RAW Reviews 

Beautiful Things, Part Deux 

Yes, I know I covered this song already, and yes, I know I promised a full album review of Barton Hollow by the Civil Wars. All in good time, my friends.  I must come back to this song, because I don’t think we’re done just quite yet diving into all it means.  

When we last met, Beautiful Things was merely a celebration cry, focusing on God’s incredible desire to make us brand new beings, and the joy that comes from putting that promise into practice will change your life. But as I dove deeper into the lyrics, as I’ve lead it for close to a year now, my perspective changed. I have a time of worship with my 4-6 graders, set apart just for them. It’s designed to create a stronger bond with them, and to take them to the next level (they start when they’re in 1^st grade). Lately, it’s been on my heart to talk about more than just “happy worship” – the most simple and common form of worship. I wanted to get into something they’ve never even thought of, perhaps even something most adults haven’t. I’m talking about worshiping through lament.  

Now I know what you’re thinking – “But Brian, we like happy things…why bring down the mood? Can’t we just enjoy this song without having to deal with our issues at the same time?” Ok, maybe not, but it’s what popped in my head when I read this review, from Michael Gungor himself…  

“My wife Lisa and I wrote the song together based on experiences at our local church. We were seeing our friends going through suffering and pain. This song is an expression of hope that God will make beautiful things out of the dust in our lives, and God will somehow use us, use our obedience and love, our feeble human effort, and build Himself a kingdom. I see that God is using suffering to bring us closer to Him.”  

Wow, could our cry of celebration really be about pain and suffering? You betcha. And like I do with so many songs the first couple listens through, I missed the point…I went straight for “You make me new, You are making me new”. Instead, I should have looked at the verses – “All this pain, I wonder if I’ll ever find my way…all this earth, could all that is lost ever be found” and on and on. But it took me straight to a couple other songs…  

How He Loves, by John Mark McMillian…a beautiful worship anthem…born from the death of a close minister friend. Desert Song by Brooke Fraser…vocals recorded by Jill McCloghry, who just a week before recording the song lost her premature newborn. This trifecta started the wheels in my head turning, and I knew God was giving me a sign that I need to talk about worshiping in lament. 

I suggest you go buy Michael Card’s book “A Sacred Sorrow” to truly dive into this notion – or come to the bible study I lead, as we’re studying this book starting very soon. It walks you through the steps, takes a look at some Biblical heroes who lived and breathed this worship sense, and gives you a great baseline for lament worship.  

But what’s it really mean – lament worship? We all through heartache, right? I can imagine that you’ve never had a perfect day, heck, perhaps haven’t even felt content for more than a few hours. Suffering and pain are part of life as we know it, because Satan is doing his worst to make you fall away from God. What’s our first reaction when tragedy strikes? Sadly, I imagine you’re like me, and you wonder why our loving Father didn’t stop it from happening. Your pain turns to anger, then resentment…and it eats you up inside. But let’s play this game – what if we took our situations, the bad included, and made it not about us?  

The “why didn’t God stop it?” battle will never truly be answer 100% until we’re with Him someday, but there’s some great promises to remember til then…  

1. God didn’t cause your tragedy. God is love, God is perfect, and He’d never do anything like that to you. Satan is playing with your mind, and he knows just how to twist your feelings to blame God for everything. Wanna get mad? Get mad at the one who caused it…  

2. When tragedy strikes, don’t hold your feelings in. Our society has created this insane idea that we can’t show emotion, especially sorrow and brokenness, and we internalize all our feelings. God designed feelings so we could have a way to expresses ourselves. And in a relationship, which is exactly what we have with our God, you have to be able to share all of yourself with Him – not just the happy moments, or the questions, or the prayers for others. You need to be willing to open your whole self to God, and let Him see your hidden pain. Like David, Job, and yes, even His Son Jesus, we need to let God know when we’re broken, when we’re hurting…and He’ll be more than happy to help.  

3. Worshiping in lament doesn’t mean you don’t mourn. There’s a process with every issue that comes up, and it’s only healthy to go through all of them. It’s not what lamenting in worship means. Choosing to worship in your lament means that you’re changing how you view the situation, and choosing to share that pain with Your Father. It deepens your relationship, shows how much you truly trust Him, and opens the door for Him to start the healing process.  

