Rebuild the City

Hey guys – been quite  a whirlwind of great summer stuff going on since my last Monday Morning post.  Had an awesome time at the Campus Conference (ICMC), followed by a week up in the mountains for Youth Camp and then lots going on with my local ministry.  The ICMC was characterized by such a call for giving our all to change the world, and I was so inspired by being with all the college students.  It reminded me of one of the early ICMC’s I attended a few years back and wrote a song for, “Rebuild the City.”  The conference was held in Louisiana, and came a couple years after hurricane Katrina.  We got an opportunity as part of the conference schedule to go into neighborhoods still devastated by the storm and serve the communities.

It was a while back, but I don’t think I ever posted the song here so some might have never had the chance to catch it.  The words of this song are taken from various passages in Nehemiah.  As I was writing it I was thinking about working together to build up the city, both in serving the communities around us (like we did in New Orleans) and in a spiritual sense as we build up God’s church.  Here is a phone interview that Mike Taliaferro did with me about the song and the conference.

Here is a video taken at the conference, and below that the studio version that appears on my CD (or download), “The Whole World Will Know.”

Recording:  Rebuild the City (studio version – available on iTunes)

Rebuild the City

I’m here, stumbling.
The wall is crumbling,
Burned to stubble,
Heaps of rubble.
Come on let’s go back,
Examine the wall,
See where it is at.
Gonna take power on high
To rebuild it.

Gonna built up,gonna build strong,
Gonna build all together as one.
Gonna take you,gonna take me,
Gonna take all we’ve got to believe.
Never give up, never give in
Never gonna let the enemy win
Strengthen my hands,
‘Till we rebuild the city
Rebuild the city!

I’ll do my part.
Here, now, let’s start.
Fight on! Don’t fear.
Take heart –God’s here!
Trumpet sounds –join us.
Yeah, we’re gonna be victorious
‘Cause we got power on high
To rebuild it.

Gonna built up,gonna build strong,
Gonna build all together as one.
Gonna take you,gonna take me,
Gonna take all we’ve got to believe.
Never give up, never give in
Never gonna let the enemy win
Strengthen my hands,
‘Till we rebuild the city
Rebuild the city!

And someday we will walk on streets of gold,
A city with foundations from of old,
A city where the sunshine never ends,
Someday we will be there but ‘til then…

 

REBUILD THE CITY

Verse:
B vamp (16 bars)

Pre-chorus:
A / E / B / B
A / E / F# / F# (break)

Chorus
E / B / D / A
(repeating)

Bridge (“someday…”)
A / E / B / B
A / E / B / B
A / E / B / B
A / E / F# / F#

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