East Texas Worship with Paul Baloche

Had a chance to visit Community Christian Fellowship in little Garden Valley, TX several weeks ago. It was about a 2-hour drive for my wife and daughter, and we struck out early one Sunday through winding East Texas roads in search of this non-descript congregation. The draw? Besides being located in a ministry mecca (Lindale/Garden Valley is/was home to World Challenge, Teen Challenge, Teen Mania, Mercy Ships, Keith Green, Leonard Ravenhill, et all), CCF is also the home church of worship leader Paul Baloche, whose songs most of us sing any given Sunday. I had emailed him some time back to find out when he would be home, and managed to schedule my trip around that particular date.

Some interesting notes:

• The church building itself was nothing extraordinary - not the megachurch edifice you'd expect with a musician of his magnitude (cf. Israel Houghten). The place was packed - SRO - but we managed to find a seat.
• Musicians were great, but obviously not professionals. Ordinary folk.
• The congregation were mostly sub-30-something, and (as I learned from the pastor) comprised largely of community people (as opposed to commuters like me).
• The service? Intimate, unpolished, authentic worship. No lights, no drama, no show. No "concert feel". In fact, you'd never know the guy up front was anything extraordinary (albeit obviously gifted).

My reflections? Professional musicians/artists have little interest to me unless they intimately connected to a local church. I don't think God needs more CCM artists. But he does need more local church leaders. Also, my visit brought some corrective to the notion that "worship" needs to be novel, polished, show-y, and entertaining. On the contrary, we all see through that, and it feels contrived and insincere.

so...a song i wrote...sort of

yesterday we traveled down to grand prairie family church to do their service. levi preached and i lead the singing with meagan and heather, and a few from their band. the worship went great and levi's message, based on matthew 22 (love God...love your neighbor as yourself) was awesome. as part of the service order i had put in "response song" after the message. i didn't know what i was going to do, even that morning. this is not my normal planning practice but for some reason i couldn't think of a song that would say what we wanted to say at the end. we decided before the service that we would just do "amazing grace (my chains are gone)" again, a song we did in the worship set.

all through the message i was just thinking and thinking, what do we need to say in response to this message? levi was talking about how we in american churches get so wrapped up in doing church stuff with church people that we don't impact those in the world that are really in need. he said this is totally not the way Christ lived. He hung out with those that were the outcasts. He hung out with tax collectors, prostitutes, samaritans, etc. He loved them and talked with them about the kingdom of God. He did not spend all His time in the temple or with religious people. He spent most of His time with sinners. then a question formed in my head (whether it was from levi directly i don't know), could it be that we don't interact with those that are outcasts because we aren't looking for them? and a phrase popped in my head: "who do you see? i want to see." so i was working on that thought for the response song. at the end of the sermon levi was closing and said "i want you to close your eyes and think about your life. think about who you can impact with the love of Christ." and then he said, "jonathan is going to come up and sing a song about grace"... so now i have to put grace in the song, i thought, and immediately came the phrase i wanna be Your grace.

so i get up on stage and just start singing what comes to mind and this is what happened:

who, who did you see
i, i wanna see
who, who did you touch
i, i wanna touch
who, who did you love
i, i wanna love
who, who did you show grace
i, i wanna be Your grace

i wanna be Your grace
i wanna be Your grace

show me
those around me
who are living
like i used to be


i don't necessarily like the "like i used to be" line for the finished version of the song. i guess i wanted to get across the idea that once we join the cause of Christ we are not the same, so the prayer is "God show me those around me that are not living life with You." i'll definitely keep
working with it but was pretty pumped that it came together. i asked levi afterward what he thought and he said, "i hope he remembers it next time." he was worried that when i got around to repeating it i wouldn't remember what i sang. lol

i don't recommend doing this. it is very nerve racking for that very reason. however, this is the second time i've written a song like this. next time, i'll post the other song.