Guitar Chords for Heart of Worship by Matt Redman

The easy version of "The Heart of Worship" by Matt Redman uses four chords: D, A, Em, and G. The verse moves between D, A, and Em, the chorus adds G, and nothing in the song asks for a barre chord or a stretch past the 3rd fret. Fuller chord charts add A7sus4, D/F#, and A/C#, which sound closer to the record but are not required to play the song all the way through. Everything below covers both versions, the full song structure, every chord shape in a table, and how to move between them without losing the beat.

The Easy Version: D, A, Em, and G

If you already know these four open chords, you can play this song today. Here is the shape for each one, string by string. Strings are numbered 1 to 6, thinnest to thickest, and fingers use standard numbering: 1 is your index finger, 2 is your middle finger, 3 is your ring finger, 4 is your pinky.

D Major

A Major

E Minor (Em)

G Major

Every one of these four shapes is a standard open chord you have probably already met elsewhere. That is not a coincidence. Worship songs from this era were written to be played by a full room of guitarists at once, most of them not advanced players, so the chords tend to stay inside the small pool of shapes almost everyone already knows.

Song Basics at a Glance

Before the section-by-section breakdown, here is what you are working with.

Two different "keys" show up when people search chord charts for this song, and both are correct. The recording is in Eb major. The chord shapes almost everyone actually plays are D-shape open chords with a capo on the 1st fret, since Eb is an awkward key to finger directly and D shapes with a capo get you there without a single barre chord. Which one you call "the key" depends only on whether you mean the pitch you hear or the shapes your hand is making, and the capo section further down covers exactly how that trade works.

The Story Behind The Heart of Worship

Matt Redman wrote this song after a season at his home church, Soul Survivor in Watford, England, where the pastor, Mike Pilavachi, had grown concerned that the congregation had become passive, consuming the music on stage rather than actually worshiping. Pilavachi's response was to strip the whole thing back. He asked the band to stop playing altogether for a stretch of Sundays, so the church would have to find its own voice again without instruments or a sound system to lean on.

By Redman's own account, that "unplugging" was awkward at first, long stretches of uncomfortable silence with no music to fill the room. Over time, though, the congregation started singing unaccompanied and offering up their own prayers, and the church came out the other side with a clearer sense of what worship was actually for. Redman wrote "The Heart of Worship" not long after, quickly and without any expectation that it would travel beyond his own church, as a direct response to that experience. Pilavachi reportedly suggested a few small lyric adjustments before it went further, so a song written for one congregation's specific season could speak just as plainly to any other congregation singing it later.

The song became the title track of Redman's 1999 album "The Heart of Worship," and it has stayed a fixture in congregational worship sets since, largely because the sentiment behind it, that worship is about something offered rather than something consumed, does not depend on any particular era of production style to land.

That context is worth having before you learn the chords, because it explains the shape of the song better than the chord chart alone does. The verses stay harmonically simple and understated, the pre-chorus builds, and the chorus opens up without ever becoming loud for its own sake. A song about stripping things back to what matters is, fittingly, built from a handful of open chords rather than anything flashy.

The Verse Chords

The verse leans on three chords, cycling through D, A, and Em.

Strum each chord for roughly a full bar, keeping the strumming hand light. This is a reflective, slow-tempo song, and a verse strummed as hard as a rock chorus fights against what the lyric is doing. Let the chords ring rather than chopping them short, and keep your dynamic well below where the chorus will eventually sit, so there is somewhere left to go later in the song.

If you are playing along with a group or a backing track, the verse is also where timing discipline matters most. At 70 beats per minute, a full bar per chord is slower than it sounds on paper, four counts each, and it is easy to drift ahead of the beat out of impatience. Keep your strumming hand moving in a steady, unhurried motion even through the sustained parts of each chord.

The Pre-Chorus

The pre-chorus is where the song starts to lift, using Em and D before resolving toward A.

This section is short, and its whole job is to build tension into the chorus rather than resolve anything on its own. Let the chords ring into each other rather than cutting them off early, and resist adding volume too soon. The lift should feel like it is arriving from the chorus itself, not from the pre-chorus jumping the gun.

