Offering -- Paul Baloche

 

He told them to stop singing. What a thing to say, especially if you’re a minister in charge of the music! Paul Baloche felt like worship should be about an “Offering” in 1997, as he told a group that was gathered in a Tyler, Texas area church (in Lindale; in Smith County – see the map of Texas with Smith County in red, here). Is there something that makes God feel like worship must be suspended, like an emptiness or apathy among the worshippers? Paul just looked out over the assembled crowd, and in that moment felt as if something was missing. Most people when they think of ‘offering’ probably think in $$ signs, especially if the setting is a church where the word is often used when a collection tray is passed. But, that kind of offering can also be offensive to God, if you read very far in your bible, like the following: In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord (Genesis 4:3). What happened in the next several verses is clear – murder. But, what was at the root of Cain’s offering that was not accepted? Only he and God could know that. The Lord will know if something is not ‘right’ (Gen. 4:7) with your offering…or with the heart of the giver.

 

Paul Baloche remembered that as he opened his eyes, he didn’t like what he saw, for the people assembled in the church were sitting and seemingly liking the music that he and the band were making. But he stopped the music and said something that sprung from his spirit. He didn’t want to sound critical or judgmental (as the prophets Amos [5:23] and Ezekiel [26:13] did when they said God was disgusted with the people’s ‘noisy’ music), but he reminded the onlookers that he and the band were not there for a concert, but rather to enable worship. Paul admonished them to come with an ‘offering’ of worship, to be ‘proactive, not passive’ in worship. And as he mentioned this ‘offering’, he began to think that there should be a song that actually says that. Consequently, Paul mulled over that idea for a couple of weeks to write the song, and with another piece of the puzzle that had actually already been present, in the form of a song remnant he’d crafted earlier, he soon completed his own ‘Offering’. The chorus he’d actually conceived on the church’s stage – ‘I bring an offering…’ -- was combined with the other fragment (the first verse of ‘Offering’) to complete the song. And then Paul added still more, in the form of another verse, when Christmas came closer. The three wise men once made their own gift offerings, and Paul evidently wanted to remind believers that Christmas-time should always be a reminder that God’s appearance in the world spawned great wonder, hope, and praise from a people looking for Him, and that offering Him worship today, two millennia later, should be with the same attitude as that of the shepherds and wise men.   

 

‘What’s in a worshipper’s heart is between him and God’. You’ve probably heard that one before. Maybe it’s a way to fend off someone who’s unimpressed with your stoic expression while singing. ‘Focus on your own attitude’, someone says, and correctly so. But, in a family where people can have the power to edify one another, as well as discourage one another, we do take notice of worship that seems lackluster. It’s part of the reasoning capacity that He gave us. He said to love Him completely, with  ‘…heart…soul…strength…and mind’. None of us are immune from boredom at times, but if that affects how I’m addressing the One who made me, I need someone with sharp elbows to nudge me in the side, like what Paul did to a group in 1997. Reconnect with what He’s done, who He is, and how that relates to yourself, and what you and I cannot do for ourselves. Try reading Paul’s lyrics first, and think about whether they’re true for you (they are, unless you aren’t human). Then try singing them.    

 

See/hear the song’s story here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNHdsArUO8I

 

Read about the songwriter here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Baloche

 

This query suggests the song was written in 1997, though song released in 2003: https://www.google.com/search?q=baloche+Offering+song+lyrics+year+written&client=firefox-b-1-d&sca_esv=17464399d8dea453&ei=8pxhaN3mKYKg5NoP3NztmQw&ved=0ahUKEwjdp9iot5eOAxUCEFkFHVxuO8MQ4dUDCBA&uact=5&oq=baloche+Offering+song+lyrics+year+written&gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiKWJhbG9jaGUgT2ZmZXJpbmcgc29uZyBseXJpY3MgeWVhciB3cml0dGVuMgUQIRigATIFECEYoAEyBRAhGKABSMU8UNcLWN41cAF4AZABAJgBlwGgAeIMqgEEMjAuMbgBA8gBAPgBAZgCFqACkQ3CAgoQABiwAxjWBBhHwgIFECEYqwLCAgYQABgWGB7CAgsQABiABBiGAxiKBcICBRAAGO8FwgIIEAAYogQYiQWYAwCIBgGQBgiSBwQyMC4yoAelWLIHBDE5LjK4B4wNwgcGMS4yMC4xyAcc&sclient=gws-wiz-serp

 

See information on the map-graphic here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_Texas_highlighting_Smith_County.svg …Public domain…I, the copyright holder (David Benbennick) of this work, release this work into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In some countries this may not be legally possible; if so: I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.

Let It Rise – Holland Davis

 

Distraction. Disappointment. Prayer. Surprise. Worship. If you asked Holland Davis to describe using one-word details how he coaxed the song “Let It Rise” to its fruition, that is how he might answer. The moment didn’t start out very auspiciously, though he and his bandmates were in a mellow setting on a beach in Point Loma, California (San Diego area, see postcard view of it here), a place that should have had the assembled worshippers feeling appreciative for the Creator’s handiwork all around them. Holland might add that such a moment is when God’s activity might be most apparent – when things seem to be going awry, a callout to Him can elicit a radical change that can only be attributed to the supernatural. Just focus on His presence coming into a group that wants Him to be near, maybe through the prayer of even just one distressed soul. Holland tried it out, probably not for the first time in 1997. The episode just reaffirms how God ‘inhabits the praises of His people’ (as the Psalmist David said, 22:3).

