Chris, Ben, and John Dickson
while about it. And then I thought,“ Okay, let’ s give this a shot.” He said,“ Why don’ t I connect you with John and let’ s just talk about it with the three of us?” So, we started having these Zoom calls and John was sharing the vision of what this was, and what this was about. And he has so much energy and so much passion as an historian, theologian, all this genius guy wrapped into one thing. And I just loved talking to him. He was sharing with me his passion for bringing this back to the church. And he was just kind of laying out the idea, what if we could bring back singing in the church the earliest known hymn of our faith? makes no sense to us. It’ s not in our music form or anything like that. But he being the historian said this, they understood kind of what this music notation was. And he sang us kind of the melody of what it would’ ve been. And it’ s so strange. It’ s like so strange to our ears. It’ s like, I don’ t even understand the sound of it. And he’ s like,“ I’ m not looking for that.” He goes,“ Here’ s how it would originally have been sung, sort of.” But I’ m not looking for that. I’ m looking for what you guys would do if you took these lyrics and how would you arrange them and sing them?” And so, it’ s not even a full song, it’ s only a piece of a song that was found. one was doing something. So, every time you’ d send something, the other one was sleeping. So you felt like at first … it felt like they didn’ t like the idea.“ Hey man, what do you think of this?” And then you wouldn’ t hear back for eight hours. He must not like this. And then obviously he’ s like,“ I was sleeping,” and then he’ d send some stuff back. And the song just came together fairly quickly because the lyric is so beautiful.
We were trying to figure out a way to sing it, going back and forth, just different ways of singing it.
Obviously, the Psalms are hymns, so there’ s the scriptures, but outside of the scriptures, the earliest known hymn ever discovered from the 200s … what if we could bring that back? What if we could sing that again? And so he shared with Ben and I some of the original melody, it had notation on it. Bruce, it’ s crazy.
This piece has notation. And the notation
But it had some amazing things in these lyrics that were so beautiful and he began to share, unpack some of those things. And Ben and I just went to work through the beauty of our phones, of texting each other, voice memos back and forth across the ocean, Ben in Australia, obviously me in Tennessee. And one of the funny things is because of our time difference, one would be asleep while the other
[ WM ] So what if it was four chords and repeated the chords nine times? Wouldn’ t that be good for modern worship music, a real vindication?( laughing)
[ Chris ] That’ s all you got to do. That’ s all you got to do.( laughing)
[ WM ] In the documentary John Dickson did
8 March 2026 Subscribe for Free...