Sing to the LORD a new song, for he has done marvelous things; his right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him.
[Psalms 98:1 NIV]
Australia’s Hillsong United talk about how scripture isn’t something they use to make their songs sound better - it’s where their songs actually come from. They talk about how they use the Bible to connect with young people today.
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JONATHAN DOUGLAS(?): A lot of the songs our church has written through the years have been based on scriptures that our church has been taught on. So some of the key kind of scriptures from our church have been ones like Psalm 100 and Psalm 84, and things that were important to our church would come out of that. So scripture isn’t just something that we use to kind of make our songs sound better, it’s where our songs actually come from, it’s where they’re birthed from, from those Psalms which we believe were the worship songs of their day, you know what I mean? So we take a lot of those and apply that into what we write as well.
JAD GILLIES(?): And some of the songs, like some of the prayer songs are like anthems, you know, songs like “Tell the World” are speaking–you know the verses at the end of the gospels where Jesus was saying, “Hey, you’ve experienced this, now go and tell the world, go and make disciples.” And so I think there’s an opportunity, particularly in speaking to this generation, the goal is that you’re speaking out of what is going into your heart through the Gospels or whatever you’re reading in the Word, and then presenting it through the music so it connects with young people and the Word’s really getting into their hearts.
Please note that the views expressed in this story are not necessarily the views of the American Bible Society. Story posted on March 3rd, 2008 and filed under Hillsong, Bible, Video Stories, Praise, Verses.
