7 Things... Part Five: Making songs 'Universal'

Now I genuinely like the 'Universal & Unique' rule to writing worship songs (usually attributed to Brian Doerksen) - it speaks of connecting with many people whilst still being yourself... but in recent years the value of songs being 'Universal' has been taken a little too literally.

I have commented many times on what I call 'McWorship' - the phenomena of being able to step into a church in London, Seattle, Cape Town, Phuket, Sydney, Rio or Basingstoke and here the sames songs sung in virtually identical ways - as if all our churches were CCM franchises.

So I have begun to value a song's ability to be local far above its capacity to be universal.

I am now concerned more with whether or not my song will connect with my church and its relevance to what God is doing amongst us. Whether or not the song relates to churches in Melbourne or Mississippi seems like a pretty irrelevant question.

Unless of course you want to be a globally successful worship song writer. And apparently a lot of people do.

dg