Exploring Love and Faith: Jenn Johnson and her Journey in Nashville’s Music Scene and Songwriting Insights

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Speaker 1: Taking a Walk Nashville.

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Speaker 2: Hi everyone, it's Sarah Harrelson, your host of Taking a Walk Nashville. Thank you everyone who has been tuning in this year. If you like what you're hearing, please give us a review and rating on Apple, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast. Here with me today is Jen Johnson. Jen Johnson is a Grammy nominated Christian singer, songwriter, and worship pastor. She is the co founder of Bethel Music and a senior worship pastor at Bethel Church in Reading, California. She has co written Grammy nominated hits such as Goodness of God, Holy Forever featuring C. C. Winans, and has contributed as a writer and vocalist to eighteen Bethel Music albums.

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Speaker 1: We'll be right back with more of the Taking a Walk Nashville podcast. Welcome to Taking a Walk Nashville with your hosts singer songwriter Sarah Harrelson.

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Speaker 2: Jen, Thank you so much for joining me today on Taking a Walk Nashville.

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Speaker 3: So you have written Christian hits for other artists, but you also perform and write with your husband, Brian Johnson, and you recently released a new single together in February titled Here in your arms.

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Speaker 2: It's a beautiful song. I love the song. And what is it like writing and recording with your husband And where did the inspiration for the song come from?

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Speaker 4: You know, we've been married for twenty five years, together for twenty six and I'm auction working on twenty seven right now in April, and he is my favorite. I love him so much and the heart for this. You know, my project that I'm putting out called Happy Is, it's a mosaic. It's a very unique album. I don't know if I've ever seen one like this before. I didn't try to do it like this. I just, you know, after being an artist for so long and just being married for so long, and we have five kids and a son in law and as soon to be daughter in law, and you know, I just am so in love with my life and my husband and my children, and my daughter's even talking about having a grand baby one day soon. So I just really love love, and I am so thankful for the love of my family and my church and my community. And so I wanted to write a song about love, but I also wanted it to be and honestly, it came from when I was originally writing a song here in your Arms. I sat down at my piano and I was writing it to Jesus. Hearing your momsies, we're avon shelz, I was writing it to Jesus, And so really, in some moments and in some days, it really can be your song to the Lord. You know. There's a lyric in it that a lot of people are like, why are you saying? Oh, you know, and I'm like, because we can be honest with Jesus and sometimes some days feel like a glimpse of hell, you know, emotionally, and so I just think it's an honest love song to the Lord that says, here in your arms. You know, there's so many verses about being held by the Father, and here in your arms, I'm safe and I can talk to you about anything, or we don't need to talk because you know me. So there's an instant intimate. It can be a total worship song because God holds us and loves us. And then in the exact slip side, God gives us husbands and wives, and there's this pure biblical love that I love that God started the whole Bible with a man marrying a woman, and that's how life comes and so just to celebrate love and children. And it was an easy song to write because it's something that I've known, the blessing of my whole life. And so Brian I wrote the song and then Brian came in and sang with me on the second verse and it's super special.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's a beautiful song. And I love the title of your new album, Mosaic that drops on May twenty second. Did you work with Brian on all of the songs on the album.

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Speaker 4: We worked on a couple together, but most of them I wrote with I have one with Abbi Gamboa, one with Brook Legetwood, one with Dable Price, Carrie job Karnes, that's one with me, and so it has a lot of fun features. I have a feature that's on a song that's crazy that's an African choir and also a Portuguese artist and the song is in only. It's like thirty percent of the song is in English, which is just crazy and so fun.

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Speaker 2: So love that. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to hearing that and all the features on it. You know, we talk about you performing with your husband a lot, and you know, time after time in the music industry, it can be very hard for performers to be away from their significant other while on the road, but it's exciting for you because you get to be on the road and perform and do ministry with your husband. Where will you be performing this year?

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Speaker 4: You know, we are church kids, and so we've been attending a local church since we were born, and we just love that. So honestly, our favorite travel ministry is to go to other churches and to just help them with their worship teams and lead with them and strengthen them. So honestly that that's always kind of been fifty percent of what we've done at Athel Music and just what I've given my life to is to strengthen the local church. So probably a fifty percent of where you'll ever see me is going to be in a local church. We're going to Gateway Church this year. We're going to Bethel, New York. This year. I'm doing a Fearless Conference in Georgia coming up here soon. It's a women's conference, all you ladies in Georgia. And then I think he's in Atlanta, and then we're going on vacation, which I'm most excited about with all of our kids. Coming up, since that's gonna be my favorite travel But we've also got our worship school in the summer in July for five days for worship and musicians, and I think it's almost sold out, but there's a few tickets left for our worship school. That's one of the most outstanding things we do every year. So yeah, I'm gonna be all over the place.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw the Bethel Music Worship School on the Bethel Music site. It's in California. Correct, It's in California. Yeah.

