My Tribute Meaning, History, and Theology
"To God be the glory"
- Written
- 1971
- Category
- Hymn
- Status
- Published
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Story
My Tribute is Andraé Crouch’s 1971 gospel song of gratitude, salvation, doxology, and consecration, with both words and music by Crouch. Published in complete and abridged hymnal forms, it directs Christian testimony away from self-praise and toward the glory of God.
Overview
My Tribute is a gospel song of gratitude, doxology, and consecration written and composed by Andraé Crouch in 1971. Its spiritual movement begins with the inadequacy of human thanksgiving before divine grace and turns that realization away from self-congratulation and toward the glory of God. Salvation, calling, achievement, and future hope are treated not as grounds for boasting but as reasons for worship.
The song also joins praise to discipleship. Gratitude is not left as an emotion or a verbal response; it leads toward a life offered back to God. That combination gives the song unusual breadth in worship: it can function as thanksgiving, testimony, dedication, or a response to preaching about grace and stewardship.
In hymnals the work appears in both fuller and abridged forms. The complete song is commonly indexed by its opening question of thanksgiving, while some hymnals print a shorter form beginning with the doxological refrain. The first_line represented in this record corresponds to that documented abridged hymnal form.
Historical Background
Andraé Crouch wrote both the words and music of My Tribute in 1971. The copyright record associated with the song consistently gives 1971, and hymnological sources identify the tune as MY TRIBUTE with Crouch as composer. The song belongs to the period when Crouch and the Disciples were becoming an important force in American gospel music, combining the testimony-centered language of Black Pentecostal church music with arrangements and recording practices that reached beyond traditional gospel audiences.
The song was recorded by Andraé Crouch and the Disciples for the album Keep On Singin’. Modern discographic sources are not entirely consistent about whether that album should be dated 1971 or 1972, so the safer chronology is that the composition and copyright date are 1971 and the recording circulated on Keep On Singin’ in the early 1970s. Recent scholarship on Crouch identifies the album as the source of several enduring gospel standards and specifically describes My Tribute as an anthemic ballad that continued to enter hymnals used by both Black and white congregations.
The complete song and the shorter hymnal form should be distinguished. Many hymnals index the full composition under the title My Tribute with a first line that asks how adequate thanks can be offered to God; its recurring doxological section begins with the phrase preserved as the first_line in this record. Other hymnals, including The United Methodist Hymnal, print an abridged form that begins directly with that doxology. This explains why hymn indexes can show different first lines for what is essentially the same Crouch composition.
The refrain’s language also stands in a longer Protestant hymn tradition. The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology notes an allusion to an earlier nineteenth-century hymn by Fanny J. Crosby. Crouch, however, created a distinct modern gospel song whose testimony reflects his own African American Pentecostal and Church of God in Christ formation. The result is both personal and ecclesial: individual gratitude is redirected into the church’s larger vocabulary of praise.
Copyright notices in hymnals and licensing databases attribute the 1971 words and music to Bud John Songs, with later administration through major Christian-music publishing entities. Because the represented text and tune are twentieth-century copyrighted works, public_domain is correctly set to false. HymnInfo therefore should not reproduce the protected lyrics, and this record retains only the standard indexed first line permitted by the editorial specification.
Biblical Foundations
Romans 11:36 provides the clearest biblical frame for the song’s doxological purpose: all things are from God, through God, and to God, so glory properly returns to him. Psalm 115:1 makes the same movement away from human self-exaltation and toward God’s name, loving kindness, and truth. First Corinthians 10:31 extends that principle into ordinary Christian life by directing every action toward the glory of God.
Ephesians 1:7 grounds gratitude in redemption and grace rather than achievement. The song’s testimony is therefore not generic positivity; it is Christian thanksgiving shaped by salvation in Christ. Romans 12:1 then turns received mercy into consecration, calling believers to present their lives to God as living sacrifices.
Hebrews 13:15 completes the pattern by describing praise as a continuing sacrifice offered through Christ. Together these passages trace the same theological movement the song embodies at a broad level: grace is received, boasting is displaced, God is glorified, and the believer’s life becomes an offering of praise.
Verse Explanation
The song opens from the standpoint of personal testimony, contemplating the difficulty of giving an adequate response to undeserved divine goodness. The emphasis is not on cataloging achievements but on recognizing dependence on grace.
Its central movement turns from personal reflection to doxology. Attention shifts decisively away from the worshiper and toward God as the proper recipient of honor for salvation and sustaining power.
The concluding movement becomes an act of dedication. Gratitude is translated into a desire that one’s life and any recognition it receives should serve God rather than self-exaltation. Because the text remains copyrighted, this explanation intentionally describes the song’s broad theological progression without reconstructing or closely paraphrasing its protected wording.
Theological Reflection
My Tribute is fundamentally doxological: God, not the worshiper, is the final object of glory. That emphasis guards Christian testimony from becoming a celebration of personal success. Gifts, opportunities, achievements, and even the capacity to worship are received within the larger reality of divine grace.
