Where Do Sovereign Grace Songs Come From?

Bob Kauflin: Knowing God isn’t just theology to be read, it’s songs waiting to be sung. And that’s what we wanted to communicate through it. So we’re kind of coaching the songwriters through this. We’re not saying, “Hey, David, you and Nate, you wrote a lot of songs, just give us another one.”

David Zimmer: Welcome to Sound Plus Doctrine, the podcast of Sovereign Grace Music, where we explore what the Bible has to say about music and worship in the church, and encourage those who plan, lead, and participate in their Sunday gatherings each week.

David Zimmer: Hello, and welcome to the Sound Plus Doctrine podcast. My name is David Zimmer.

BK: My name is Bob Kauflin.

DZ: And your name is?

Devon Kauflin: Devon Kauflin.

DZ: Devon Kauflin.

DK: Yes. It’s good to be here.

BK: Well done.

DZ: So great to have you. I don’t think in season eight, we’ve had you on the podcast yet.

DK: I don’t know.

BK: I don’t think so.

DZ: This is great.

BK: No, it is a delight.

DZ: Off to a good start. What are we talking about today, Bob?

BK: We are talking about something actually that we did a breakout on at the Worship God Conference this past summer, and it’s where do Sovereign Grace Music songs come from?

DZ: Yes.

BK: ‘Cause we know where they come from. This is not like a personal conversation. But there are a lot of people who’ve asked us, yeah, where do you guys get your songs? What’s the process? So…

DZ: Yeah. And at the Worship God Conference, we did a… In that breakout with songwriters, it was so cool to talk to people after that said, I had no idea what your process was like, who wrote Four Things? And so that was… I’m glad we’re talking about it.

BK: Yeah. And you can go to the Worship God site and download that.

DK: Shameless plug alert.

[laughter]

BK: I’m just saying you can go there.

DZ: Worshipgodconference.com. There it is.

BK: And somewhere on there, you can do a search for this very topic. But we thought we would talk about it just to give another perspective.

DZ: That’s great.

BK: So first, I just wanted to share a little bit of the history of Sovereign Grace Music.

DK: To answer that question, you gotta start with who we are.

BK: Who we are?

DZ: Yeah.

BK: Well, who we are? I don’t know. I mean, who are we?

[laughter]

BK: That’s a very deep question. All right. Sovereign Grace Churches began back in 1981. Sovereign Grace Music began shortly after that. We’re just an expression of Sovereign Grace Churches. We’re not… This is something I was thinking about sharing later, but we’re not a record label. We’re not a publishing company. We’re not a parachurch ministry. We are just an organic expression of our denomination, our family of churches.

DZ: Yeah.

BK: So back in the early ’80s, one of our writers, Mark Altrogge, was writing songs and sending churches… Sending those songs out by cassette, cassette, to different local churches, our churches. And they reflected the teaching that we were receiving. So we couldn’t find songs that specifically addressed, in a contemporary form, the topics that we wanted to sing about. So, those would be the gospel, the sovereignty of God. The mission of the church was a big one. Our relationship with one another, those kinds of things. So…

DK: And this was also the time where the contemporary worship movement didn’t exist.

DZ: Oh, yeah.

BK: Just getting started.

DK: Just getting started in the ’70s, out of the Jesus Movement.

BK: Yes, yes.

DK: So there isn’t the… It’s hard to imagine now, especially if you’re under the age of 30, that there was a time where churches actually… The songs they had to sing were in hymnals, which was wonderful and a gift, but that was it.

BK: Yes.

DK: And the thousands of songs that we have access to is a very modern and recent phenomenon.

DZ: Oh, yeah. There was…

DK: And something that’s taken place over the last 20, 30 years.

DZ: Yeah, there wasn’t a category for contemporary worship, especially in congregational worship.

BK: No, it was… I mean, it’s hard to imagine. Like you said, no internet, so everything you hear is on the radio, and you would turn on a Christian radio station, it would be so eclectic. You would be getting folk music, a little bit of rock music, Southern gospel. It’s like…

DZ: Choirs.

