With All of the Saints
All Saints is a major feast of the church that is celebrated in early November (for more on the feast, click here). It celebrates the communion of saints—both those Christians who have gone before and who are now alive that we join with when we worship Jesus. Read More…
Isaiah 51 (I, Even I Am He Who Comforts You)
In May of 2008, John Fawcett, the longtime worship leader and one of the key shapers of the worship culture of Resurrection passed from this life into God’s presence after a several year battle with cancer. John was the worship leader when Bonnie and I first began attending and then leading worship at Resurrection. He was a colleague of Robert Webber’s at Wheaton College and actually practiced on a weekly basis the blended worship and ancient future worship that Webber wrote about. John was a charismatic (in every sense of the word) leader who’s larger than life personality always faded into the background as he led in worship that ushered the congregation into the very presence of God.
John was also a leader in the healing prayer movement and was particularly adept at leading worship in the free flowing, Spirit led context of healing services. John also wrote many of the settings for liturgical songs that we use in our worship service. Bonnie and I learned a lot about worship leading directly from John in the few years we knew him and we’ve continued to learn and be blessed by the legacy he has left at Resurrection in the worship culture he helped form and in the people who knew him and were touched by him.
When Bonnie and I were asked to lead worship at our first healing conference last fall, we immediately asked ourselves, “what would John do?” I remember sitting with John in between sessions at the last PCM healing conference he did in the summer of 2007 as John flipped through four large, red binders with hundreds of worship songs in them as he said out loud, “well Lord, what do you want us to sing?” So Bonnie and I loaded up all of our music into large binders and tried the same approach!
After John passed, his widow Margie passed along an old manuscript book to our worship pastor, Steve, who showed it to me. On one page there was a set list of songs for a healing service, one of which was an original song, and on the next page was John’s sketches of that unfinished song in somewhat messy shorthand. It was a verse and a chorus of music, and a chorus and about three quarters of the lyrics for one verse. I studied the score and did my best to interpret it. Along the way I discovered that he was setting a portion of Isaiah 51. The chorus was from verses 12-13a, and the verse was from verse 13b. Using his framework, I finished the first verse and wrote two more verses based on the scripture verses following to the end of the section.
Below is the final piece. I post it as a thank you to John and his ministry and as a celebration that John’s gift of worship leading lives on in the many young worship leaders who have learned so much from him.
Lyrics
Lead Sheet
Chart
Demo
Angels Watching Over Me
This is an SATB arrangement I wrote for an old traditional spiritual. My mother used to sing it before bed to my brothers and I when we were young. I transcribed the melody as I remembered it and wrote the four-part.
The recording is from our new album, Sleep Easy. It features my wife, Bonnie on Soprano and our good friends Sara Masterson Smith and Steve Smith on Alto, and bass respectively. Another good friend, Steve Williamson—the Worship Arts Pastor and my supervisor at church—sings tenor. We recorded it with all four vocalist together singing into a Blumlein Pair mic setup and performing the whole track in a single take. I think you can hear the intimacy and natural give and take of everyone singing together and blending live.
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