group and just watching it evolve into what it ’ s become . It ’ s a wellspring for our city in Nashville . It ’ s such a great place , we love being a part of it . We just love the vision . We love what God is doing . God is really moving and it ’ s a joy . So yes , there ’ s so many great worship leaders , so many other fellow artists there at the church , which has been beneficial to us . Just people that do what we do , getting to be in community with them and really hold each other up at times has been beneficial . Very cool . It ’ s really a joy to be a part of our church .
[ WM ] That ’ s amazing . There ’ s so many different worship streams or worship camps right now . Some folks won ’ t play songs from some camps and others don ’ t think twice about it . It seems there are also a lot of cowrites between songwriters of various camps and even record labels . How do you approach co-writes when mixing from these different streams , so you put out resources that are solid foundationally ?
[ Cody ] Yes , I find it important to connect songs . I ’ m writing back to scripture first of all , just the ways that , “ What are we saying ? Where is the scripture to support this ? To back it up ?
Where ’ s the truth ?” Even if I have an idea in a song , a lot of times I ’ m going to the scripture that connects to the idea .
And even before the idea is completed or written , I ’ m more so writing from the inspiration of scripture . Scripture is at the beginning of the process , beginning of the idea . A writing room at my house looks like a lot of Bibles open in that process . And some songs are written straight from scripture . Some songs are written from the inspiration of scripture . Some songs are written just from personal testimony , some from really … just prayers . A lot of songs take different shapes , and they have different purposes .
I also like to send songs to a few people in my life that are pastors that have deep theological backgrounds . They ’ ve studied scripture so much in their life . They devoted their life to that . And so , I love sending songs to them to really have these checks and balances . Is there anything in this that you would say is completely not doctrinally sound ? So yeah , I think just having that is important and feeling like you ’ ve got those checks and balances as you ’ re writing and making sure that you are saying everything as accurate as you can .
And obviously there ’ s going to be times when we mess it up . There ’ s going to be times when we don ’ t get it right . There ’ s going to be times when you write a song and five years later , because now you ’ re more mature in scripture , you ’ re more mature in what you understand . You go back and look and say , “ Maybe I would ’ ve said that differently now ”. But that ’ s also part of the journey . That ’ s right as well . That ’ s just part of maturing , that ’ s part of being human and really trying to understand these mysteries of God and trying to put your experiences in a song .
And my experiences are different than somebody else ’ s . And I love writing with people who are from all different arms of the church . I really enjoy that . I love having a different perspective . Like I said earlier … of Jesus and of God and of scripture , and in a way … that always is refining . We ’ re always refining each other , bringing in these different perspectives . And I think it ’ s supposed to look like a beautiful mosaic . All these different colors , all these different shapes coming together . I think that ’ s what the church is meant to look like . And
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