The Chorus

The chorus is where the fourth chord, G, enters, expanding the harmony just as the lyric opens up.

That final A leads the progression back around into the next verse or the next pass through the chorus. Some chord charts write the ending of the chorus as a return straight to D instead of lingering on A, so treat the exact last chord as a small variation you should confirm by ear against whatever recording or arrangement you are playing along with, rather than as a fixed rule.

Dynamically, this is the one section of the song that is allowed to open up. Strum a little fuller here than in the verse or pre-chorus, without turning it into an aggressive rock chorus. The song's emotional peak is still restrained by the standards of most contemporary worship music, closer to a swell than a wall of sound.

How the Whole Song Fits Together

Seeing the full structure laid out in order makes the song far easier to play start to finish, since the same handful of chords repeat in a specific sequence rather than one flat loop.

Congregational worship songs are not always performed identically twice in a row, even by the same band, so treat this as a reliable map rather than a fixed script. Some arrangements repeat the chorus a third time, some drop the band out entirely for a line or two near the end and let the congregation sing unaccompanied, echoing the very story the song came out of. Follow whoever is leading in the moment, and use this structure as the default shape to fall back on.

How This Song Sits in the Key of D

Naming the chords by their role in the key, rather than just by letter name, explains why this particular set of four chords keeps showing up together. In the key of D major, D is the I chord (the home base), A is the V chord, Em is the ii chord, and G is the IV chord. Written out as a progression, the verse and chorus both move through I, V, ii, and IV in different orders.

The ii chord is worth pausing on, because it is the one a lot of players expect to be different. Many pop and worship songs in a major key reach for the vi chord instead of the ii, in D that would be Bm, to get a minor chord into an otherwise major progression. This song uses Em, the ii chord, instead. The practical effect is a slightly different flavor of "minor" inside the progression: vi chords tend to sound wistful or melancholic against their major key, while ii chords sit closer to the middle of the harmony and lean more directly toward the V chord that follows them, which is exactly the role Em plays heading into A in both the verse and the pre-chorus.

That relationship is also why the pre-chorus lands so naturally. Em moving to D moving to A is a ii-I-V motion, three chords that each pull toward the next in a well-worn, satisfying way. You do not need the theory to play the song, but it explains why the pre-chorus feels like it is gathering momentum even though nothing about the tempo or the strumming pattern has changed yet, the harmony itself is doing that work.

The Fuller Chord Chart: A7sus4, D/F#, and A/C#

Look at more than one chord chart for this song online and you will run into three chords that do not appear in the easy version: A7sus4 in place of plain A, D/F# in place of plain D, and A/C# in place of plain A at certain points in the pre-chorus and chorus. None of these are wrong, and none of them are strictly required either. They are a fuller, more embellished reading of the same progression.

A7sus4 Instead of A

A7sus4 replaces the note that makes A major sound "major," its third, with the note a fourth above the root instead, then adds the flat seventh on top. The result is a chord that sounds suspended and unresolved compared to plain A, which is exactly the effect a lot of worship arrangements are chasing at the end of a phrase, a chord that leans forward into whatever comes next rather than sitting still.

Notice this shape only needs two fingers, middle finger on the 4th string and ring finger on the 2nd string, both at frets you are already used to reaching from the plain A shape. Swapping A7sus4 in wherever the chart calls for it is a small change to your hand, not a new chord to build from scratch.

D/F# Instead of D

D/F# is a plain D major chord played with F#, its own third, as the lowest note instead of D. If slash chords are new to you, the Dm/A chord guide covers exactly how the notation works, chord name first, bass note second, using a different chord as the example. The same logic applies here: D/F# is still D major, just voiced with a different note on the bottom.

The only real change from plain D is fretting the 6th string at the 2nd fret with your index finger instead of muting it, which puts F# underneath the rest of the chord and creates a smoother, stepwise bass line moving into the chords around it rather than jumping straight to D's own root.

