One method I've found can be useful is looking for the primary hook of the song, and building everything else around it. It can be a lyrical or melodic hook (or even a chord progression can be a hook...think of e.g. Ryan Adams' "New York New York") . Sometimes I start with some evocative idea or expression relating to an aspect of theology or doctrine, or a specific biblical truth that might benefit from exploration. So let's say the idea I want to talk about is the righteous anger of God...to pick an easy one :-) What do I want to communicate about it? I want to acknowledge that it is great, and real, and will terribly come to bear on those who reject Christ. I want to acknowledge that it is connected to God's holiness, and that it could not be any other way: that God is just and right in his judgements. I want to finish by making Grace seem all the more amazing considering what it saves us from, and perhaps helping me to see the gloriousness of God's wrath as part of who He is. That's a fair challenge! Then I think about one statement which powerfully sums up the core idea, or at least evokes a powerful picture. So that could be something like "O burning fire". Fire is both good for heat and light, but bad for those who do not respect it. Then think where that idea would come into the song...at the start of the chorus, maybe, or the end. Or it could be the first line of every verse... O burning fire, your wrath remains On those who choose to scorn your name They see no glory in your light And only judgement in your flames O burning God, whose son revealed A greater truth that we could know That those who trusted in your grace Might be transformed by that same glow OK so that's not brilliant...I don't like the "glow" line because it's too softy... but it was just ten minutes or so from expanding on that first idea. It's forming itself into a more traditional hymn-form, which is something I often write...maybe I should try something new! Sometimes, it's better to stop before all the lyrics come and think about the melody, otherwise you might find yourself stuck in one particular pattern of writing, like I am above. So I might write those words down just as a way to add meat to it, but I think this is the point that I'd pick up the guitar or go to the keyboard and go around some ideas. I could start to think "right, what would Tim Hughes/Keith Getty/Isaac Watts do with this idea" and play around with some styles. Have some fun, and don't take it too seriously. You might discover the real hook by accident, and then things can become serious. It's easier to create a melody for a small snippet of an idea than to come up with a fully-formed chorus. Four or five syllables will lend themselves to a melody before 10 or 12 will. You'll find that with most popular music (not so much with folk melodies, which take a different approach) the whole song is essentially a framework designed to support one or two main hook ideas. It's much easier once you have one hook to settle on the others: because you're asking yourself "does this sound consistent with the first idea" rather than having a guess at "is this objectively a good sounding idea?" So that's an outline of some of the processes I go through. Hope it helps!