Over the last few days, I’ve been working pretty diligently on crafting a song that I’ve had floating in my head for a while now. I found a neat program called Guitar Pro that lets you write the music, and then it’ll actually play it back for you so you can see how it sounds. (See how is sounds? Whatever.) It’s great for writing down multiple tracks and then listening to them all together without spending a lot of time in GarageBand recording and editing them to fit over each other.

I used this program in the past during high school in my wanna-be-metallica-style-show-how-good-we-are band and liked it a lot. I found it again and decided to try it out again, this time on a Mac, and I now remember why I liked it so much. It makes writing so much easier, and you can get a much, much better feel for how everything sounds together. It also fuels musical creativity since you have a lot of control over arrangements and styles that you wouldn’t normally try. You can even write drum tracks in it. One of the fun things I’ve also been able to do is find some old tracks of my high school band that we wrote on Guitar Pro and listen to them again. They were really awesome, in a really lame sort of way.

What fuels your creativity?

d

I’ve been trying this whole song writing thing for a few months now. I’ve come up with some good ideas, and a lot of bad ones. But overall, I really enjoy the process of writing music, especially working on a song with a partner and really combining what each person can bring to a new piece of music.

So far, most of the stuff I’ve written has the sound of a layer of Hillsong United, on top of that, we have a layer of Generation Unleashed, then covered in a decadent layer of Desperation Band. Put it in the oven for 4 hours at 350 degrees and when it comes out, top it off with a little bit of Tomlin and let cool overnight. And in the morning, there’s a beautiful creation of sugary deliciousness set to music. At least, that’s how I’d describe it. You might not go to those lengths to describe it.

I see a building passion in our church to go to a deeper, more intimate place during our corporate worship times. To encounter our saviour in a very real and powerful way as we love Him and let Him love on us. I believe that Heart of Worship events and songs written in our church are a part of pulling closer to God corporately and crying out with one voice.

I think this next year is going to be a very exciting one in Eagle River, Alaska.

Dustin

I spent an hour or so last night writing down lyrics, humming melodies, and coming up with chord progressions to some songs that I’m trying to write, I actually made a lot of progress on a new one and am going to put more focus on finishing it. But after I finished writing for the night, as I was getting ready to go to bed, I felt really refreshed and had a peaceful feeling about me. I wrote a post a few months ago about rest and refreshment. And I think that the great feeling after songwriting last night is a way of God telling me that this is a good thing for me to do to rest, relax, and spend time with God.

The timing of this realization is not a coincidence as the subject of rest and the discipline of taking a Sabbath was brought up during a prayer session Tuesday night. And so here, I post publicly my intention to use songwriting as a way to rest, relax, recharge, and spend time with God. I don’t believe that this is all that I personally need to do to be more faithful and intentional about a time of rest, but I believe that this is definitely a part of it.

So I want to issue a challenge to you, the reader. What’s something that you can do to be more intentional about resting and spending time with God on a consistent basis? Read your Bible more? Spend a certain amount of time every day/week in prayer? Do an activity that you enjoy that calms your spirit? And would you be able to commit to doing that and telling a couple people about it to hold you accountable to it? I encourage you to seek out a way to go about doing this and see how the time you spend with God in a more intimate way affects the rest of your day/week.

Mine involves songwriting. What does yours involve?

Dustin

That night was such a great opportunity and God’s hand was all over what went on, not just with this song. Hopefully this is the first of many songs that will be written by this community of worshipers that will draw people into the presence of God.

Dustin

There were a number of things that made this one different from the previous ones. We moved the event into the sanctuary, we moved it to a Sunday night following the 5:00 service, we collaborated with Jeff to incorporate prayer stations that would engage both young people as well as adults.

It’d be too hard for me to go through chronologically, song by song, as to what happened when, but from the responses we’ve been hearing from those who attended is that this might possibly have been the best event so far.

Some of the coolest moments of the night from my perspective was singing Healer; it’s a song that’s unfamiliar to most of the adults there but the level of participation and willingness to go for it with a new song was something cool to be a part of. It Is Well With My Soul was amazing. That song is possibly my favorite hymn and from what I could hear on stage, just about everyone was BELTING that song. And probably the most personal for me, the debut of Come to Us, the song that I wrote. I was super nervous going into that song because there’s something very vulnerable about taking words that you wrote down and a melody that you put over them and using it to lead others in worship of our Saviour. It got a very good response and I’ve heard comments that that was one of the best moments of the night. And those comments are more of a confirmation that the song really was God breathed and it was His intention for that song to be born.

Sunday was a great night of people encountering their Creator. It’s such an honor to do what we get to do and I look forward to the next time we gather together to worship like that and see more of God’s kingdom come.

Darkness is fading now in the light of His name

Dustin

I was able to write this song in a couple hours of writing spread out over a monthlong period. I feel that this song almost wrote itself; I think that this is because of God’s hand in the start of the process and this being a song that needed to be written. In the last week, the finishing touches were put on it as I met with Jesse to show it to him. We tweaked a couple things, changed a few words, and came up with an order that we like for it to flow and sound and feel the way that it’s intended to. I’m very pleased with how this process has worked out and with the finished product. I’ve written really bad songs before, and this isn’t like anything I’ve written before. It’s real. It’s raw.

The official debut of the song will be at the Heart of Worship event: More than Conquerers on January 18 at Community Covenant. It’ll be one piece of what is going to be an amazing night of worship and encountering God. I can’t wait to see what God does with this song, the worship night, and with this whole songwriting thing.

Thanks, Mindy, for reminding me to post this update. I hope the news was to your liking .

Dustin

la la la…

Dustin