Worship Musician Magazine September 2020 | Page 64

WORSHIP LEADERS “THE BLESSING” AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND | Grant Norsworthy Woo-hoo! It’s finished! It’s out! From inception to completion, it’s been close to three months of intense work to produce one song and video, but it’s finally done, and I am elated. I can’t quite put into words how gratified and thankful I am to (finally!) be able to share with the readers of [WM] (and the rest of the world) the “virtual choir” video from The Church in New Zealand singing our own, uniquely Kiwiflavored rendition of “The Blessing”. We are thrilled to be part of this historic statement by the global Church during such a difficult and challenging time - adding our “voice" to the many other “virtual choirs” of so many nations, regions, cities and people groups that have gone before us. Click the video below to watch our rendition of “The Blessing” - surely the unofficial anthem of Christendom in 2020. As the end result shows, there were a lot of people involved to bring this together. In addition to the close to 200 New Zealander vocalists (and the handful of instrumentalists) who submitted video of themselves for inclusion, behind the scenes there was a small, hard-working, dedicated team of professionals - who all gave of their time freely - to bring about the finished product that you see here. It fell to me to be the overall producer, but the project could not have been completed without the work of three video editors, four audio engineers, two administrative assistants and several other promotions workers, instrumentalists, technicians, and cultural advisors. I am extremely grateful to each of them. Looking back, I now see that I tragically underestimated - with copious naivety - how much work would be involved and how much help I’d need. I thought I’d get perhaps 30 or 40 vocal video submissions and have the video completed in 2 or 3 weeks with a bit of help from a video guy! But when the number of vocal submissions flew past 100, the potential to create something important and moving began to take shape and unforeseen production difficulties materialized, the magnitude of the task at hand grew exponentially. In the flash of an eye, three or so weeks became three months. The story surrounding that journey and the lessons learned along the “The Blessing | Aotearoa/New Zealand” “The Blessing” Words & Music by Chris Brown, Cody Carnes, Kari Jobe & Steven Furtick. (© 2020 Capitol CMG Paragon, Kari Jobe Carnes Music, Worship Together Music, Writer’s Roof Publishing, Music by Elevation Worship Publishing). Te reo Māori translation of Numbers 6:24-26 from Paipera Tapu and adjusted by David Tapene snr. 64 September 2020 Subscribe for Free...