Here Am I, Send Me

We had a really busy summer / autumn with lots of conferences and retreats, and I got a bit out of practice with communicating through the blog and social media. I’m going to try to get back on track – I have so many songs to share!

The last conference I attended was the American Leadership Conference (combined with the New England Christian Conference including a worship leader track). I got to plan the opening night of worship on Thursday night, teach some classes and lead some songs. Most of the worship over the weekend was put together by some amazing servants of the church – Tony Martin, Jeff Mannel, Dave Eastman, and others. It was great to get to join in the house band with Ralph Beerhorst, Malcolm Turner, Vinnie Adams, Melvin Jordan, Jamie Slobodnik and too many other amazing musicians to mention. And it was a blast to get to sing with incredible worship leaders like Ross Lippencott, Tina Crawley, Tony Fernandez, Jaime Turish, Carol McGuirk, Ray Kabia and so many others.

Here is a recording of one of the songs from the weekend, “Here Am I Send Me.” This song was actually written for a Campus Conference of the same title we hosted here in LA a few years back. The phrase is a reference to a line in Isaiah 6:8,

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying,
“Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

There is an old hymn called “There is Much to Do” that uses this phrase for the chorus, and has great words about the spiritual needs that are out there in the world. It is a nice song, but it just seemed a little bit outdated in musical style for a bunch of campus students. So I was inspired to use the words from the verses of the hymn and write a new song. Actually, oddly enough, the chorus came to me in a strange apocalyptic dream I had at the time. [Also note Jon Augustine wrote a beautiful song for the conference also, called “Here Am I”. Check it out on iTunes or at this link.]

Here is a video of the song. Sheet music and lyrics / chord chart are below. A studio version also appears on my latest CD, “The Whole World Will Know” and features an awesome rap by Big City. I’ll post that here too. And a teaching recording that goes through the vocal parts for the song.

Here Am I Send Me – studio recording

Here Am I Send Me – teaching recording

Here Am I Send Me – sheet music

Chords:
E     /     B    /   F#min   /     A

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