Some songs take Jay Padgett hours of painstaking work. Others flow like a river.
“Behold the King of Heaven,” one of five songs selected for the Kentucky Baptist Convention’s first album, “Heaven’s Refrain,” flowed from the beginning, the songwriter said.
“Right off the bat, ask me any other day of the year, ‘Jay, what is one of the best songs you’ve ever written?’ I would have said ‘Behold the King of Heaven.’ I always thought it was a really good, solid song. It has a hymn structure to it.”
The album will be released Nov. 6, with songs and accompanying resources, including sheet music, split tracks and a demo, available free to Kentucky Baptist churches.
Padgett, who recently celebrated his 27th anniversary at Graefenburg Baptist Church as associate pastor and minister of music, submitted several songs for consideration. But he believed “Behold the King of Heaven” offered his best chance of being selected.
‘This song came easy to me’
“The guidelines primarily were songs needed to be written by Kentucky Baptists,” Padgett said. “There was no we want you to submit praise songs or Christmas songs. I guess you could submit what you want. I submitted a few of my songs, some of the few I thought were the strongest.”
While songwriting can be a struggle, this song came naturally.
“There’s certain songs you sort of slave over,” Padgett said. “You work and work. It’s tedious as far as rhyme scheme, melody and harmony — all the stuff that makes a song a song. This song came easy to me.”
“It is primarily based on Isiah 53 with the suffering servant of Christ, His wounds, His face is marred with looking forward to John saying, ‘Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sings of the world.’ Those were the two guiding Scripture passages of the song, a reflection of Christ in His suffering but also behold the King of Heaven, the King of beauty, the King of victory and the King of glory,” he said.
‘Sounds like us’
Although the song can be used throughout the year, Padgett said it would fit especially well during Holy Week.
“The cross brought us to victory,” he said. “Some of the lyrics are, ‘His face was marred.’ Even in Christ’s suffering, there is beauty and victory over sin and death. Christ crushed the serpent’s head.”
As a longtime worship leader, Padgett encourages musicians to make the songs they perform reflect their own congregation rather than imitate a Nashville recording.
“We want it where it sounds like us and not sound like somebody else,” he said.
He felt the musicians arranging his song for the project did just that, making it their own while preserving its essence.
“Hopefully, churches in the KBC will be able to take it, embrace it and make it their own,” he said.
Range of emotions
Learning his song had been selected brought emotions ranging from disbelief to gratitude.
“It’s humbling to think that one of my songs made the grade, one of my songs was selected to be part of something like this. The KBC has never done this. The words and melody that the Lord gave to me is now going to possibly be sung in other churches. It was a beautiful day the day I found out.”
Padgett said he has written plenty of bad and mediocre music, along with some decent songs. “Behold the King of Heaven” was a “good one,” he said.
He credited KBC worship consultant Jason “Bubba” Stewart for leading the project, calling it “a great thing for Kentucky Baptists and the SBC at large. Hopefully these songs get on Lifewayworship.com.”
“Kentucky Baptist church musicians are writing music for their churches. That’s exciting. There is a good variety of songs. Not every song is slow, there are some energetic songs. It adds to the goodness of the project.”
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Mark Maynard and originally published by Kentucky Today.
