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MP3 Taryn Chase Hofert - Love & Justice - EP
7 MP3 Songs in this album (37:56) !
Related styles: Spiritual: Praise & Worship, Pop: Pop/Rock, Solo Female Artist
People who are interested in Sandra McCracken Sara Bareilles Vicky Beeching should consider this download.
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I have no beard, guitar, foreign accent, or mega-church affiliation, but you might just like my worship album anyway.
If you have ever led worship, you know how hard it can be to find songs that just work. That connect. That give people the words they need to reach out in song to God. Although worship is far more than music, this album was written as a soundtrack for those who are on the pursuit of actively loving the marginalized- or are perhaps marginalized themselves. Because, therein is where the heart of God lies.
I''m a piano player, singer/songwriter who, along with some very talented musicians/friends recorded songs that will allow you to let down the barriers of your heart and be vulnerable to God. This EP runs the gamut from rock to acoustic soul to pop to old-school hymn like structures reframed in an fresh and indie vibe.
About Taryn:
She''s an aspiring peacemaker, wife to a pastor & leather-smith (what a sexy dichotomy), mom to two immensely rambunctious young boys, worship leader, grateful church-planter in the heart of the city of Charlotte, NC, amateur humanitarian, semi-novice half-marathoner, thrift-store addict, and poet at heart.
Like a novice to a virtuoso
Like nonsense to poetry
So I cannot scratch the surface
Of fathoming the Almighty
Attune our hearts to Yours, Lord
Align us to Your ways
When everything around us changes
When underfoot is sinking sand
When questions far outnumber answers
Rearrange us, God.
-”Rearrange Us” - Taryn Hofert
STORY BEHIND LOVE & JUSTICE EP
I love music and I love God. So, naturally as a singer/songwriter, I love hearing people sing to God...really loudly (even if it sounds like a bunch of drunken https://www.tradebit.comch the first few months of our church plant worship experiences often did!). My early years of being a musician were more about performance. Then after college, I had the chance to literally “sing for someone else’s supper” by doing concerts for a non-profit humanitarian aid organization. It opened my eyes to the fact that God gave me music for a purpose if I was just willing to see it.
Then India happened to me. I lived there for a good part of a year and I came back home someone else. That’s a whole story too involved to share here. When I returned to the U.S., I became a local church worship leader (kind of an unusual thing for a 24 year old woman at the time, especially for a church of that size). Although I adored the ‘everydayness’ of being in people’s lives and leading a community I knew well in worship, the Sunday morning ‘machine’ disillusioned me a bit. And being a young (not to mention small-statured and naive) woman, what took me by surprise were the giant egos that drove that machine and other machines like ours. It was almost as if I might get swallowed up in it.
I began to wonder how I had moved from an orphanage in India to leading worship with a band in 3 services every weekend in what started to feel like a giant experiment to be written about, conferenced and podcasted. But what were we really doing? Who were we really pleasing? When did God ever really care if we were published or recognized...wasn’t reaching our community with the love of God what we are called to be as the church? Once again, an involved story, but one that stretched me in good ways. By the way, the tides have changed in that church community and now humble, incredible leadership have stepped up to the plate there. Amazing story.
Then my husband and I planted a church in the city of Charlotte with a group of friends. Good things happen in community: from the churches who supported us in many ways to get us off the ground, to the friends who packed up their lives and moved here to help us...we caught glimpses of God in the faithfulness of friendship and kindness of relationship. We realized that what our city (and every city) needs is not another Sunday morning gig, but transformation, love, kindness, and people willing to give up some of themselves to truly, authentically GET INVOLVED in the lives of those around us.
Then in 2007, my husband gave me a book that he was asking all of our leadership team at our church to read. It was Shane Claiborne’s The Irresistible Revolution. A book hasn’t radically shifted my thinking and my heart like that in years. But what I wasn’t prepared for was the self-loathing I experienced while reading it. I had come home from India only to get further and further entrenched in a life of “doing ministry” but not living it out here in America like I should be. If what we do for “the least of these” we do for Jesus, I wasn’t doing enough for Jesus. Not by a long shot. The poor in Charlotte (and elsewhere) don’t need a handout, they need me to live among them, work with their kids in school, have them eat at my dinner table, spend time mentoring them- giving of my life, energy, family and time.
That’s worship. That’s being a Christian.
We had quite a sizable homeless population showing up at our Sunday morning services at Watershed. Maybe because the theater we rent is right in the city and mostly because of the hot coffee and free panera goodies, but whatever the reason, I knew that I needed to get involved. One day a homeless, pregnant, young mother of a 2 year old showed up at our church. Her mom died of AIDS when she was young and her father pretty much disowned her. She was living in some woods outside the uptown area with her son. It’s inconceivable. I was also pregnant at the time with my younger son. I remember hugging her thinking how different our lives have been and how much I just ached to right all the wrongs in her life. We began a friendship that is ongoing today: I’ll never forget the Christmas she and her newborn baby girl, 3 year old son, and fresh-out-of-prison (by a few weeks) boyfriend spent with our family. It was amazing. Scott and I experienced through her and her boyfriend’s companionship how frustrating it can be to jump through all the hoops needed to do simple things like even get a G.E.D. or get a driver’s license. She often falls off the face of the earth and resurfaces. But we try. We call each other. I am slowly learning and she is an amazingly patient teacher.
As much as I’ve longed for opportunities to spread my wings musically through the years I know that without India, without mega-church burnout, without church-planting, without motherhood, without Shane’s wake-up call, without the whole road we’ve trod...I would not have begun to realize the call of ‘living a life of love’ (Ephesians 5:2) that is my true act of worship. More than any song I could pen or church I could start- do people feel the love of God flow through me - how I serve the weak and needy and love the marginalized? I will never have ‘arrived’ in living that life, but in striving to do so, realizing justice and love go hand in hand- lyrics began to spring up in my heart that were representative of these learnings and experiences.
Some of my favorite songs in the Bible are songs of activity. Songs people sang while marching around a city. Songs they sang while mourning loss. Songs sung while dancing in the street for joy. Meaningful songs should be sung out of lives of meaning. We were never made for merely singing our intentions. We were made to sing out during moments of living out the intense and beautiful and immensely counter-cultural generous way God invites us to live.
So, this LOVE & JUSTICE EP is comprised of songs for moments such as this.
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