dave wellington

I love to Worship God and to help others do the same.

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It seems that in the world of ministry you need to write books and get them published in order to show you are successful. I would definitely subscribe to the maxim that everyone has at least one book in them. BUT On the other hand I would also make the argument that for a minister of music creating an album is equivalent to writing a book. 

Hear me out. 

First step is to write a song. But it has to be a good song with a hook filled melody seated upon chord voicing that oozes quality and taste. The lyrics must avoid cheesiness and cliche, being crafted and honed to convey interest and depth. Every syllable must pull its weight. The parts need to work together with the whole greater than the sum of those parts. A great song may have less than 100 words but move the listener in unimaginable ways. Oh, and it needs to be theologically sound and well grounded.

Writing (or maybe I should say, completing) such a song can take anywhere from 15 minutes to 15 years. Those are extremes but most songs arrive in a flash of inspiration followed by a period of hours, days or weeks sweating the details. 

To create an album you need about an hour’s worth of great songs. That equates to 10-12 songs on average. 

The Boss (Springsteen) would enter a studio with a huge number of songs (40+) then whittle them down to an album of material. In a similar vein, when I recorded Glory and Fire I sat beforehand with Neil (producer) and we went through a list of over 30 strong and well tested songs to find a theme that could guide our choices. Once we realised we were mostly considering songs around the person and work of the Holy Spirit, we were able to discard those not quite fitting with that theme and concentrate studio time and effort on just those which would make the album (in the studio Time = Money)

This then is a typical scenario for artistes. You have more songs than you need going in to the studio. And here’s the thing: that represents a huge amount of time spent in crafting songs. If we say a song takes a week to write (yes I know some take a lot less, but some a lot more) before heading into the studio you’ve spent probable half a year just on the songwriting side.

Then there is studio time. With Glory & Fire we budgeted 6-7 weeks for tracking, adding extra layers, adding vocals, finessing, fine tuning and then mixing. Once the mixes were done, a day in Abbey Rd to master. 

In total about 8 weeks spent and we have an album. 

If writing the songs is equivalent to writing a book, then the process of recording is the rough equivalent to typing it and editing it. Mastering is like Typesetting and layout. The final step is to place the completed work into the hands of another; a company who will take your finished item and produce it in quantity: CD duplication plants for the music, printing presses for the books. 

Your average book is going to use between 70 000 and 100 000 words; your average worship album only 1800. If a picture paints 1000 words then something similar could be said of the marriage between lyrics, melody and harmony which adds significantly to the weight of each word as it is delivered. Each song works  like a chapter in a book. And on an album carrying a theme, each song/chapter links to the next, building a thematic arc. The pacing and placement of each song is important. In our modern world of listening to random tracks we are possibly missing out on layers of meaning intended by the artiste in putting the tracks in that order. Perhaps this in part explains the resurgence of vinyl as a recorded medium where you put the vinyl on the platter and just sit back and enjoy the songs in the order the writer intended.

Releasing my latest album, Worthy (available on all streaming platforms worldwide), is, in my mind, equivalent to me writing and publishing a book. It has taken a similar amount of time and a far greater variety of creative skills. For this album I was songwriter, singer, studio engineer, keyboard player, guitarist, bass player, drummer, arranger, mix engineer, mastering engineer, producer (though track 9 a lot of those tasks were brilliantly handled by my good friend and co-writer, Luciano Manfrinato). What it boils down to is this: Worthy is a great book – worth your time to “read”. Let me know which chapter was your favourite.

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It was whilst working on ‘Worthy’ (the album) I had a couple of conversations with old chums who really wanted to listen to some of the original worship tunes I’d written, the songs which started my journey in writing songs for public worship back in the mid to late 1980s and early 90s.

Bear in mind I started writing songs in my early teens but only started focussing on writing for worship not long after getting married. Some of those early songs were not great but others began to light up the church youth choir and youth group, then ‘I stand before You’ became a main church favourite along with ‘I love You Lord, (because You first loved me)’.

By the end of the 1980s I’d written some bangers that were now being sung nationally at conferences and churches across the U.K. Being at Bible College meant I was developing a broader network of connections in my student peer group and in leaders who were visiting teachers.

In the middle of all of that I was learning how to record. Initially recording on one cassette and playing it back whilst recording another part enabled me to layer up a little. Then friends invested in the magical world of 4 track cassette recording. By the time I returned from Bible college I was able to lay down an album’s worth of songs using a 4 track and inviting friends to add vocals and stuff. All real-time. Got to get it right. Mixed to cassette then duplicated and sold. On Cassette!!

