This Is My Passion

Maybe it's the fact that I'm teaching a songwriting class at the moment, or maybe it's the fact that I've said yes to God's prodding to step out of my comfort zone yet again. Maybe it's because both of these things have me praying a lot, but whatever it is, I feel like I'm getting more song ideas than I have in a really long time. While I tend to get lots of little song "sprouts," in recent years I've have a hard time bringing a lot of them through to completion so that they are usable for our local church congregation. My "seed file," as my songwriting idea file is affectionately known, is full of partial songs, choruses, titles, melodies and harmonic ideas. Lately though, the ideas are turning into completed songs and it feels really great.

I pulled out a song idea from 2009 last week and have been playing with all sorts of lyrical ideas to flesh it out. It feels really close but with a few potential weak spots: It has two working titles at the moment: "Passion" and "Risen One." It also has a different chorus for each verse. This might mean it needs to be honed in a bit. There are some others, but we'll leave it at that for now. The lyrics as of Thursday night, May 10 read as follows:

Passion (Risen One)

This is my passion, to live this life for You

With one desire: to honor You

Jesus, my Portion, I live for Your pleasure

To serve You forever, to worship You

To sing of the wonderful work of Jesus

Saving the sinners to call us sons

Of blood that was poured out to make us holy

Perfectly dressed in the righteousness of the Risen One

This is our passion, to carry Your kingdom

In this generation, declaring Your truth

So fill us again, Lord, with power from heaven

Provoking the nations to worship You

The sons and the daughters of many nations

Praising the Father, we join as one

Freely adopted through great salvation

Now we are dressed in the righteousness of the Risen One

©2011 JonnyDavids Music

On Saturday night I have the opportunity to have this song evaluated by a veteran Christian musician and songwriter, Bob Kilpatrick. In the 1980's Bob penned the song "Be Glorified" which became one of the most widely sung worship songs in the world and it's still sung in countless churches today. One of his songs was sung at Mother Teresa's funeral, resulting in a public compliment from Hillary Clinton. Bob is going to be leading a clinic for worship musicians, leaders and songwriters Saturday at 7 pm. He'll be evaluating songs from two or three local songwriters as a part of the evening. What fun! We'll see what kind of changes the lyrics undergo as a result of Saturday and I'll be sure to post them here.

PS - If you'd like to hear Bob speak and lead worship he'll be doing both on Sunday night, May 15 at 7 pm at Clark Fork City Church. His band will be made up of local musicians! (Surprise!!)

Hey everyone. I just realized that we've written several new songs that we forgot to post to our scribd.com page. I'm posting chord charts tonight for the following songs:

Send Us

Kingdom Of God

Just To Worship You

We Are Forgiven

Feel free to use these songs! (If your church is in its reporting period for your CCLI License, it's helpful if you report any copies you make! And I can make tens and tens of dollars!!) Ha!

Send Us

So I finally finished the song this week that I blogged about in January. The title stayed the same: "Send Us." The bridge is completely new and I'm glad we waited until we got it right! I had the great privilege of debuting it with Becca and my good friends Dennis & Tammy Reschke and Caleb Burk at the Missoula 3:16 Rescue Mission's banquet/fundraiser Friday night. It's appropriate that the song was finished this week and here's why. Drum roll please...

We announced today that Clark Fork City Church is partnering with other Newfrontiers churches in the U.S. to plant a new church into Spokane, Washington in summer 2012 and... that I will be leading the team to do this! It would be an understatement to say that I'm excited, but I'm not walking with my head in the clouds either. This is going to be the biggest challenge I've undertaken to date. It's one thing to be on a team planting a church with someone else leading it. It's another thing entirely to lead that team.

This is where some good theology is really helpful! God is in control, which means my family and I and the whole team are in the best hands imaginable. While we will make our plans, God is the one who is actually directing our steps. This same God who began a good work in us (even in the dream stage) is the one who is committed to being faithful to complete it. If He is for us... who can be against us? This is the foundation we build on, not how awesome of a leader I can be, and that really takes the pressure off!

I'm going to post again about the amazing story leading up to this crazy announcement today, but first I'll leave off this post with the words to the new song:

Father God, we Your sons and daughters sing
Let Your kingdom come here
Father God, we Your children long to see
Your will be done here

You are sovereign, You have chosen
To work Your will through us
You are able, more than able
To glorify Your Son

Let Your kingdom come in us
Let Your will be done through us
In mercy and in love, send us
To the rich and to the poor
To the leper and the lame
In the power of Jesus' name, send us

Let Your goodness flow to the high and low
To the broken heart, to the captive soul
Let Your Father's song from Your Father heart
Be our anthem as we go

New Song In The Works

So I started writing this song a little over a year ago... and then I wrote another song called Kingdom of God in about 20 minutes, but inadvertently used a couple of the ideas from the other song to do it. Song #1 got shelved and Kingdom of God has become one of our most sung songs over the last year. But I still really like Song #1!

In seemingly unrelated news, we just started a six month worship leader training program at the church so I get to teach classes on Monday nights and Thursday mornings for that. There are about nine worship leaders and leaders-in-training taking these classes, which is really encouraging for the future!

There is something about training worship leaders that sparks my creative juices. It's probably the fact that I once again am teaching worship fundamentals, how to flow in the prophetic, and preparing to teach on how to write songs from the heart that we can use to worship Jesus together! Thinking about teaching others to write and lead stirs me up to actually model the things I teach and to see what God will stir in my own heart in this season. My heart is stirring ... and the song ideas are starting to flow.

Back to the song I mentioned a minute ago: It's based on the opening lines of the Lord's Prayer, "Our Father in heaven ... let Your kingdom come, let Your will be done." Several years ago I heard Brian Doerksen, a great Canadian worship leader, call the Lord's Prayer "The Sons and Daughters Prayer" because we get to call God our Father. I've latched onto it myself (which you can hear about in "Prayer That Works - Our Father In Heaven" at http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/clark-fork-city-church/id390001111).

For now, I'm tying in three concepts in this song's development:
1. God is our Father, so we get to talk to Him as His sons and daughters.
2. He is a sovereign God who has chosen to work through us.
3. He has chosen to send us to minister to the world in Jesus' name.

The working title of the song is "Send Us" but it might change as it moves along! We'll see... I thought I'd post this so you can all see how I process through a song! Notice all the scribbles and ideas in the picture. Stay tuned!