In this solo episode of the "Voices in My Head" podcast, host Rick Lee James—recording artist, worship leader, author, and ordained Nazarene minister—introduces and promotes his annually‑used Advent song, "Advent Hymn: Watching, Waiting, Longing," co‑written with Ted Rastetter. He explains why the hymn has grown in radio play and church adoption, then walks listeners through a comprehensive set of resources for using the song in worship: the official music video (filmed in a repurposed boxing‑ring venue in Dayton, Ohio), streaming and purchase options (Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon, Lifeway Worship), licensing details (CCLI SongSelect sheet music, free YouTube video use with CCLI TV license), downloadable chord/lead/hymn charts, multitrack studio recordings available via Loop Community and Lifeway Worship, and endorsements from notable figures such as Dr. Walter Brueggemann, Paul Balázs, and Mike Harland. He directs listeners to his Substack page and podcast show notes for direct links. The episode concludes with a full performance of the hymn’s lyrics, emphasizing its theological themes of anticipation, Christ’s incarnation, and redemption, and invites worship leaders to incorporate it into Advent services. Throughout, James encourages audience interaction via reviews, Twitter, and his daily‑kindness account @MrRogersSay.
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Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer, a songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is where I discuss music, movies, books, pop culture, theology, and more with friends, colleagues, and sometimes just by myself. Now make sure to let me know what you think of today's episode by leaving me a review on iTunes or by tweeting at me @RickLeeJames on Twitter. And please join my mailing list at RickLeeJames.com where you can receive an email every time a new episode is released. By the way, in case you're interested in a daily dose of kindness and encouragement beyond this podcast, I also run the Twitter account @MrRogersSay where I post daily quotes from Fred Rogers, one of the voices in my head. Well, I guess that's it for the intro, so sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of Voices in My Head.
Hello everyone, welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I'm your host, Rick Lee James, and I'm so glad that you are here with me again. This is going to be a different kind of episode again. I guess there are always different kind of episodes. Uh, this week, no guest, but we are heading quickly into the Advent season, and one resource that I am able to offer every year is a song I wrote that thankfully, uh, every year it seems like it gets a little bit more radio play around Christmas time. And also it seems like more churches are using it. Sorry for the creak, I'm just shutting a door. It's the middle of the night once again because it's the only time I seem to have to record anymore. Um, but I wanted to share a few resources around a song that I wrote with a friend of mine, Ted Ratstatter. Um, and the song is called Advent Hymn: Watching, Waiting, Longing. I'm going to be playing it at the end of the show today so that you can hear it. A lot of you have already heard it. I would venture to say some of you are listening to this podcast because you've heard the song, and maybe it was an introduction to my music and some of the music that I've had published over the years. But each year I seem to get requests from people about where they can find resources to how they can use it in their church, or if they would like to sing it themselves or play it with their praise team, or just more information about the song. Radio stations will sometimes ask for it. Hopefully. And I'm so grateful for the way that the song has just been embraced by so many people. So I wanted to take this episode with Advent coming quickly. I know at the time of recording this, and even at the time if you're hearing this, we are not even to Thanksgiving yet. But for those who are planning music, they're thinking ahead, and it's for some people already too late. They're already thinking about music for the Advent and Christmas season. So this is just, just a few resources available to you. I'm going to have all of listed on our podcast webpage. And if you subscribe to rickleejames.substack.com, that's going to be probably the easiest place to find all of these links that I'm going to be talking about on the show. So let me dive right into it. First of all, what you're going to see when you go to any of our web pages involved around the podcast Voices in My Head, you'll be able to see first of all the official music video for Advent Hymn, Watching, Waiting, Longing, which we filmed here in Dayton, Ohio. And it was so much fun to do, and I really appreciated everybody who was involved in making this video happen. Jason Elam and Agape Media, they were actually the first music video, you know, officially that I made like on a professional level. And we both were just kind of starting at the same time at that point, and Jason has become a friend, and he helped me make this video on a shoestring budget. And we did it at a very hot location in Dayton, Ohio. It was not Christmas time yet. It was, I think, July, I want to say. I can't remember the exact date when we did it just a few years ago. But boy, the video turned out great. We're in this old boxing ring area. You wouldn't know it was a boxing ring, but it's a rundown building. Had no electricity inside of it, and we did this really fun music video, and I think it turned out great. So the first thing you're going to find when you go to our Substack page, or just if you look up the music video on YouTube, you're going to be able to see the music video. Some churches just like to play the music video in their church, maybe as a way to start the service, or something that they can do in the midst of it, maybe while they light the Advent candles each week. In fact, in the music video It shows me lighting Advent wreath. And so if your church does that kind of thing and you're looking for music to use during the lighting of your Advent candles, maybe as kind of a liturgy, some churches have opted to use the music video just for that. That costs you nothing. You can just use the music video straight from YouTube, and it's, it's legal that way as long as you, you reference the song, because the publisher is Lifeway Worship. But you can still use the music video free of charge to you that way. If you have a CCLI TV license, I believe that helps you to do that. But I also wanted to, to let you know that when you come to the website, there is a link where you can go on Bandcamp and you can purchase either just the track or the whole album, actually, because all of the album is available. And a lot of people stream it from several different platforms like whether it be Apple Music or Spotify or Amazon Music. It's available on all those