment from “gardens we have grown.”

Also, I wrote this hymn when folks at church, friends, and other people were grieving over local, national, and international acts of injustice and violence. I tried to funnel those emotions into the song: “Deliver us from those who use and harm us / From evil laws and leaders set us free.” While writing, I remembered how our prayers not only form us; they can even compel God to respond.

The second song I wrote is from the perspective of Adam, and is about his yearning to return to the Garden of Eden. In the first verse, Adam connects humanity’s re-entry into paradise with Isaiah’s vision of a world in which people beat their swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks (2:4): “Can’t go back / Through the flaming sword / Must work the cursed ground / ‘Til we learn war no more.”

In late September, I performed this song during a service at my local church. I felt it was appropriate given the military conflicts in which our country and others began to engage. I hoped that in communicating a vision in which we relate to our neighbors and even our enemies in peace, I might persuade those who think it is right to attack our enemies to imitate Christ, the second Adam, who did not use his power to destroy his enemies but to bless, love, and ultimately save them.

Because this song is from the perspective of the first human, it communicates that forsaking war is not new, but is at the root of what it means to be human. And though “learning war no more” is prominent, the song is not a protest but a lament and petition to return to our true home, where grows the tree of life whose leaves heal the nations. Such a song can be both prophetic and pastoral, calling people to walk in righteousness and giving voice to our yearnings.

Songs communicate ideas, emotions, experiences, communal memories, and more. Singing is a life-giving activity which can engage our depths. Because we not only listen to songs but sometimes sing them, they influence how and to whom we communicate. Writing songs communicates that there are words worth singing, people with whom to share them, and a God who we believe will listen and act.