Amazing the results you could get. This was what I used for the cassette albums ‘I Believe’ and ‘Run Deep’, and initially ‘Tears fall like rain’ (though that album was mixed onto DAT opening the way for it later to be mastered onto CD) But almost no one has a working cassette player these days. Put that alongside the fact that whilst I was really happy with those albums when they came out, my own production skills and 21st century contemporary musical tastes have moved on. Even if I could find a way to get those versions out, I would choose not to.

So my next conundrum was this. What should I do with these 20 or so really good songs. The answer is obvious. Start from scratch and record them. But which? I started with a few obvious ones and as I continued on I gathered 12 into some great modern arrangements but with a nod to their origins in some of the sound choices. ( I say 12 songs, it’s actually 14 but 3 have been put into a medley so only 12 tracks in the album)

One track features my old musical bestie Lin Nicholls on vocals. When I sent her the nearly finished mix we both remarked on how easily our voices blended – bear in mind, I knew which parts we had both sung but I couldn’t tell our voices apart – not surprising when we’ve sung together for so much of our lives.

Then the title: this came easily. Golden.

Two reasons. Obviously these are Golden oldies. Secondly 50th anniversaries are Golden – though none of these songs is quite 50 years old, nevertheless I am in my 5th decade of writing worship songs. How did that even happen!!!?

The only trouble is, in uncovering this collection of songs, I have at least as many again worth some attention. Could Golden 2 be a thing?? (You know it is! I have already started the process of recording and have a few absolute bangers laid down – Golden 2 will arrive in due course, not sure about late 2026 or early 2027)

It’s worth noting that this constant stream of releasing older material came from a sense that God wanted to pour new stuff into me and I needed to get the old out to make room for the new. I think I saw that in Two Worlds Kissed pts 1&2 as the new songs were written, at the right time they just poured out of me. It’s also great to hone my production skills and really learn to use the professional tools at my disposal.

I am looking forward to the new song material that I am about to write and co-write.

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As I was getting Encounter ready for release I had to shelve working on several good songs which in my mind could not fit the arc of that theme. Some of them had been used on albums that are simply not available on modern streaming platforms. Others had existed as demos distributed to worship teams to enable song learning. Some had been published (some unpublished even though they’d been used live – e.g Can’t earn it – a co write with chums Ivo Ivanov and Christine Britton) but in essence now only existed on paper – no actual recordings existed. Others lay in my head with some lyrics but largely unfinished. At least one had been written whilst still at school but never in my recollection ever performed live. Ever. But still too good to waste. And the icing on the cake, one other was to come from a surprising and delightful co-write with Luciano Manfrinato earlier this year with production from him too.

In whatever form these songs had existed, it was time to finish them, polish them and get them ready to become a cohesive whole for a new album, where necessary rebuilding them from the ground up.

Where a recording pre-existed, my first port of call was to listen to that recording to see if there was anything there which might help to shape the arrangement going forward. I was essentially asking myself “Do I like this version – is it worth working with”. For the most part the answer was “there are some parts of this which are great, some which are good and some which are redeemable”. But listening with a critical ear identified parts which either needed to be replayed, edited, chopped or changed and definitely updated with new sounds. This is especially true of pianos and drums (modern keyboards or VSTs just carry so much more detail in their sample sets), but all parts benefitted from choosing new sounds or new recordings of the old.

Regarding vocals, sometimes an old performance is just right; timing, cadences and emotion. Whilst I sing in tune, these days I will check the tuning and tweak it where necessary. Harmonies benefit from being multi layered and I would have recorded any original demos with each part recorded just singly. So it’s time to add extra vocal layers and a decent vocal effects chain. But everything is up for replacement if needed. My rule tends to be that before reaching for the editing tools at my disposal I have to ask could I sing it (play it etc) better. Should I sing it differently. An advantage of the tuning tools available are that you can explore alternative harmony choices without re-singing. Even so, re-singing is often the right choice.

One of the songs I felt it was worth exploring was the song ‘Worthy’. I had pitched this song to Kevin Mayhew publishers to give me a comparison between them and what I did through CopyCare (now Song Solutions). In the intervening years and having moved house, we lost touch and on deciding upon the inclusion of this song I reached out to Kevin Mayhew and updated them with our contact details. Happily they came back to me to report that the song had been quietly earning its own little nest egg in royalties. Not huge but…something.

