Australians all let us rejoice – Malcs is coming.

In less than two weeks, we’ll be getting on a plane to Adelaide for my first overseas music tour. That’s pretty exciting huh?!

The tour is to promote the work of the ‘Songs that Unite‘ website, which is an initiative of the Uniting Church of Australia. The site publishes songs from local composers to make them available to the wider church. This is my kind of thing. Without really thinking about it, we’ve adopted a similar ‘celebrity model’ of song spreading to the secular world. So if someone famous and awesome puts a song on their album, we’ll hear about it, and maybe sing it. But what about that amazing song that someone we’ve never heard of writes? Well that stays unsung. It shouldn’t though. Songs that Unite is an avenue that ordinary people can use to share their music around the world and around the church. It isn’t out to create superstars, its there to make songs available that give voice to the faith and experience of God’s people.

I’ve got a few songs up there, and am thrilled to see a few of mine in the top 5. More than a popularity contest, as a writer its great to get some real life feedback that your songs are connecting with the people of God. Do you know that Charles Wesley wrote over 6500 hymns, and yet only 40 of them remain in hymn books to this day? That means we’re going to write a lot of stuff that connects once, or for a short season. Its not every song that is going to last for ever. And that’s ok. As long as we have a way of hanging onto the ones that do have something for time to come. Songs that Unite is a great start. I’m thrilled to be working with these guys.

If you’re in the area, I’ll be spending a week in each of these churches from the 28th of October.
Hope Valley Uniting Church (Oct 28th to Nov 3rd)
Adelaide West Uniting Church (Nov 4th – Nov 10th)
Centre for Music, Liturgy and the Arts (Nov 11th- Nov 17th)