Why Foundations Matter - Part 2: The Chordbook That Made Me Cringe

The Chord Book that Made Me Cringe 

 In the days before the internet (yes, I’m that old), worship guitarists had two main sources for chords. There were the official Hosanna! Integrity lead sheets (accurate but a little too intimidating for most) and then there were the coveted chord books: just lyrics with the chords on top. Simple. Accessible. Lifesaving… in theory. 

The problem? Many of those chord books were wrong. Badly wrong. 

While in university, I was serving at Faith Community Baptist Church, a well-established church with different ministries. One sincere and well-meaning leader from Touch Forces (our ministry to armed forces personnel) decided to compile a chord book for their own cell groups. He was a good man. I still remember him with his Ovation guitar (the coolest of the cool back then)… but his ear for chords wasn’t exactly stellar. 

The results were, well, obiang (Hokkien for clunky and off). 

The smooth C–G/B–Am progression? Reduced to C–Bm–Am. 

Those beautiful sus4s? Vanished. 

“I Worship You, Almighty God,” third line: that rich Gsus4 resolving to G became a blunt C–G. 

Still, I could tolerate it, because to me sincerity counts for something. What really got me was when I started visiting other campus groups like Campus Crusade for Christ, and saw their guitarists strumming from photocopies of the same book. “The chords can’t be wrong,” they’d say. “This is from Faith Community Baptist Church!” 

I didn’t have the heart to tell them. 

The Chord Sites that Made Me Facepalm 

Fast-forward to today. We’ve moved on from photocopied chord books… only to end up in the land of random chord websites, where users upload their versions of songs and hope for the best. 

Recently, I had a nasty flashback to the bad old days. One guitarist, sincere, eager, willing to serve, sent me screenshots of the chords he pulled from one of those sites for an upcoming worship session. My job quickly became emergency editor. I spent way too much time correcting the PDFs, fixing clunky progressions and totally wrong chords. 

But then the real problem surfaced: he couldn’t actually play the corrected chords. Esus4? Not happening. C#m–B–F#? Looked like a foreign language. Amaj7? Forget it. He just defaulted to a plain A. That was the best he could do, and I don’t fault him for it. He’d never been taught better. 

But here’s the hard truth: if you leave your musicianship at the mercy of random chord sites and the algorithm gods of YouTube, you’ll never rise beyond “tolerable enough.” 

If you want to be better than that: if you want to grow past the shortcuts and have real confidence in your guitar serving, if you want your foundations examined (and maybe rebuilt) so you can soar higher and grow faster, you need guidance from someone who’s been there, not just a faceless upload. That’s why I created my Worship Guitar Mentorship. It’s not about hype or hacks, but about giving you the solid ground you need to play with confidence in worship.

Back then, it was chord books that spread like wildfire, filled with mistakes that became “official” just because of who printed them. Today, it’s random chord sites and YouTube tutorials doing the same thing, leaving eager musicians stranded with bad habits and half-baked skills.

If we want worship that’s strong, sustainable, and life-giving, we have to stop leaving our musicians at the mercy of bad sources and start investing in proper foundations.

That’s why I do what I do. Come check me out.