St Marks Worship Release Singles 'In Your Presence' & 'Emmanuel'
St Marks Worship have released 2 follow-up singles to 'Creator Come', ‘In Your Presence’ and ‘Emmanuel’. Born out of the worship life of St Marks Coventry, these are the second and third of a 4 single project available now.
St Marks Coventry is part of the HTB (Holy Trinity Brompton) network of churches and was planted in 2016 by Gas Street Church (home of Worship Central). St Marks was closed for 45 years and gradually fell into disrepair until 3 years ago when a team lead by Phil & Rachel Atkinson started work to revive the church and re-open it as a place of worship.
In Your Presence was written by Niel Vrieling, Andy Shelton, Callum Fisher & Anna Lennard. The idea was first shared at a songwriting retreat by Niels around a year ago now. We wanted to write an upbeat song for the project and Niels came with chorus around the idea of bringing our mental health into the presence of God. Worship can be transformational for our mental health as we fix our eyes on God and bring our anxieties to Him in prayer. Much of the verses are based around Psalm 27. Niel Vrieling, songwriter, about ‘In Your Presence’: For me, this was the first time of writing songs within a team, which taught me to be flexible and open minded to other people’s ideas. It has been amazing to see how songs were birthed and came to life through the writing and production process. The sacrifices of effort and time that people made to bring this project to life are really admirable. I believe that the songs on the EP reflect the heart of our church; to see the city come alive through the transformational power of Christ.'
Emmanuel song number 3 came out of a Kingdom Come worship night led by Nick Herbert at St. Mark's. Kingdom Come are nights of spontaneous worship where the one rule is you can’t sing a song that already exists, together we press into where we feel the Spirit is leading us. On that night Hannah Hodges and a friend of the church Reuben Williams stepped up to the mic and sang out the chorus and bridge and we've been singing it as a church ever since.
Hannah Hodges, songwriter, about ‘Emmanuel’: ‘The process of crafting ‘Emmanuel’ took over a year of rewriting and reshuffling, but I really believe it’s a song written for this exact time. As a team, we hope that this song brings fresh revelation of the consistency and faithfulness of our God, that even when we’re faithless, God is still faithful, and that it brings glory to his name, Emmanuel'.
St Marks Worship represents the worship community of St Marks Coventry, lead by worship pastor Andy Shelton alongside worship leaders Matt Ford and Hannah Hodges. ‘Creator Come’ was produced by musical director Stefan Schlag and mixed/mastered by Dave Plumb (Gas Street Church).
