NASHVILLE (BP) — Fulfilling a goal to produce an entire album of songs using verbatim Scripture, the Immanuel Nashville worship team recently released their second album titled “Romans 8 — Live.”
The 15-track record features songs alternating with Scripture readings from Romans 8 by artist Shai Linne and sermon excerpts from pastors Ray Ortlund, T.J. Tims and Sam Allberry.
All of the songs feature portions of Romans 8 exactly as they are written in the English Standard Version, a feat not easily accomplished in the songwriting world.
“Conceptually this seems to be something that had really never been done before, in terms of including the sermon pieces and the Scripture and the music,” Jessica Waterman, musical director at Immanuel, said.
The songs from Romans 8 were not intended to turn into a full-length album, Waterman explained.
Beginning ideas
The church was going through a sermon series focused on Romans 8 and Waterman simply set out to write some songs that helped the congregation internalize the truths.
“What can we do as the worship ministry to come alongside what he’s [Pastor Ortlund] doing?” Waterman said she asked herself and the team.
Waterman knew that personally, music helps her with memorization of Scripture.
Songs help get Scripture into believers’ hearts, she said.
The first two tracks of the album, “No Condemnation” and “If Christ Is in You” were birthed out of her own personal mediation on the Scripture, trying to see what melodies God would bring to her mind, Waterman explained.
Co-writing played a large part in album with the tracks “Who Shall Separate Us”, “Abba Father” and “Sons of God,” but Waterman said she was personally encouraged by the solo writing she was able to do for the album.
“Sometimes I bring insecurity to those moments when I try to write by myself,” Waterman said. “Can I do this on my own? Do I need somebody to come alongside me and write this?”
The joining of creative minds is awesome, Waterman said, but having the encouragement from the Lord with her individual part in the album’s songs was a blessing.
The goal with many of the songs on the album, in addition to utilizing verbatim Scripture, was to create singable melodies for the congregation, Waterman noted.
Waterman said as she wrote she asked herself “How can we hear this one time and still be able to sing it with each other? How can we dwell on the Scripture with music?”
The challenge of style
Although writing verbatim Scripture was a new challenge, it was a rewarding experience to see how the crafted melodies folded around the words that otherwise may have been altered or changed, Waterman said.
“Sometimes, as songwriters, we can shy away from doing this kind of thing because it seems like too daunting of a task,” Waterman noted. “But what I loved about it was that we came at it like we’re not trying to make this into our own thing, we’re trying to take what God has given through His Word and create melodies that can go along with that.”
The album ranges stylistically all the way from folk and country influences featuring prominent fiddle lead lines and steel guitar droning slides to heavy rock grooves with soaring electric guitar riffs.
Waterman said the inclusion of diverse styles was very purposeful in the arrangement of the songs as well as the actual writing process.
“There’s so many different ways that we can come to the Scripture and there’s so many different ways we can sing it. The Lord is not limited by style, and He’s not limited by melodies,” Waterman said. “He’s still exalted through however we choose to sing and lift His Scripture.”
The team wanted to create an album of various styles in order to keep it exciting, fun and prevent the wearing out of one particular musical feel, Waterman said.
“We try to not be tied to one style or one arrangement of a song but we really try to touch on a lot of different kinds of music,” Waterman noted. “We’re commanded to sing; we’re not commanded to play a certain style or with certain instrumentation.”
The album reflects to a great degree what the weekly services look like at Immanuel Nashville.
With instrumentation including banjos, trumpets, saxophones and pedal steel alongside drums, piano, guitar and bass, Waterman said no music style is off limits for the team.
“Nothing’s off the table in terms of musical style and diversity, and we know we still have a long way to go with that,” Waterman said.
T.J. Tims, lead pastor at Immanuel, said the album in its usage of singing, preaching and spoken word all together, showed the diversity in which God is worshiped.
“The line between preaching, singing, spoken word, are very arbitrary, and when we sing, we’re preaching,” Tims said. “There’s a very real sense in which God preaches and sings the world into existence.
“Each one brings its own element, of course,” Tims continued. “But they’re all essentially doing the same thing, and it’s proclamation, it’s preaching the Word of God.”
Source: Baptist Press
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