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Speaker 4: You also can take it online though. We have a it's called Worship University, and so if you just go online and look at worship You, anyone can take the courses from anywhere. And the courses aren't just for if you're a musician. Therefore, if you love Jesus and you're a worshiper, there's a lot of heart classes from people like Christine Kane has a servant called the Dark Room and how God developed us in the dark like a photograph, and so there's something for everybody in Worship University. But you can find that on social media and online at worship you dot com.

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Speaker 2: Very cool and we talk about how you're all over the road this year doing shows and churches and doing worship schools. Do you split your time a lot between Nashville and California.

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Speaker 4: Yeah. Our oldest daughter and her husband live here in Nashville. Where in Nashville right now, they live here, So we're back and forth about once a month, once every six weeks something like that, or they come to us. So it's a really good flow. But we have so many of our friends and family obviously now that live here that it definitely feels like a home away from home.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. And you do a lot of work with other Christian artists here in Nashville. Has writing music about your faith and Christianity? Do you think that has brought you closer to your faith?

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Speaker 4: Absolutely? You know. I think we see that very clearly in the Psalms with you know, just David processing with the Lord of the highs and lows through life. You know, but yet God is victory. But yet you God, But yet you God. And God loves when we're honest, I think, you know. And so songs are a great way to communicate with the Lord. I kind of see songs too differently. I think I think there's some songs that when you're driving in your car. They connect with your heart in a special way that isn't in a place where I would sing it on a stage in worship. But you know, I think the Christian music industry CCM world, if you will, it's really beautiful for that space. Just fun songs or songs about life or love or pain or anything that we go through in this life. But I think worship song and I love to write those songs. By the way, I love to write the CCM Christian music songs, but I also really love the worship songs, and those are the ones we sing corporately because when we're corporate in church, we sing about who God is, what He's done, and what He's doing through us, and we magnify the Lord, you know. And so that's a different, unique place that I think some songs fit there. There's a few crossover songs, and then there's a CCM world, and you know, gospel and all the other genres of music. You know. But it's it's been beautiful and it's been a gift for me to be a songwriter. Since I was a little girl, I've i've I learned to play piano when I was five and started leading worship in kids church at twelve and writing my first song, and it's been a great way not only for me to process with the Lord, but also thankfully now to get other people to be able to process the Lord and most importantly, magnify the Lord.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. I think music is just such a great outlet in general when you have questions about the world, to be able to be open and honest about what you're feeling and your situation. It's really being honest about your faith and connecting with it. That's right.

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Speaker 4: Absolutely.

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Speaker 2: So you're also an author of a book. It was published in twenty twenty one, All Things Lively and Spiral to health and wholeness in your home, heart and community. This book is about leading a life with intention. So what does that mean for you?

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Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, I've wanted to I had wanted to write a book for a long time before this and just didn't know how I'm in a zoo of my life that I'd ever have time to do it. And I thought, as the Lord told me to sign a book deal, and so I was like, Okay, how am I going to do this? And then the world shut down with COVID, So I was like oh well great, not great, but opportunity. So I wrote the book during COVID, locked away in my home with my closest friends who's a photographer, and we kind of did the whole book, and at the end of the book, we just felt so happy because we've really lived our lives by best friends and I to emotionally, physically and spiritually be healthy and whole and also even practically in our in our family physically with natural ingredients and products and healthy food and so health is a really important topic and I wanted it to come from an eternal place as a mom that shows family and life and worship and again the mosaic of our lives that is not just one aspect of it, but really truly spirit, soul and body. To really help people with encouraging them to get healthy emotionally but spiritually and physically. Yeah, I love that because I think in order to be able to lift your spirits and have a lot life and faith, you do need to take care of your own mental and physical health absolutely, And that's why this album is called Happy, because it's from that place of true happiness comes from a mosaic of things in life, not just one or two. But true happiness, true joy is not just because you have everything you want in the world or what you know x y Z. True happiness is because you live according to the Bible and you are happy and healthy emotionally, spiritually and physically, and you're in your Word of God, you're reading your Bible, you know your Bible, you're in community, so so many different aspects of being happy that make it that mosaic.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know, with factors going on in the world, with chaos and devastation, it can be hard to find happiness. So when listeners hear your music, do you just hope them hope for them to take faith and ministry from your music or happiness? What do you hope for them to take?