BK: Choirs. Yeah, people didn’t know what to do. I know there’s something happening here. So we were a part of that, and we… Mark and myself, a few other writers, the Cooks, were putting these songs out. And so, that’s how it began. I think in the late ’80s, we did a few albums. One was called The Nations Are Waiting, then A Rise in Worship. And then in ’91, we did an album with Integrity, Hosanna.

DK: And I think where these songs were primarily distributed was in this annual conference that our family of churches had, that those songs were sung.

BK: The celebration conferences.

DK: Yes.

BK: Yes, once a year.

DK: And so then from there, then you had local churches throughout the United States singing these songs that they sang together.

DZ: Yeah.

BK: Yeah. I think the Integrity album was a little bit of a shift in that, more people are aware of this. So they had known the albums we had recorded and said, yeah, maybe we should get some of these songs out there. So, then we did three albums with Word in the mid ’90s. So, again, it’s getting a little bigger. And the worship industry, the worship song industry is beginning to grow. Those are the years that Delirious came out, who knows them?

DZ: Yeah.

DK: Shout to The Lord come out.

BK: Darling Jack was… Yeah, that was a part of the Integrity series. There’s a story behind that which I won’t go into. Well, I’ll just say that she wasn’t supposed to lead that, and then the guy who was couldn’t lead it. And so, it was just a last minute decision, and just how the Lord used that song, Shout to The Lord.

DZ: Wow.

BK: Just kind of…

DK: And Matt Redman started writing mid ’90s.

BK: Matt Redman was writing Soul Survivor. So, I think we did about 16 song service tapes, then we did a Come and Worship series, CD series with, I think that was about nine or 10 CDs. And then it was in the early 2000s that we started doing more thematic albums, and we’ve done over 60 projects at this point. So, it’s all pretty much been homegrown in the sense of we haven’t sought to make a big name for ourselves, we’re just writing songs for our churches and happy when they serve the larger body of Christ. And so, we’re aware of that, that we do have people all over the world singing our songs, and the Lord’s been kind to bless some of our songs.

BK: I Stand in Awe was one of our early ones, Mark wrote, Forever Grateful, Jesus Thank You written by Pat Sabel. So yeah, we’ve just been writing songs for years and continue to do it.

DK: And one of the unique things about that is, from the get go, we wouldn’t have ever articulated this from the get go. But in a sense, we had these confessional boundaries that we were writing within.

BK: Explain that for those who wouldn’t know.

DK: Yeah. I’m getting there.

BK: Okay, sorry.

DK: So…

BK: I want you explain it now.

[laughter]

DK: It wasn’t just write whatever we feel like or whatever has been inspiring me right now, but it’s within the confines of this is what we believe as a church and this is what we believe as a family of churches in denomination. And over time, I think we’ve grown in our doctrinal clarity and our ability to articulate those things and our focus in songwriting. And I think there’s two key doctrines that shape where our songs come from, how we think about our songs. And I think one is the doctrine of scripture and God reveals himself to us through his word. And his word is, I mean, it’s God’s revelation. It’s something that we can understand and it’s words of life for us and it’s sufficient for us.

BK: Absolutely.

DK: All we need for life and salvation. And so, we wanna write songs that express and center on what’s revealed in God’s word.

BK: Yes, what God has said.

DK: And so we’re very word-driven in what we write. And then the other aspect or doctrine that really shapes who we are and where our songs come from is our doctrine of the church.

BK: Yes.

DZ: Yeah.

DK: And the church is how God purposes to carry out his mission in this world.

BK: Yes, yes.

DK: And to make his glory known, it’s in the body of Christ. And so that’s where the action is. And so we wanna write songs that are serving the church and that are both from the church. We talk about how we are about Christ’s exalting songs and training for the church from our churches. And so it’s something that’s coming birth from our churches, but then with a target and aim to serve our churches.

DK: And those two things, doctrine of scripture, doctrine of the church, really do give us these boundaries in addition to the confessional boundaries that we have, the statement of faith that we share as we’re writing these songs. And that’s something that… The statement of faith, you can go and you can read and all of our songs that we’re writing, if we’re gonna produce them, they’re gonna be…

BK: They better line up.

DK: They’re gonna line up with that statement of faith. And if they fall outside the bounds of that, then it’s not… We should be called out on that. We don’t want to produce songs that fall outside of that.

