Worship Musician Magazine September 2020 | Page 64

WORSHIP LEADERS
“THE BLESSING” AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND | Grant Norsworthy
Woo-hoo! It’s finished! It’s out! From inception
to completion, it’s been close to three months
of intense work to produce one song and video,
but it’s finally done, and I am elated.
I can’t quite put into words how gratified and
thankful I am to (finally!) be able to share with
the readers of [WM] (and the rest of the world)
the “virtual choir” video from The Church in
New Zealand singing our own, uniquely Kiwiflavored
rendition of “The Blessing”. We are
thrilled to be part of this historic statement by
the global Church during such a difficult and
challenging time - adding our “voice" to the
many other “virtual choirs” of so many nations,
regions, cities and people groups that have
gone before us.
Click the video below to watch our rendition of
“The Blessing” - surely the unofficial anthem of
Christendom in 2020.
As the end result shows, there were a lot
of people involved to bring this together. In
addition to the close to 200 New Zealander
vocalists (and the handful of instrumentalists)
who submitted video of themselves for
inclusion, behind the scenes there was a small,
hard-working, dedicated team of professionals
- who all gave of their time freely - to bring
about the finished product that you see here.
It fell to me to be the overall producer, but
the project could not have been completed
without the work of three video editors, four
audio engineers, two administrative assistants
and several other promotions workers,
instrumentalists, technicians, and cultural
advisors. I am extremely grateful to each of
them.
Looking back, I now see that I tragically
underestimated - with copious naivety - how
much work would be involved and how much
help I’d need. I thought I’d get perhaps 30 or
40 vocal video submissions and have the video
completed in 2 or 3 weeks with a bit of help
from a video guy! But when the number of vocal
submissions flew past 100, the potential to
create something important and moving began
to take shape and unforeseen production
difficulties materialized, the magnitude of the
task at hand grew exponentially.
In the flash of an eye, three or so weeks
became three months. The story surrounding
that journey and the lessons learned along the
“The Blessing | Aotearoa/New Zealand”
“The Blessing” Words & Music by Chris Brown, Cody Carnes, Kari Jobe & Steven Furtick. (© 2020 Capitol CMG Paragon, Kari Jobe Carnes Music, Worship Together Music, Writer’s Roof
Publishing, Music by Elevation Worship Publishing). Te reo Māori translation of Numbers 6:24-26 from Paipera Tapu and adjusted by David Tapene snr.
64 September 2020
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