Mercy Me's Bart Millard from 2015 with Robby

No matter the bumps, no matter the bruises, no matter the scars, still the truth is a cross has made, the cross has made you fly. Welcome back to Kingdom Versuits.

How does God take your passion and use it to build the Kingdom? And what a fun time. How exciting, I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am to be able to do this interview with Bart Millard from MercyMe.

And if you've listened to the radio at all lately, you know that coming next Saturday, the 26th of September, MercyMe is going to be part of a two-day festival that actually goes on the 26th and the 27th. And we're so honored to have Bart with us. Welcome, Bart.

Hey, thanks for having me. And, you know, I was thinking about it as I heard this opportunity to interview you, Bart, that one of your first albums was The Worship Project, which I only imagine came on. And as I was thinking about for the Truth Network and your song, your new hit song Flawless, you say it so marvelously that the truth is we're flawless.

And in doing so, you're worshiping God in such a way that you lead other people to worship. And what an honor. What a cool thing to be able to watch people falling more in love with God as you're looking out there into the audience as you will be coming up from this concert. Yeah, it's a pretty cool honor to do this for a living, I guess, and to do it. I mean, we've been a band for 21 years, and if somebody had told me that, you know, 21 years later people still care about what you're doing, I'd probably think they're crazy. It's a pretty awesome feeling, and I think the coolest part for us, and probably the craziest part for us, is that there are times you feel like you've seen it all and you've done it all. And then all of a sudden, looking back, I feel like the gospel's more alive now in my life than it ever has been. And that's probably the thing I'm most grateful for more than anything else, is that I just feel like the perspective I have, and I'm just seeing things in ways that I've never really seen before. And it's been a pretty cool ride, and it's awesome to stay on stage with something to say and people willing to listen. Right, and if you're just tuning in, it's Robbie Dilmore here. We're talking with Bart Millard of MercyMe, and they're coming to this amazing concert coming next Saturday, the 26th.

It's part of a two-day festival with Kirk Franklin and Jeremy Camp and all sorts of folks, but I know our listeners would love to hear Bart. What process do you guys go through to create the music? Who writes the lyrics and the music, or is it a collaborative thing, or how does that work with you guys? Well, gosh, if there was a set formula, I'd try to write a book and sell it in copies, but every song's different. A lot of it comes out of life experience, and as far as the process goes, it depends. There's some songs, like a song like Greater with a guitar riff and song idea that Mike, our guitar player, had and brought to the table, and we recorded the music without any melody or lyrics written down. It's kind of backwards, and then just kind of loved the feel of it and tracked it. I went in later and worked on the melody and wrote all the lyrics, and there's some songs to where it'll hit me driving down the road or by myself that I'll bring to the band when it comes to recording. It comes from all different angles. I think the only thing that's probably consistent is that I write about 99.9% of all the lyrics, and the melodies kind of come from me, just because their experience. If I'm not feeling it or didn't write it, sometimes it's kind of a hard sell, but it's hard to sing it with conviction for me personally on stage. For some reason, it's always had to come from what I'm going through. I don't know.

As a car salesman most of my life, Bart, I can tell you the thing salespeople always talk about is the first and most important sale you've got to make is the one that you make to yourself. If you've experienced the worship and now you're leading people, have you ever been to a Jewish wedding, Bart? I have not, actually. There's an amazing thing that happens, and I went to one this summer, and when I saw it, it was interesting how God taught me through this, that the bride, when they let go of the father's hand, they encircle the groom seven times. And the picture is that it's similar to Jericho, that they would bring down the walls of the heart of their groom by encircling the bride seven times.

Well, in Jeremiah 31, when Jeremiah's fixing to give us the new covenant idea, he says the Lord's doing a new thing, that the bride is going to encircle a man. And I thought about, wow, how can I as a worshiper, which obviously you do this phenomenally, Bart, how can I as a worshiper encircle my Savior's heart? And so when you're writing the melody and the music to a song like Flawless, can you share with our listeners, you know, obviously you are really in a worship place in order to feel that, in order to, like you say, write the music and the lyrics. Yeah, I mean, it definitely, you know, it's definitely much more than just, hey, I have a great idea for a song, let's write it and hope people like it. It's like, that's probably the furthest thing from our minds, or my mind, when we're writing a song, is rarely are we ever concerned with what people are going to think of it when we're in the middle of the writing process.

It's almost more like it's something we have to get out of our system. It's like, we've got to go through this. And I always say the blessing and the curse of the songwriter is that writing songs is part of our therapy when we go through things. And it's, you know, people always, I've had people ask, you know, why did you choose to do Christian music?