DZ: Right.

BK: Yes. So we’re… Oh, go ahead.

DZ: I was just gonna say, the boundaries that we have are just so beautiful, and they provide limitations that a lot of other organizations don’t have. There’s some limitations in being an artist, artistic creativity. Not that we’re not striving to be creative, but we want it to be accessible for the church. And when I hear people talking about Sovereign Grace Music that are outside of our churches, that’s most typically what I hear. It’s just so easy to sing it. It’s just so easy to latch on to it quickly.

BK: So a church focus versus an artist focus.

DZ: Yeah, yeah. Because I mean, it’s wonderful what artists can do.

BK: It is.

DZ: But I think that would be outside of the boundaries of what we’re attempting to do.

BK: Yeah, yeah.

DK: And we were having a conversation the other day about how that also helps us avoid some of the cringiness that can be present in maybe artist-driven or… It’s music written for the church, but written by an artist and more driven by artistic expression. And then you get together with a group of 10 people or 1000 people, and you’re singing this line, and it’s like, yee-hoo. I don’t really wanna be saying this with other people about Jesus or whatever it is.

DZ: Yes, ’cause you’re taking some artistic license. When you say cringe, that’s what that license is. It’s like, well, I don’t know if our whole church would sing that. [laughter]

BK: Yeah. Yeah.

DZ: So it’s sort of… But it also… We might talk about it later, but there is a rigorous process of how we’re trying to get songs written and then put on albums.

BK: That’s exactly what we’re gonna talk about. But when you mentioned the boundaries, I think Psalm 16, where it says, “The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. Indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.” And so often in songwriting, we can fear boundaries. And there is a place for when you’re writing a song to just write whatever, write whatever. But we are constrained, as Devon so wonderfully put, by the doctrine of God’s Word and the doctrine of the church. This isn’t our deal. There’s no label. And I thank God for the different companies and ministries that are putting out some great songs.

DZ: Oh, yeah.

BK: But they don’t necessarily have those constraints unless they impose them upon themselves. We are… Sovereign Grace Music is an expression of Sovereign Grace Churches. And we’re not free to do whatever we want.

DZ: Yeah. And it’s our people.

BK: It is our people. So I thought it’d be helpful just to say, in Sovereign Grace Music, there is a staff. There’s a group of people who are employed by Sovereign Grace Music, but we’re not all songwriters. So there’s me, I lead it. David’s the head of production and promotion. Fabrizio Rodolfo, head of media and Spanish resources. Becca Hyde, who holds everything together, admin. Devon is head of resources and events. And then Grace Nixon, our audio engineer. Those are the people who are on staff, although Devon is a senior pastor at Grace Church in Maryland. So this is something he kind of squeezes in for us.

DZ: With all the time he has, yeah.

BK: But I think people would be wondering, who are the songwriters? Where do they come from? So I’d be interested. I have some written down, but I’d be interested in what you guys would say to that.

DZ: Yeah. Predominantly, 90% are coming from our local churches. I remember when I was in Southern California, and I would come and play drums on the albums, I was thinking like, man, it’d be fun to write on these. But, [laughter] I wasn’t…

BK: And nobody was asking you.

DZ: But I wasn’t a part of a Sovereign Grace Church, and we had built relationally together.

BK: Yes.

DZ: But all the musicians that I was playing with were from Sovereign Grace Churches, maybe minus like Ryan Foglesong and I. But as time went on, and the Lord was moving me to Louisville, Kentucky, I never thought I would be here. I think it was so cool for me to see that. Oh, these are people who are church members in Sovereign Grace Churches. They’re known by their pastors. They’re known by their elders. And it also creates a lot of accountability just within the ministry.

BK: Absolutely.

DK: I think, I mean, it’s an expression of the boundaries that we have, where our boundary, it’s not strictly, “Oh, you’ve got to be a member of a Sovereign Grace Church, and those are the only people that we will produce songs from.”

DZ: Right. True.

