What would I say to someone after 20-30 years of experience working at something? I might think about all of the things I had done, and count the awards – bask a little. Not the composer, Scott Wesley Brown, who wrote the song “We Will Worship You” in 1997 (which appeared on the 1998 album More Like You). He sings about things that have been lost in the song, but also more importantly what - or rather, whom – he has retained all that time. How does one worship, properly…kneeling before a stone and a flame (see the picture)? He’s been around the world, enough to probably have been jet-lagged and homesick, spreading a worship message. What else lies behind this worship song ?
Many things can be said about Scott Wesley Brown in 1997-98. In 1998, the same year the song appeared on the album, he was ordained into Baptist ministry. He was in his mid-forties, and had been producing Christian music on albums for 24 years already at that point. In fact, he’d been writing songs since the sixth grade in elementary school (about age 12), so he was what someone might call a veteran of the Christian music world. He would also compose a song “I Will Worship You”, so how is the song “We Will Worship You” different? ‘We’ tells us he was thinking about a group, about a body of believers, rather than just himself. Maybe he was reminiscing about all of the places he had already been at that point, spreading the message of Jesus in several countries, including behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany and the Soviet Union (in 1989). Was he encouraging new Christians in the song’s two verses to think about their temporal sacrifices, about ‘treasures’ (verse 1) and ‘all we’ve lost’ (verse 2) in exchange for Christ? His 1998 album Out of Africa suggests he visited that continent to communicate this Truth there too. This newly ordained, 40-something minister/musician must have had many impressions running through his mind in 1997-98.
The ‘we’ Scott Wesley Brown sings may include a swath of missions and activities that he has been supporting. He’s worked with nine different ministries listed on his website (see its link below), including the US Center for World Mission, in order to spread not just music and free musical instruments, but also food, health care, and the Word. He’s been active in ministry in the United States, as a pastor in churches in southern California and in Arizona. No one is an island, someone has noted, a perspective that Brown has adopted as a basic tenet in this song and more broadly in his life of worship. He notes in his biography that he’s visited more than 50 countries and every state in the U.S. His songs are about this journey, and are his confessions too, he says. ‘There is none beside You’, he confesses to God in the refrain of this song, quite a statement for a guy who’s been around the globe and seen so much. Maybe if we all saw as much as Scott Brown has, more of us would sing, and radiate these words. Time to get off the couch, and outta the pew, and worship.
The below links provide information on Scott Wesley Brown:
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