24 Aug, 2010
The Gospel Song – An Animation
Posted by: Bob Kauflin In: —Song Downloads|—Sovereign Grace Music|—Worship and Christ|Videos
Not too long ago I came across the work of Chris Powers, who put together an animated video of one of our songs, The Prodigal. I was moved by the way he used simple animation to illustrate the song in a powerful way.
Recently Chris told me he had animated another one of our songs, The Gospel Song.
Here are the lyrics:
Holy God in love became
Perfect man to bear my blame
On the cross he took my sin
By his death I live again.
In the video, Chris also added a portion of a message by John Piper where he pleads with unbelievers to trust in the finished work of Christ for their sins.
The Gospel Song was first written for a musical my church put on in 2002 for our 25th anniversary. Drew Jones, who led the production, wanted to musically communicate how over the years the church is always tempted to make primary what is secondary. But it is the gospel that remains constant and preeminent. When secondary issues (relationships, serving, mission, spiritual gifts, evangelism, etc.) are given equal weight, the gospel has the potential of getting obscured, assumed, or lost altogether.
Drew asked me to put music to seven different sets of lyrics that could all be sung together. Out of the cacophony the simple gospel song emerges as the only hope for those lost in their sin. In the production, a father also sings The Gospel Song each night to his daughter before she goes to bed.
I had a blast writing the music, and think we were able to pull off Drew’s idea. The other songs stayed with the show, but we’ve continued to sing The Gospel Song on Sunday mornings.
You can download the song for free here. Here’s the guitar chart, and a four part hymn arrangement.