I sadly don’t have time here to write it all out for you, but here’s my bottom line: when tragedy strikes, and it will, remember God didn’t change, even thought our circumstance did. He’s still in control, still as powerful as ever, and most importantly, He still loves you just as much. Let Him take care of you – don’t go through this alone. Share that pain, that brokenness with Him. Of course, He already knows how you feel and what you’re going through, but it makes Him so proud to know you care enough to share it with Him yourself. It’s how we grow closer, and knowing you can turn to your loving Father in all situations, not just to celebrate with Him when life is good, but to know He’ll truly be there when your world falls apart…man, that’s the greatest feeling in the world. And once you allow Him in, once you surrender your whole situation, truly your whole self to Him, He can begin to make you new, and beautiful once again.

~Brian

Rend Collective Experiment

“We’re all handmade people created by our God who is not safe or small,” “Our heart was ultimately to make music that was sonically creative and pushed the boundaries, but we also wanted to write something that really served the Church. It’s not us trying to do something crazy and different for crazy and different’s sake, it’s our response to a truly magnificent God with a wild imagination.” 

In an age of copy-cat worship bands and carbon-copy music it’s always refreshing to find a unique voice that goes against the grain. Meet Rend Collective Experiment. There’s nothing ordinary about this band. For starters, they consider themselves more of a family and a group of friends than just a band. Their name comes from places in Scripture where it says to “rend your hearts” and not your garments, to be genuine, authentic, and not fake. They are composed of a collective of people and thus the name, Rend Collective Experiment was born.

What stands out about their music? It’s organic and not manufactured. Their second album, “Homemade Worship for Handmade People” (a very appropriate title) was recorded entirely in their homes. As they reason, homemade is typically better than a slick, factory produced carbon-copy.  As a result, the worship is more intimate, creative, raw, and hand crafted. Their music is similar in sound to that of David Crowder, Snow Patrol, Mumford and Sons, and Gungor. They consider their fans as part of their family and their concerts are known as “family gatherings”.

They began as a small group of 20-somethings who were just trying to figure out their lives and how God wanted to use them to further his kingdom. By 2007, they grew into a collective of musicians and artists who wanted to share with the world what God was teaching them. Their home is found in Ireland where a revival in Western Europe is desperately needed. Today they are composed of a group of 15 musicians and artists. They’re continually looking to grow in the future.

Their first album, “Organic Family Hymnal” has been internationally acclaimed and they were featured on a United States tour with Chris Tomlin.  They also have gone on tour with speaker and preacher, Francis Chan. Their hits songs from the album include, “Come On”, “Movements”, and “You Bled”. The song, “Faithful” has features David Crowder as a vocal and is a favorite among many Rend Collective fans. This album is an excellent debut album that is rich lyrically and stands by it’s claim as organic. I give it a 4.5 out of 5.

“Homemade Worship made for Handmade People” is simply an outstanding album. Their first stand out song from the album is a revised version of “Be Thou My Vision” which incidentally is an ancient Irish hymn. Rend Collective slightly changed the lyrics because they felt the words were getting lost in translation in the ever-changing culture. “Second Chance” is a song that addresses the amazing grace of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. “The Cost” is a fun, upbeat song that is instrumentally rich and lyrically simple, yet profound. Another fun song that is upbeat that is an anthem for a revival of the church is “Build Your Kingdom Here”.  ”True Intimacy” echoes a sound that is similar to the band, Gungor, and has strong lyrics on what it means to be love with Christ. “Praise Like Fireworks” is the opening track is a fast paced celebratory worship song that will put a smile on your face. “Desert Soul” may be the strongest track on the album as it expresses the broken nature of humanity and the power of God to revive us as the dry bones. This song is the most appealing for corporate worship found on this incredible album. I give this album a 5 out of 5 and consider to be the most innovative worship studio album since David Crowder’s Band’s “Church Music”.

The sky’s the limit for Rend Collective Experiment. As the curtain begins to fall on the highly successful and innovative David Crowder Band this year, this young family of musicians appears ready to take their place. God has blessed their music greatly and is perhaps they will be at the forefront of a revival in Western Europe and in the church at  large!  It’s time we took notice and take part of this wonderful collective family!

