Songs for the In-Between

Written by Phil Maucieri, Frontline Downtown Worship Director

We all know the feeling — yes, that feeling — when the playlist serves up an old, old song... a song from the past. It appears out of the mist, well-worn from a seldom-recalled season of life. Suddenly, you find yourself reliving moments of joy, fear, uncertainty, delight, and confusion. From the press of the “next" button, you are transported to another time, overwhelmed by forgotten yet significant sensations.

A good song often invites a listener on a journey; a great song puts on flesh and goes along with them, becoming a companion to weary and homesick travelers. People are embodied creatures, and songs can embody our stories.

Frontline Music desires to curate songs and catalog them for the everyday experiences and expressions of our people. As a church, Frontline seeks to tell these embodied stories and has since the beginning. Over the last 20 years, a myriad of songwriters, artists, and musicians have crafted anthems, which, in many cases, go on to become prayers in the daily lives of our people.

Songs like “Deeper Wells” ask the Spirit of God to fall fresh on us, especially in the driest places of our communion with God. "Whatever Tomorrow Brings" is a prayer of raw lament and holy submission when facing the unknown. “Will Not Fear” rises out of the depths of our souls, wedding together honest fears and a jaw-clenched refusal to give up hope in the Kingdom to come.

Frontline Music’s next project, “Songs for the In-Between,” is a collection of seven songs meant to continue the tradition of offering prayers to our people. Setting out to capture these prayers in recorded form, the team went to work but this time with a different plan in mind. This go-round, our process went in reverse — we gathered the prayers our people were already playing and tethered them to meditations on specific scriptures. Passages like Colossians 1, Ephesians 3, and 1 Corinthians 6,  as well as Psalms 55, 84, 96, and 121, all became back-drops for songs.

This method helped create new expressions of the biblical categories for desire. Prayers of presence articulate a wide-eyed expectation of meeting the living God. Prayers of exaltation and adoration lift our eyes off our circumstances and ourselves onto the beauty and majesty of the Almighty. Prayers of remembrance call to mind times and places where God was faithful and trustworthy.

Each song in the collection is meant to help the listener engage in worship with their whole selves: mind, body, and soul. Steeped in the reflection of God’s Word, the album traverses the expressiveness of the Psalms, voicing the everyday experiences of joy, sorrow, longing, and purpose. Inside these melodies are handholds, guiding us through the commonplace and extraordinary moments we are called to inhabit. Our hope is when we hear a melody from these songs in the decades to come, we are overcome with joy, adoration, and holy grit.

“Songs for the In-Between” is available wherever you stream music.

This year, Frontline Church is celebrating our 20th Anniversary! On Easter Sunday 2005, Frontline was planted in Josh & Nancy Kouri's living room. 20 years later, we are one church with five congregations across Central Oklahoma committed to loving God, loving people, and pushing back darkness. To read more stories like this one or learn how you can celebrate with us, visit frontlinechurch.com/20year.