DK: But there is this boundary of, we write relationally, and it’s people that we know and have relationships with and have a history with. And so I think of, I mean, other people that we’ve written with that aren’t in Sovereign Grace Churches, like my brother Jordan, or Matt Boswell, or Matt Papa, and these are people that we’re connected with, or Pat Sczebel, connected with relationally and historically. And there’s a significant amount that we share confessionally. And so, we’re not going out and just casting a wide net and saying, “Hey, we just wanna produce the best songs. Doesn’t matter where they come from, doesn’t matter who’s writing them, just send them our way.” That’s not our disposition. And we recognize, no, this is one of the limitations that we have, and it’s a good limitation. It’s a gift.

DZ: Yeah. Yeah, well said.

BK: A lot of times we have sought to build with different people over time, if someone sent songs and say, well, who are you? Because we wanna, who are you? In fact, I’m accountable to Sovereign Grace Churches for who writes our songs. So we can’t just have anybody write the songs. So there are members of Sovereign Grace Churches primarily, as well as some who have been a part of Sovereign Grace Churches, but are no longer. So I think of George Romanacce, who’s a worship leader in Pennsylvania, a worship pastor.

DZ: A fantastic song writer.

BK: And he still writes with us, and he was part of the churches for years, but then got this position and… But just a dear friend, and yeah, I just love it. And then you have guys like Marc Willerton from Vancouver, BC, who was a friend of the Sczebels. And I remember Pat saying, “Yeah, this guy is a worship pastor here, and we’ve been hanging out, writing some, and you think he could come?” And so we had him come, and Marc’s written just some wonderful songs for us.

DZ: Oh, my world. Yeah.

BK: And he’s a worship pastor. He’s not an artist, he’s not going into songwriting sessions and doing all that, he’s just writing for his church. And so, that’s really a large part of our heart, looking for those people that we know who have those values, who wanna write for the church, who aren’t looking to this as a career necessarily, but just love serving the church with songs. Alright, I thought it may be helpful, and you guys tell me, if we walk through an actual album.

DZ: Yes.

BK: Just the whole process. So we’ve written probably over 500 songs in the Sovereign Grace Catalog. Many of them not that great. I mean, not now, I wouldn’t do it. [laughter] But a lot of them, I think, are really good.

DZ: In the past 30 years.

DK: I’m sure there’s more than 500.

DZ: Oh my word, there has to be way more than that.

BK: Maybe 600, yeah.

DZ: I’m not sure. [laughter]

BK: Yeah. I counted them up at one point, but I know there’s over 500.

DZ: I mean, for like each album, it might, sometimes it’s 100.

BK: On the album?

DZ: Oh no, oh no. You’re talking published.

DK: This conversation is just great for listeners.

BK: I’m sorry. I’m talking about actual songs on albums.

DZ: Oh.

BK: Yeah, no, we’ve written thousands of songs. [laughter]

DZ: I was… I thought… I thought it was…

DK: So let’s get back to… I think it’s great. Talk through what is an album, come up with an album. We always have started, for the last, I would say, almost 20 years, started with a concept.

BK: Yes. Beginning with the Hymns Project, somewhere around 2003.

DK: That’s right, yeah.

BK: The Bob Kauflin Hymns Project, I should say.

DK: The Bob Kauflin Hymns Project that became…

BK: Because my name, the notoriety of my name would really draw people in.

DK: You had nothing to do with that title.

BK: I did not. [laughter]

DZ: Thank you for setting the record straight.

DK: Full disclosure. And that title was a surprise to you.

BK: Yeah.

DK: And then, I mean, we did things like Valley of Vision. And so that we…

BK: The songs.

DK: As we began to do that, Come Weary Saints, songs for suffering. As we were doing that, we were seeing the benefit of, again, I mean, we’re getting back to boundaries and limitations.

DZ: Yeah. Why not more restraints?

BK: Yeah. Yeah.

DK: But really good songs came from setting those boundaries in place. And so since then, I mean, that’s how we’ve approached every project. And so, with Knowing God, I mean, that started with…

BK: Fall of ’21.

DK: Was it?

BK: Yeah. You pointed it out.

DK: We were talking about different possibilities. And I had noticed that JI Packer’s Knowing God was coming up on its 50th anniversary. And so, suggested, why don’t we…

BK: Try to do an album.