 

Holland took advantage of an opportunity for his band to guide some evening worship, but once at a beachside chapel in Point Loma, he felt that the opportunity was going downhill pretty precipitously. The band, including some new members, was stumbling a bit in the performance, and the church’s members were responding with inattention, a cycle that quickly had Holland feeling desolate. God was not being honored appropriately, neither in the music the band was presenting, nor in the crowd’s reaction. Where could Holland turn, except in prayer to the God he so much wanted to lift up in reverence and exultation? And so, the words just came to him spontaneously, a petition that turned out to be the song’s title with some additional words that Holland’s spirit formed that day. The lyrics were really those that came from deep inside his moment of despair, as he asked God to help the band and the crowd sense the divine Spirit, and to ‘let the glory’, the ‘praises’, the ‘songs’, and the ‘joy’ of the Lord ‘rise among’ them. Could Holland have really been surprised when the awkward moment evolved into something truly special, like a beauty that takes one’s breath away? He says it was a strange feeling, but Holland seemed to recognize God’s presence nevertheless. As he and band members relaxed and let the Spirit flow through them and the crowd, an uncertainty in the crowd yielded to a greater sensation, and what was going to be a bomb of an evening worship instead grew into a 45-minute elevating experience. Was Holland Davis and the band responsible? Holland remembers feeling that his only credit for the evening was trusting that the Spirit was already present, if he and the rest of the assembled would accept that God was indeed near, not far away. If a crowd gathers with the intent to praise Him, that is harmonious with God’s desire, too. Worship leaders only need to believe that, and let the worshippers know they can believe it too.   

 

What’s left after worship has been had? Perhaps that is the thought that had Holland on edge as the evening in 1997 began. How might the evening’s other plans have proceeded, if the music had not inspired genuine worship? It was a bible study night for the church, after all. Would a dispiriting worship harm a study that was meant to bring relevance of His word to them? I want to know that He can make a difference to me in the middle of a busy week, not leave me shrugging my shoulders. No doubt there might have been some in Jesus’ era who thought His life and effect was a ‘so what’. What was it Pilate meant when he said ‘What is truth?’ And yet, Jesus inspired so much passion among others – both venomous and adoring. Can you feel His passion for you? There’s something He’s put inside you, which He wants to make grow…it’s called eternity (Ecclesiastes 3:11). No one should want this without Him there beside you. The alternative is too horrible, and He’s too great. Think about that if you find yourself talking to Him soon.      

 

 

The source for Holland Davis’s song story is the book “Our God Reigns: The Stories behind Your Favorite Praise and Worship Songs”, by Phil Christensen and Shari MacDonald, Kregel Publications, 2000.

People Need the Lord -- Phill McHugh and Greg Nelson

 

It happened in a very musical city -- Nashville, Tennessee; so, you have to wonder whether the venue where these two songwriters had an epiphany had a history with lyrics scrawled on napkins, or maybe conversations that moved from tables to exit doors and back to studios, as happened one day in the early 1980s. Phill McHugh and Greg Nelson had tried all morning, but they seemed to be pushing all the wrong buttons as they sat in Greg’s office trying to produce some new music. Was it only hunger that drove them to a local restaurant, a needed sustenance break to feed their physical selves? Phill and Greg found other hunger at the eatery they chose that day, but it wasn’t their own. It was a perception they could have picked up in probably almost any public gathering, but perhaps it was the fusion of something they were trying to find and their own otherwise ordinary purpose for going to this place that sparked what happened next.

 

She could have probably been almost any waitress, who served Phill and Greg that day in a restaurant where they went after a fruitless morning of song creation. The Nashville restaurant is also not named, but it would not be surprising if both the server and the location were actually familiar, at least in a distant kind of way. The two men both remembered seeing her face, and thinking that even with a smiling expression, this woman had a vacant look in her eyes. That’s when they spontaneously thought ‘she needs the Lord’, a not uncommon impression they gathered when observing the other lunchtime guests in the place. Was it just a bad day, when everyone was a bit overwhelmed by their schedules and tasks – maybe just a feeling of tedium that often pervades urban life? Phill and Greg imply that they recognized this place and these people, maybe not by names and details of their lives, but that this emptiness was sadly very normal for millions of people around the world. It was impossible for the two songwriters to actually look into all those countless faces, as they sat in one restaurant, but what they saw in that place in the space of one hour convinced them that a solution, a divine one, would resonate for people all over the globe. ‘Every day…filled with care…private pain’ (v.1) were the insights that Phill and Greg could see permeating these people, even if they never had had a conversation with them. Perhaps the two men had often felt as these restaurant workers’ and its customers’ faces suggested that day – that life lacked something, and furthermore, that the ‘… world where wrong seems right’ (v.2) was in control of events.  How do people escape a situation that seems to violate standards of right and wrong? It’s a ‘lost’ world, McHugh and Nelson concluded, but that’s not the end of the matter. Meet God, and He will be to all of these distressed people an ‘open door’ (song’s refrain) to a new reality, one where He redeems all of us and life itself.     

 

Phill McHugh and Greg Nelson were actually thinking of themselves a bit as they sat in that Nashville restaurant, too. After all, they went there to be served food. They were hungry. The morning’s efforts must have left them feeling somewhat frustrated, so perhaps the change of scenery was one thing they sought in order to approach their objective – song-making – from a new angle. As they looked about themselves at the other people, they arrived at kind of a self-judgement in the last line of their new song: ‘When will we realize…’, and joined that thought with the song’s title words. Greg and Phill were admitting their own responsibility – and, yours and mine too – in helping a lost civilization find its way back to the Creator. I’m made in His image. And, so are you. Walk toward Him and toward those who know Him best, and see if things don’t look brighter.  

 

 

The song story is found in the following books: I Could Sing of Your Love Forever, by Lindsay Terry, Thomas Nelson publishers, 2008; Stories Behind Popular Songs and Hymns, by Lindsay Terry, Baker Book House Company, 1992; and The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J. Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006.