“For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven.” —Ecclesiastes 3:1 (NLT)
Like the seasons, our lives tend to evolve in a never-ending pattern of equal parts: rain and sun. It’s the way we grow, both physically and spiritually. Just as winter turns to spring, our lives shift from cold and dark to bright and beautiful once again. For Bethel Music, life’s seasons—both good and bad—tend to be a recurring theme. The collective of creatives based out of Bethel Church in Redding, California, share in each other’s experiences as they drink deeply from the well of community forged from decades of worshipping and living life together. Over the course of the past several years, the worship leaders who call Bethel home have walked through seasons of loss, grief, joy and victory, not only as a body of believers but as friends who feel like family. Turning those seasons into songs, the group created the blueprint for their latest live recording, Have It All.
“When you’re friends with all these guys, and you know what they’ve walked through…and then a song comes out of that season, there’s always a backstory to it,” says worship leader Brian Johnson. “We all had similar things happen—whether good or bad—and this album goes to show that we all made it through the journey and we have something to show for it in the form of a song.”
A power-packed two-disc set, Have It All is the first live recording at Bethel Church since 2012’s For the Sake of the World. The 14-track album captures the passionate worship at Bethel’s weekend services, and features songs led by names quickly becoming synonymous with modern worship, including Brian and Jenn Johnson, Jeremy Riddle, Steffany Gretzinger, Amanda Cook, William Matthews, Jonathan Helser, Paul and Hannah McClure, Kalley Heiligenthal, Josh Baldwin and Bethel newcomers Leeland and Cory Asbury.
“For the worship experience, there’s nothing more powerful than a group of people singing the same songs to the same God,” Brian contends. “Plus, there’s some spontaneous moments that happened as a result of that atmosphere, and it’s hard to capture that in the studio if you’re not doing a live recording.”
The diverse mix of worship leaders is intentional. If there’s one thing Bethel is associated with, it’s community, and Have It All showcases the individual talents of the members that make up the Bethel Collective. It’s also a chance to highlight the assorted facets of God’s character as they’re revealed through each worship leader’s unique style.
“Everything we do is ‘co’… We co-write; we co-lead. There’s a community element that’s a part of our team here locally; but also on the album, it gives the feeling of that community,” Brian explains. “I think everyone has specific strengths, and the songs they lead really capture their specific anointing and gifts. So we tried to do that on this album—not to just highlight each artist, but also expose people to God in a new way.”
Have It All introduces listeners to Leeland and Cory Asbury for the first time, yet longtime worship enthusiasts know that while both are new to the Bethel family, neither artist is new to the worship movement at large. “We’ve been friends with these guys for years and years, so probably to the world, they would be newer faces, but these guys are legends,” Jenn Johnson affirms. “They’ve been leading and connected to the local church for years. So even though we’re bringing them in as ‘different and new,’ they’ve been doing what they’re doing, in similar settings like we have, for a long time.”
The songs that comprise Have It All have already had a transformational effect on the Bethel congregation, and the church’s worship leaders get a front row seat to seeing God move.