DK: Write an album with songs driven by this book?

BK: Yeah. So in January…

DK: So that was Fall of ’21?

BK: 20… Yeah.

DK: Okay.

BK: ‘Cause January ’22 is when we have our songwriter retreats, they come from once a night through Saturday morning. And they’re in Louisville. And we have about 15 to 20 people. We’ve brought the number down a little bit over the years ’cause we found that too many people just makes it confusing. So, we started writing songs for knowing God then. And we can talk about that process of what happens on a retreat. We’ll do that in a moment. The next year, January ’23, we had another songwriter retreat and we were still writing songs for Knowing God.

DZ: Yeah. I just wanted to say on that first retreat, I feel like it was too broad. I mean, we realized maybe it was too…

DK: God’s pretty big. And knowing him is a pretty daunting…

[laughter]

DZ: Totally. And so, you had almost two problems. You had like, one problem was we were trying to get too specific into the book, and then it sounded like medical almost. It sounded like…

BK: Oh, I see.

DZ: It was too heavy.

BK: Too wooden.

DZ: Yeah. Or it was too broad, and you’re like, well, how does this even connect? What’s the connecting points? And so after that, I feel like you had another conversation with the songwriters come that following year, and you thought… What we thought was maybe take a chapter in the theme and work through that chapter in that theme, and then try to pull from that.

BK: Yes, yes.

DZ: That was like… That nailed it on the head.

BK: Yeah, I think it’s the difference between writing a song that affects people and writing a song that sounds like systematic theology set to music. And it’s that second kind of song. In fact, I was looking through some notes about what I said to the songwriters, and I said, things to avoid, songs are theologically rich but clunky. Songs are theologically rich but complex. More words doesn’t always mean greater impact. Songs are theologically rich but unclear progression. So, we just throw a lot of truth in the song, and no one’s really following it.

DZ: Yes.

BK: Songs are theologically rich but overly familiar. So, we say a lot of true things, but everybody’s heard them that exact same way a hundred times, and it just doesn’t impact our hearts. And so we’ve really aimed to… As we said, knowing God isn’t just theology to be read, it’s songs waiting to be sung. And that’s what we wanted to communicate through it. So we’re kind of coaching the songwriters through this.

BK: We’re not saying, hey, David, you and Nate, you wrote a lot of songs, just give us another one about God, knowing God. Just go for it. Which in some senses, it can be fun and easier, but we’re not trying to necessarily give expression to your artistic impulses, or even your personal impulses. We’re saying, we wanna serve the church, and we believe knowing God is a book that really every Christian should read.

Speaker 2: For sure. For sure.

BK: It’s been around for 50 years, and it hasn’t diminished in its significance or impact. So how can we draw attention to that book, but then also pull out some of the themes that Packer expressed so well, and get those into people’s hearts.

BK: Yes.

DK: And at a high level, we’ll also be thinking about, with every project we do, themes that we wanna make sure are present and articulated. And so I think of knowing God, and one of the most impactful chapters was the chapter on adoption. And so, it’s like, that’s a theme that we need to have song about. And I’m like, that should be present there. And so, we might come to songwriters and say, “Hey, these are… We’re still looking for songs about this topic or this topic, and encourage people that way.

DZ: That was funny, just exactly to that point. I remember when we were sort of getting to the editing process where we’re trying to whittle all of these hundreds of songs down into 13, we didn’t really have a strong adoption song. We had maybe five adoption songs, but…

BK: That’s about it, yeah…

DZ: Not as clear as Packer’s making it, not as connected. And so you could have 20, 25, 30 brilliant songs, but we’re actually thinking thematically, what are we missing? That might bump out some great songs that maybe we’d love to publish later, but just to get that theme right.

BK: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So there is… Boundaries is kind of becoming a theme where our songs come from a clear vision for what we’re seeking to do for the church. We’ve talked about, as you mentioned, doing some singles that… You just stand on their own. All of Our Tomorrows is one of those. That was a song that was…

DZ: Was supposed to be put on the record.

BK: Going to be on Heaven Has Come, but we thought, it’s not quite a song about the incarnation. It’s a New Year song, so you think about it at that time. So then we ended up releasing that as a single, which I’m so glad we did, Dave Fortier and…

DZ: Ryan.