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Speaker 4: Absolutely? You know, I think people are going to get a really unique experience with this album because it is, you know, such a selection of songs. I start the song out with a song that was my favorite him when I was a kid, Great as I Faithfulness singing that as a little girl, that was my anchor in my life. And I have my son who's he was four at the time. He sings a little song that I used to sing when I was little, and one of the tracks is just his cute little voice at four years old, singing I've got the joy, Joy, Joy, Joy down in my heart. So there's pieces of my childhood in there, and I think people are going to connect with pieces of our childhood they're going to There's a song called I've Got to Know You for Myself, just really a cry for every young person out there that believes in God but just really is encounter longing for an encounter with God as we all are, just to know Him for ourselves. That song is called know You for my Self and it's actually a song I wrote for my brother like twenty years ago. But there's obviously the country love song of you know, getting married and following in love on this journey of life like I did. And there's a song called Walk with Me that is just how God walks with us through everything in life, highs and lows. And then there's that fun crazy African choir Portugueze artists and it's called Look what the Lord has done. He's turned my morning to dancing, sorrows to joy. So there's scripture throughout this. There's creative scripture throughout this because my life has been lived in and drenched in the word of God, as I've been faithful to the voice of God, and so you're just gonna take It's gonna be a different ride for everybody. And I think even as people listen to the album multiple times, they're going to take a different point of view or get something different from it as they keep listening to it.

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Speaker 2: I love that, and I love the beautiful messages you are incorporating into everything. And you know, even though it's a Christian album, like you said, there's a little bit of crossover like country, and you have an affter choir in it, a little bit of everything. But I think that's what's great about Christian music. It can be so crossover with other genres of music totally.

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Speaker 4: You know what's funny is I've always been like people are like, oh, that's secular, this is sacred.

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Speaker 1: No way.

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Speaker 4: If it's good, it's good. Whatever, it's good, whatever it's lovely, whatever's pure. That's what the Bible says. So we can't put labels on anything unless we say what it is. And so if it's coming from a kingdom place and it's pure and it's lovely and it matters to God, then it is spiritual.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah. I think people can take what they want, what messages they want from this new album. I hope they will go and stream it check it out. Jen, This is a question I love to ask my guest since we're on Taking a Walk Nashville. Do you have a favorite place you like to take a walk in Nashville.

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Speaker 4: Oh, that is an excellent question and actually exactly what I'm doing when I get off of this call.

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Speaker 2: I love Radner Lake.

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Speaker 4: It's so beautiful there. I actually love to take my kids to the park and just kind of walk around the little area that they're in while they're playing at the park. So I am a big walker. I put in some miles girl. Every day, I try to do like three to six miles. So I'm headed out to do that right after this call with my little boys.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I know they're still doing some clean up over there after the power outage, doing some tree yeah by Radner Lake. But I think walking in general is such a great way to connect with yourself and connect with your faith.

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Speaker 4: Absolutely, walking with me again. I have a song called walk with Me for just that, because we do need to just be alone with the Lord and ask him questions. And ask him to speak to us. We see the Lord speaking to people all through the Bible. He hasn't stopped, so as we just are honest with him with our questions, Lord, speak to me, Here's what I'm going through. The Lord knows, but as we wait on him to answer is a really beautiful moment. And going for a walk is a great way to connect with God. And it's also super important physical activity. Not only eating healthy, but super important is that we stay healthy and stay active physically because even for our door and door friends and our emotions. So get out there, eat healthy, and go for a walk while you listen to my new album.

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Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely take a walk while listening to Jen Johnson's new album. You can purchase her book All Things Lovely and listen to her latest single Here in Your Arms. Jin. Thank you so much for being on Taking a Walk Nashville today.

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Speaker 4: You're so welcome. I hope you have an amazing day and that you go for a walk.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Taking a Walk Nashville with Sarah Harrelson. Please check out our other shows produced by Buzznight Media Productions, Comedy Save Me and Music Save Me, hosted by Lynn Hoffman and Taking a Walk, hosted by Yours Truly buzz Night. All shows are available on appurple Podcasts, Spotify, and are part of the iHeart podcast network.