wild . And in the purpose of saying , “ God , you are so much bigger and mysterious than we could ever imagine . Please , can we allow you the opportunity to teach us what it looks like to worship in spirit and truth ?” We have evenings called Kingdom Come . And these are kind of rewilding nights where we ’ re very intentional , where the whole church will gather , and we ’ ll put the band in the round . And I ’ ll often be hosting those nights . And what we do on those evenings is we gather , maybe we ’ ll play one song to gather everyone and then I ’ ll sort of speak through the evening and just say , “ What we ’ re actually going to do now is we ’ re going to put all the instruments down and we ’ re going to start by waiting on the Holy Spirit .” And we would teach how to do this . We often have encounter with explanations , so we would allow people to engage at any level they want to , but we would say , “ What you might want to open your hands , close your eyes and we ’ re just going to wait on the Lord .”
We might have several hundred in the room and if someone senses an inspiring song , then we want to encourage you to lift your voice and sing it . You don ’ t have to be the best singer in the world , whoever it is . And then what we ’ ll do is we ’ ll try and find the key . We ’ ll try and back you up , we ’ ll try and provide some harmony , and we ’ ll see where it goes . But I ’ ll set some ground rules . This isn ’ t worship karaoke ; it ’ s not singing your favorite nostalgic song . And the only rule is we really want to encourage you to sing a song that you ’ ve never heard before .
It is a brand-new song . We ’ re encouraging Psalm 98 and throughout scripture to sing a new song to Lord . So it puts us in this position of dependency with God . And honestly , we found these nights to be messy , raw rewilding , our worship , but the most beautiful precious nights where someone who ’ s maybe not even on our team will sing a song and it will capture something of the rawness of God ’ s heart for the moment and then we ’ ll pick it up and work with it . And then I sort of guide the evening . So , when it feels like we ’ ve naturally come to the end of that moment , I ’ ll say , “ Aright , we ’ re By the Grace of God
Let Me Tell You
Come and See the Father ’ s Love
Prepare the Way
going to reset and we ’ ll wait again .” And just really allowing people to join that journey . And we find incredible moments .
I remember one moment when the band was singing a song and this young lady came up to me and she said , “ Nick , I think I ’ ve got a song ”. And I said , “ Great . We ’ ll let this finish , and you just sing it out and I ’ ll give you the mic . So that song petered down , I gave her the mic , she started to sing out this beautiful four-line refrain that was a brand new song and everyone started to sing it and go for it . And it was a beautiful moment that kind of unlocked the kingdom in the room . And afterwards I interviewed her , I said , “ Can you just tell us how
old you are ?” She said , “ I ’ m 15 .” And you realize it ’ s like a 15-year-old , one of our youth leading the whole church in spirit led spontaneous worship . And that ’ s been the beauty of it . And we ’ ve had people of all ages and stages doing this and moments that truly have left us feeling incredibly , I guess in awe and wonder what God wants to do .
[ WM ] John Wimber once told me , “ I ’ ve learned that to never cut the bush down , just to trim it back . That goes along with your rewilding concept .
Well , let ’ s talk about the EP , the Writing Room . There are six songs released here . Can you tell me about the song “ By the Grace of God ”?
[ Nick ] “ By the Grace of God ” is probably one of my favorite songs I ’ ve ever written , and it was definitely one of the most time consuming . So , from start to finish , it took I think about two years and it started on a little FaceTime call I remember from the writing room with Brian Johnson . And we just got this idea about the grace of God and just started working on it . And then from that moment it went on this incredible journey where we kept working on it texting . And really to me that theme of grace has always been something I love to write about throughout my life as a writer , I ’ ve always come back to the grace of God . For me , grace is always the thing I ’ ve come back to time and time again . We worked on this song and then I took it down , doing a writing day with Martin Smith , and I showed it to him and then we worked on it a bit and worked on it a bit with Christine DeMarco . And then the really sweet moment was actually I went round to Tim ’ s house and we pretty much got the song done . But we just got this sense that there needed to be a bridge . I hadn ’ t mentioned anything to Tim . We were working on another song and then he turned around and said , “ I had this really interesting dream last night with this song . So I said , “ Well look , let ’ s hear it ”. So he played it , and I said , “ Do you know what I think this could actually fit this song ? And then we joined the dots and realized , and we tweaked
14 December 2024 Subscribe for Free ...