BK: Ryan, yeah.

DZ: Ferguson.

BK: Wrote that. Just so… It’s such a great song, but didn’t fit into a theme. So it’s not like we’re saying, no, don’t write anything that stands on its own. But we are saying, yeah, it’s almost contrary to the artist’s impulse. Let me just write whatever I want. Well, how about if you look at a truth long enough so that you see it more clearly and freshly and write about that, and this is the truth that we’re focusing on?

DK: Those constraints, it’s like walls to a garden for an artist, for a creative. And it’s like we want to cultivate that garden as the gardener, in a sense. We wanna do the best we can to cultivate that. And by providing those thematic boundaries, in a sense, we’re doing what we can to keep the weeds out. Because again, you talked about, write a song about God. It’s like, that doesn’t help an artist to write a good and compelling and clear song. There needs to be some focus, some constraint. And so we’re always coming back to that again and again.

DZ: Yeah. And here’s what you gain. You gain specificity. There are so many times…

BK: Absolutely.

DZ: When we’re planning for a Sunday and we’re in a passage of Scripture that our church is in, and we go, “Man, what song would be a great follow up to this sermon? What song would be a good benediction song?” It’s like, well, this song that talks exactly about… And that’s not only a resource to congregations, it is a huge resource to pastors.

BK: Yes, yes.

DZ: They’re going, wow, this cements what I just was talking about. So I love that we have that specificity.

BK: Yeah, and it’s not as commercially viable as, say, writing a song that…

S2: Yeah, it won’t be put on the radio.

DK: Just has mass appeal.

BK: Mass appeal. Those are great.

DZ: Totally.

BK: I mean, those… [laughter] Sometimes people say, why are you so against? To say you’re for something doesn’t mean you’re against something else. It’s great to have songs that, like, Holy Forever just won the Dove Award for Best Song of the Year or something. It’s a beautiful song.

DZ: Yes, it is.

BK: But it’s that mass appeal. It’s just broad and anybody can sing it and just at any time. Yes. But what about the songs where you wanna nail, as you were saying, what was said in the word because all our songs are going back to the word.

DZ: Yeah.

BK: And how do we flesh this out? Think of Wesley, Charles Wesley, who they wrote over 7,500 hymns.

DZ: Yeah.

BK: To articulate all the doctrines that they were teaching. Now a lot of those songs aren’t… [laughter] No one’s singing right today. But their desire was, we want, we understand the power of music when it’s linked to the word. And so we wanna find ways to get that into people’s hearts.

DZ: That’s great.

BK: Let’s talk about the actual treat. ‘Cause I think there’d be a lot of questions about that.

DZ: Yeah.

BK: We start on Wednesday night, usually with well, with a dinner. And then just kind of laying out. Well, we talk about encouraging things, God’s start with…

DK: Yeah. Giving us Sovereign Grace Music update. This is…

BK: Yeah. Yeah. This is how the Lord’s using our songs. You know, the songs you worked on two years ago last year. This is what the Lord’s doing on them.

DK: People are actually singing them.

BK: Yeah. And it can be difficult to come to a retreat and write and then not see a song get on an album.

DZ: Yeah.

BK: Or did, you just play a small part. But we tell our writers, look, just the fact that you are here means that you’re being faithful. And God’s gonna bless that. He’s gonna bless your soul. He’s gonna bless the souls of those around you, and you just don’t know what He’s gonna do. So we start then, and then a Thursday morning we have a, like a devotional, sing a song or two. And then we have something called a group write where we assign group writes. And we just started doing this recently, in recent years, where we say, okay, you three are gonna go together. You two, you three, and maybe some groups of three. And we play songs usually that have been written in preparation for the retreat. So, there’ll be about 50 songs written, 30 to 50 songs. It depends on the year, prior to the retreat that people have been working on.

DZ: Yeah.

BK: So, they’ll play some of those at that session and get an evaluation from the other people in the group. Sometimes the three people just might say, hey, let’s just work on a new song. And some of those songs has ended up being on our albums.

DZ: Yeah.