A/C# Instead of A

A/C# is the same idea again, plain A major with its own third, C#, moved into the bass. It shows up in some fuller charts in the pre-chorus and chorus in place of a plain A.

Reaching your pinky down to the 4th fret of the 5th string while your other three fingers hold the rest of the A shape takes some finger independence to keep clean. If it feels cramped at first, that is normal, and the plain A version further up this post is a complete substitute any time this stretch is not landing cleanly.

Em7 Instead of Em

A handful of fuller charts also swap the plain Em for Em7. Em7 is a one-finger chord, middle finger on the 2nd fret of the 5th string with every other string left open, and it is covered start to finish, including five voicings further up the neck, in the Em7 chord guide. Either Em or Em7 works throughout this song. Em7 adds a slightly softer, more open color, and Em is the more grounded, resolved sound. Neither is more "correct" than the other here.

Playing It With a Capo (and Matching the Original Key)

The record is in Eb major, a key that has no comfortable open chord shapes on guitar, every chord in Eb without a capo needs a barre. Rather than play the song entirely in barre chords, the standard workaround is a capo on the 1st fret, which raises every open shape you play by one semitone. Play a D shape with a capo on the 1st fret and the note that actually sounds is Eb.

That single row is the entire trick. Every chord shape in this post, D, A, Em, G, A7sus4, D/F#, A/C#, keeps its own shape and its own name relative to the capo. Put the capo on and play a D shape, and an Eb chord comes out. Play an A shape, and a Bb chord comes out. You never have to relearn the progression or think in Eb directly, you are simply shifting the entire guitar's pitch up and continuing to read and play D-shape chords exactly as written above.

A capo is not required to play this song. If you are playing alone or with a group that is not trying to match the original recording's exact pitch, playing the D-A-Em-G progression with no capo at all is completely correct and arguably simpler, since you are one fewer piece of gear away from just picking up the guitar and playing. Reach for the capo specifically when you are matching a track, a video, or another instrument that is fixed in Eb, such as a keyboard or a vocalist who has already set the song in that key.

Transposing to a Different Vocal Key

A capo does not have to sit only on the 1st fret. If you are leading a song for a singer whose voice sits higher or lower than the original recording, moving the capo changes the key while every chord shape in this post, D, A, Em, G, A7sus4, D/F#, and A/C#, stays exactly the same. Only the fret you place the capo on changes.

The relationship between the chords never changes, no matter where the capo sits. D is still the I chord, A is still the V chord, Em is still the ii chord, and G is still the IV chord, all four moving up together by exactly as many semitones as the capo does. That means once you can play this song in one key, you can play it in any of these keys just by sliding the capo, without learning a single new shape.

This is worth knowing beyond just matching the original recording. If you are leading a group and the melody sits uncomfortably high or low for whoever is singing, moving the capo up or down a fret or two, rather than changing the chord shapes entirely, is usually the fastest way to find a key that actually fits their voice.

Full Chord Shape Reference

Every chord this song uses, gathered in one place. Strings are numbered 1 to 6, thinnest to thickest. Fret numbers are relative to the capo if you are using one, not the physical fret on the neck.

D Major (Open)

A Major (Open)

E Minor (Open)

G Major (Open)

A7sus4

D/F#

A/C#

Why Your Chords Are Buzzing or Sound Dead

None of these shapes are individually hard, so a buzz or a dead string almost always traces back to one of the same handful of causes.

Your Finger Is Too Flat

A finger lying flat across the fretboard instead of coming down on its tip touches the neighboring string and mutes it. This shows up most on Em, where your ring finger's flat underside can brush the open G string it is supposed to leave ringing. Curl your fingers so they contact the string near vertically, at the very tip, and check your thumb position on the back of the neck, since a thumb that creeps up over the top tends to flatten every finger above it.

You Are Pressing in the Middle of the Fret Instead of Behind the Wire

Fret numbers count the space between two metal fret wires, not the wire itself. Pressing right up against the fret wire, on the side closer to the guitar's body, takes far less pressure for a clean note than pressing in the middle of that space. This matters most on D/F# and A/C#, since both ask a finger to reach further down the neck than the easy four-chord version does.