I liked how this song came out so much that I felt it was the main contender for the album’s title track. Adding in some ambient drumming again from Pete Welly took the track to another level. To help create a total family feel, I asked daughter Beth if she’d be up for singing the female lead part. We managed to squeeze that in to a trip to London. You’ll love this song and I think you’ll love this album.

It should be live worldwide from the 30th August 2026 – let me know in the comments which tracks were your favourite

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If one album in 2025 wasn’t enough it was followed by a single release and a whole new album.

In June of 2025 my much loved big sister went in for a serious heart operation for which the success rate was high. Despite the optimism about her recovery she didn’t come around and was declared dead on 7th June.

We all have different ways of coping with grief. Mine was to pour myself into a song which I reframed for my sister. ‘Play it over again’ was released as a single in late July. Please do have a listen but be warned it is edgy and raw.

In the meantime I had been working on a collection of worship songs called Encounter. Two of the songs had made it onto recordings previously but needed reworking largely from scratch to bring them up to date. Most of the others had existed in demo form for some time but had never been released on an album, though had been either performed by me or used in worship. So cue a major rebuild with fresh sounds, tightened timing, and new vocals. Finally one song was a brand new co-write with my mate Andi Foster which featured him on acoustic and vocals with Peter Welly contributing some ambient drums.

In amongst all these great songs is a fabulous jewel – ‘Jesus how we love You’. It’s the song that first drew the attention of Nigel Coltman and Geoff Shearn at CopyCare back in the early 1990s. Delicately sung by Andrea Almeida its qualities are timeless. This edition is true to the original and includes a very Gilmour-esque guitar outro.

As ever if you have questions on processes of writing songs or recording them, then please do drop a comment below.

You can listen to all my music on any streaming platform worldwide.

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I’ve so much to tell you about since I blogged last. Let me catch you up in few blogs.

If ‘Two Worlds Kissed pt1 – The Season’ was a Christmas album, ‘Two Worlds Kissed pt2 – The Reason’ had to be all about the build up to and immediate aftermath of Easter. It’s an album full of 12 beautifully crafted songs, exquisitely arranged, and lovingly performed. It mixes some classic songs going back to my late teens alongside freshly minted songs written to this theme. If you recall from my last blog, I had the idea for Two worlds kissed whilst skiing. The initial flash of inspiration held both the birth and death of Christ in tandem. So even whilst I was working in part 1 to get it ready for Christmas, I had started writing and shaping songs for part 2.

One song I’m particularly pleased with is the final track – The Name. It’s a song which came out of a spontaneous worship moment in Brazil as we sang together the name of Jesus in a congregation of several hundred people. It was intense and beautiful, and it was such a sacred moment that any follow up song had to match that moment in Spirit. Inspiration came as I read Philippians 2 which culminates in Jesus being given the highest name. Words suggested themselves from the pages of The Book and a tune followed leading to the song’s climax of singing the Name. The worship team at Cheltenham Elim helped provide some crowd vocals: I had wanted to use the recording I had from Brazil but it wasn’t clean or clear enough.

Judge for yourself and maybe let me know in the comments what your favourite track is. You can listen on any streaming platform.

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As I write this blog, I am excited that my latest album called Two Worlds Kissed – Part1: The Season is now out and available on all streaming and downloading platforms worldwide. As it happens it is a Christmas album. I want to tell you the story of how it creatively formed.

2022 had been a busy musical year for me culminating in the release in 2023 of 3 albums, 1 album of story songs and 2 albums of worship songs. A total of 32 tracks were honed, given spit and polish and released on those 3 albums. Even so, there were still more than enough unreleased tracks for a further one or maybe two albums. So, I collated some demos and began to listen with a view to putting out another album in 2024.

I did this in the tail end of 2023. Two things popped out at me: Firstly, there were some significant tracks relating to the cross, both the work of Christ through it, and our response to it. Secondly, I realised that my previous Christmas album, released in 2007, was losing its freshness and I wanted to find a new creativity for future festive seasons.

I was undecided as to a direction for any production but with time my side I waited and pondered, and I prayed as we headed in to 2024.

In early February we went off on a skiing holiday to Grindelwald in Switzerland. I love skiing and I love the mountains – the vistas and the fresh air. They are such inspiring spaces. It was whilst skiing one day I had what I can only describe as a God moment, an epiphany, and all my ponderings to that point came into sharp focus in the realisation that both Christmas and Easter represented moments in human history when the earth we live on was kissed by heaven; moments that changed everything. The impact on me was so profoundly moving that I nearly lost it on the piste – I had to get quickly to the side to recover. Whist I paused there, a lyric and a melody rose up and I began singing it out, hastily grabbing my phone to capture the result.