I'm like, I don't know if I ever chose to do this. You know, a great songwriter writes about whatever consumes their heart, and this is just, I don't know any other way. This is what consumes me. And so a lot of that's through amazing, awesome times. A lot of it's through very gut-wrenching, painful times. And some of the probably most effective songs we've written have come out of the harder times in our lives. You know, it's the songs like Hurt and the Healer, and I can only imagine, and Bring the Rain, a lot of these songs came out of just really painful times when, you know, by nature it's like those are the times when we find ourselves, you know, desperate for the Lord.

And, you know, gosh, I remember, you know, during 9-11 and just realizing, we're from Oklahoma City, we were there during the Oklahoma City bombing, and through that and then 9-11, we saw, you know, my generation, we saw, we've seen how the country kind of rallies together through tragedy. And, you know, it's amazing how we're reminded of our mortality and just the spiritual side of things when we go through these difficult times. And, you know, that's the same through our personal life. You know, there's times when it's like, man, I don't know if we have to be reminded, but, you know, I've always, you know, I consider suffering a gift at times because it does reveal so much about us and remind us of, you know, what's important. And that's a lot of these songs, you know, come out of those moments. And even songs like Greater, which are, and Flawless and Shake and these songs that are kind of happy songs, you know, they were written coming out of, you know, coming out of the storm, coming out of the, you know, some difficult moments in my life and realizing that, man, you know, that grace is enough. Realizing that, you know, that I'm banged up pretty good, but I'm still flawless in the eyes of Christ, remembering that, you know, the enemy doesn't want me to know who I am in Christ, but luckily there's a louder voice from the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead that dwells inside of me that reminds me of holy, righteous and redeemed and not disqualified. And so, you know, I think, I mean, gosh, you read through Psalms and, you know, most of the worser stuff that David's writing is on the tail end of some, you know, some pretty hardcore suffering.

And so, yeah, I think it's human nature that, you know, that's where it comes from. And so, as far as the process goes, man, you know, it's, you know, it's just, I mean, there's so many things that remind us of how desperately we need Christ and how it's a good thing that Christ is available and there. And so, yeah, that's where a lot of these songs come from, and it's just, for me, it's finding the time to sit down and kind of sometimes revisit some pretty painful things. That's probably the hardest part is kind of having to, you know, if the songs don't come out of experience, there'll be times when it's time to write another album, sometimes I'll have to sit down and kind of revisit, you know, where I've been. And that's probably the hardest part of all is kind of reliving some difficult times in your life. But, you know, it's part of it, you know, it's like, you know, there's a line in Hurt and the Healer that says, you know, Lord, please don't let this go in vain. And the whole point of that was, man, I don't want to go through suffering and hard times and tragedy and pain just for the sake of going through it. Man, I want something to come out of this that's beautiful and that's amazing, and that's the prayer of, like, God, man, don't let me forget this. Don't let me walk away from this and not, and refuse to revisit or go back. That's, you know, I don't want this to be in vain. I want this to somehow point to you so that even our worst, lowest points have a purpose and have meaning and that even God's presence shows up in our worst times possible.

And anyway, sorry, I got on the line. No, no, it's awesome, Bart. And again, part of the reason that you want to come out to this festival is two days so you can come into Winston-Salem and stay, enjoy all the music. But it's all about the worship. And when you get out there and you get to experience God in a crowd like that that's all worshiping together. And Bart, I can't help but think, as you mentioned, David, that, you know, his heart was that he wanted to build a temple. And he really, really, you know, he kept telling God, I want to build this temple. And as I thought about that, I'm sure you've seen the little thing where you hold your fingers and you say, this is the church and this is the steeple. Our pastor used to say, this is the church, and he'd wriggle his fingers so they'd go, these are the people. Well, if you think about it, David worshiped like you do, so in song and all those things that as he led these folks, they became the temple.

Yeah, Solomon may have built the building, but David made the worshipers. And so you all have an opportunity to go out there and with this amazing worship experience that you're hearing that Bart's gone through, you get a chance to take part of that. Mercy me, Kurt Franklin, Jeremy Camp, I mean, it's so much stuff going on. I am so excited to be part of it. It's coming up next Saturday, September 26th and 27th. Bart, you have no idea how disappointed I am that our time's up because I've been so enjoyed hearing your heart.

And I was thinking, man, the stones have got to cry out if Bart doesn't. So God bless you and keep up the great work, please. Well, thank you so much and we're looking forward to it, man. Jeremy and Kurt are our most favorite people, so it's going to be a pretty awesome night. I want to thank you for listening to Kingdom Pursuits today. It's been so much fun. And now stay tuned as we got so much truth coming at you.