I’ll be honest—when I first saw Phil Wickham was taking on the Number #1 Contemporary Christian Song of all time, Awesome God, I flinched a little. There are certain songs in Christian music you just don’t touch. They’re sacred ground. Awesome God is one of them. It’s stitched into the DNA of every youth group kid who grew up in the 80s and 90s belting it out with arms raised and pretending to remember all the words of the verses.

So when I heard Wickham, one of the biggest names in modern worship, was daring to rework it, I braced for impact. At first glance you may hear a glossy remake with brand new verses and modernized version of the historic chorus. After talking to Phil about it though, the motivation was clear. What brought him to Awesome God was reverence, memories, and a surprising kind of joy.

“Yeah, I didn’t expect to put the song on either,” Phil told me, laughing. “It definitely wasn’t a boardroom decision, if you know what I mean. It wasn’t a big plan.”

He painted the scene: “I was in Nashville in my buddy’s studio, Jonathan Smith. We had had a long day of working on the record… the computer was turned off—it was 11, 11:30 at night—and me and a couple guys in the studio were just talking about songs that we loved as kids.”

YouTube player

 

Then it happened. “We were all making the jokes about a couple of us who were worship leaders, and we all made the joke about how none of us would lead the verses. We didn’t even know what ‘puttin’ on the Ritz’ meant,” he laughed. “But the chorus would always just be such a huge moment.”

One of the guys mentioned how his church had spontaneously launched into that chorus one Sunday and the whole room exploded. That’s when something clicked.

“The record that the song is on is called Song of the Saints,” Phil said. “We had already had some moments where we took old songs like Wondrous Cross and even The Apostles’ Creed, and we’re trying to put in, like, salt and pepper them throughout the record. The songs or melodies or moments that would remind you of songs sung before in churches. So we thought, well, man, what about Awesome God? It’d be great to throw in at the end of a song. And then we started joking around about, like, what if we wrote new verses because we never could sing the verses in the first place?”

The joking didn’t last long. “Someone turned the computer back on, played a beat, I sang a melody, and then 30 minutes later had the song written for What an Awesome God. We just had a fun time, turned it off at 1 a.m., went to bed, woke up the next morning, listened to it, and we all kind of looked at each other thinking like, this kind of hits. Like, this is kind of awesome. But I don’t know if we’re allowed to do this.”

Everyone remained cautiously optimistic. “We had to ask permission from the people that own Awesome God, and they were into it,” he said. “Do you think people will be mad? Do you think people are going to be bummed about this?”

Phil decided to test the waters. “I just put it on social media to get a gauge because I don’t want to ruin this,” Phil said. “I don’t want to create a bad situation here, like ruining a song that people love.”

The reaction was instant. “I put it up on social media, and by far, of anything I’ve ever posted, it got like crazy feedback of people just saying, ‘We’re so excited. Bring it back. This is something we want to sing again.’ And so I just let the audience decide.”

Of course, there were a few dissenters. “There’s been a few, maybe some would call Karens out there,” Phil said, grinning. “They like the old verses, which I like the old verses too. I’m definitely not trying to replace anything, but more honor a song and bring a chorus into it. It’s been so life-giving to bring these choruses into nights again and just remind myself of the first time I met God through these songs.”

CCM’s always been about celebrating new voices, but part of our mission now is to honor the ones that came before, the songs that built this house. “If you think about it, like hip-hop and pop music started kind of reissuing songs, even in country, like in the early 2000s, even in the 90s, but for sure in the last ten years. And if you think about it, Christian music as we know it today really started in the 80s. So we’re a few decades behind. This might be one of the first of many to kind of be reintroduced.”

He’s already got ideas. “I can see a Shout to the Lord chorus working, you know, or something like I Could Sing of Your Love Forever.”

And live, What an Awesome God is already spectacular. “This is the moment of the night lately,” he said. “. “It feels like every voice is with me. Some nights this song is ten minutes because people just won’t stop singing the chorus acapella. It’s really, really been special to carry it, you know, and to hopefully honor a really special man , Rich Mullins and then also Michael W [Smith], who really brought the song even to another generation. And so just to be the guy who’s carrying it right now, it’s so cool. And I’m honored.”

Maybe that’s what makes Wickham’s version so powerful. He’s not rewriting history, he’s reopening it. “To sing it again, and for my kids to know this chorus and to sing it with another generation is very cool,” he said. “It’s an honor to be a small blip on a story of a huge, huge song.”

These melodies and lyrics deserve to live on, we just need artists that are brave enough to sing them again.

Leave a Reply