quickly. We felt like we weren’t supposed to
sit on this, we didn’t know what was going to
happen, we didn’t know where we were going
to be in a month. We actually renamed the
album right before we released it to Land of the
Living, because that was the song the Lord was
highlighting in this time, “I will see the goodness
of the Lord in the land of the living”. So, we just
did it.
We’ve really tried to create a lot of structure
and give things the correct time and do
everything correctly. But at the same time, in
the UPPERROOM we’re always listening to the
Lord and if we feel like we need to do something
that may be out of the box, we’re going to do
it. And so, we did it, and it was amazing. It was
a great surprise release. I think it did inspire a
lot of hope in people. Obviously throughout
this whole conversation we’ve been talking
a lot of about spontaneity and moments and
things, but on the other side of the coin there
are songs, and songs can come out of a place
of spontaneity. Songs can also be something
that we have labored with the Lord with, and
really just buckled down and worked hard on.
These songs were songs that we just felt like
we were supposed to get out there. They’re not
extremely long. There is not a lot of spontaneous
on this album, we just really wanted to focus
on getting these songs out there. I think there
are some amazing songs on the album, and
on this album, we probably took a little more
of a risk. Half of the album is going to be more
corporate worship driven, and then you’ve got
another half of the album that’s going to be
more songs where you’re going to encounter
the Lord in them, not necessarily corporately.
But the thing about music and about worship
is that you can never predict completely and
successfully which songs the Lord is going to
bless, and which song will completely take off.
You can think you know, and you can calculate
it up to a certain point, but at the end of the day
you do your best and you offer up these songs
and albums as a sacrifice to the Lord and you
see what happens.
That’s what we did, we got a little bit outside
of the box on this record, and we also have
some that are more classic, and I love that.
I think it shows a lot about who our worship
leaders are and what’s on their hearts. With
the lyrics, I would say some of the messages
are less simple. They’re just deeply engrained
messages from our worship leaders and our
culture. I think that’s extremely cool, and I
think it’s cool also that we have songs that are
simpler and that we can do in church as well.
[WM] There are 10 new songs on the project. I
really appreciate the place that the church gives
to “indigenous” worship songs written from
within the church community. “Into the Battle”
is a great song and a powerful personal anthem
for all struggling with anxiety and depression.
Please tell us about this song.
[Matt] We were actually at an UPPERROOM
July 2020
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