Beyond the One Big Song
We occasionally get to sit down with friends in the Christian music industry and tell them what we're up to with Resound Worship. They're often fascinated and encouraged. In recent times, there is one phrase we have heard frequently repeated in those conversations.
"One big song."
The conversation usually goes like this: you're doing a good thing, we can see you're providing something fresh and different for the church, you just need that 'one big song' to get a seat at the top table. Then you'll have the opportunity to leverage the profile and revenue that comes from the big song to really make an impact.
You can see the logic. But is that really the only way?
What if, instead of chasing one 'big' song to try and open doors into churches, there were hundreds, even thousands, of 'small' songs that emerged from within the churches themselves and enriched their worship from the ground up?
What if there was an opportunity to work with the writers in those churches, helping them to write their best songs and truly reflect their communities and echo God's story in those places?
A recent study from Southern Wesleyan University showed that the lifespan of a 'big song' in the church - ie the time during which it remains a big song - is around five years. If that's how long a big song can last, what else could happen in those five years?
During our past half-decade, we have had 862 songwriters sign-up for the 12 Song Challenge, a year-long songwriting initiative around which a vibrant community of local church songwriters has formed. We recently asked the writers how many of the songs written during a particular season had actually been used in their church's gathered worship. Over a whole year of the challenge the numbers added up to almost exactly one song per participant.
Of course, some had used more, others were still waiting for an opportunity or didn't feel they had yet got anything ready to share. Certainly from our experience we'd be surprised if more than one or two from each person made it into a Sunday service - most worship songwriters will tell you you need to write a lot of songs in order to have a few that are useful.
These numbers from our community show us that in the five years that one big song could have had its moment in the sun, there were over 850 new 'small' songs being sung in local churches through this initiative. They didn't need any big name performers, promotional budgets or industry mechanisms to deliver them, they just needed people in local churches to have the confidence and encouragement to use their God-given gifts to bless their church.
But there is more to this than the success or otherwise of one particular programme. The church needs the small songs just as much as it needs the big songs.
The songs that reach the top of the charts will always tend towards the more generic. That's not a statement about the songs themselves, rather about the nature of the charts. The songs that fill the top places - ie get sung most widely, and most often - are always going to be on the more generic end. It stands to reason that songs which say fairly standard things in a standard way are going to be the most accessible for the greatest number of churches and fit in on many Sundays.
It doesn't mean the top songs are not great songs, they are just unlikely as a collection to be especially thematically rich or specific. (That's why those studies which struggle to find themes like justice, ecology, lament, etc in the top songs have unsurprising results and are possibly asking their questions of the wrong set of data)
If we want the church to have a full and expansive repertoire, covering all the aspects of life and worship, of discipleship and community, we need the small songs to fill that role. Otherwise, by relying on only those which are most popular, we risk one-dimensional worship which forms one-dimensional disciples.
The one big song can be, and will continue to be, an incredible blessing to the global church. We love to sing together those songs that we cherish in common. The work of many of our music industry friends is precious and important. But the small, locally sourced songs are just as important. And they are never going to be funded by the markets, or the record labels and their shareholders. It doesn't make sense in any of those models.
Ironically, there are already many wonderful published songs out there which could step up to fill some thematic gaps between the big songs, but the church doesn't really notice them or know about them because the big songs entirely fill the landscape. To rely on industry models to reach churches with these songs is next to impossible compared to the beautiful simplicity of presenting your own song to your own congregation.
If we can't rely on someone else to deliver the songs into our lap, we have to get involved. That's why we so strongly believe that the small songs need to be actively encouraged by the churches and by the people in the churches who care what the church sings. That's why we're so passionate about what's happening right now in our grass-roots community. And it's why our particular model is built around financial support from individuals and churches instead of record sales.
Let's be clear, we're not the only ones attempting to encourage grassroots writing. But we do have a coherent approach that is worth talking about. Over the next five years, we hope to see upwards of two thousand songs written within our community that will be sung in local churches - not to mention the countless others created along the way. A handful might travel more widely, but most don't need to, they'll already be doing the job for which God gave his creative gifts to those churches in the first place.
When I say 'we' at the beginning of this article, I often mean my colleague Chris Juby and me. A lot of this comes from our conversations that have followed those encounters.