Faith Work and Music

My guest is Todd Agnew, who is a musician and a theology student, right?

We are here to talk about music and truth and beauty and vocation and all those mixtures. Let's start a little bit with your personal story. How did you get involved in music? Give us a little outline of your background and what got you to Dallas.

Years and years later when I would drive somewhere and play for a youth group of four people for pizza and gas money every weekend, I eventually recorded a record that I was going to sell at camp and at my church. But one of the guys who turned into a mentor for me, Dana Key, heard what we were doing and just said, "Hey, Todd. I think God has a bigger plan for this." We prayed about it because I really didn't think that was God was doing; He had taken a long time to break the pride of being a musician in my heart. So I didn't assume He was going to take and do something real big with it. I thought I was where I was needed to be.

But Dana was a patient and godly man and we prayed through it. All of a sudden God opened these huge doors and I had songs on the radio and was on a tour bus traveling around. I had a great bunch of guys with me who were a great part of what God did over those years in my life, being a part of their life and how they affected me.

I have just kept doing that. I've had different opportunities. By now, it is, well sometimes it is jumping on a plane and playing a big band show with all the lights and sound equipment and lasers and fog and everything, and sometimes it is just grabbing a guitar and leading worship in a church,. Sometimes it is going into teaching the Bible. Sometimes it is going and training the next generation of people that are going to be doing this. It has really been a beautiful story so far.

But, I was just convicted. I felt like a lot of what I had to offer them was experience, "Oh, there is this one time this happened in service," and I had a few home run Bible verses about worship. But, a real solid foundation, biblical theology of worship; I had an idea, but like most of those things I pulled as quotes from somebody's book and I really just wanted to be more trained, more prepared to help them build the foundation for their future ministry. That was part of it.

The other was my wife got a job offer up here and as we started talking about that I was trying to be encouraging about the city of Dallas. One of the things I mentioned that was a highlight in Dallas was DTS. She said, "Well, do you want to go Seminary?" I said, "Well, I didn't say that. I just said it's a really good thing in Dallas. I really respect the work they're doing there," and she goes, "Yeah, but do you want to go to Seminary?" I was like, "Well, if you mean in my heart of hearts, of course. I love studying the Bible. I love understanding who God is and what He is doing in our lives and in the world, but I am a musician who has not been in the academic world. I don't think I get to do that." I was like, maybe some day, retirement age, I'll get to come audit some classes.

She really just encouraged me and said, "I really think that God is doing something here and you need to call them." So I did and got lots of help and all the pieces got to come together. So, I've had a great three years here.

You know, normally I guess one of the challenges of doing music, and particularly writing music, is thinking through the contents of what it is that you are engaged with. I would imagine that one of the challenges is thinking about what you are writing and what it is saying and how it can be understood – that kind of thing. Have you found your time here to be enriching in that regard, in terms of opening up the possibilities of what it is that you can write and sing about?

I thought I would come here and "boom" and explode – Isaac Watts, writing all these great, rich things. Instead, I did the opposite. I got here and I stopped writing songs altogether. At first I thought I was afraid of it. I thought that I had gotten sort of stage fright of, "Oh, now I see how much there is to know. I know how little I know, so maybe I just shouldn't even risk writing a song."

But fortunately I had a great community around me. We started talking and wrestling this idea and what we came to was that fear is a little bit of it, but that a majority of it is that my writing process is really long. I song write usually over about 18 to 24 months.

What happened here was I had so much going into the front end of the pipe that nothing was getting to the end of the pipe.

The things that have come through have been really rich and really beautiful and I am honored to be a part of it.

So you build that, whereas a lot of time some of my friends that write books do that all by themselves. But I get to see everybody else's creative process and see how they operate.

The honest truth is I know guys who work all those different ways. Some of them have tunes and carve out the words to be on top of them. Some of them are more poets and then put the music to it. I am this long process person. So for me it is always the scripture; it is always the theology that is the real inspiration, the real seed. As it grows through life, eventually as a musician that is just the language it comes out in. When it does for me, it comes out almost done. It is the tune and the words come out together for me in one moment.

But like I said, as we have been taking this a little more seriously, looking at what songs can be written for the church in the last couple of years that has – "This is what it is going to be like." So now we need to stop. We've got the vibe. Here's where the song is going to go, but let's not just throw words in it. Let's find what is the theology, what is the best thing that can be said in the third line of verse two, where normally by the time I'm at the third line of verse two I'm just going, "This kind of rhymes. Here we go."

Now we're saying, "No. We're talking about redemption. What happened on the cross? So, what can be said in these seven syllables? What is the best thing that can be returned as an offering to the Lord in that moment?" It has really been challenging and a beautiful kind of new season.