The Slash Chord's Bass Note Is Not Ringing Clearly

D/F# and A/C# both depend on a single low note ringing out clearly underneath the rest of the chord. If that bass note is muted, weakly fretted, or drowned out by the rest of the strum, the slash chord stops doing its job and just sounds like a slightly muddier version of the plain chord. Pick the bass string on its own after fretting the shape and listen for it specifically before strumming the whole chord.

A7sus4's Open Strings Are Getting Muted by Accident

A7sus4 leaves the 3rd and 1st strings open while your middle and ring fingers fret the 4th and 2nd strings. If either fretting finger leans sideways and brushes an open string next to it, you lose part of the chord's color without immediately noticing why it sounds thinner than expected. Keep each finger's pressure aimed straight down rather than angled across the neck.

Your Fretting Hand Is Tensing Up on the Easy Chords

Because D, A, Em, and G are all familiar shapes, it is easy to grip harder than necessary out of habit, especially during a slow song where you have time to think about your hand instead of just playing. Excess grip tires your hand faster over a long worship set and does nothing for tone once a string is already fretted firmly enough to ring clean. Use only as much pressure as it takes to stop the buzz, not more.

The G Chord's Stretch Is Muting a Neighboring String

G is the one shape in the easy four-chord version that asks three fingers to spread across four strings at once, from the 6th string down to the 1st. If your index finger, reaching for the 5th string, is not arched enough, its underside can lean into the open 4th string next to it and choke off part of the chord's sustain. Check the G chord in isolation, strumming slowly and listening for every string ringing clearly, before assuming the buzz you are hearing elsewhere in the song is coming from a different chord entirely.

Easier Versions for Beginners

If any single chord in the fuller chart is the sticking point, there is almost always a simpler substitute that keeps the song moving.

Swap A7sus4 back for plain A any time the two-finger stretch is not landing cleanly yet. The two chords share the same root and the difference is a matter of color, not correctness, so plain A is never a wrong answer here.

Swap D/F# back for plain D whenever reaching the 6th string with your index finger is throwing off the rest of your hand shape. The bass note is the only thing that changes between the two, and plain D carries the harmony just as completely on its own.

For A/C#, an easier substitute than reaching the pinky down to the 4th fret is Asus2, played by taking the ordinary open A shape and simply lifting your ring finger off the 2nd string, leaving it open. That swaps the third for the second, the same kind of "suspended" color A7sus4 uses, without asking your hand to stretch anywhere at all.

None of these substitutions are a permanent compromise. They are a way to keep playing the whole song while your hand builds the strength and independence that the fuller voicings ask for, and most players end up picking up the fuller versions naturally once the easy four-chord version feels automatic.

Changing Between Chords Without Losing the Beat

The shapes here are not the hard part of this song. The speed of the changes is, particularly Em to D in the pre-chorus, since your hand has to reshape almost entirely between the two.

Two things help more than anything else. First, practice each change in isolation, just Em to D and back, on its own, before adding the rest of the progression around it. Second, look for the fingers that stay close to the same string across the change rather than lifting your whole hand and resetting it from scratch.

For Em to D specifically, notice that your middle finger goes from the 5th string in Em to the 1st string in D, and your ring finger goes from the 4th string in Em to the 2nd string in D. Neither finger is reused on the same string, so this change genuinely is a full hand reset, which is exactly why it deserves isolated practice rather than being learned for the first time inside the full progression.

The D to A change is friendlier. Your index finger moves from the 3rd string in D down to the 4th string in A, a one-string shift rather than a full reset, and your other two fingers slide into place around it. Anchoring on that index finger's short move is the fastest way to make the D to A change feel automatic.

The A to Em change is friendlier still if you are using the plain A shape, since your middle finger stays near the same area of the neck and only your ring finger has to travel any real distance, from the 2nd string in A down to the 4th string in Em.

