How I Came to Write My First Gospel Song

The older I get, the less I remember dates. Rather, I tend to remember "landmarks" that happened around the time of the event I am trying to remember.  I know that our daughter, Jaime, got married at the end of 1998, which puts this story somewhere in 1998.

Dr. Jack Hyles was our pastor at First Baptist Church in Hammond, Indiana.  I was in the choir, which gave me a "ring-side" seat, and made it easy to pay attention to every word.  He was making a comparison between the old standard songs we sang in church and the modern ones.  Then he said something that really got me thinking.  He said that he was not against new gospel music, but he was against music that had no gospel message. Dr. Hyles pointed out that while our minds and bodies respond to perky tunes, they do not further the cause of reaching others for Christ, or for edifying those who are already part of the family of Christ.  He then said that he wished there were more people willing to produce good gospel music.

Until that time, I had never attempted to write music.  I had written poetry and essays for as long as I could remember, but had no idea that it would even be possible for me to compose original music.  But his words lay heavy on my heart, and I couldn't shake the feeling that began to follow me everywhere, even in my sleep.  I prayed that God would allow me to be one to write gospel music for Him.

I was working in downtown Chicago at the time, and rode the South Shore Train for approximately a 30 minute one-way trip each morning and evening.  I began to "hear" a melody in my head as I rode on the train one morning.  I began jotting down thoughts about heaven and why I loved to sing about heaven.  For several days, I spent my morning and evening commute with pad and pencil, trying to make my thoughts fit with the melody in my head. I finally got it to my satisfaction, and then I thought, "Now what?"

This is the point where Curtis Doss came into the picture. (If you did not read my last post about my mentor, I suggest that you go back and read it before continuing with this post.)  After I showed Curtis my work and got encouragement from him that he could get it published, I began the painstaking task of putting the song into the format of 4-part harmony.

It is important to understand that even though I have been involved in gospel singing my entire life, took six years of piano lessons, and 7 years of band--plus a year of the famous Flutophone, I did not study music composition. Pecking out a melody is one thing, but putting a song into parts for Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Bass is another thing altogether. It takes me weeks of work to get a song ready for the publisher, and it almost makes me wish I had worked harder on my music theory lessons when I took piano. Almost. 

I did finally get it all done, but I did not submit that particular song to the publisher until 2007. Below is a copy of "We'll Sing Glory!" in it's published form.  Next time, I will talk about what was going on between 1998 and December of 2000 when I did send my first submission to the publisher.