While crafting is important for most songwriting expressions across genres, it is particularly important for congregational music.  The songs we sing in our churches don’t just express our theology; they help form it. When we write songs for people to sing as a spiritual act of worship, those songs soak into people’s souls. The words that we ask them to sing help shape their view of God, the universe, and themselves. So, why is it then that a lot of congregational music often seems to be...

I get asked a lot about how I write songs. Here’s the short of it… First of all, creating is creating. We are human beings, and we have no ability to create ex-nihilo (out of nothing.) All we can do is order something new from what already exists. We can take words and form a sentence. Take paint and canvas and form a painting. The same is true with songwriting. It starts with some raw elements, and then the creative process is simply forming those raw elements into a song. So before y...

My book is slated to release the first week of October. If you are one of the first 25 to figure out the book's title, we'll send you a free autographed copy when it comes out. Tweet us your answers with the hashtag #gungorbook The first noun Can make quite a sound The second may judge with a frown Of all seven words You'd think there'd be verbs But no, just some small words with nouns The third is a goddess of art Whose voice of the three stands apart The acronym of The nouns up a...

My pastor preached a sermon recently about how most of us are addicts to something. Food, shopping, sex, drugs, alcohol, image…etc We use these things to medicate ourselves against our pain and the realities of the world. I wonder if many of us should add our Christianity to that list. I sent this tweet this week that got a few online bees buzzing for a moment: “Approximately 70 percent of the Psalms are laments. Approximately 0 percent of the top 150 CCLI songs (songs song most in chu...

We are at a big festival in the UK right now, and as often happens with artists in this situation, I had some press interviews throughout the day.  People in Europe seem to have a courage to speak things as they are, and I was asked more than once about my “problems with Christian music.” It got me thinking. I realized how one-sided I’ve been in this blog.  And by one-sided, I don’t even mean one side of a larger argument, but one side of my OWN argument. I realized how little...