Strumming Pattern and Dynamics for a Worship Ballad

At around 70 beats per minute, this song has more room per beat than a faster strumming pattern gives you, and that space is part of what makes it feel like a ballad rather than a strum-along. A simple down, down-up, down pattern per bar covers the verse and pre-chorus without crowding the vocal line.

The chorus can open up slightly, a fuller down-up-down-up across the bar, without turning into an aggressive strum. This song's emotional lift comes from the harmony opening up to include G, and from more voices or instruments joining in, not from the guitar suddenly being strummed harder.

Dynamics matter more in a song like this than in almost any up-tempo song on the site. The verses are meant to sit back, quiet and unhurried. The chorus is meant to open up, without overshooting into something that no longer matches the reflective character of the lyric. If a bridge or unaccompanied tag section is part of the arrangement you are playing, that is the moment to nearly stop strumming altogether, letting the room's voices carry the moment the song was written to create in the first place.

Fingerpicking the Verse Instead of Strumming

A slow ballad like this one translates well to fingerpicking, especially in the verse, where a quieter texture matches the lyric better than a full strum does. A simple thumb-and-fingers pattern gets you there without learning a complicated fingerstyle arrangement from scratch.

Play the thumb note first, then roll the remaining three fingers upward in order, letting each note ring into the next rather than plucking them all at once. For D, the thumb lands on the open 4th string. For A, the thumb lands on the open 5th string. For Em, the thumb lands on the open 6th string. For G, the thumb lands on the 6th string at the 3rd fret.

This pattern works especially well under the verse and pre-chorus, where the harmony is doing the work and a busier strum would compete with the vocal rather than support it. Switching back to a full strum for the chorus, where the song is meant to open up, creates the same kind of dynamic contrast a full band would get from adding instruments, using only your right hand's technique to do it.

If a section is meant to feel especially bare, such as an unaccompanied tag or a quiet ending, dropping the thumb-and-fingers pattern down to just the thumb, playing a slow, spaced-out bass note on beat one of each chord with nothing else, is a natural way to thin the texture even further without stopping the guitar entirely.

A Practice Routine for This Song

Start with the easy four-chord version, D, A, Em, and G, at a slow tempo, until the verse progression feels automatic under your fretting hand. Add the pre-chorus's Em to D change next, since it is the hardest single transition in the song and benefits the most from isolated practice. Only after both of those feel solid should you add the fuller chart's A7sus4, D/F#, and A/C# in place of their plainer counterparts.

A realistic first week looks like this.

Do not treat day 7 as a finish line. It is the first time you are allowed to play the whole song slowly and imperfectly with the fuller chart, not the point where it needs to already sound finished. If you are building this into a short daily habit rather than one long session, the homepage has more on structuring focused fifteen-minute practice blocks that actually stick over time.

Playing It Solo, With a Band, or Leading a Group

Alone, with just a guitar and a voice, the easy four-chord version carries the whole song, verse, pre-chorus, and chorus, without needing a single embellishment. That is a complete way to play it, not a stripped-down placeholder version waiting for the "real" chords.

With a full band, the fuller chart's slash chords do real work, since a bass player is often outlining the same D/F# and A/C# bass movement whether or not the guitarist plays it too. Matching that bass line in your own chord voicings, rather than playing plain D and A underneath it, keeps the guitar and bass parts from working against each other.

Leading a group of singers on your own, the capo option matters more than either of the above, since it lets you match a pre-set key without relearning the shapes. Decide the key based on where the song sits comfortably for whoever is singing lead, not based on which version of the chart you found first, and use the capo table above to translate between the shape you play and the pitch that actually comes out.

If a keyboard or piano is also part of the arrangement, coordinate the key before you start rather than assuming the guitar's capo position is a given. A pianist typically plays directly in whatever key the group settles on, with no equivalent of a capo to shift into a more comfortable set of shapes, so the conversation about key usually needs to account for both instruments rather than the guitarist choosing first and everyone else adjusting around it.

Common Mistakes Beyond the Chords

A few issues show up repeatedly with this song that have nothing to do with fingering a wrong shape.

