Heavens Perfect Gift

It’s an old song for me. I wrote Heavens Perfect Gift years ago as a choral piece for First Baptist New Orleans. Their choir performed it once. Dunwoody Baptist in Atlanta performed it once. My publisher at Universal was always convinced it would find a home some day but no one eveer recorded it. I’ve recorded it for personal use a few times over the years but I think it has finally found it’s LIFE as a Citizens Oath track.

David, Markus and I just recorded the pieces at my house for this little Christmas number. We hope it adds to the mystery and wonder of your Christmas season.

Manger small, baby quiet
Fire warm, mother by it
Wood and hay, child and blanket
Heaven’s perfect gift has come

Countryside, hill and valley
Quiet night sleeping soundly
Silence breaks rings the chorus
Heaven’s perfect gift has come

The angels raise their hallelujahs
They lift their praise to heaven’s King
This little baby, God among us
Can you hear the angels sing
Immanuel, Now our God is with us
Immanuel, Christ the King is with us
Heaven’s perfect gift has come

Winter sky, starlight glimmer
Beckoning saint and sinner
Hand of God reaching to us
Heaven’s perfect gift has come

Purchase a copy of “Heavens Perfect Gift” HERE.
Watch the song with lyrics HERE.

Christmas Tour

This month I’m out with Josh Wilson and Wes Pickering on a Christmas tour through MO, AR, OK and TX all month. It’s been a surreal experience. I spend all year driving around the Southeast with a truck load of guys and a trailer dragging behind us. This time however, it’s a new set of guys and I’m really just along as a supportive friend. I LOVE to serve but I am also realizing how much I crave attention. It’s my cocaine, equally destructive, equally addictive. I am learning to serve and be invisible. It has been a humiliating discovery. Vanity is NOT a coat I am proud to wear.

The best part of this role is the remarkable talent of the two guys I’m traveling with. This Christmas show is stunning and I geek out a little every night that I’m friends with these guys.

Christmas bonus: I found a new widget to goof on. It let’s you stream full length songs from my last four records. If there’s a song missing here that you would love access to, send me a comment HERE and I’ll try and make it happen. Merry Happy Jingle HoHo.

A Story, A Song – Our Shalom

“Our Shalom” was born in the busy summer of 2009. Summer is always crazy for us with 8 weeks of camps stacked back to back. We usually have a day or 2 in between each camp to drive to Nashville and do laundry and rush to the next group. This particular weekend we were staying at the same location in North Carolina for 2 weeks back to back. Conor Farley at Centricity emailed and said he had scheduled a writing appointment in Nashville that Saturday afternoon with Stu Garrard (Stu G).

I’ve been a fan of Christian music for long before I was ever a writer and have watched Stu G’s work as guitar player for the band Delirious for years. I drove the 5 hours to Nashville, had 2 hours to write with Stu and drove 5 hours back to North Carolina. Needless to say, that experience in the middle of what is already an intense summer schedule left me scattered and ill prepared for creative output.

When Stu and I got together on couches in the Centricity offices we started by passing some ideas back and forth. I was desperately scanning my writing journal for song ideas and found some notes I had scribbled down while listening to drummer/producer Paul Mabury speak at a writer’s retreat earlier in the Spring. In a vain attempt to convince us to quit trying so hard to impress the world with our talent, Paul had given us a rabbinical definition of the Hebrew idea of peace, shalom: nothing missing, nothing broken. I was struck by the simple symmetry of the idea, perfect peace, nothing missing, nothing broken.

The idea seemed to resonate with Stu and as he began to lazily strum the acoustic in his hands these words melted over me. What I needed most in those frantic days was BIGGER than peaceful circumstances. I needed, we need, an eternal peace that is evidenced by wholeness, not threatened by chaos, and always resulting in unhindered praise of the One who is our Perfect Peace, Our Shalom.

A Story, A Song – Open Hands

As a songwriter and worship leader I am constantly searching for ways to mobilize the church to accomplish the great commission through the songs I write. I found a comrade in Matt Papa. Matt and I are a part of the same team at Centricity Music and we were paired together for a co-write by his A&R guy. We started from scratch searching for missional worship ideas around my favorite piano in room 6 at Universal Music Publishing in Nashville. On my list of titles was “Open Hands.”

The idea was born from a story my pastor told in a sermon. His daughters were finally reaching the age that he was realizing how powerless he was becoming in their spiritual journey. As an exercise he began praying over them each night with his hands open and his palms up. He was physically representing a spiritual posture of surrender. In the middle of his sermon I opened Evernote and typed in the phrase “I am learning how to live with open hands.”

I remember hearing Matt playing through the piano progression and I was struck by the power of the movement. We finished the song that day…kind of. The record label decided the verses were right but the chorus had not arrived yet so a month later we met together and gave the chorus another shot. The melody Matt created was powerful and by the time we finished I couldn’t wait to play this song live. For a year people would ask “what CD has Open Hands on it?” and I would answer Matt Papa’s CD Your Kingdom Come. We came close to selling Matt’s CD at our merch table but never went that far. I’m so proud to have finally recorded this version of the song. I’m hoping this song continues to be used in the church for years. We’ll see.

A Story, A Song – Hold To You

Today I am continuing the slow journey through the new EP “Open Hands.” These songs are all born of personal experience, moments of tragedy and triumph. They are the shouts and whispers of a soul in worship. “Hold to You” was written with my publisher set us up to co-write. The creative process of co-writing never works the exact same way twice but it usually starts the way this session did. We took some time to hear one-another’s story. I think we both wandered into this day with an urgency to say something that matters, to sing something that matters about the God we worship.

We started the song from the same premise as “No One Like Our God.” I was struck several years ago in China by the repeated use of the phrase “One Most High God” to describe Yahweh. In that religious context there was a distinct effort among followers of Jesus to differentiate between the “gods” that are receiving worship and the One Most High God who is uniquely deserving of worship. Our direction was to talk about a God who is deserving of worship in a way that is larger than our circumstances. “In the hurt and the healing…You are most high.” If Yahweh truly is “Most High” then surely those who follow God have a sure and unshakable foundation to Hold tightly. In the face of any circumstance we can hold to the Most High.

Until the final week of the recording process, the working title of this record was “Ashes & Anthems.” The album cover that never was is posted to the right. That title came from the second verse of this song and is one of my favorite lyrics on this project. It continues to prove true in my life and in the eternal narrative of God’s providence. “You have carried Your children through fire and flood and from the ashes spring anthems to the Most High.”