~Kyle

Beautiful Things, Part One

“All this pain
I wonder if I’ll ever find my way
I wonder if my life could really change at all
All this earth
Could all that is lost ever be found
Could a garden come up from this ground at all

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us

All around
Hope is springing up from this old ground
Out of chaos life is being found in You

You make me new, You are making me new”

Hey friends! Today’s RAW Review comes as a personal favorite of mine, and is a song I think will make a huge impact in your worship – almost instantly. It’s been in my top 5 favorite worship songs over the past few weeks: Friends, today we talk about “Beautiful Things” by Gungor.

Gungor is a new worship band on the scene, but not a new worship band. Originally under lead singer Michael Gungor’s name, later to be The Michael Gungor Band, they found small success in co writing the popular worship song “Friend of God” and penning their original “Say So”. But they wanted more…so they changed the name, and changed their mindset. Michael himself says it this way, on their official website:

“If leading worship is just about bringing a group of people into a room so we can get goosebumps and sing songs together, there’s not much value in that. But if leading worship is a means to an end, that we leave this place as a different kind of people, as part of a new humanity that God wants to create – the people that are caring for the widows and orphans, that aren’t bound by the systems of this world but becoming free, becoming fully engaged in our world – then that matters.”

And the catalyst to this end, for me, is the second track on their album, the title track “Beautiful Things”. It’s so simple in its lyrics (see above), but so powerful. While the chorus consists of fewer more words than “You make beautiful things”, it really digs into a deeper meaning. And it comes straight out of scripture:

2 Corinthians 5:17 – New Living Translation (NLT)

“This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!”

How it warms my heart every time I hear this verse. It’s one of my favorite promises as well: Christ is saying here that once we come to Him, once we give ourselves away, we no longer have to deal with all the shame and hurt of our old selves. It doesn’t matter where we’ve come from, the terrible things we’ve done or had done to us, or how much in shambles our lives are. He wants to fix us, to make us brand new, make us as we were always designed to be: Beautiful.

Let’s talk about the music itself: though it starts out slow, this song hits pretty hard. One of my favorite areas of music is dynamics – how a song builds, how it uses the instruments to create the atmosphere, and how it takes you where you are and places you at the end. It’s that roller coaster we’re used to, and “Beautiful Things” doesn’t disappoint. You’ll find yourself at moments in quiet reflection, at some points with your hands stretched to the Heavens to pure awe, while other you’ll be dancing around, head banging in His glory. Can a song truly have all these aspects? This one sure does. And not just a little bit – it blows the doors off, and as I said earlier, truly takes you somewhere else.

As we close out, let me give you why I love this song and why it jumped instantly into my top 5. To start with, I have to say this: I’m a crazy music critic. Usually, it takes me two or three listens to a CD before I start to appreciate it. I expect a lot, and I demand a high level of excellence at all times. That being said, it should speak volumes to the incredible nature of this song that it became my favorite on first listen. A friend of mine had me listen to “Dry Bones”, the opening track of the song (which I will review later on), and I went straight home and bought the album on iTunes. Yes, “Dry Bones” is amazing for sure, but when I got to “Beautiful Things”, the whole game changed. The repeat button should have probably broken from the number of times I hit it. But nothing compares to the first time I led this song.

It was down at our church’s camp, Round Lake Christian Assembly, in Lakeville, OH, where RAW and I lead for the annual Bible Bowl Retreat. Friday night’s worship was awesome: the kids were pumped to be there, just overflowing with energy. Saturday night, however, was much different: after playing rounds basically all day, they were exhausted. And it showed – the first pack of songs we did all fell short, and they almost looked like zombies going through the motions. But after our speaker that night, we came back for two more songs: “Forever Reign” by Hillsong United, and this one, “Beautiful Things”. And I tell you what guys it was like night and day. It may have been the most they’d worshiped all weekend…until Sunday. Sunday morning we did an acoustic worship pack, and you better bet “Beautiful Things” was included. I can’t tell you the last time I saw an entire group of people, mostly junior high and high school students, absolutely losing themselves in God’s glory, forgetting all others, and making sure every hesitation they had was squashed.

So go out and get this song already! Just kidding….but seriously, I have to recommend this with all my heart, because it is a life changer. Honestly, I’d say go ahead and get the whole album, coincidently titled “Beautiful Things”. You won’t regret one penny you spent. Thanks for hanging out for our first RAW Review. Next time, I’ll do my first full album review, focusing on The Civil Wars, an acoustic/folk group consisting of songwriters John Paul White and Joy Williams, of Christian music fame, and their debut album “Barton Hollow”. Have a great one…and by all means, keeping worshiping!

~Brian