I am hoping the Holy Spirit is still No. 1.
Not every musician can just listen to a worship song and pick out its chords accurately by ear, right?
If you can, congratulations—please share this blog post with someone who can’t before closing this page, thank you :)
But, if you’re like the rest of us that need basic guitar chords charts (and sometimes lyrics too) to learn to play worship songs, you’re gonna love this post.
While there’s no single online resource that publishes chords and lyrics for all the church songs out there, you should be able to find the one you’re looking for in at least one of these websites.
15 sites to find free guitar chords for worship songs
1. Worship Together
This is, right now, my go-to resource to find Christian song lyrics and guitar chords.
If the song I am searching for is available (which is more often than not), Worship-Together becomes a single point resource to get all of the following:
- Guitar chords and lyrics
- Song video (sometimes an instructional)
- Link to purchase the MP3
- Link to purchase the ChordPro file
From Hillsong to Bethel to Passion to Jesus Culture and more, you are bound to find songs by most mainstream Christian artists.
And the best part?
Because of the tie-ups, all of these resources are legal and accurate (you won’t find many flaws in the chords and lyrics).
There’s one thing that irks me about Worship-Together though—their marketing terminology. For e.g. you’ll find a promotion saying “Click to get X free songs…” and when you visit the page, you only get the chord charts for free and not the actual songs themselves!
That said, let me also mention that they do have a selection of free MP3 downloads too!
2. We Are Worship
Started more as a resource for worship songs by UK artists (mainly from Kingsway records), a global version of WeAreWorship is available now after the acquisition of Kingsway by Integrity records.
While you’ll find lots of Christian lyrics and guitar chords, songs are also given away every week as free packs apart from bi-weekly free hymn packs. These free packs contain song MP3, lyrics and chord chart, lead sheet and even sheet music.
With thousands of songs from Matt Redman to Stuart Townend to Paul Baloche, you’re bound to find gospel chords and lyrics for every occasion.
You can listen to the songs, watch videos, download guitar chords, lyrics and purchase them too here—all legally since everything’s coming from the record label itself.
However, because of licensing arrangements, some songs may not be available for you depending on where you are located geographically. For end users like us, this is definitely a sour point and reminds us how worship music has become more about business and industry first and ministry next.
However, if and when the songs you need are found at WeAreWorship, the resources available for it are indeed greatly useful!
3. Worship Tutorials
This site has more than just chords of guitar based contemporary worship songs.
Here's what you get here:
- Tutorial videos of popular praise and worship songs. Gospel songs are taught from top to end with an acoustic guitar
- Song and chord videos, which feature an acoustic guitarist playing a full song accompanied by chord diagrams—you can call them video chord charts I guess
- Guitar lessons to improve your guitar playing
- Loops and backing tracks that can be used for personal practice or in live church worship as accompaniment music if you don’t have a big band
- Gear reviews and demos of useful products for church musicians
4. Catholic Songbook
If you belong to a traditional and liturgical church like the Catholic Church for example, contemporary praise and worship songs are not always enough.
Here’s where the Catholic Songbook can help.
You’ll find songs neatly categorized by the various parts of the Mass—Acclamation, Gloria, Doxology, Offertory, Sanctus, Agnus Dei etc.
There are also songs classified under different church seasons and occasions—Advent, Baptism, Wedding, Lent etc.
Resources include lyrics with chords for Catholic hymns and songs and also a facility to submit your own songs.
Apart from Catholic songs and hymns, this site features daily Catholic Mass readings and an annual Bible guide too.
5. Hymn Chords
This is another site, which will be more useful for people of Catholic and other traditional churches that use hymns more than contemporary praise and worship songs.
The site publishes chords for public domain Christian hymns—not a lot of hymns available here (I counted only 154 at the moment), but still quite useful to introduce a hymn now and then into your church worship.
Chord charts of the hymns are downloadable in PDF and Word formats.
6. Christian Guitar Resources
A straightforward repository of thousands of worship songs chords with new material added every day.
You can search for guitar tabs, chords and lyrics of your favorite worship songs by song name or by artist name both sorted alphabetically. There’s also a quick site search if you are not sure of either.
And there’s a cool bass tabs section also if you’re specifically looking for bass tabs of worship songs!
The site has an active community connected through a forum discussing several essential topics like leading worship, musical instruments, gear, theology, life issues etc.
You can also submit your own praise and worship tab to be added to the database.
Christian Guitar Resources also has music reviews, upcoming music release information, concert information and an online shop to buy merchandise.
7. Vineyard Songs
This site provides exactly what its name suggests—an exhaustive catalogue of worship songs from the Vineyard churches.
Free resources published here include song video (some instructionals also), free chord chart, lyrics and lead sheet.
Every month, MP3 files are also freely given away for selected ‘Songs of the Month’.
Certainly a keeper for all Vineyard music lovers!
8. Guitarmann
A guitar and bass lessons site that also has tons of free praise and worship guitar chords and lyrics.
The worship song charts are actually “Studio Charts”—a type of chord chart based on the “NashvilleNumber System” used by professional studio musicians.
Download this example of a Studio Chart for 10,000 reasons (Bless the Lord) to better understand it.
For more information, Guitarmann also runs a series of 12 free videos which includes a lesson on “how studio charts work”— you have to sign up for them though.
The Guitar lessons section has the following:
- Cut capo series
- Beginner series
- Intermediate series
- Electric series
- Advanced series
- Worship song examples
- New weekly lessons
- Beginner series
- Intermediate series
- Advanced series
- Worship song examples
9. Higher Praise
One of the oldest online resources for gospel songs, Higher Praise hosts a massive collection of praise and worship songs nicely arranged by song title in alphabetical order with lyrics, chords, PowerPoint slides and sometimes MIDI files too.
You can easily find most of CCLI’s top songs here.
Higher-Praise also publishes music videos, audio sermons, children resources, Bible courses and more.
You can submit your own songs too.
10. Ultimate Guitar
Here, you should be able to find gospel song lyrics and chords (and sometimes guitar tabs too) for almost any popular worship song out there.
You can submit your own songs too.
11. Tabs for Worship
An excellent storehouse of thousands of contemporary praise and worship songs with lyrics and chords apart from guitar tabs.
Everything is neatly organized by song and artist name with a clear-cut site search.
You can submit your own songs too.
12. Christmas Carols for Acoustic Worship
A free song book published by Praise Charts that has simplified chord arrangements for almost all the best loved Christmas carols.
This is a neat resource of you’re looking for easy Christian guitar songs for Christmas worship.
13. Gospel Guitar Chords
This is a very good single page collection of older praise and worship songs with guitar chords and lyrics (think “Abba Father” or “Awesome God”).
The songs are available with simplified guitar chord arrangements, which should be extremely helpful for the beginner or intermediate guitar player.
14. E-Chords
This is another cool resource to find Christian song chords and lyrics.
It offers worship song chords for guitar and also keyboard with simplified versions of the chord charts, which can be used by beginner or intermediate musicians.
Premium users get additional services like preferred song keys, plain text charts for easy printing, instructional videos and more.
15. Worship Archive
Worship Archive is a collection of over 1,000 worship song lyrics with guitar chords and more.
Song resources include audio, transposable chords, related Bible verse, lyrics, alternate chords, acoustic guitar and drum tutorial videos.
Unfortunately, the site requires membership to access most of these resources.
And the worst part?
Site membership is not even open to the public—an invite from an existing member or site staff is required to register here.
Else, I would have featured Worship Archive near the top of this list.
And that's it, hope this list is useful for you.
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