God With/For/In Us

Around 1990, some of the newer praise and worship choruses were beginning to be sung in churches that had previously been more traditional in their worship style. My friend Tom Fettke, in coordination with Don Moen at Integrity Music, wanted to create a musical utilizing these newer praise and worship songs to bring them to the more traditional choir sound with orchestra. 

The concept evolved into a musical called God With Us. We had no idea at the time that it would be such a significant offering to the church. The musical was extremely well received and performed by many churches around the world. God With Us is my most popular work to date.

For the musical, I was asked to assist with the arranging and orchestrating. One of the requests involved writing an overture for the musical using some of the best known praise and worship songs of the day. The overture is a medley of several popular songs of that era.

I love the fact that I once heard one of my pastors, Dr. Jerry Vines, say that Bethlehem was "God With Us", Calvary was "God For Us", and Pentacost was "God In Us". I immediately thought - "Oh, we have the potential for two more musicals!" Sure enough, the musical was so popular that we did a follow up with God For Us, and God In Us after that.