Down In My Heart Joy!: Chris Tomlin "Hello Love" Concert PART 1 - My Self-Centered Heart and This Dying World

While working on the “Hello Love” album, he came up with four lines of a song and decided they were brilliant – probably the next Coke commercial and would make him millions. The lyrics were something like “Love is the answer, Love will find a way, When you love one another, there’s a brighter day” – Drink Coke!

When he told this to his producer, the producer liked the phrase and thought they should continue to develop a song from it. He said, “I hear a world sound, like an African children’s choir or something, but a world sound with other instruments, rhythms….” Weeks later they were in the studio in Nashville working on the song, now entitled “Love”. A member of Chris’ band hears his cell phone beeping, and checks the text message that has just arrived. “Hey guys, you’ll never believe this! It’s a mass text email saying that the Watoto children’s choir from Africa is in the US on tour, and will be in Nashville this week!”

Amazed, Chris tells the rest of the group that the Watoto children’s choir are part of the Watoto orphanage in Uganda. The orphanage was started by Christians, and all the children are AIDS orphans – left alone by the death of their parents to the AIDS virus so prolific in Africa. The choir travels throughout the world, performing as a way to raise publicity and funds to support the orphanage and the work being done in Uganda by these missionaries.

With a brief phone call to Mercy, the director of the choir, Chris learns they can fit a visit to his studio into their tour. As a matter of fact, their several month tour has only two days off, and one of them was scheduled in Nashville! The children arrived in the studio several weeks later.

At this point in the concert, a video came on showing the children in the studio that day. They arrived in traditional African apparel, and came full of smiles and energy. Chris told them to relax, make themselves at home, and just sing whatever they wanted to warm up. As he stepped another room, he heard them begin to sing, and was stunned by their song selection – “How Great Is Our God” – a contemporary worship song he had written a few years back that is being sung all over the world by now. Humbled and in awe, he listened to their youthful voices lilting through the words and melody he had written, never knowing the impact that particular song would have in the years to come.

In another portion of the video, the children are singing energetically, dancing with choreographed and coordinated hand motions, feet stepping side to side, full of life, rhythm, and their own traditional style. Chris laughed and said, “That’s obviously not one of my songs they’re singing. I could never write anything that cool!”

Later one of the teenage choir members approached the electric guitar player in Chris’ band. Eagerly he asked about one of the songs he loves that their band does. He says that he plays electric guitar too, and he has been working hard on the song, but can’t figure out how the band gets that particular sound. The band’s guitarist offers to show him, and the two walk over to the instruments. Bending down, the guitarist picks up an electric guitar effects pedal and says, “It’s called a distortion pedal. You put the settings like this, and like this,” and with a few twists of knobs and dials, he strums that “sound” the teen was looking for. The Ugandan teen’s face lit up, and seeing it, the guitarist paused, bent down to grab the pedal, and handed it to the teen. “Here, take it. Take it back with you.” The teen’s eyes widened as he clutched the pedal in both hands, staring at it in disbelief as if it would evaporate when he took his gaze away from it.

After recording the part they had come to sing, (“Love is the answer” repeated over and over in their own dialect), the children gathered to leave. With waves, hugs, and smiles, they reluctantly began to exit the studio toward their waiting van. The teen from earlier came in last, so he was the thing heard and seen in the studio, waving the distortion pedal above his head and shouting, “We NOW have DISTORTION in UGANDA!!!”

What a moment. I can’t imagine too many dry eyes in Chris’ studio just then, or for that matter, in the concert audience now listening to the retelling. What came to my mind in an instant was a few days ago, arriving home from our vacation to Southern California, declaring to a group of family and friends, “Well, after this trip, Benjamin and I are convinced we HAVE to have iPhones.” What a waste. What selfishness! We HAVE to have this expensive new technology toy, to add five more minutes of convenience or entertainment to our day? Turns out the data plans for the iPhones are $35 per month – the same amount of money it would cost to sponsor a needy international orphan through Compassion International.

I can hardly believe my own audacity, insisting to a group of friends and church members my worldly, selfish ambitions and desires. As much as I mentally condemn others around me with too much “stuff” and pray I never reach their level of material accumulation, the same addiction is rooted in my heart. It just doesn’t have as many leaves and flowers yet.

Lord, break my heart again for the lost, starving, dying, in my own backyard and around the globe. Keep me disgusted with the Enemy’s plan for material consumption and its effects around my and in my own life. Break me free from the additions of greed, wealth, and “more.” Take my hard, selfish heart and replace it with one that is soft, compassionate, and generous. Let me manage my finances wisely, learning your priorities for my money and following them.