What's New?
What's New?
A few weeks ago I was reading Psalm 27 again and got the strangest sense that the Lord was telling the Church not to be afraid. Like, not just generally as we know the Bible commands us but, specifically, that events were about to unfold that would tempt Christians to react in fear. Over and over, I kept hearing in my heart that Yahweh is our light and our strength, that we ought to fear nothing and no one but him. This song came rumbling out of that meditation. I almost left it in the "that was an exercise for me, not a song to share" pile (which is much larger than the "this is a song to share" pile, but I showed the song to Tyler, and he urged me to share it. In the midst of our national and worldwide response to the COVID-19 outbreak, the song seems appropriate to the moment. Don't be afraid. Call on the name of the Lord! Tyler and I have a song coming that arises from a similar place (and it's a better song because he wrote most of it!) Stay tuned.
We're glad to see you on the site. I'm going to use this first "news" opportunity to level with y'all about what RedeemerSongs is all about. And what it knows it isn't. For years I've written music, and for years I have kept much of it to myself and the Lord. I'm not much of a singer (as you can tell from our recordings on this site), I don't play an instrument, and I don't write sheet music. As I began to pastor The Church of the Redeemer and work with our quite gifted pianist, Tyler Crocker, I continued to write a bit for the congregation. And then he started to write music. Then we began to collaborate. At some point, we began to recognize that a style was beginning to emerge, that an anointing from the Holy Spirit was apparent in our writing sessions together, and that some of what we were writing would be useful to others. Understand that I'm not really a musician, and Tyler is as introverted as they come. We didn't have the collective self-confidence or the publishing knowledge to get our music "out there." But as songs emerged like "The Beauty or the Lord" and "Make All Things New" and as hymns like "Father, Teach our Lips to Praise You" and service music like Tyler's Gloria helped to form the worship of our congregation, we saw that we had to start making our music available. We decided that we needed a place to send folks to check out our songs and download the music. So here it is. The small efforts of a couple of local-church-focused worshipers who love the Lord and want the whole world to know him and adore him. May the grace that brought us to sing these songs fill your hearts as well. Oh! I should probably mention the books! I am a priest in the Reformed Episcopal Church/Anglican Church in North America. My doctoral work is in Christian Worship studies. As I began to write material for my parish on a couple of issues that came up for us, Tyler and I, in consultation with our bishop and others in our diocese, discerned that the Lord was calling me to make that material available to the larger Church. I published a couple of titles under RedeemerSongs because my book writing, like my music writing, seems to always end up being about the worship of the Lord. Only two books are available at present. Hang on, though, there's more coming, Lord willing! Pray for us as we listen for the Lord's voice and follow his leading. And worship the Triune Majesty along with us!