Rushing the Pre-Chorus

Because the pre-chorus only has three chords and feels harmonically simple compared to the chorus that follows it, it is tempting to speed through it toward the payoff. The pre-chorus is doing real work building tension, and rushing it undercuts the chorus's lift instead of setting it up. Practice holding a steady tempo through this section deliberately, even though it feels like the "easy" part.

Strumming Through a Quiet Tag or Bridge

If the arrangement you are playing includes a quiet, often unaccompanied section near the end, echoing the song's own origin story of a congregation singing without instruments, strumming through it at the same volume as the rest of the song erases the moment entirely. Whether that means laying out completely, dropping to a single fingerpicked bass note per chord, or simply strumming far more softly, the point of that section is restraint, not another verse.

Adding the Fuller Chart Before the Easy Version Is Solid

A7sus4, D/F#, and A/C# are worth learning, but layering them on top of a chord progression you are still fumbling through in its plain form usually means you get neither version clean. Get the D, A, Em, G verse and chorus comfortable first, then swap in the fuller voicings one at a time rather than all at once.

Treating Every Chorus Identically

Worship songs performed live rarely repeat a chorus at exactly the same volume every time. A final chorus, in particular, is often played fuller than the ones before it, sometimes with the whole room singing rather than just a lead vocal. Building in a small amount of dynamic growth across repeated choruses, rather than playing every pass through the song at one fixed volume, matches how the song is actually used far more often than a flat, unchanging arrangement does.

Frequently Asked Questions

What key is "The Heart of Worship" in?

The original recording is in Eb major. Most guitarists play it using open D-shape chords with a capo on the 1st fret, which raises the pitch to Eb without requiring any barre chords.

Do I need a capo to play this song?

No. A capo only matters if you are matching the original recording's exact pitch, another instrument, or a specific vocal key. Playing D, A, Em, and G with no capo is a complete, correct version of the song on its own.

What are the easiest chords to start with?

D, A, Em, and G. All four are common open chords, none require a barre, and together they cover the entire verse and chorus.

What is the difference between A and A7sus4 in this song?

A7sus4 replaces the note that makes A sound major with a suspended fourth and adds a flat seventh, giving it a more unresolved, "leaning forward" sound. Plain A is a complete substitute anywhere A7sus4 appears in a fuller chart.

Why do some chord charts show D/F# and A/C# instead of plain D and A?

Those are slash chords, the same D and A shapes but with a different note (the chord's own third) moved into the bass, giving the progression a smoother, stepwise bass line. They are optional embellishments, not a different song.

Can I use Em7 instead of Em?

Yes. Em7 is a one-finger chord that adds a slightly softer color to the same spot Em occupies in this song. Either one works throughout.

How fast is this song?

Around 70 beats per minute, a slow ballad tempo. That is slower than it might feel listening casually, so counting a full bar per chord change is worth doing deliberately while you are still learning it.

Is this a hard song for a beginner?

Not in its easy four-chord form. The chords themselves, D, A, Em, and G, are commonly among the first shapes any guitarist learns. The pre-chorus's Em to D change is the one spot that benefits from dedicated, isolated practice before playing the song straight through.

Does the song change key partway through?

No. The chord charts this post draws from all keep the same key from the intro through the final chorus, unlike some worship songs that step up a key for a final repeat. Whatever key or capo position you start in is the one you play in for the whole song.

Should I strum or fingerpick this song?

Either works, and many players use both in the same performance. Fingerpicking suits the quieter verse and pre-chorus, while switching to a strum for the chorus gives the song the dynamic lift it is built around. Neither approach is more "correct" than the other.

Who wrote "The Heart of Worship"?

Matt Redman. He wrote it after a season at his home church, Soul Survivor in Watford, where the band had temporarily stopped playing so the congregation could rediscover their own voice in worship. The song became the title track of his 1999 album of the same name.

What if I only know three of the four chords?

D, A, and Em alone cover the entire verse and pre-chorus, so you can start playing along well before G feels comfortable. G is only needed once the chorus arrives, which gives you a natural window to learn it separately without holding up practicing the rest of the song.