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Your Team

Bob Kauflin establishes key principles, as summarized by Mr. Coates, in facilitating a worship team, in his book Worship Matters. Establishing Your Team is the key to start the journey. This includes the vision, personnel, and commitment of each member. Encouraging the team is the next of these principles which entails creating a culture of gratefulness. Expressing appreciation is critical to accomplishing this. Equipping the team is creating a culture of growth whether it be spiritually, personally, or musically. Evaluating the team involves humility and judging one's self. Lastly, enjoying the team brings about joy. Out of those, an especially important principle is creating a culture of growth. Creating an atmosphere where getting better is normal and expected makes a team dynamic and fruitful. Even better, there is accountability within the team in this reality. Each one takes hold of their responsibility and makes sure the others do the same. There is no better environment to ...
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From Theory to Reality

Paul Baloche discusses the transition of song from its testing phase towards its culmination. He dives into the "filtering process" where artists take the entirety of their songs/song ideas and begin narrowing it down. Just as a coach must cut, bench, and start players, the songwriter must choose which songs to discard, postpone, and focus on. Baloche encourages songwriters to find a group of like-minded worshipers who can evaluate songs and give meaningful feedback. This collaborative community enhances the songwriting experiences and refines the songs, themselves, so that they are of the highest quality. 
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Finishing the Song

Paul Baloche describes the process of bringing a song to completion in the episode titled "Finishing Your Song" of his Youtube worship leading series. At the point where many of the features of the song have been written, Baloche points out the need to go back and nitpick each line. While the early stages of songwriting mainly consist of simply putting thoughts and tunes onto paper, this part of the process brings out the technical aspect of songwriting. Baloche mentions factors, such as word repetition, relevance, and, most importantly, theological correctness, that he considers at this juncture of the songwriting journey.  Nitpicking may seem tedious, boring, and sometimes irrelevant, but it's a necessary step to produce a worthwhile product. Baloche highlights the effect of "refining" through the analogy of shaving the fat off meat. Pursuing refinement is part of the pursuit of perfection. Whether it be our songs, our work, or our faith, consistently seeking ...
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The Feeling of the Message

Paul Baloche talks about crafting music to fit the "feeling of the message" in this episode of his Youtube Songwriting series. He points out that the first step is deciding what type of atmosphere the song is intended to create. For example, his title "Above All" was meant to be an anthemic song, thus he chose a tune that fit its intended purpose accordingly. Baloche mentions Disney as the king of melodies, noting how many of their songs have beautifully constructed tunes that capture a breadth of pitches which earn a place in our memories. Hints of the styles of these well-written songs are prevalent in other genres of music, further highlighting their brilliance.  The idea of being memorable is an intriguing one. In the context of songwriting, the tunes that are generic and aren't creatively put together are the ones that fade with time. It's the ones that are different, seasoned with flair; those are the ones that are remembered. We must seek to find our ...
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Prayerful and Authentic Ideas

Paul Baloche emphasizes the importance of drawing ideas from intentional prayer and scripture reading in his Songwriting Youtube series. He points out that most ideas don't actually originate as strictly "song ideas", but rather as thoughts during time with God. For example, his song "Your Name", came about as he and a friend were simply reading scripture and casually playing the guitar and piano. Baloche also highlights the need to memorize scripture. He calls the Psalms the "vocabulary of worship" and stresses the importance of taking those words off the page and letting them dwell in our minds and hearts.  Prayer and scripture reading are spiritual disciplines. In case the importance of living with discipline in the Christian life isn't clear, the apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 9 that he disciplines his body so that he himself "may not be disqualified from the race". Isn't that something? That even the great apostle Paul was ...
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Inspiration from Journaling

Paul Baloche focuses on the importance of journaling in the songwriting process. He describes a portion of the process of writing a few of his well known songs, starting with "Above All". Much of the lyrics for the song came on the spot. Nothing was scripted, as Baloche sat with his guitar one day in the presence of the Lord. This theme of natural spontaneity  is prevalent in songwriting. Baloche makes it clear that in order to remember creative thoughts, they must be written down. The songwriter must write, not just think.  Humanity is naturally creative. We come up with innovative ideas regularly. However, the process of transforming ideas into a tangible end product, like a song, is jumpstarted when we begin to write ideas down. This not only helps us remember, but also is a sign of intentionality and commitment to being a songwriter. Also, an important anecdote from Baloche's songwriting experience is the way he relates his thoughts back to God. Whether it be looking ...
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Inspiration from Sermon and Prayers

Paul Baloche, in his Youtube songwriting series, points out that many of his ideas for songs originate from sermons and prayers. He recalls multiple lines he heard from his pastor that resonated with him. He later expanded on them and added a melody to accompany the words and, before he knew it, he'd made legitimate progress in writing that song. This endeavor wasn't planned or pre-rehearsed, but rather the idea for the song came spontaneously. Similarly, Baloche describes thinking of other ideas through sitting in prayer meetings. His song "Open the Eyes of My Heart" came to be through hearing one of his revered church fathers begin his prayers with those very words. Baloche makes it a point to sit in on these church meetings to be, first and foremost, enriched spiritually. However, he benefits musically from them as well. Songs from truth. That's essentially where most of Baloche's ideas are coming from. Sermons are (hopefully) based on Scripture, the true W...
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