Charity Gayle houses a powerful voice which has a fresh yet reminiscent sound. She loves the Lord with fierce faith and has authored songs such as "Amen" "Enter In (Psalm 100)," "New Name Written Down in Glory,” “Thank You Jesus For The Blood,” and more.
“Repeat The Sounding Joy” is a great opener for a Christmas setlist! Tell us about the choice to center the hook on this lyric from “Joy To The World.” (gospel elements - multi-cultural churches)
“Repeat the Sounding Joy” is one of my favorite songs off this new record.
When I was a worship leader at my home church in Buffalo, New York, we would sing some form of “Joy to the World” every Christmas time. And I loved it because the lyrics are so strong. They say, “The Lord has come and let earth receive their King.” And at the end of the chorus, it would say, “Repeat, repeat the sounding joy,” because we do have a joy and a hope that is filling this world, which is Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us. And so “Repeat the Sounding Joy” is a fresh take on “Joy to the World” because we are to continuously celebrate that God has come.
“In The Presence of The King” builds from a reverent invitation into a soaring declaration of praise. I love how it places the listener/congregant in a place where they ponder what they would bring to God if they were in His presence right now. Would love to hear the songwriting backstory for this one!
“In the Presence of the King” was written this past spring because the previous year we had toured these songs from the Christmas record, and I always would get to the end of the tour set and think that there was a song that was missing. A song that set the expectation of what it was that we were needing to do in the room, which was to lift up the name of Jesus and put our hearts in a posture of worship.
Something that I have been studying as we've been working on this Christmas record is the revelation of the birth of Jesus Christ and what that actually meant. For example, I had never realized before that the night that the angels came to the shepherds and told them that they would find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger—I've heard that time and time again since I was a little girl, and I love this story—but what I'd never realized before was that those particular shepherds on that particular mountaintop, those shepherds were responsible for tending the sheep that would give birth to the sacrificial lambs. And these shepherds, as these lambs were born, they would catch them in swaddling clothes to keep them from getting blemished.
And so when the angels told them that they would find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger, they understood the gravity of what that meant. And when they went and kneeled before Jesus, I can imagine them thinking, just like we do when we are in worship unto the Lord, “Wow, we are in the presence of the King of Kings.” And that song puts my heart in that posture of, “Wow, the Lord came, He died on the cross, the veil was torn, we have immediate access to Him.”
But let us never forget that we are in His holy presence and that our worship unto Him is an offering and a sacrifice of praise.
This project is a combination or original songs and traditional Christmas songs for the Church. How did you go about choosing which Christmas songs to cover? Was your personal church in mind, or was it more about the songs that you personally connect with most this time of year?
We went through a meticulous four years of choosing what songs should go on this project.
I have been very intentional about the songs because the first and foremost goal of this album, second to glorifying the Lord, is to resource the church. And so, yes, as a worship leader growing up, I would get to Christmas time and I would wonder, well, what new songs am I going to do, or how am I going to put a fresh spin on songs we've done over the past years?
And so the way we went about choosing the songs for this record was, what songs would be best to resource the church? Well, obviously, that meant songs that were worshipful, thankful, and giving God praise. So between the new ones that we wrote, which do all of those things, and the ones that we added, like even “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” I look at as a benediction to the church to have joy at Christmas time, have peace and love and rest, which is super important.
Another song that's familiar to everybody is “O Come All Ye Faithful.” This is one of my favorite songs that I used to sing growing up, and I still love to sing. We wrote a brand new chorus because we wanted to resource the church with that song that I know everyone knows and loves, but has always felt to me like it needed a chorus. And so we added a simple chorus so that churches, choirs, and worship teams would be able to use that for their churches.
And so, yes, these songs are all very near and dear to my heart, but we wanted to choose songs that the church would be blessed to sing.
There is a flow moment after “His Name Shall Be.” How was that captured? Is the instrumentation planned out beforehand or is it more improvisational/Spirit-led?
After we finished recording “His Name Shall Be” with the band, there was a moment where I looked over at my producer, Kyle, and I said, “I think there needs to be a pause, a prayer moment, to have the listener or the singer sit in the realization of what it is they just sang or they just heard with ‘His Name Shall Be.’” It's directly out of Isaiah 9, and that moment is just a pause, a breath, to sit and think about God as our Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and the Prince of Peace. It's a moment of reflection, and I love that it's on the record because even in churches, that moment can be used for a sermon, a moment to preach to the people that He came for the lost and He came for the lonely. He came for all of us, no matter what we're walking through. So that moment, even though it's all instrumental, it was captured spontaneously, and I love it because it gives a breath in the middle of the record to reflect on the reason that He came.
A lot of these songs have Gospel elements. Do you hope these songs will connect in multi-cultural churches?
I grew up listening to and singing gospel music, and it is my favorite style of music. However, when Ryan and I sit down to write a song, our first and foremost goal is that it is scripturally rooted, and then we tend to go wider with the style. We have elements of worship, elements of gospel, we like to add multiple harmony parts, because I grew up loving choir music. But whether a choir of a hundred people or one person is singing the song, we want the song to be strong enough, both stylistically and scripturally, that anyone anywhere can sing it at any time.