I now had a clear creative urgency and direction to sort the demos which could fit with such themes. There were only 3 possible songs. It was therefore time to get busy in the studio and get creating. As I poured myself into songwriting I found some fresh ideas in the Christmas story – ideas which had not been presented before, or at least had not been presented in this way and definitely not by me. Before I knew it, I had an album’s worth of ideas ready for full production, but the ideas did not stop flowing and I shifted focus from Christmas to Easter. More new songs came. But excitedly as I revisited some songs written decades ago (but which had never aired in public), I found their content and style absolutely fitted.

It then became a process of completing and polishing what was there. That epiphany had been so strong, I knew that I had to bring my ‘A game’ to every aspect of the process. A dodgy lyric line – rewritten and/or re-sung. A poor guitar part – replayed. Piano parts, strings parts, organ parts – all honed. Editing was down to the smallest of details. I wasn’t representing me – I was representing something far greater, something that required my utmost for his highest.

So, Part 1 is out. It has already invigorated many, from the youngest – dancing to the groovy tracks, to the oldest – who reckon it has a melody. The feedback has been so positive. It is spurring me on to make ‘Two Worlds Kissed – Part 2: The Reason’ even more EPIC. Another 10 songs (at least) which this time will bring the death of Jesus into stark relief. Spoiler alert – his death is not the end 😊

I hope you enjoy Part 1 in the meantime – get it on your Christmas playlists. Sing along in your car. Get hold of the lyrics – they should be on this website www.davewellington.org in the resources section very soon.  

Blessings

Dave

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You know what it’s like. Somehow this week everything has been against you, a litany of troubling stuff – the kids, the car, the plumbing, the electrics, the traffic, the job, the shopping, the bank balance – and they all add up to leave you feeling wrecked, empty, frustrated and down. And of course you are on the rota to lead worship this coming Sunday.

You now have perhaps three basic options.

1 you cry off leading worship

2 you lead worship as if everything was fine

3 you recognise what’s been going on, so you lead from a place of brokenness.

1 is dangerous. God has called you to this. Don’t give up on your calling. Press into God for His strength to pull you through. That advice comes with a red flag of its own. Are you at a breaking point? If so the right advice might be to plan a break, a holiday, some quality rest, even some spiritual input, a worship conference perchance. Not this week, but very soon! We have to wise up about the state of our metal health, but balance that with a steadfast faithfulness that will not give up easily.

2 if you are a leader, this might be you normal option. You get your game face on and get on with the job. It’s not quite living in denial but it is summoning the strength to rise to the occasion – that amazing opportunity to be a part of that which lifts the spirits of the congregation that you serve. You will most certainly feel better after a worship session like this and God will honour you for your servant-heartedness.

3 is also an incredibly important option. This is you being vulnerable and hopefully curating songs to lead people through your pain and out into hope, recognising that there will be many who will resonate with your experience. You can certainly see this at work in some of the Psalms. Beware though of this becoming a pity party or of leading people into hopelessness. Even from a pit of despair we still look up in hope, after all, Salvation is a much broader word biblically than how we tend to use it these days. But of course vulnerability is also a close relative of authenticity. You must be authentic, otherwise what you are offering is not really worship. It’s how you do that when you are in front of the congregation. Maybe you need a personal worship time, just you and Jesus where you can lay all the cares and woes before Him. Then come before the congregation to lead them from the place of the renewed strength you have received.

In the meantime whether you are feeling like option 1, 2 or 3, if you are at a point of breaking, you need to be talking with your pastor and exploring options for moving forward. You are not indispensable after all! Together, can you identify someone who is or can be a part of your team who would be able to lead worship in your stead? If so, great – develop them and learn to delegate to them. Or are there worship leaders around the town or city who you could call on to cover? If not, there are tech means these days to provide a competent someone with the tools to provide some music for sung worship (I’d suggest this is the emergency backup option!). It will be different but importantly you’ve planned it and put it in the diary and you get to have a well-earned break.

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There has always existed a confusion about the identity of the Church, at least to those looking on and even to many who are involved.

In the UK, we are surrounded by everything from the tiniest chapels to the biggest, grandest Cathedrals and they all fall under the rough heading of ‘Church’. The confusion exists because these are just buildings – often built very lovingly, creatively, beautifully and with a desire to model the glory of God, but still just buildings. The church is not now, and never has been, a building! The Church is the people – the living stones, the body of Christ and his bride to be. The buildings are there in Europe to keep us dry, and warm in winter when we gather together, and as spaces to welcome us as we gather.

