What Kind of Throne

Our friend Joel Payne has written a fantastic worship song, particularly great for the Christmas season. Below are some of his thoughts on writing the song. Enjoy!

Christmas is a time when we sing - a lot. But sometimes in the midst of all our singing we forget to worship. Of course, our proclamation of the wonderful truth and the extraordinary story is worship in itself, but not often the sort where we bow down before our God. I wanted to write a song which would allow us to express the same heartfelt personal worship to the child King that we do week by week to the King in heaven, and that wouldn't seem like a total change of style in our contemporary churches.

I found out that the first people who are recorded as worshipping Jesus in the Bible are the wise men. We're told that they travelled a long way, carrying gifts, and when they found him they were overjoyed and bowed down to worship him. I imagined the mixture of joy and surprise at discovering the king, only to find that he is so unremarkable and poor - what kind of king is this? The shepherds must have had similar emotions when they visited him as a baby on the night he was born.

I wanted the verses to be lyrically rich, naturally leading to worship in the chorus, so I set about writing this using a technique I'd heard Graham Kendrick talk about, where he would take a theme and brainstorm pages full of poetic couplets. I had a go at this, and then began to assemble them in all kinds of ways, gradually narrowing down the themes and tying up what seemed like the best combination of thoughts for the verses. Each time I put lines together I would have to rewrite others, trying to find the perfect balance. I think my favourite line is 'What kind of king is so modestly born, when glory unmeasured is humble and small'. It blows my mind every time I think of it! The chorus was much simpler - trying to echo the story of the wise men bowing down and opening their treasures and recognising that the greatest treasure we have to give to Jesus is our whole lives, letting him take his rightful place as King in our hearts.

There's so much poetry in the Christmas story, I think there could have been a hundred verses to this song but it needed to retain a simplicity to match the simplicity of the sentiment it was expressing. With so many other songs I've had them torn apart, taken to pieces and rebuilt by the other RESOUNDworship writers as part of the writing process, but this one seemed to finish itself and pass through pretty much unscathed! I think the very thoughtful and methodical approach must have paid dividends this time - it doesn't always happen this way! My prayer is that this song, and others like it, will lead us deeper into a genuine act of worship in such a special season.