Ken and Melinda are very good friends. And a great songwriting team. Ken is an amazing musician and has a unique feel for great melody, beautiful chord voicings and progressions and an innate musical sensibility. Melinda’s gift centres on lyrics—powerful imagery, natural syllable matching, a refined and polished economy of words, and unique hard-and-soft rhyme structures that bring a true poetic craftsmanship to their songs.

Each of them also write separately, and with other writers and teams, but there’s a special fusion that happens when they write together. They sense it. Their writer friends recognise it. So does the congregation of Grace Fellowship, where they are both active on the worship teams.

But with publishing, the two have taken very different paths. Ken loves to keep track of all the administrative details himself, so he acts as his own publisher. Melinda attracted the attention of an up-and-coming Nashville publisher, so she was very content to let them handle all the administrative details, plus they are developing a great track record, pitching songs to labels and artists.

Since so many of Ken and Melinda’s worship songs have resonated so strongly with their church, and many other churches in the region, the CCLI revenue has grown more substantial over the past couple years. This has definitely become more than just a hobby for both of them. And many exciting opportunities lie ahead.

Ken is in frequent contact with the Intellectual Property Representatives at CCLI—making sure each new worship song is properly registered. He supplies ownership percentages, copyright information and lyrics, chord sheets, lead sheets and vocal sheets to CCLI’s IP department, who then works with CCLI’s SongSelect engraving team to make sure the lyrics and sheet music for Ken’s new worship songs are well-represented on SongSelect.

Ken is in frequent contact with the Intellectual Property Representatives at CCLI—making sure each new worship song is properly registered

Melinda is very content to let her publisher handle all that. She’d much rather focus solely on writing.

For both Ken and Melinda, CCLI is truly a Godsend. Their songs bless the church. Their work is protected and rewarded by CCLI. And they get to keep doing what they love, knowing that their efforts are truly valued.