I’ll never forget those hours as long as I live. On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was huddled in my basement office in the hospital where I worked. Every staff member was called in because of a threat made against the Sears Tower (now Willis Tower). All Chicago-area hospitals had to be on high alert. My marketing team dragged a small television in from another office as we scrambled to find information about what was happening. But my ears were glued to the radio in my office, tuned to a local Christian radio station, listening to their loop of Twila Paris’s “God is in Control.” It gave peace in a harrowing time, as I heard the lyrics reminding me that God does not forsake his children.
What makes a great Christian musician? Someone who writes and sings songs like “God is in Control” that draw people closer to God. Someone who seeks no glory but instead seeks that God be glorified. An artist who can take the truths of God’s word and combine them with a melody resonating with the listener. At the risk of sounding obvious, a great Christian musician writes great Christian music. Whereas secular music often relies more on melody and beat, and the lyrics may not add up to much, Christian music is written about God and for God and contains life-sustaining truth.
But we’ve had that for thousands of years, haven’t we? From King David to Fanny Crosby to Twila Paris, we have had music to drive us to worship.
Annette Griffin points out that not all Christian music is true worship. If the song is merely encouraging us in our Christian walk, and anyone else is the “victor” in the song, it’s not real worship, says Griffin. Twila Paris not only exists to sing songs with lyrics that bring us nearer to the heart of God and His word: she intends for those songs to be true worship. But even further, as her website notes, she has “helped to pioneer today’s praise and worship music and contributed greatly to making this informal style acceptable to normally more conservative churches.”
I can attest to this as a denominational churchgoer relying on ancient music and a 1959 hymnal. My church plays some older music, but songs like “Lamb of God” and “We Will Glorify” are sung just as often.
When Did Twila Paris Start Making Christian Music?
According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, Twila Paris was born on December 28, 1958, in Fort Worth, Texas, one of four children of Oren Paris II, the founder of Youth With A Mission ministries. She began playing and singing when she was young, but her career as a singer/songwriter began in 1981 with her album Knowin’ You’re Around.
She was a constant in Contemporary Christian Music in the 1980s and 1990s and continues releasing music today. She has recorded 22 albums and achieved 33 number-one singles. According to her website, she was named the Gospel Music Association Female Vocalist of the Year three years in a row in the 1990s, including a Song of the Year Award for “God is in Control” in 1995.
In the 2000s, she signed with the new worship label Integrity Worship and recorded her first live album, He is Exalted: Live Worship. She has also written several books/devotionals for adults and children. In 2015 she was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame.
Who Are Some Other Early Female Christian Musicians Like Twila Paris?
Many have argued that a major shift in how Christians make music came with the Jesus Movement in the 1970s. The norm had been singing about God in church with an open hymnal. Then the so-called Jesus freaks or Jesus hippies began writing songs that sounded more like the culture of the time.
Young musicians who played rock music rock realized they could sing for God using their genre. The Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) scene became solidified into a marketable genre in the 1980s: radio stations now played songs that sounded like mainstream music but with Christian lyrics. Twila Paris came out with her first album in 1981, and the 80s saw several other women leaders of the genre: women like Amy Grant, Sheila Walsh, Debby Boone, CeCe Winans, Margaret Becker, Kim Hill, Leslie Phillips, and Sandy Patty. These women pioneered the idea that you could drive with the kids in the car, belting out a cool-sounding song from a Christian radio station that honored God.
All Music Guide contributor Thom Granger singles out Twila Paris as “modern inspirational music’s most prolific singer-songwriter,” highlighting how she’s often compared to the prolific hymnist Fanny Crosby.
