[Mack] Growing up writing songs when I was
playing in bands, I was writing by myself a lot.
But since early adulthood, in writing songs for
the church, and songs for worship, almost all
of those have been collaborative. “O Come
to the Altar” was a song that was written with
pastor Steven Furtick at Elevation, and Chris
“I don’t have this
mastered, but
I’m trying to let
Brown, and Wade Joye. That was when I was
at Elevation, and we were on a writing retreat
specifically to write for our church. Pastor Steve
had the idea of having an ‘altar call’ song,
maybe because we were coming up to an
Easter service, I don’t remember the specifics
but we would have these big moments in our
church where we would present the gospel,
and we knew that was going to be a big push
in that season of our church and we wanted
to write a song that was like a straight Billy
Graham crusade alter song to just bring
people down. We wrote that song with that in
mind, but ultimately when we started singing
it in church, we realized that it had a lot more
power than just a response song, that it was
a song that met people wherever they were at
in that moment. Whether you knew Jesus for
twenty years or you were just meeting Him for
the first time, it was a song that we could all
sing together.
“King of Heaven” is kind of funny, the
collaboration on that one is almost the exact
opposite. Phil and I wrote that song entirely
via text message. [laughs] We were never in
the same room together writing that song. I
remember Phil sending me the initial idea that
he was working on, and from there it changed a
your own, that is, “by yourself”. But much of your lot, we changed that song so much, even right
work is collaborative in nature. Can you describe before we recorded it. But he had this initial idea
the collaboration process on “O Come to The that was something like “King of heaven/you’re
Altar” and the much newer, “King of Heaven”? welcome in this place/Your will Your way” and it
go of the things
that aren’t true
and to cling to
Jesus, letting
go of anything
that might be
laying on me,
and just find rest
and peace in His
presence. It’s not
an easy process,
but when we
do that and we
speak that over
ourselves, there
is so much peace
that comes along
with that.”
“O Come to The Altar”
“King of Heaven”
May 2019
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