It is kind of a little bit that I have to know what my songs are going to do. I've done this a long time. They are going to lean in this direction and they are going to say kind of these things, and I am going to push myself. When you bring somebody else into that it can really spark something that I would have never thought of and never tried. That is a lot of fun.

So there is my primary package and then I am trying to do all these other things on the side. So yes, I still go out and play concerts. I don't do a lot of the big crazy shows anymore just because I don't know that I need to. There are a lot of other great bands that can do that just as well or better than I can. So I try to be home with my family and then take the shows where I think what they are doing ministry-wise I could really be a part of and I could really add something to.

Sometimes that is by playing my songs, more concert stuff. A lot of times it is by going and leading worship. In fact, almost all the time it is some kind of combination of those two – even concerts. I am a worship leader; that is going to be a part of what we do. But I am also a Bible teacher and a story teller so by now I have got the freedom. I've done this long enough and people have believed in me long enough that they kind of come in and say, "Hey look, we want you to be who God has made you to be and just share with us." It is a really fun time right now.

Dallas is metropolitan enough that I don't know how much it really affects me. But at the same time it is home, so I might not notice the influence that it has on me. I didn't really notice as much in Houston either, but when I left Houston and went to Memphis it changed how I listened to music, how I played, and how I understood some things. It really shaped. That happened.

The Grace Like Rain record, the big one that started all this for me, I recorded while I lived in Houston but I was doing ministry weekly in Memphis, flying back and forth. In between the time I recorded it and the time it came out I had moved to Memphis to play in a church.

Those first record is just, "Hey, this is me growing up in Texas. This is kind of who I am." Even just by the second record you can already hear Memphis and the effect it has had on me just kind of going, "Ah, this is kind of home." There is something about this that resonates with me that nothing else has, and I loved the music there. You can see the effect it had.

But then getting married and turning around and coming back to Austin had a big effect too. Kind of for the first time, Texas and its style of music wasn't something that's, "Hey, that's how I grew up. I don't want to be that." It was a, "Hey, this is home and I want to embrace this," and I grew into Texas music being a Texan. It was a lot of fun.

I actually was going to ask you if you had spent much time in Nashville, as opposed to Memphis, just thinking about the southern roots and how many Christian artists do gravitate, at one point or another, to Nashville.

You have a sense that at least two of these cities really did impact the way you've ended up writing your music?

But I've found that over time a lot of people have said, "Yeah, but I've felt like that." So, I think God has allowed me to be a part of peoples' stories in that way.

I spent some time last semester with a lot of visual artists and their experience in the church they would share, like, "Oh, this is what I kind of struggled with in church," and I had to finally tell them. I'm like, "I feel for you. I'm listening. I understand the words you are saying, but you also need to understand that you are not talking to somebody in exactly the same position because music is much more integrated into church life than visual art is."

We got to have some really great conversations and it did make me look back at music additionally as art. It is a different, an unusual circumstance. I don't remember if you just said it right now, or earlier, but there is this kind push-pull relationship with the church that sometimes, "The love. This is the best thing. God did something I've never seen. It's the most wonderful thing I've ever experienced."

But then you can go one step farther or just somewhere a little different and it's, "Well, hey, I am not sure if we can do this." The thing is, theologically and methodologically as a pastor you say, "Hey, that is a fair question." If something is new you should test it and ask questions.

But it has been good to be at the Seminary for me for the last year, really, and having conversation of risk and creativity versus theology where we kind of have a tendency to minimize risk, where we are trying to dial it down to what is actually right. In creation we are usually trying to expand and see what is out there. They are really different process and they are both valuable.

Of course you talk about running into people with different tastes, and particularly communities; that becomes important. Were you in the middle of that? How did you negotiate your way through that issue?

Then all of a sudden, now we're also going to sing, "I'm so glad I'm a part of the family of God," while we're shaking hands, but that is the only place for it. So I watched it move as a kid to the point where I was in high school and Word released a new hymnal that had some of the choruses in it. For the young people we're like, "Yeah. This is awesome."

In the church that I am in – I am very close with two churches, but in one of the churches that I am in they have drums, but it is all electronic and it is all very controlled and muted. Sometimes I'll begin and I'll talk about this caged person that is back there in the band who we like to see but we're not quite sure what to do with – that kind of thing.

We actually played at a church in Murfreesboro, Tennessee one morning. We're just going along in our first song and all of a sudden the drums just went away. Then they came back in but they didn't sound quite right.

I trust my drummer, he’s one of my best friends and so I just kind of kept going. Then I finally cut my eyes to look over there and he was in one of the cages and the roof had caved in on him and he's holding up the roof still just playing.

It was this hilarious moment. But it is one of those things that you don't see in other environments. Part of it is sound. But I think you are right, it is a great visual metaphor for: How do we really do with this; how does that fit into what we have always done. These are the things we are comfortable with and know; that we are fairly confident that all of this is right. We think we probably should be adding this but we don't know quite how to mix those. I think we are still taking that journey to some extent.

