The following is an excerpt from an interview Pastor Joel Brown did with Sojourn Church’s Bobby Gilles about Kenosis ’ new EP, Depth of Mercy , hymn re-writing, song arranging, the concept of worship “bands” rather than worship “teams,” and more. Read the full Q&A on Gilles’ personal blog, My Song in the Night.

Bobby Gilles: When you’re essentially rewriting a classic like Charles Wesley’s “Depth of Mercy” or Isaac Watts’s “I Sing the Mighty Power of God ,” how do you go about it? Do you spend some time with the original or standard melody? Or is it better if you either didn’t even know the standard melody or you can strip it from your mind?

Joel Brown: I’ve only re-written a few hymns in my day: “My God, My Father,” “I Sing the Mighty Power of God,” and “Depth of Mercy.” My usual focus tends to be on writing original tunes and lyrics, so “Depth of Mercy” was a stretch for me. I did listen to the original melody, because for me it was more about making those amazing words come alive than creating something new. I believe two things are really important with a hymn re-write:

1. Is the song’s melody already widely established, having stood the test of time? If so, it should remain.
2. Is it a strong melody that translates well to modern music? If so, improving upon it will be next to impossible.

Out of Charles Wesley’s 6,000 hymns, “Depth of Mercy” isn’t very widely known today (like, say, “And Can It Be”), and when I listened to a variety of melodies for the song, there weren’t any that I connected with on an emotional level.

The words are heavy. We see the reality of how grotesque our sin is, but also the contrasting beauty of the crucifixion—it’s where we are met with mercy sufficient to restore us to the God we’ve sinned against:

I my Master have denied
I afresh have crucified
And profaned his hallowed name
Put him to an open shame
There for me the Savior stands
Shows his wounds and spreads his hands
God is love! I know, I feel
Jesus weeps and loves me still

All that to say, I was looking for a melody that plunges the depths (no pun intended) of where these words take us emotionally, and I wasn’t able to find it.

So I ended up toying with about 5 to 10 different melody ideas of my own (recorded via voice memo on my phone during my commute) until I landed on this pseudo-blues vibe that finally connected the dots for me.

BG: The lyric adaptation of “Depth Of Mercy” is very interesting. You’ve got Wesley’s 18th-century lyrics, then a very simple, plaintive cry on the chorus—words even a child understands like “Forgive me, I’m sorry.” What was your thought process for the abrupt shift in lyrical tone? And why did you decide to arrange Wesley’s “Now incline me to repent” verse as a second chorus?

JB: Ha! It’s interesting that you noticed that. As I said [elsewhere in the interview], I’m a [lyrical] hack. I spent a ton of time trying to make the "There for me the Savior stands . . . " verse the chorus, when I stumbled upon this other melody which came out as a totally different meter than the verse. At that point I realized the "Now incline me to repent . . . " verse would adapt to my new meter more easily.

But it wasn’t just a musical decision. What I wanted to accomplish was to further personalize and simplify a very formally written lyric and bring it home as a prayer for God to change us. So often we’re prone to sit in the grief over our sin (2 Corinthians 7:10), but repentance doesn’t remain there. God meets us there with kindness (Romans 2:4), which leads us to action.

BG: Kenosis is one of several Mars Hill worship bands . For people unfamiliar with the difference between these bands and the typical worship team format of many contemporary churches, can you explain? Why do you have a name like “Kenosis” rather than “Mars Hill Ballard worship team” for instance?

JB: Essentially since the beginning of Mars Hill, we have run our worship teams on a more band-focused model. Initially this wasn’t an intentional decision. When you take a bunch of recently converted local musicians and ask them to lead the music, they just do what they know, and what they knew was how to play in a band and write songs about what they were experiencing.

While it’s not the only way we structure things today at Mars Hill, we do see a lot of benefits to leading this way. If your musicians are experienced, arrangements have the potential to be more dialed in and uniquely tailored to a specific church or location. Though the word is overly used today, this can sometimes help music to have a more missional intentionality. The band then is ministering to a specific people at a specific time and place rather than strictly playing covers of music that someone else created somewhere else for someone else.

We use band names to bring distinction to who we’re talking about. In some ways it can look like it’s meant to draw attention to the “artist” and off of Jesus or the songs to him, but it’s honestly more of a practical thing than anything else.

Hear the latest tracks from Kenosis.