Over the past two decades, music from
Hillsong Church in Sydney, Australia has been one of the most consistent voices in the worship of the worldwide Church. Despite the widespread success they have achieved, the
Hillsong Live team continues to strive to tune into the voice of God and speak fresh words as He works through the church.
In the wake of the release of Cornerstone, NRT's Bill Lurwick talked with Hillsong members Ben Fielding and Reuben Morgan about the process and passion behind their latest groundbreaking project.
Let’s talk about Cornerstone. It is the 21st live release from you guys. For someone checking this out, how does this release follow from the others?
The first thing to say is we do have a great heritage of worship and releasing songs for our congregation that are really carrying the message of our church. We go through seasons in church life and piecing theories where it is a theme that’s on the heart of our leadership and a theme that’s in our church.
The songs that we write capture that. This is the 25th or 26th album we’ve done. We’re as passionate as ever about releasing songs that capture the heart of our church. This particular project has got some amazing new songs on it, like the theme song “Cornerstone.” That really just puts Jesus right in the middle of our worship.
It’s a fresh sound. It’s a fresh theme and I think it’s going to be a great project.
So in your eyes or your ears, either one, what makes this project different from the other 20 live projects you guys have done?
This has been an amazing season in our church. We’ve seen an amazing response to salvation, a lot of people becoming Christians. There’s a real sense of revival in our church over the last few months. It’s a really exciting time to be around.
One Sunday, we had a baptism Sunday. Over 600 people got baptized in our services. That’s amazing to see, that all those people have given their heart to the Lord, and they came to be baptized and we had a great time at worship.
Actually, one of the songs on the album came out of that moment, “Beneath the Water.” It’s an exciting time to be part of our church and I think this album really reflects that.
Ben, can you talk about the song that is headed out to radio and how that’s going for you guys? It’s “Hope of the World,” right?
Yeah. “Hope of the World” has been a great song for us in church. We’ve done an edit of it for radio, and it’s a song that talks about basically the message of the gospel, that hope is in what Jesus’ done for us. The chorus so beautifully paints that picture of Jesus with arms open wide on the cross, extending His hope and His message to everybody.
This is a song that responds in the bridges. It talks about all we need being in Him. It’s a hopeful song, and I think in today’s times there are a lot of questions being asked. We can hold onto the hope that we have in Christ, like an anchor for our song.
“Cornerstone” is the title, and several of the songs came out of an event in Norway where some folks were tragically gunned down last year, right?
When I was over in Scandinavia visiting our church there, there’d been that event where the man had gone crazy with a gun and a lot of people were killed. The whole church was kind of shaken up, and it was the kind of thing where everybody knows somebody that was affected or a family member.
People are really left asking questions. Where is God in all this? What are we meant to make of this in light of God? It’s kind of around that situation that I got together with a couple of my friends, and we really wrote a song thinking about people coming to church, how we could help them respond to what had happened.
The lyric from that beautiful hymn, “my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness,” just seemed like the right place to start. That sense when everything is shaken, Christ is the foundation. He is our cornerstone.
Really that’s the theme of the song, but that’s also the theme of the album.
Reuben, “Your Love so High” was co-written with Matt Redman and Chris Tomlin. How’d that come together?
We’d been writing that song over a few months. Really that was just thinking about the love of God and all He’s done on the cross. I was writing it in Sydney, and Chris is in Atlanta, and Matt is from England.
It’s one of those things that just came together over a period of months. I just love that thought, the heart and the depth of all of God’s love, that we can search it out.
Reuben, talk about some of the packaging here. Hillsong’s Cornerstone is also going to be put out as a CD/DVD combo, so we can get that special night recording in Sydney live on DVD as well, right?
That’s right, you can. It is a live recording and it’s a worship experience. We got together in our biggest indoor arena in Sydney, just our church. It’s an incredible night of worship. It’s great to get the DVD because you really do get that experience. It’s a passionate encounter we’ve got.
Is it true, what I hear, that Hillsong Live is coming back to the US this fall?
That’s right. In September we’re going to be touring all over the place. Check it out on Facebook, Hillsong Live on Facebook. There’ll be more details on that, but it’s very exciting. We’ll be here in September.
We always appreciate your partnership with New Release Tuesday and what we’re doing. We are excited about the latest from Hillsong live. Thanks for spending time with us.
Thank you so much.