10 Inspiring Twila Paris Quotes
1. “I want to encourage people to be faithful in what God has given them to do, however insignificant it might seem, because they have no idea how huge it could be in God’s overall plan.” Twila Paris, Proper Management Profile
2. “I write from personal experience. Most of my songs are prayers from me to God and are very vertical… I believe that we all go through the same things though not at the same times.” — “Twila Paris: Paris’ Songs Are Prayers To God,” Deborah Evans Price, American Songwriter
3. “When God calls us to do something, even if we enter a new season in our lives, He finds a way to enable us. Yes, it’s a challenge, but it’s clear what God is doing, where He’s leading and what He’s enabling me to do.” — “Twila Paris,” Christian Broadcasting Network
4. “And it seems to me that one of the many productive ways that God uses worship in our lives is that when we offer it to Him, He comes and inhabits us and the places in which we worship and does His work.” — “Twila Paris: Her Heart’s Desire,” Mimi Elliott, Christian Broadcasting Network
5. “‘I hope that after 17 years of songwriting I have developed my craft and gotten more skilled at the art, which I believe it is to a degree… And yet at the core I still tend to start the song at a very visceral level… I believe sometimes the songs that are felt the deepest are the ones that start at that level.” — “Twila Paris: Creating Musical Garments,” Deborah Evans Price, American Songwriter
6. “It helps keep me in check when I think about how I am coming across in different situations. Was I the fragrance of Christ...or was I an unpleasant odor?” — Crosswalk Music profile by Mark Smeby
7. “God does not waste his time or ours. If you feel like you are marking time… God is building into us wisdom and character and experience that we will draw on later if He opens doors into larger avenues of service.” — 1996 OpenLine radio interview
9. “One thing I’ve noticed is great music will inspire me to write even if I’m writing something completely different… When I hear great music it’s inevitable. I have to write something. I’m inspired to create.” — “Paris’ Songs Are Prayers To God”
10. “The songs and the songwriting are really gifts from the Lord.” — Twila Paris 1994 interview, Victory Videos
5 Great Twila Paris Songs
Twila Paris has written dozens of inspiring songs over the years. Here are just a few favorites:
5 Best Twila Paris Albums
Here are Twila Paris’s most popular albums, as listed on Spotify in April 2023.
4. Bedtime Prayers: Lullabies & Peaceful Worship
5. He is Exalted: Live Worship
5 Great Christian Books by Twila Paris
Twila Paris’ books range from companions to her albums to inspiring devotionals.
1. Bedtime Prayers and Lullabies
2. Celebrate the Gift of Jesus Every Day: Song Lyrics & Devotionals
4. In This Sanctuary: An Invitation to Worship the Savior
Paris also contributed the foreword to Baby Changes Everything: Embracing and Preparing for Motherhood after 35 by Beth K. Vogt.
What Makes Twila Paris So Inspiring?
I’m drawn to Twila Paris’ music because she seems like the mom next door, the kind of woman you would call to comfort you in your troubles with Biblical truth. Her lyrics celebrate the attributes of God and our relationship with Him. She’s reminded me of my hope in God with words like. I’ve followed her since the early 1990s, and to this fan, she has seemed nothing but consistent in her work and walk with the Lord.
Further Reading:
Who Are Some Jesus Movement Christian Rock Pioneers You Didn’t Know About?
20 Great Books on Christian Music
Why Did Christian Music Forget The Call’s Michael Been?
Remembering Contemporary Christian Music Pioneer Keith Green
How Did John Michael Talbot Change Christian Music?
Mark Heard: Contemporary Christian Music’s Best Songwriter
How Did Randy Stonehill Revolutionize Christian Music?
How Did Larry Norman Become the Father of Christian Rock?
What Makes Christian Musician Michael Card Unique?
Why Should Christian Music Pay Attention to T Bone Burnett?
Photo Credit: Getty Images/Nagaiets
Mary Oelerich-Meyer is a Chicago-area freelance writer and copy editor who prayed for years for a way to write about and for the Lord. She spent 20 years writing for area healthcare organizations, interviewing doctors and clinical professionals and writing more than 1,500 articles in addition to marketing collateral materials. Important work, but not what she felt called to do. She is grateful for any opportunity to share the Lord in her writing and editing, believing that life is too short to write about anything else. Previously she served as Marketing Communications Director for a large healthcare system. She holds a B.A. in International Business and Marketing from Cornell College (the original Cornell!) When not researching or writing, she loves to spend time with her writer daughter, granddaughter, rescue doggie and husband (not always in that order).
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