The song is also explicitly Christ-centered in its understanding of salvation. Its theology of gratitude rests on redemption accomplished through Christ rather than on moral effort or spiritual accomplishment. This makes thanksgiving a response to grace, not a means of earning it.
A third theme is consecration. True praise extends beyond speech or music into the shape of a life. The believer’s proper response to mercy is to offer gifts, reputation, vocation, and future to God’s purposes. In this sense, the song connects worship with stewardship and discipleship: glory is given to God not only in what Christians sing but in how they live.
Church Impact
My Tribute moved from Crouch’s recorded gospel ministry into a wide range of North American hymnals. Hymnary indexes the full song, abridged forms, and the MY TRIBUTE tune in dozens of hymnals, including Baptist, Methodist, Reformed, United Church of Christ, African American, evangelical, and ecumenical collections.
Representative appearances include The United Methodist Hymnal, Trinity Hymnal, The New Century Hymnal, Baptist Hymnal, African American Heritage Hymnal, The New National Baptist Hymnal, and Total Praise. Some print the fuller song while others use only the shorter doxological portion, which helps explain variations in first-line indexing and length.
This hymnal circulation illustrates an important part of Crouch’s broader influence: a song rooted in Black Pentecostal gospel practice became usable in congregations with very different musical and denominational traditions. Its durable worship role is especially tied to thanksgiving, testimony, dedication, salvation, and services in which individuals or congregations wish to acknowledge God rather than themselves as the source and goal of their gifts.
Musical Notes
MY TRIBUTE is Crouch’s own tune for the song and dates with the text to 1971. Hymnary classifies it as irregular meter, reflecting a gospel-song design shaped by the natural pacing of testimony and doxology rather than by a repeating traditional hymn meter.
Hymnal settings frequently place the tune in B-flat major, although published instances also transpose it into other keys. The music is designed around a contrast between reflective, speech-like melodic writing and a more expansive congregational declaration, allowing the emotional trajectory to grow from personal gratitude into corporate praise.
Because the composition is still copyrighted, modern arrangements should be distinguished from Crouch’s original words and music and used under appropriate licensing. Worship leaders can preserve the song’s gospel character by allowing its phrases room to breathe rather than forcing them into the rigid pulse of a metrical hymn.
Application
- Use the song in services centered on thanksgiving, testimony, salvation, or Christian dedication.
- Pair it with Romans 11:36 or Psalm 115:1 when teaching why Christian praise redirects honor from the self to God.
- Invite worshipers to identify abilities, opportunities, achievements, or recognition that can be consciously offered back to God in gratitude.
- Use Romans 12:1 to connect sung praise with whole-life consecration, emphasizing that worship includes vocation, relationships, service, and character.
- Because the song is copyrighted, ensure that projection, printing, recording, streaming, or arranging follows the permissions provided by the church’s applicable license.
Discussion Questions
- What does the song teach about the difference between gratitude and self-congratulation?
- How do Romans 11:36 and Psalm 115:1 clarify the song’s insistence that glory belongs to God?
- Why does Christian thanksgiving naturally lead toward consecration rather than ending with words of praise?
- How does Crouch’s gospel and Church of God in Christ background help explain the song’s testimony-centered character?
- What practical changes would follow if our gifts, achievements, and public recognition were consciously treated as opportunities to glorify God?
Teaching Tips
- Explain that Andraé Crouch wrote both the words and music in 1971 and that MY TRIBUTE is therefore an integrated text-and-tune composition.
- Distinguish the complete song from the abridged hymnal form so worshipers understand why different books may show different first lines.
- Read Romans 11:36 or Psalm 115:1 before singing to frame the song as doxology rather than personal achievement.
- Connect Romans 12:1 with the song’s movement from thanksgiving to whole-life dedication.
- Use Crouch’s career as a brief example of how twentieth-century Black gospel songwriting entered hymnals across several denominational traditions without reducing his broader biography to this single song.
Sources
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Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology — My Tribute entry on composition, Crouch’s COGIC context, and the allusion to an earlier Fanny J. Crosby hymn.
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Oxford University Press — Robert F. Darden and Stephen M. Newby, Soon and Very Soon: The Transformative Music and Ministry of Andraé Crouch, chapter Keep On Singin’
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Hymnary.org — My Tribute complete-text authority page, authorship, 1971 date, meter, copyright, and hymnal instances
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Hymnary.org — MY TRIBUTE tune authority, composer, 1971 date, meter, copyright, and hymnal instances
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Hymnary.org — The United Methodist Hymnal no. 99, documented abridged form corresponding to this record’s indexed first line
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Recording Academy — Andraé Crouch artist page, seven Grammy wins and twenty nominations
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Los Angeles Times — Andrae Crouch, Grammy-winning gospel singer and pioneer, dies at 72
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Easy Song Licensing — My Tribute song copyright holder information, 1971 copyright and CCLI identifier
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eBible.org — World English Bible Classic, public-domain edition and textual source for Scripture quotations
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Sheet Music
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