Vision180 chatted to Jessie-Rose – Kingdom Culture Church’s Worship Pastor about dreams, visions and having a heart of worship.
We’re a new church, been around for just over four years. I was part of the team that had the privilege of starting it—really awesome. Music, writing our own songs and releasing our own album was always part of the dream, right from the beginning.
We did a lot of writing a lot in homes. After church, a bunch of people would just get together. So it was really from house worship—organic from the beginning. It wasn’t like: ‘Ok, let’s get a bunch of artists in a room and make them create.’ Even though I’m the worship pastor at the church, I wasn’t actually organising anything. I was just being invited along to these writing sessions that were happening all through the week. Then came the point when I thought: ‘Wow, there are some good songs here! I think we could definitely release them.’ Fact is, I think you’re always more critical of your own songs but I felt with the stuff the other guys were writing, ‘We have to share this.’
Actioning it all was pretty rapid. I presented it to our pastor and the board and, within four months or so, we were running with it. It was a very quick turnaround from getting the approval to getting it altogether. It was fun. It was fast.
The speed of getting the album together was a challenge. Some of the band members actually left the week of the recording, saying: ‘We need to push it back, we’re not ready.’ We had a deadline we wanted to release by, so I said to the guys: ‘Ok, if we want a live recording, we need to be doing the event in six weeks.’
We’d written the songs and we had been talking about it but it was still daunting because it was very go-go-go. But they really pulled together and we didn’t push the event back! We did the live recording and it did really well!
worship isn’t about music but about connecting us again to God
The heart of the album is that worship isn’t about music but about connecting us again to God. Even some of the songs are written from the perspective from God—there’s one song called Take My Hand and the first line is: ‘Take My hand and trust in Me, My child, I’m not going anywhere.’ The whole album is an expression of our hearts towards Him and of His love towards us. We hope people would grow in their relationship with Him through our songs.
For those who want to do what we’ve done, my encouragement would be to pour your heart out in worship to God at home. It’s where no one sees because it’s behind the closed doors at the piano or on your guitar—even if you only know three chords or you can only play in one key. Where you pour your heart out: that is the ground work. That’s really what sets you up for what people do see in the public. What happens in your private life sets you up for what’s going to happen out where God’s going to take your music.
For me, I first started song-writing when I was fifteen. I was homeschooled just the end of my high-schooling, and so I was able to go into my room where I had a keyboard. I’d just play for hours and hours.
I was meant to be doing maths or something, but I’d look up at the clock and four or five hours had gone by when I’d just been singing to Jesus, pouring out my heart in song. Singing other people’s songs and then getting little bits of my own songs. The first song I wrote was atrocious, it was nothing impressive. But it was my heart before Him and He loved it—even though craft-wise and structurally it was nothing special at all. But I think that’s the start and what will set you up in the long term to be writing more. Because God sees that and, at the end of the day, He wants your heart the most. Writing awesome music is great but if you lose yourself in that process and you lose your relationship with God in that process then the words are meaningless anyway.
So I hope the album blesses every listener that it points to Jesus and draws everyone into a closer, more intimate relationship with God. He wants to know us closely. He’s not just far away, He actually wants to be really close—to talk to you, to know you. My prayer is that everyone who hears these songs would experience Jesus and that God’s presence would be so close to them as they hear it.
Listen to it below