BK: So you just don’t know how it’s gonna work. Then we have lunch, then we have more general writing. And then we have something called group Sing where, that’s usually at night. Sometimes it could be in the morning, first thing, where we just sing the songs that people have been working on. And we found that to be so helpful just in giving honest feedback right at the start.

DZ: Right.

BK: You know, don’t get so far down the road in the song that you think it’s amazing. And then people actually sing it. You go, eh, that’s not so amazing.

DZ: Yeah. And that is such an incredible resource just to songwriters. Like if you’re a songwriter and you’re listening to this podcast, I think one of the hardest things for you is that your church loves you.

[laughter]

BK: Isn’t that a good thing?

DZ: It’s a wonderful thing. But it can also, but it can also…

BK: So, sad. Your church loves you.

DZ: It can also keep you from that editing process.

BK: Yeah. Yeah.

DZ: And so, coming to a place where you have a lot of people around you that can give you honest feedback.

DK: That also love you.

DZ: That also love you.

DK: Yes. That’s right.

DZ: This doesn’t make sense. Or, hey, this could be clear that that’s just been a big resource for me. I know. But in those group sings, if we don’t immediately latch on, it’s telling.

BK: Yes.

DZ: And you think about our churches, you want your church to immediately latch on you.

BK: Yes. Yes. So, is this, so people give comments. Is this easy to sing? What part really stood out to you? Oh, I really love the melody. You know, they’re quick. They’re not long extended. Hey, help me, let me help you write this song now.

DZ: Yeah. Right.

BK: It’s just, what’s the impact of this song? Because we don’t get second chances. Normally, when someone hears a song that’s recorded or it is on YouTube or they sing in the congregation, it’s like, how does that song affect you right now?

DZ: Right.

BK: And that’s what we’re going for within those constraints that we were talking about earlier. Is this faithful to the word of God? Is this faithful to the theme we’re seeking to communicate, and is, does this really impact people? So all those things are tied together. And I wanna say about the… Just the culture that the Lord by His kindness has enabled us to cultivate over the years. We have songwriters who are slow to take credit and quick to give it. And we may have mentioned this on an earlier podcast, but I think of one writer.

BK: I think it was George Romanacce, who had written a song, put someone else’s name on it. And when we were figuring out percentages for royalties and that stuff, or co-writes who wrote the song. I contacted the person he had mentioned. He said, I didn’t help write that song. I walked in the room and I think I’m like, made a suggestion about a line or something. And then I walked out and I just thought, that’s so beautiful, [laughter] that George is not thinking, I don’t want anybody’s name on this song.

DZ: Yes.

BK: You know, as much as possible. ‘Cause there is a lot of collaboration. And if you are thinking, I just want my name on a song, I just want my name on a song, I just want my, it’s going to poison everything you do. That’s going to influence everything you do. And then writers who are slow to take credit. So, you’ll have people walk into a room and they’ll fix a line or change a line a couple lines, and maybe this cord progression could be different, or why don’t you stop here and they’re just thinking, I’m just helping you.

DZ: Yeah.

BK: You don’t need to put my name on this song.

DZ: Yeah.

BK: You know, there’s a lot of questions here. Do you want to be a part of this song? [laughter] Do you wanna be part of this song? [laughter] And it’s like, yeah, no, I don’t need to be. Yeah. Which is just, it’s so helpful in writing the songs that we do.

DZ: Yeah.

BK: Yeah. So I’m thankful to Lord for that.

DZ: Yeah. And in that process, a lot of the… We all have different strengths, so a lot of people who are strong on Melody will pair with someone…

BK: Yes.

DZ: Who’s really strong with lyrics.

BK: Yes.

DZ: If you get two guys who only write lyrics in a room together, or three people who are strong lyricists, they don’t really know where to go melodically.

BK: Yeah.

DZ: All the time. And so that’s really helpful as well. But yeah, during that process, I mean, after we do that songwriter’s retreat, then it’s just edit, edit, edit, edit, edit, edit. I mean, it’s just a long time of editing What we’ve come up with.

