You don’t need to learn many chords to play a lot of worship songs. Here is a list of simple songs where you only need 3 chords (or in some cases 4 chords) to play:

• I Can Only Imagine

• Wonderful Cross

• How Great is Our God

• Way Maker

• I Am Set Free

• Raise a Hallelujah

• Mighty to Save

• Oceans

• Blessed Be Your Name

• What a Beautiful Name

The Most Common 3 Chords for Beginners

If you are a beginner who is just starting out learning guitar, you’ll want to focus on these three chords: the 1 chord, the 4 chord, and the 5 chord. Now, you may have guessed that I would have said the G chord, the C chord, and the D chord; however, it’s actually better to learn what’s happening behind these common letter names of chords.

If you recall the famous song in the Sound of Music, you’ll remember: “Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do.” Now sing that song in your head, but use the numbers, “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.” You’ll hear what each number sounds like, no matter how high or low you are singing. Each number represents a particular sound.

The reason G chord, the C chord, and D chord are common chords for beginners, is because they are the sounds of the 1, 4, and 5 notes of a G scale.

Let’s try another example. The D chord, the G chord, and the A chord are the sounds of the 1 note, the 5 note, and the 4 note of the D scale.

So, why would you want to learn the numbers instead of just the letter names of chords first? Because there is actually an easier way to play those chords than the traditional way most people use. You can use a special tool to make any 1, 4, and 5 chord incredibly simple to play. More on that here. However, for now, just know that once you know the 1, 4, and 5 chords of any given key, you can play a lot of worship songs written in that key.

For instance, with just those 3 chords, you can play the intro, verse, and chorus of “I Can Only Imagine”. You can also play the entire song of “Wonderful Cross”. You can play a lot of other songs; however you’ll often run into one more chord that is incredibly common.

The “Relative Minor” Chord

If you learn just one more chord called the 6m (pronounced 6 minor), then you can play infinitely more songs. The 6m chord is called the relative minor chord because it acts as a counterpart to the 1 chord. So, think of the 1 chord as the main happy chord, and a 6m as a sad cousin to the 1. It shares many of the notes and sounds of a 1 chord, but it has a sad sound.

The 6m chord is common in songs to provide a little bit of contrast to the happy sounding 1, 4, and 5 chords, known as major chords. Once you learn the 6m minor chord, you can play infinitely more songs. In fact the rest of the songs on the list use the 6m minor chord.

The Other Chords You Need

If you have learned the 1 chord, the 4 chord, the 5 chord, and the 6m chord, there are only a handful of the other chords you need to learn. Any given key only has seven chords in it, and you have four of them covered.

The 2m (pronounced two minor) isn’t used as often as the 6m chord; however it provides a nice change every now and then.

The other chords are called “slash chords” and are really just chord inversions. Instead a chord strum will simply start with a different bass note than it usually does. That note is already in the chord somewhere, but it’s not usually played first.

For instance, the 1/3 chord (pronounced “one over three”) is an inversion of the 1 chord. Instead of starting with the 1st note of the major scale, it would start with the 3rd note of the major scale. In the key of G, a 1/3 chord is a G/B chord. So instead of strumming a G chord, starting with a G note, you’d start strumming with a B note instead.

If you’re a beginner you can actually just ignore slash chords. Just play the chord, and don’t worry about the new bass note. It will sound great either way.

Easy Beginner Guitar Worship Songs

Once you know how to play all seven chords in a given key, you can strum virtually any song; however, most worship songs use the same four chords, regardless of the key.

After you work your way through the 10 easy worship songs on guitar (listed at the top of this article), you can start working through 200 more!

You can see the full list of worship songs on the homepage, but here is just a sample of what’s in the bonus book you’ll receive in the Worship Guitar Course.

10,000 Reasons
Amazing Grace
Amazing Love
Build My Life
Come Now Is the Time To Worship
From the Inside Out
Give Me Faith
Good Good Father
Graves Into Gardens

The Best Place to Start

Learning guitar is like learning a language, and there are a few ways to start. The slowest way to begin is to learn how to read music and then apply it to guitar. Learning how to read music is great for certain instruments but will really slow you down if your goal is to play the songs you love.

As you begin, it’s better to learn “how” than “why”

The quickest way to begin is to learn a few chords and start playing songs. Get your hands and fingers in the right spot and start having fun. As you do, you’ll also start to gain confidence that you can actually play guitar.

By the way, if you don’t yet have a guitar, you may be interested in: The Best Guitars For Worship

If you really want to speed up your playing, there is a device that will turn all of your chords into one and two finger chords. There is a bit of a learning curve with your left hand in learning the correct shapes for each of the most common chords. This device will make that part extremely easy, which is why I call it the short-cut to playing.

Using this short-cut device will make it so that you can literally play 10 worship songs in 10 days. As you progress through the course, you’ll also learn some really helpful things along the way that will help you down the road.

The course starts with how to hold the guitar, how to hold a pick, and how to play a few one-string songs. From there, you’ll learn how to put a few easy chords together to start playing through a few basic worship songs.