I wrote “We Fall Down” in season of life when two things were happening.  The CCM music industry was moving very quickly toward an almost exclusive diet of “praise music,” and we songwriters were being specifically asked to avoid the dark themes of human frailty and failing, human relationships, human issues, and focus instead on uptempo, happy, clappy, vertically-directed love songs to God.  After 9-11 especially, people wanted to be happy, to be assured, to lose themselves in confident praise of their…

Several folks have asked for the prayer I prayed last Sunday after the Parkland massacre.  Are any words adequate?  I don't think so.  But here's an effort I hope helps.

peace,

Kyle

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Pastoral Prayer, kyle matthews, first baptist greenville 2/18/18 

O God, we need you this day.  We gather here from the gamut of life experiences 

some of us exalting in the beauty of this day and the many blessings we enjoy 

others of us come so low, so burdened, so worried, so grief-stricken we…

When Kenneth and Lisa Lee Rust became aware of the desperate need in their community for a shelter for women and children, they brought together churches, city leaders, social services professionals, and caring donors to do something about it.  Their vision was to give a generous gift to the city: a modern facility complete with a kitchen and a live-in social worker to provide leadership, aid and security for the guest families.  Last year, they invited me to do a fund-raising concert in support of this…

File: The Power to Bless

Talk about embarrassing… I was doing a concert for the good folks at First Baptist Church of Knoxville, in one of the most beautiful sanctuaries in the country, when, after years of writing and weeks of recording and rehearsing, I got halfway through the title track of my album “Be Here Now”… and forgot the words.  I paused, admitted forgetting, made a joke to buy time, and tried again…but no, it wouldn’t come.  I finally had to just start another song and move on.  My audience was…