It has been observed in this season of lockdown that the church has been closed. Well, no – the buildings have been closed for many, but the church has carried on meeting by a huge variety of means. Technology has been mastered to provide us with virtual meeting spaces. We are so grateful for the likes of Zoom, Teams, YouTube and Facebook Live (other platforms exist!) which have enabled this. We’ve also learned a lot about getting things to sound and look good so that visitors and regulars alike are engaged rather than put-off.

Importantly, together we have learned more deeply what it has meant for our own homes to be places of worship and the centrality of our own family altar. Worship is so much more than a song, so much more than a musical performance. The Holy Place is not about geography it is about an attitude of heart.

Since lockdown began I have been aware that I need to model the altar of worship in my own home; to welcome the Lordship of Christ into my own living space and to offer him my devotion. This idea sparked a conversation with my son about how we might do that together, capture the results, and then invite you to worship with us. So we set up our lounge with a keyboard, a guitar and a vocal mic and we picked 9 songs that I’d written, stretching back over the the years and sang and played our hearts out together. There were moments of joy and laughter and moments of deep worship. There we praised! It was a special afternoon – we had a lot of fun, and God was with us in the room.

Once we had had a good cuppa, we reviewed what we had done and saw that it was good, we also realised we could do something more with it. Thus began the painstaking process spread over many months, working around two very busy schedules, to add other guitar parts, vocal harmonies, pads and organs, drums and bass until we had really full sounding songs. The final mixes sound so fresh and contemporary, despite the oldest being 20 years or so old!!

Our invitation to you will be to join us as we release them after Easter 2021 and enter the Holy Place where you are to worship Almighty God – let us honour him together.

See you there

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It seems like for years that a main thrust of those of us who teach and train worship teams has been to bring an excellent performance ethic into an already overflowing heart of worship. It comes as something of a surprise then that in our current COVID shaped landscape congregational sung worship has been chained (limited by governments fearing churches could become super-spreaders of the disease) with the result that the sung worship we’ve been training for has become diminished in its scope. Our on-line services are valiantly streamed with songs embedded in the hope that at home people will be joining in with gusto. But have you ever tried doing congregational worship on your own accompanied by your laptop speaker? Immersive it is not! Even with the rest of the family joining in, I suspect that there will be an abundance of self-conscious worshippers.

In thinking and praying about this I wonder what the future direction might be? As a result, I have some ongoing thoughts which I hope may help, particularly those in Pentecostal and Charismatic churches.

  1. All of that excellence must not be forgotten but needs to be channelled into getting the one or two songs you as the worship leader will sing as polished as possible. Yours may be the only voice heard. Let it be in tune and in a key to suit your voice. Let the music support and embellish that vocal. Let it breathe in order that the gathered few allowed in the building (depending on the size of that building) can at the very least reflect on the goodness of God and the depth of the sung lyrics (as opposed to being offput by a shoddy piece of singing or playing)
  2. If it is up to you to choose, pick songs which draw you to worship or praise, or which draw from the depths of your spirit offerings of thanksgiving. Be authentic to the gift that is within you. After all, people cannot in this current time join with you in song. But they will join with you in an act of worship if you are worshipping.
  3. Repetition in this season is of limited point. So pick songs which are already lyrically rich and which allow your congregation (both in the building and watching on-line) to reflect upon the depth of meaning of a song. This isn’t a plea to return to classic hymnody, but you would certainly find some rich veins to mine there.
  4. Since the congregation are currently not allowed to sing, there may be a case to find songs that they don’t know which are nevertheless worshipful but away from the normal staples of current public worship. CCLI has Hundreds of thousands listed. If the congregation don’t know them, they will be less tempted to join in regardless. Oh, and by the way, if they do join in, that could cause quite a headache for your pastor…  
  5. If they are not allowed to sing, what else can they do?
    I think spoken recitation and spoken prayer can be done – masks on please!
    How about reciting a Psalm? (Choose wisely!)
    How about doing a call and response prayer?
    How about borrowing some formal liturgy?
    In this season your job as worship leader isn’t just about choosing songs and singing them in services (not that it ever was though) but it is about finding ways to engage the congregation under your care so that they worship God. When the music fades worship leaders step up and still manage to create a space where worship happens, it’s just not sung worship.

This is a difficult time for worship teams and musicians. Perhaps it’s time to lay it all down again in an act of sacrificial worship that at the right time we will be renewed and ready to serve.

God bless all of you in this season