He looked intently at others whose worship he wanted to improve. And, Jamie Harvill also took a long look at himself in the same vein, feeling that something was missing and that what he and others had been saying musically for a long time lacked depth. This was something he also shared with a musical collaborator, Nancy Gordon, and together they dove deeper into the seeds of their shared faith. This self-examination and the resulting investigation allowed Jamie and Nancy to declare “Because We Believe”, an answer with many facets to the questions they had asked themselves to consider in 1997.
One very important building block of the multifaceted beliefs Jamie and Nancy discovered was summed up in a four-word line in the song and title of the booklet, To Jesus We Sing, which Jamie eventually authored some 20 years later (in 2016). Incidentally, all the various locations or a single spot where Jamie sat, mulled over, and put together To Jesus We Sing would be difficult to sum up, but he was likely living on Alabama’s Gulf Coast in Mobile in 2016 (see graphic here). More broadly, how far back, and exactly where do all your beliefs and practices go for their original seeds of germination? Jamie’s booklet is concise, yet wide-ranging, and cites dozens – even hundreds, thousands, and probably countless characters – who set the tone across all history for that which we call ‘worship’ today. Jamie calls all of them and us pieces of the ‘Big Story’. Jamie and Nancy were after this historical perspective in their song, summed up in a short paragraph in the preface of Jamie’s booklet (p.8; also shown on his website – see link below). From Abraham and all of Old Testament history, through Jesus and the new covenant, and up through the 21 centuries since He ascended, some key ideas have endured. Those are the beliefs that Jamie and Nancy address. ‘God the Father’, ‘Christ the Son’, and the ‘Holy Spirit’ – this triune God, the inaugurators of ‘the church’ (v.1), are the foundation. Jesus is the center point of it all, echoed again and again in their song’s chorus, and also repeatedly in verses 2 and 3. Christendom’s history relies on these for sustenance – the ‘Holy Bible’, the ‘virgin birth’, the ‘resurrection’, and the hope of His ‘return to earth’; and further, the ‘blood of Jesus’ and that it ‘frees’ every believer unto ‘eternal life’, and into being Christ’s ‘bride’, a divine concept us earth dwellers admittedly don’t yet fully comprehend. There’s also fourth and fifth verses that are spelled out for the Christmas season, focusing the worshipper’s attention on the ‘King of kings’, a ‘newborn baby’, the ‘shepherd’s journey’, a ‘guiding star’, and a ‘humble manger’. Jamie’s last few words of his booklet’s preface (p.11) remind us that all believers throughout time have ached for a Jesus to whom we can sing, even though congregational singing lapsed for a period of some 1,000 years. That’s a stunning fact, underscoring the value of this that we call worship through song.
What Jamie says with his booklet’s few words is that my heart’s fullness overflows into song about the God who came to save me. There’s other ways to express my devotion to Him, but singing is uniquely capable of channeling my emotions. There’s a lot going on there, and it’s the genius of God who gives His created ones this tool that fuses notes, chords, other sounds, poetry, and so many intangibles into a piece of artwork. It would be tempting to worship the song or the earthly composer as we ponder a song’s intricacies. Lest we think that today’s worship music is comparatively bursting with imagination and energy while earlier periods were dull, Jamie’s booklet tells me that music and worship to Him has accumulated lots of momentum by 2022. I and my contemporary worshippers are riding a huge wave -- the Big Story. Are you content to merely spectate in this Big Story? How about joining in?
See the following: To Jesus We Sing, by Jamie Harvill; Wyatt House Publishing; Mobile, Alabama 2016.
See here a concise description of one author’s books: https://jamieharvill.com/books/
See one author’s information here: https://jamieharvill.com/about/
you did very well
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