platforms, but it's also available through Bandcamp, and that helps me a lot more as an artist. If you wanted to order the CD or even download the digital tracks, you can actually just pay for the album there. That helps me as an artist. Also, there are downloadable charts. There's tracks that you can get through not only CCLI, which is, is one resource that if you are a CCLI SongSelect user— and as a matter of fact, I'm kind of typing some notes to this as I'm recording right now— SongSelect users can go and download the full sheet music as just part of the service that you use. So if you're looking for music for your praise team, you can customize it to whatever key you want to use the song in. And that's a great resource that's available for a subscription service that many people who work in churches already subscribe to, so it doesn't cost you any extra money to do it that way. And you can download the hymn sheet, you can download the lead sheet, you can just download a chord chart, or even if you just need the lyrics, they're all available there. If you use— well, actually several music software options that are available allow you to get the lyrics and pull them in straight from CCLI, so you don't have to do a lot of editing to the lyrics if you're going to project them on the screen. So that's one resource that's available to you. Also, lifewayworship.com, and I'm going to have the links in the show notes, but if you— in the show notes— but if you go to lifewayworship.com, if you aren't on our Substack page or on our podcast page at podbean, you can simply go to lifewayworship.com and type in Rick Lee James or Advent hymn, and then in parentheses put watching, waiting, longing, and then finish the parentheses out, and that will take you to the song. Or you can just look up my name, Rick Lee James, and every song that I have published— I believe every song I have published that's available through Lifeway Worship will show up on that site. But again, we have a direct link. If your church, or even if you are just an artist and you use multitracks, um, what that means is if you've never used multitracks before, you can actually buy the original album recording straight from what I did with Lifeway Worship. And Lifeway has made that available through loopcommunity.com. I believe they also have them on lifewayworship.com if you're interested there. But Loop Community, you can go and get the track. And what happens with the track, if you've never used it before in worship, is there is a click track that you can play along to, and they're in— that's in one ear. So if you're using in-ears, you can hear the click track in, in your, like, I believe it's your right or left ear, however you decide to pan it. But then you can get all of the tracks individually that we recorded. So you have the electric guitar part as its own track, you have the piano part as its own track, drums as its own track, acoustic guitar as its own track, vocals as its own track, and you can individuate which ones you need. So if you play with a band and let's say you don't have a bass player or you don't have a piano player that week and you want to use the track but you want it to sound exactly like the recording, you can play along with our studio tracks. Again, it's customizable so you can put it in whatever key key you are most comfortable playing with. So what you might want to do is go to Song Select from CCLI, get the key you want the song in, print off the music, and then if you're playing along with Loop Community and you've bought the track, you can get that track, put it in whatever key that you're wanting to play it in along to that music, and play right along, and it'll sound just like the album. So we have links available on the website for that. Other than that, I mean, there are a few other resources that I'm going to have listed in the show notes. There's a few endorsements endorsements from people like, like Dr. Walter Brueggemann, who really enjoyed Advent Hymn, and he wrote something about it, and I was so grateful for that. You have endorsements from a songwriting hero of mine, Paul Balázs, from Mike Harland, who's another just fantastic musician. And yeah, so there's several resources that are going to be available if you go to our webpage at rickleejames.substack.com, or just look in the show notes to podcast episode. All of those things should be available. So if you have not heard Advent hymn, Watching, Waiting, Longing, I'm going to close out the show by playing it for you right now. So if you feel like this is something that you would like to use in your worship service this year during the Advent season, this is the song. And the— those are the resources that I have already talked about. They are listed through our webpage, so hopefully you can easily just click on them find them, use them. And I try to make as many free resources available as I can. Again, Lifeway Worship is the publisher on this song, so it's through their generosity that I am able to offer things like this to you. So that's it for the podcast today. Enjoy the song Advent Hymn, written by myself and Ted Rastetter, and we'll see you hopefully next week, uh, on Voices in My Head. The Rick Lee James Podcast. God bless you and thank you for listening.
Heaven sent a child to save us, light for all to See, helpless baby, mighty Savior, holy mystery. Unto us a Son is given, born in Bethlehem. Lamb of God, the light of nations, God in flesh became. Watching, waiting, longing for the day when his people would glorify the name above all names. For the joy that lay before for him chose our agony. Jesus bore the wrath of Calvary, washing sinners clean. God our Father, Christ our brother, Word of God in flesh. Loosed the chains that held us captive, broke the bonds of death, watching, waiting, longing for the day when his people would glorify the name above all names. We wait with expectation for his advent here. Bride of Christ, his word proclaim for all the world to hear. He will come in clouds descending at the trumpet sound. In the light of Christ, our Savior, Savior, every knee will bow. Born in a manger, dying on a tree, rising Easter morning to set his people free. We're watching, waiting, longing for for the day when all nations will glorify the name above all names.
Thank you for joining me here this week on Voices in My Head. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com where you can find out more about me, get my music on vinyl and CD, follow my blog, and even schedule me for a concert or a speaking engagement. Better yet, even a book signing in your neighborhood. You can find all that and more at rickleejames.com. Also, it would mean a great deal to me if you could write a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast will be online. And now for the benediction: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit that you may abound in hope. God bless you, and thank you for listening to Voices in My Head.
