Brook Hills Music released an E
P this week to compliment Secret Church 13. Emmanuel’s Land is simply an excellent work of God-glorifying art. I am extremely impressed with this project and what the team of brothers and sisters put together. You need to get this recording as soon as possible. Sample and obtain it HERE.
Matt Mason is the worship pastor with The Church at Brook Hills and a dear friend. He is theologically sharp, musically gifted, and leads with a shepherd’s heart. He is also extremely blessed to be working with a great group of musicians. In view of this week’s release, I wanted you to hear from Matt on a bit of the story behind the music, how the team works together on projects, and his views on music and missiology. Here are his responses to a few questions.
Matt, since our offices are next door it’s probably safe to say I’m your first audience! What’s the approach you and your team of songwriters take when you meet together to write?
Our main goal as songwriters is, first and foremost, to grow in the grace and knowledge of God by studying His Word personally and being attentive to the preaching of the Word. From there, we hope to write songs that reflect biblical truth. We hope to write some songs that can be used in our corporate gatherings: truth-filled, singable songs. We want to write other songs that may serve a teaching/instructional/story-telling role. The hope in all of this is that we’ll grow in our ability to serve Brook Hills with these songs. And if these songs serve beyond our faith family, or serve as an encouragement for songwriters from other local churches to seek to grow their gifts and give voice to the indigenous expressions of faith in their local contexts, well, that’d be great too.
Matt Mason
What was the most challenging part about this project?
The goal was to write songs that related to the theme of Secret Church 2013 (“Heaven, Hell, and the End of the World”). However, in light of other things we were working on last fall, namely, a Christmas EP, we weren’t able to focus much on this project until January. We needed to be finished with recording by March 8. So the challenge was mainly on the writing and recording side of things.
Is there a relationship between writing worship songs and missiology?
I believe so. The Bible gives us the content of our faith. The overarching story of the Bible is a glorious message: God the King has sent His Son to die in the place of sinners. He offers mercy and eternal life to any who turn from sin and trust in Christ alone. Wesley called this message “music in the sinner’s ear.” The gospel is such good news that it elicits both proclamation as well as song. In every generation and culture where this gospel has been proclaimed, there is an instinct to express this Godward joy and reverence in the form of songs. Part of what we do when Christians gather on Sunday mornings is we rehearse the story of the gospel – the story into which we have been swept up by the sovereign mercy of God. At the same time, I believe, as we sing of this great redemption, God loves to bring these truths home to hearts in a way that it fuels a passion to take this gospel to others!
If a local church was looking for ways to write songs for use in their congregational worship, would you share any practical helps on how to take steps toward that?
This question sounds exactly like what our team is aiming at, so I’ll just describe some of the ways we pursue these things together. We approach this in different ways. First, broadly speaking, we’re having an annual (at this point) meeting with anyone in our faith family who is interested in songwriting. We’ll get together to talk about principles of songwriting, share songs, and do some songwriting exercises. We encourage them to send their songs in via email and we look for ways to encourage them. Second, we have a smaller team of songwriters who work on specific projects. We meet once a week to work on songwriting. Often I’ll give them a feel for what we want to aim at for that meeting. Then we’ll pray, and often, after that, we’ll split off and work on that day’s project. We have a set time to come back and we’ll share the fruit – or not – of that time away. Sometimes the fruit is simply that we read a passage of Scripture and spend some time getting a better feel for its context and meaning. Other times we come back with a bit of a melody or a few phrases that might be the beginning of a verse. Third, sometimes we’ll read through a book together or a part of a book to go deeper into a subject we want to write about. Once those songs begin to take shape, we’ll spend more time singing them together. It’s a kind of a “test drive.” We’ll sharpen one another by pointing out spots where a lyric or a melody could be better, clearer, less predictable. Most of the songs we’ve written haven’t been used, yet. We find that some rise to the top immediately. Others need to stay in the “in process” pile and others, well, they just become opportunities for us to cultivate humility.
Matt, if there is any limitation to this project it is simply that it needs more cowbell. You should have added more cowbell. May I play the cowbell on the next project?
Um, I’ll pray about it.
Follow Matt on Twitter @MattMason3
and Brook Hills worship can be found @BHWorship
Make sure you check out Emmanuel’s Land. You and your church will be blessed greatly!