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Writing as Worship: Writing Prayers
Every Saturday I’m writing about some ways to incorporate more writing into your worship times. Last week I wrote about my process for writing spoken word. This week, I want to talk about writing down your prayers. Here are three reasons I love putting my prayers on paper. 1. It keeps me focused. Sometimes my mind feels so crazy and scattered that I don’t even know what to pray. The act of writing keeps me focused on the prayer, and helps me sort out what I need to pray about. 2. It helps me process. Sometimes, I will start a prayer feeling or thinking one thing, and by the time…
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Writing as Worship: How I Write Spoken Word
As I mentioned in my last post, every Saturday for the next few weeks I’m going to be posting some ideas for using writing as worship, and incorporating writing into your quiet times. You can read my previous post for a few basics. Today let’s talk about spoken word! Spoken word is basically poetry that’s meant to be read out loud. If there are any rules, I don’t know them. Spoken word can sound different based on the topic and the artist reciting the piece. Each writer seems to have their own rhythm, and I love listening to the different unique styles. You can find tons of examples on YouTube.…
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Writing as Worship: An Introduction
A couple of weekends ago I had the great privilege of speaking at the LifeLight music festival. In addition to speaking, I taught a spoken word workshop, which unexpectedly became one of my favorite parts of the weekend. To be honest I was more than a little nervous, because I don’t actually know how to write spoken word. I just write it. I took a creative writing class in college and actually didn’t do that well—especially in the poetry section. I never knew what to write about, and forcing the words to have a certain rhythm and rhyme that conformed to the rules stripped me of the freedom and joy…
