Worship Teams
The Songwriting Process and Stewarding Your Gifts w/ Chris Davenport
Songwriter and artist Chris Davenport has written some of the biggest songs for the church, “Hymn of Heaven”, “Another In the Fire”, “His Name Is Jesus”, “Plead the Blood” and more! Chris sat down with Loop Community Founder Matt McCoy to talk about songwriting.
Stewarding Your Gifts
Matt: What’s it like to have written so many big songs for the church?
Chris: “There’s a part of me that is so blown away and shocked by it, and it’s just the kindness of God. Then there’s another part of me that is like, ‘this is what God has called me to do and this is what should be happening.’ It’s interesting to experience both of those things in real time. The longer that I have been doing this, and the longer that I have been doing it with a measure of success, what success looks like has changed for me. The reality is that God breathes on the songs that He breathes on and it’s His decision. I have things that I think are cool, or I think would be powerful that minister to me, or have personal skin in the game, but where a song goes and the reach that it has is not my department. Writing has become much more of me being a steward of the gifts God has given me, I want to be a steward of my voice and the opportunities that I have.”
Cowriting and the Songwriting Process
Matt: What’s your favorite way to write songs and what’s your process?
Chris: “I really struggled with cowriting initially and didn’t like it. I was very precious with everything and prideful with my ideas. But I started viewing writing alone as preparation for cowriting. I think that God is into partnership and He’s into collaboration. He blesses unity and I think that’s very clear in scripture. I started trying to always be prepared with an idea I’m passionate about, but the people that I’m writing with are people that I share values with. Not just faith values, but life values. I take that quite seriously, because I want to get in the trenches with people and write real songs with them.
The process for me, I’ll set up a time to write with someone and show up with three different ideas. One will be a title to see if there’s something interesting there. One will be 30 or 40% done just in case that stirs something up. And one will be pretty much ready to go because sometimes people aren’t feeling inspired and I don’t want them to feel like they’ve had a bad write. I think of myself as having more of a utility style roll as far as writers go. Being able to read the room, read the people I’m writing with, see where there needs to be more strength, and take that gap.”
Advice for young worship leaders
Matt: “What’s something you would tell a young worship leader that wants to write songs?”
Chris: “You don’t have anything to prove. If you can find a way to anchor who you are, your identity, to Jesus and not to what you do, you’re going to go as far as you want to. You have everything you need to do what God has called you to, and you always will.”
Click below to watch the rest of the interview! You can download the Master Tracks for Chris Davenport’s new album TIME on LoopCommunity.com.
