Nashville-based Krissy Nordhoff is a professional songwriter and author.
Krissy is the creator of The Writing Worship Course and the Worship Songwriter Mentorship. Her songs have been recorded by a variety of artists including Natalie Grant, Jenn Johnson (Bethel Music), Darlene Zschech and many more! Passionate about training and encouraging the next generation of songwriters, Krissy now mentors, teaches and creates resources, including informative podcasts and her popular 'Songwriter Personality Test'. She has also penned a new book, Writing Worship: How To Craft Heartfelt Songs for the Church that offers spiritual and practical insights for aspiring songwriters and worship teams that want to write original songs for their congregations.
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The Importance Of Co-Writing
I wanted to talk to you a little bit today about the importance of co-writing. For many many years, I wrote on my own, and didn't really understand the concept of co-writing until much later in my writing career. When I dove into it, it seemed like a scary thing. I had some bad experiences right away that made me apprehensive about continuing to go down that path. What I now know, after pressing through some of those hard writes, is that it's super important for us to be able to write in community.
First of all, it's important because it's a picture of musical expression of the body of Christ working together. Many strengths can operate together in the same room to create something more beautiful than anyone's strength could have created on its own. I also believe diversity is very important. Including as much diversity as possible in a writing room means that when the song is delivered, those different types of people will resonate with that song.
I also think it's just a beautiful way to work together to build the kingdom. You will find over time, if you're writing with the right writers, who complement your strengths and don't clash, when you walk in the room it should be a much more successful and enjoyable time. Again, we've talked previously about the songwriter personality test, but that's a great tool for you to use to set yourself up right for co-writing sessions, and to make sure you're writing with the right people.
I'm super excited for you and your co-writing journey! As always, once you've written songs with your church, please share them, upload them right here to SongShare, and share them with your church, your city and your world.
If you don't know where to start with writing songs, or if you're an old hand in need of some fresh new tips then Krissy has some amazing resources on her site writingworship.co. A great place to start is by taking the Songwriter Personality Test, which will help you to understand where your personal strengths are with songwriting, and who you need to team up with! If you want to dig deeper with others in your church then have a look at Krissy's book Writing Worship, and her online course.
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