I'll tell you what I do as a speaker. I do spend some time talking to the staff that I know, or the people who have invited me, about the makeup of the church before I ever get up to speak so I have some sense of what the audience is about. Is it similar for a musician?

Once we made that shift, it really helped us a lot, and it helped me now, still going from church to church because now everybody knows different songs and has different ideas of what it should be and what styles. But just to go in and say, "Hey look. My job is to help shepherd these people, so that is what I want to accomplish more." I am going to use whatever art can accomplish that the best today.

I like to talk about speaking this way. I don't know if music works this way, but I say, "There are 20 percent of the people who it doesn't matter what you do or what you say. You've got them. They are there and they are highly motivated. There is another 20 percent probably sitting on the edge and you are going to have to work pretty hard to get those people." But it is that bulk in the middle, the 60 percent that can be swayed to be engaged or be disengaged; that is the major part of your audience that you are playing with.

I imagine in music where you've got these different tastes and styles that, it is almost you can think about an audience in that kind of a way in some ways.

He had put so much learning into this and really understood how to connect with those people. I learned a lot from just watching his understanding of connecting to people.

In preaching we do the same thing. If I have to connect this truth, I have to get them to listen to it.

Then, as a worship leader this is what – we're just kind of – in the last year I have started taking these things with my team in Houston now and saying, "Okay, let's start having these conversations." We use the phrase "access points." Where are the places in our service where we can help people who may or may not be connected yet to connect into what is going on rather than say, "Hey we are going to start, and good luck. You can either come with us from the beginning."

No, that is not how you lead. There are different people coming from different places and different stories. We are having those conversations even now, just looking at a Sunday and saying, "What is this?" Well, we've got a lot of these great new songs, but if we do Amazing Grace right here because that allows this generation and these kinds of people, that only come sometimes, a way in. "Oh, I know what to do here."

I remember. I'll tell the story. This goes back to my first day in class at Dallas Seminary. We are in Prof. Hendricks' "Bible Study Methods," and he breaks out a song: "My hope is built on nothing less. Jesus' blood –." I came to faith in college. I didn't go to a Bible college or anything. I didn't have this hymnal of hymns that I knew. There were no words. There was nothing to guide me. I didn't know the song, and I felt totally disconnected to what was happening in the class. I was really a newbie.

I think that sometimes we are slow in our construction of worship. This can be, again, music or in the way we talk theologically – I often tell my audiences. Theology is a foreign language to a lot of people. You've got to do a lot of translating to do really good connecting.

I think sometimes we are tasked in the church to help – I like that word "access point – people get onboard because they look at it and they go, "I don't recognize that train." I don't know if I want to step on it.

I wrote it with one of my best friends who, like you, didn't grow up with that body of work, those songs. So as I was teaching hymns to seventh graders at our church, helping them, going, "Okay, so when you say 'Here I raise my ebenezer', this is what that's about.

But, people that had been going to church actually had to pay attention to the words because they couldn’t sing it on automatic anymore and it made them have a new experience with this great lyric and this great truth from years ago. It was really this wonderful experience that we got to be a part of.

Another genre that we've seen more recently – and I think some of this has softened some of the tension – is taking a well-known hymn and singing it and connecting it to a chorus, or something like that, that has the same theme but expresses it in a little different way, and using the two as almost a medley on and off of each other in such a way that the demographic issues that sometimes come with the different styles of music; both sides get their time, if I can say it that way.

Somebody like me can come in and play these songs and everybody is going to know them, but it is not like that everyone. So, one, I just love the heritage of those songs, intentionally connecting to those. But also there is a reason that they have been effective for so long. It is the same as the creeds. There is a reason that they were repeated for so long. It is because a ton of Godly work went into putting them together and they are brilliant expressions of our belief in who God is.

Even now we see this, "I believe," a new song by Hillsong, which takes the creed and puts it to music.

We are almost running out of time. I want to ask you one more question. I want to be sure and ask this before we get done. It is this: How much commentary do you give to linking together what you are doing versus just letting the songs speak for themselves? I've heard different approaches to that question as well. What is your thinking on that?

A number of years ago we just had a summer where the band guys and I really felt that we needed to lift Christ up and let Him reveal Himself and we needed to not do anything else. That was a really special year for us. It taught me that I don't have to force everything, that God will woo the hearts of those that He wants to worship him.

So, now I do a kind of combination of always trying to ask, "Hey, is there something I can say there that will really exhort the body, that will really help us?" If not, I can trust them and trust Him to accomplish what He wants.

We appreciate that very much, and we appreciate you taking the time to talk to us about it. We thank you for being a part of The Table and hope you will be with us again soon.