My favorite songs to write are congregational worship tunes. Writing
songs for the church is something I am called by God to do. We’re
living in a time when writing worship songs is a very popular thing to
do. With the huge success of the Passion movement alone, writing songs
for the church has gone to a whole new level. Songwriters are coming
out of the wood work with their latest modern worship song. The danger
of all the success and any success is always pride. Motivation is a
huge factor when it comes to this. I’ve felt the danger of pride as
I’ve written songs. For a season, my motivation was centered around
getting my songs heard and possibly getting signed. For me, that was a
result of receiving a little recognition, and that recognition made my
dream a possibility. One day, I read an article in
Worship Leader Magazine
by Matt Redman, which challenged me to rediscover the joy of simply
writing for my local congregation and nothing more. It was then that I
remembered the first time I saw our church worship with one of my
songs. That was my motivation, and that article inspired me to regain
that motivation and lose my pride. I still dream of seeing one of my
songs go into churches all over and having a big impact, but the
difference is that it is not my goal. It’s fine to dream for those
things, but our goals have to be on target. Writing songs for our local
congregations is such an amazing thing for our church and for us. What
a beautiful offering of our gifts, to simply serve the local flock that
God is using us to minister to. I have a feeling that there may be too
many talented worship leaders and songwriters who are thinking about
record labels and radio as they write worship songs. My prayer for my
songs is that they impact and minister to the crowd that God has put in
front of me. If it goes beyond our church walls, then let that be God’s
will, and I’ll give him all the praise for it. As I watch my local
congregation connect to God through these words and melodies that I
wrote, let that be my reward, and nothing else.
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Gary Durbin
