Tip #4 for Writing Worship Songs: Turning Melody into Text

Tip #4: Turning melody into text.
Sometimes I start with a chord progression or a melody, and I don't have any words yet. This is especially difficult for me. The best thing to do is just experiment with different phrases, even if the phrase is non-sense. Gibberish at least gives you a feel for how the melody sounds if you sing it. As you sing, ask yourself what that melody makes feel. If you are writing a worship song, sing the melody with a prayer. Forget about rhyming and just sing your prayer to Jesus with the new melody you are developing. Keep your journal and your recorder close to capture ideas as they come. Eventually, you get a few phrases that you want to develop. Then you can take off the musician hat and put on the poet hat, scribbling out couplets and stanzas that you can try out to see what fits with your melody. If none of that works, go back to poem fragments in your journal that you've been saving for later and try them on.