Memorizing Philippians 1 By Singing
What singing Philippians 1 over 100 times did to my mind
Ever since I learned that Fighter Verses put the Sermon on the Mount (for the ESV) to song, I’ve been using singing to memorize scripture. After memorizing by rote repetition for a few months, I was shocked at how much easier it was to memorize via singing. The verses stuck better in my head. After experimenting for a few weeks, I came to realize that best way for me to memorize and retain scriptures was to use a combination of memory palaces, singing, and rote memorization.
One of the difficulties of memorizing the Sermon on the Mount (I’m not done yet, but very close) was keeping the individual songs in order. Jumping from one song to the next and keeping them all straight became difficult after about 20 different songs. I eventually used a memory palace to keep them in order (which worked very well), but I began to wonder what it would have been like to memorize an entire chapter at a time. It made more sense in my head to memorize a chapter at a time with 1 song versus 10 songs.
Through a post on a scripture memory community I’m a part of, I found out about a ministry by Lutheran Bible Translators called Living Water Scripture Experience. This group put the entire New Testament to song with the help of award winning singers and an amazing pianist. From the first five seconds of listening to Philippians 1, I knew I was going to memorize the chapter with this method. The quality of the songs is unbelievable and is palatable enough to listen to on repeat for weeks on end. Seriously check it out. You’ll be shocked.
I decided to take a stab at it by listening 100 times.
Originally I planned on listening to the song 10 times a day, Monday through Friday. The song is 9 minutes long, and so every day I listened for nearly an hour and a half. Considering my commute is roughly 4 hours a day, round trip, this wasn’t a problem. It still gave me time to listen to my Bible readings for the day as well as any podcasts on the scriptures I have on my list.
To give you the short description of what happened, after about 20 times the song was somewhat in my head. I couldn’t sing it but I had large chunks of the chapter memorized. After 50 times, I could go through the tune of the song completely in my head but some of phrases were off (I was probably 80 percent memorized). From 50 repetitions to 80 I did not notice any change. This made me realize the song along would not get the verse perfect in my head. From 80 repetitions to 100 I worked when I got home on the phrases I struggled with, as well as limited my listening from 10 times to five times a day, with time spent reciting on the drive to see which points I was sticking at. Often I’d listen to the entire thing, try to recite it, and once I got stuck listen to the entire thing again. This worked very well.
You’d think I’d get tired of the songs after even 50 times, but I found myself enjoying them more and more. Maybe I’m insane, I don’t know, but if it works to redeem my drive time and I enjoy it while I’m doing it then I’ll take it. It doesn’t get much better than that.
I can now, up to about 99 percent accuracy, recite Philippians 1. This took about 4 weeks total, which for me means about a verse a day for an average speed. That’s much faster than what I was doing with the Fighter Verses method and is a lot easier to keep straight in my mind. It’s nothing impressive compared to some of the other memorizers I know, but I don’t have time other than my long drives and the few minutes in the morning and evening I have for memorizing. Considering what I’m working with I feel as though I’m going at lightening speed.
What I’d do different is start rote memorizing after 50 times of passive listening. I will be doing this with Philippians 2. This would let me finish the chapter in 3 weeks instead of 4. That would bring me up to 16 chapters memorized a year, which means I could memorize the all of the New Testament Epistles in about 8 years just by driving to work. WOW!
I’ll be updating you on this journey as I go. Take care and keep memorizing.