What "How He Loves" means
John Mark McMillan wrote this song the night his friend Stephen died in a car accident. That backstory matters more than most people realize, because it changes everything about how the lyric sounds. "How He Loves" is not a polished theological statement handed down from a distance. It is a confession made in the wreckage, by someone trying to hold onto a God who still feels real when reality has gone sideways. The original lyric carried the phrase "sloppy wet kiss" rather than "unforeseen kiss," and while worship leaders will have to make their own call on which version fits their congregation, the original phrasing was McMillan trying to describe something overwhelming and undignified: the kind of love that does not keep itself clean and composed when it reaches you. That is the emotional register of the whole song. It is not tidy. It is not triumphant in a chest-out way. It is the kind of love that shows up when you are on the floor, that slows the room down, that makes the noise stop. The melody is sparse and slow. The lyric is imagistic and raw. And underneath all of it is a theological claim that is deceptively simple and staggering: that the love of God is not a concept to be studied but a force to be undone by. When you lead this song, you are not leading a celebration. You are leading a surrender. The grief that produced this song is part of what makes it carry the weight it carries.
What this song does in a room
At 64 BPM in D, this song does something rare: it makes a congregation go still. You will feel it happen. The chatter stops. People who were distracted start to actually look down, or up, or somewhere private. That is the song working. "How He Loves" operates in the register of longing and exhaustion. It does not call people to excitement; it calls them to honesty. In a culture where worship services can feel like they are moving from one high-energy moment to the next, this song creates permission to simply be present in a quieter kind of feeling. Rooms where people are carrying grief, burnout, confusion, or disillusionment often respond to this song in ways that surprise even the leaders who scheduled it. People cry, not always dramatically, but in that quiet way where something that has been held gets to be let go for a moment. The dynamic arc of the song moves from a verse that feels almost like prayer to a chorus that opens up and insists. When the band lands on the chorus with some weight behind it, the room tends to open with it. Watch for that moment. It is pastoral and musical at the same time, and if you are paying attention, you will know when it happens.
What this song is saying about God
This song is saying that God loves with abandon. Not with strategic affection measured out in proportion to your performance or your faith level, but with the kind of love that is excessive, relentless, and slightly overwhelming to be on the receiving end of. The lyric describes a love that makes the world go dark and quiet and significant, that draws close and fills the space. It is reaching for the New Testament theme that the love of God is not merely a characteristic God possesses among other characteristics, but the defining reality from which everything else flows. The apostle John keeps coming back to this. "God is love" is not a sentiment in 1 John; it is a declaration about the nature of the source of all things. McMillan's song is trying to point at the same thing with imagery instead of proposition. He is saying: this love is so large it outweighs your grief, outweighs your losses, outweighs the weight of whatever is sitting on your chest. That is a pastoral claim dressed in poetic language, and it is worth naming for your congregation before or after the song so the theology lands alongside the feeling and not merely instead of it.
Scriptural backbone
The primary gravitational center is 1 John 4:16: "So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him." That "come to know and to believe" construction is important: it suggests that receiving the love of God is not a single moment but an ongoing orientation, a practice of returning. Romans 8:38-39 also sits underneath this song: "For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." McMillan's imagery of a love that overwhelms and holds on is a poetic rendering of that passage. When you teach this song, pointing your congregation toward those texts gives them a place to put the emotion the song surfaces. The feeling the song creates is not the destination; it is the on-ramp to something the Scripture has been saying the whole time, and the congregation benefits from knowing where the ramp leads.
How to use it in a service
"How He Loves" lands well in three distinct service positions. First, as a mid-set pivot after higher-energy songs, when you want to bring the congregation from celebration into intimacy. Second, as a response to a sermon that dealt with suffering, doubt, or the love of God in the middle of hard circumstances. Third, as a standalone opener for a service with a specific pastoral intention around grief or heaviness. Avoid scheduling it immediately before high-energy songs without a clear transition; the emotional gear shift is too sharp and disrespectful of where the room will have gone. The song also pairs well with communion. The languishing pace and the themes of a love that was not held back even at great cost sit naturally in that context. If you are using it as a communion song, consider sitting on the verses longer and letting the dynamic stay lower than you might otherwise. Give the room time to actually receive what they are singing rather than moving through it on schedule.
Things to watch for as the worship leader
The temptation with a slow, emotionally weighted song is to fill every silence. Resist that. The space between lines in "How He Loves" is doing pastoral work. If you talk over it or rush the tempo to keep momentum, you will accidentally drain the song of its most powerful quality. Stay at 64 BPM or slower; even 60 works in the right room. Watch your congregation during the chorus. If they are engaging, do not interrupt with a spoken line out of nervousness. If they are disengaged, the problem is rarely the tempo; it is usually that the moment has not been set up well. Give a one or two sentence frame before the first verse that gives people permission to bring whatever they are actually carrying. You do not need to tell the story of McMillan's friend every time, but some acknowledgment that this song was born out of real grief gives people a way in. Also watch for key change timing. The song can climb, but climbing too early burns the emotional capital before the congregation has had a chance to spend it.
A note for the team behind you (techs, vocalists, band)
Drummers: brushes or hot rods are worth considering for the verses. A full kit at 64 BPM can feel heavy-handed in the opening sections. If you are playing with sticks, play lighter than you think you need to, and save the fullness for the chorus. Guitarists: give the song room. This is not the moment for busy fills between vocal lines. A clean, open strumming pattern with occasional single-note movement is more effective than trying to do a lot with the instrument. Keys players: the pad is doing more work here than the piano or organ. Sustain, warmth, and support under the melody rather than movement across the top. Vocalists: match the emotional register of the song. If backup singers are bright and performative during the verses, it undercuts the intimacy McMillan wrote into the melody. Pull back, blend under the lead, and let the harmonies open up in the chorus where they belong. Sound techs: this song needs reverb on the lead vocal, but not so much that the words blur. The lyric is doing too much work to get lost in wash. Keep the room sitting in the mids, and if there is a moment when the leader drops to near-spoken delivery, ride that fader up slightly so the congregation catches every word.