Behind the Chase Oaks Worship Song "More of You (Más De Ti)"
What do you get when you have a Mexican, an American, and a New Zealander in one room? Well, in this case, Chase Oaks got a new song.
It was April 7 at our songwriting retreat. Our Chase Oaks Worship Team, full of coffee, was ready to get into our next songwriting session. As Ari, Wendy, and I got our guitars out, we were inspired by the idea of writing a bilingual worship song in both Spanish and English.
I am always amazed whenever I lead worship at En Español. I am touched by the grace that they have for my very limited Spanish comprehension, and their ability as a Chase Oaks Campus to embrace multi-cultural worship. As we reflected that day on our other campuses, we felt we were not serving them as well as we could in breaking down language and cultural boundaries through the vehicle of music.
So the challenge came: what if…?
What if we wrote a song to sing in both English and Spanish? A song that celebrates us as a diverse and multi-ethnic church, across many campuses and languages?
What if we pushed the boundaries even further on our DNA statement, "We See Beauty In Diversity"?
This is how “More Of You (Más De Ti)” was born.As we started playing around with some melodies, we decided to set up a framework to make the song accessible to as many people as we could. We decided that
- The melody in the verse, chorus and bridge needed to be simple
- The harmony needed to support the journey of diversity
- For translation to be easy, we would sing the first part of each section in English and then the translation in Spanish
- The melody needed to have syllables that cross over easily from English to Spanish
Sounds easy, right?
As we started, things really fell into place (which is really unusual for songwriting, as the process doesn't always come easily). First we landed on a verse melody. Then, as we were writing the English words, Ari made sure the Spanish would marry up well with the English lyrics. We made changes as we went until we got to the bridge, which is probably our most favorite part of the song.
The bridge usually is a time to confirm lyrically the journey of the verse and chorus. So our question for this section of the song was, "What do we want people to walk away with after singing this song?"
We concluded it should be the simple truth that "We are the family of God/Somos Familia de Dios."
This is who we are at Chase Oaks. We are a multi-campus family in different areas, speaking different languages, celebrating our different cultures.
Reflecting on the worship that is to come, John declared in Revelation 7:9, "After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb...”
This is transcendent worship. This is beauty in diversity. This is what God wants more of.
Our song is us crying to God in return that we want"More of You, Más De Ti."
As you sing this song at your campus, remember that we are a diverse family. Each of us is singing with people who do not look, talk, and think alike. And yet, we all share a love for Jesus. And He is the one who brings loving unity in diversity.
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