Moving with the "Freedom" rhythm
Calling all songwriters!
Here's a chance for you to bring “joy to the world” using your songwriting gifts and passion.
Start by remembering how Christmas music makes you feel as you sing it. Can you imagine Christmas without it? A terrible thought!
Now think of all the crucial biblical events we rarely or never sing about. We do sing about the cross and at least a little about the resurrection, but why are we depriving our worship of all the feelings and insights connected to many other great acts of God? Let's bring some of those in!
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Let's turn worshipers' attention to what the home at Bethany smelled like when Mary anointed Jesus.
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Let's take people's eyes and ears back to Jerusalem on Pentecost Day.
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Let's paint some fresh and inspiring musical pictures of Eden and of Christ's return.
These seven phases of the year-long SYNC contest are just crying for songwriters' attention:
Not your kind of songwriting?
Don't give up on it yet. Almost no one else is doing it either. That's why this contest exists--to find the people who are already doing it, promote their work, and get as many others to join them as we can.
We want God to get year-round glory, not just at Christmas. Psalm 145.6 says, "Your awe-inspiring deeds will be on every tongue." Your song can put those deeds on people's tongues. It can be one of the ways God fulfills that promise.
Your song should touch people with the meaning of a key biblical event like Christmas carols touch people with the meaning of Jesus’s birth or like worship music touches people with the meaning of the cross. Your song does not have to sound like a Christmas carol or a hymn. Choose whatever musical style brings the most joy to the people around you, as long as it includes some way for them to sing along, respond, chant, etc.
If you sense at all that God wants you to explore this kind of songwriting, or if you may already have a song that fits what we are looking for, welcome to the Joy to the World Contest.