BK: We use Google Docs and we have folders for every song that include a Google Doc of the lyrics. So you can see the changes on it. And then an MP3 of the latest iteration as it were. And some songs really have 20 pages, literally 20 pages of notes. And then you eventually get to the point where it’s really close and you’re still tweaking. You’re still fighting what, how does this, what’s the best way of saying that, is there a better way of saying that?

DZ: Yeah.

BK: And so, we go through that long evaluation process after the second retreat…

DK: So Jan, yeah. January ’23.

BK: Yeah. January ’23.

DK: Knowing God. We’ve done two retreats. How many songs do we have?

BK: Oh, I think we had a lot more than 40. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

DZ: Somewhere in that…

BK: Yes.

DZ: Range 120, 150 somewhere.

BK: So we whittle it down to like 50 and then we have like a couple month period where say we’re gonna…

DK: And then whittling down is a small group of people just listening and making kind of a quick assessment.

BK: Yeah. Yeah.

DK: This should be, this is a possibility. This is not a possibility.

[laughter]

BK: One through five, I really like this song Five. I really like this song. See the song in the album four. This is pretty good. This is really good. These some changes three…

DZ: Yep.

BK: Down one. Don’t put this song on the album. Right. So we’ll let the songwriters know then, these are the songs that are currently in the running. Maybe about 50. You can still add songs. And then we’ll have another date where we say we’re gonna make final decisions now. So get everything in by this time. And then we’ll maybe have a little larger, so there are three evaluations, little larger group. And then when it comes down to the final…

DK: And that larger group gets to 20 or 30 songs.

BK: Well that’s the last group. Yeah. We’re still at like four or 50.

DK: Yeah. Yes.

BK: The last group we send outside, we send about 30, 30, 40 people.

DZ: This is a major benefit to what we do, this process because you’re getting people outside of our immediate network to go, would you sing this in your church?

BK: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

DZ: And those categories are like one to three, right? Isn’t it? Or is it top?

BK: Yes. No, that’s one to three. Yeah. And we ask them for, I think their top…

S2: Top three and bottom three.

BK: Top three. Yeah. Yeah. I forget the… We refined it so that it’s very specific. It is one, two, three. Three put this song on the album two, a good one.

DK: It’s okay.

DZ: Needs work. One, don’t put it.

BK: Yeah. Because we want songs that are gonna have immediate impact and are true. We’re not asking them evaluate this lyrically ’cause we’ve been doing that, but we will get comments that change the songs.

DZ: Yep. Yeah.

BK: This line’s unclear. ‘Cause you, you miss things. And, it’s been really helpful to get that kind of feedback. So then out of that, we’ll get like a top 12, a top 14, and then it’s the final selection is with the producer of the album. Might be Ben Shive or whoever. And yeah, just saying, okay, these are the songs that fit best together and that’s how we come up with our songs.

DZ: Yep.

BK: So, and then we record it, we figure out how we’re gonna record it.

DZ: We arrange it, for a week and we demo them.

DK: Yeah. So, Knowing God, when did we rehearse-ish? Do you remember? May, June?

DZ: Yeah, ’cause we recorded it later in the year.

BK: Recorded in September.

DK: Recorded in September of ’23. And then we released the first single in.

BK: February of 24th.

DK: February of 24th.

DZ: Yeah. And yeah. That was sort of a trial to see, or to trying that out. What if we released a single a month?

BK: Yeah.

DZ: That was a conversation with Integrity. And that has gone well and just basically telling you like, Hey, we really would love, this would be a great song for you to sing.

BK: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

DZ: And then the full album in July.

BK: Yeah. And thank the Lord, those songs are out, that album’s done. [laughter] We’re working on a new one.

DZ: It was such a process.

BK: A new album, which we’ve had one retreat for the album, we think is gonna be called Songs For The Lord’s Day. And this coming January, we’ll have our second retreat on that and hopefully record that sometime in 25. It’ll come out in 26, but we’ll see what the Lord does.

DZ: Yeah. You can pray for us.

BK: Please do. So that’s where songs come from. And if you have any more questions, please send them in to SoundPlusDoctrine@sovereigngrace.com.

DZ: Yep.

BK: We’d love to hear from you. Devon, thanks for joining us.

DZ: Thank you, Dev.

BK: Thank you for joining us. See you next time.