By Dr. Brett Cody
Imagine encountering Christ in a passage of Scripture so vividly that His beauty arrests you. Imagine being able to describe that encounter—both the text and its effect on your soul—in a single sentence to your church family. For pastors, this is familiar work. Each Sunday, from behind the pulpit, we seek to give voice to the glory we have beheld, inviting our congregations to see Christ with us.
But what if the invitation went further—past the pulpit and into the study itself? What if the people of God stood beside their pastor as the text opened, witnessing the discoveries, the delight, and the worship that emerge as Scripture yields its riches? Imagine a congregation gathered around the Word not merely receiving its fruit, but participating in its careful unfolding. Such an encounter calls for a response worthy of the beauty revealed.
I took my church on a journey like this, and it led us somewhere unexpected: we wrote a hymn together.
Along the way, I began to imagine what it might be like for a congregation to sing about their Savior with full-hearted conviction—not only because the words they sang were true, but because they were their words. What if a church believed what it sang so deeply that its affection for the truth could be heard in its voice? What if the words were believed precisely because the people had labored together to write them? What if the gathered church did not merely sing the words it had written, but gathered in order to write the words it would sing?
This is what happened in our congregation, and it could happen in yours as well—by engaging the imagination in service of the supreme beauty of Jesus Christ.
A Small Church, a Shared Discovery
I pastor a small, rural church in Vermont. We do not possess much by way of notability in our 215 year history, but we are rich in people who love Christ and are willing to be vulnerable together. Their eagerness to show up and participate bears continual witness to this reality.
One evening at a men’s Bible study, after we had divided the book of First Peter into sections and written one-sentence summaries of each, it occurred to me that we had effectively distilled the entire letter together. As we read the summaries aloud, I began to imagine: What if these sentences were shaped into poetry? And what if that poetry were given a strict rhythmic structure? In a flash, it became clear that such a structured poem could become the verses of a hymn.
That realization became the seedbed for what would grow into the Biblical Exposition Hymn Writing Methodology—a communal approach to Scripture that weds what I call Synthetic Biblical Exposition with poetic and musical expression, allowing the church to encounter Christ together through Word, imagination, and song.
The Methodology: Mapping the Mountain Range of the Text
At its core, this methodology asks pastors to lead their churches toward a shared creative goal by treating a biblical book as a mountain range to be discovered, climbed, named, and mapped together. The process unfolds in two phases: Biblical Exposition and Hymn Writing.
Phase One: Surveying the Landscape
Phase one is akin to surveying a mountain range. The task begins with careful observation: reading the lay of the land, identifying prominent peaks and valleys, and naming the features that define the terrain. Practically, this means working through an entire biblical book as a congregation, dividing it into sections and collaboratively crafting concise prose summaries of each section.
Crucially, these discoveries are made together. The church must be given time not only to read the text, but to annotate, question, and dialogue about what stands out. In our congregation, this process took approximately three months as we worked through the Gospel of Mark. The precise length will vary depending on context, but the guiding principle is momentum. The pace must be slow enough to allow real engagement, yet steady enough to keep the church moving forward together.
Once the book has been fully divided and each section summarized, the survey is complete. The mountain range has been named.
Phase Two: Plotting the Map
With the landscape identified, phase two begins: mapping what has been discovered. This phase unfolds in two movements.
The first movement involves transforming the prose summaries into poetry. If a poet exists within the local church, that person should be entrusted with creative responsibility and freedom. If not, the church may seek a poet from outside the congregation who is willing to serve the fellowship. Drafts of poetic verses should be brought back to the group for discussion, allowing the church to address questions of imagery, clarity, and doctrinal precision together.
The goal at this stage is to establish a consistent rhythmic and rhyming structure—once that structure is fixed, the remaining verses can be shaped to fit it. As before, the timeline should be governed by momentum rather than rigid scheduling.
The second movement involves setting the completed hymn text to music. If there is a composer within the congregation, so much the better. If not, the church may invite a willing composer to bring melodic settings before the group. Through this process, the theological landscape of the biblical book is quite literally mapped into a singable form.
Importantly, the hymn does not merely encode the content of the book; it also carries within it the memory of the journey. The church’s shared labor of synthetic biblical exposition becomes part of the song itself. Throughout this phase, singing together must not be neglected. The hymn should be voiced regularly, even while it is still being formed.
Concluding Reflections
Keeping this creative endeavor within fellowship is profoundly worthwhile. Yet once the hymn is complete, the church arrives at a new crossroads. The question arises: What else should we create in response to the beauty of Christ we have beheld?
The summit has been reached, but expression need not end there. New paths may yet open—new songs, prayers, liturgies, or works of beauty born from sustained attention to Scripture. May the Lord bless these endeavors, and may the church continue to imagine faithfully in response to the Word made flesh. Let the local church engage to encounter Christ, and endeavor to express the beauty she has beheld.
Dr. Brett Cody serves as pastor of Whiting Community Church (WCC) in Whiting, Vermont. Currently, WCC has composed two hymns using this methodology. Videos of the church singing their hymns can be accessed using the following link: wcchymns.online/BCody
You may also like
- Church and Culture, Church Leadership, Leadership
- Chaplain Training, Prison / Jail Ministry, Prison-Reentry
Billy Graham’s Legacy for a New Generation
Mosaix 6th National Conference
