Lincoln Brewster – God of the Impossible

CCM: Can you give an example?

LB: The song “Turn it Around” was written because our church has a campus in Santa Rosa, sort of ground zero for a lot of the relief efforts for the recent fires. They were devastating. Thirteen people on our staff lost their homes, as well as hundreds from the church.

Our church took an offering and one weekend raised $670,000. All of it went to the victims of the fires. And I thought it would be cool to write a song about God’s faithfulness in the midst of the fire that doesn’t sound “down, so we wrote “Turn it Around.”

CCM: How does your creative process come together? Do you find yourself writing for your church first, or writing for albums?

LB: It’s pretty diverse. If you asked me what my preference is, I would always write for the church first. That’s just what I feel called to do.

A lot of times I’ve been writing with our global worship crew that we call Thrive Worship. We do a lot of creating together, and the team is just really coming alive. So it’ll be “Hey do you guys want to write some songs?” and they’ll come over and we’ll write stuff. Or they’ll come over and say “Hey check out this idea we got.” Or the guy Corbin Phillips who produced some of the tracks and is one of the main creative forces behind Thrive Worship, will bring in seedling ideas.

Sometimes I function as a nurturer / encourager. He’ll think it’s not that good, but I can encourage him to finish it. “ So yeah, raising up that next gen and encouraging and coaching them is on my top list of things I love to do.

CCM: Are you heading out on tour anytime soon, or do you stay closer to home these days?

LB: I’ve stayed home on purpose quite a bit the last year and a half. I just celebrated being married for 25 years, and my two sons Levi and Liam are 13 and 16. Parenting goes through phases, and usually when your kids are younger, the first three years, you can pick a game plan and roll with it. Then you can do it again for the next two years. And then those increments shorten… yearly, monthly, weekly. With teenagers, it changes daily. Sometimes multiple times a day.

The conversations I’m having with my sons now are unbelievable. I didn’t have that growing up, so I’m not going to miss that with my boys.

CCM: There’s this perception that the first years are so demanding, but yeah… the teenage years are such a precious and challenging time for the kid and for the parents I’m sure.

LB: Yeah, you go through frustrating days. But the thing that makes the difference is having a relational foundation to work with. My sixteen year old is driving now, so we have lots of conversations about responsibility. And with both of them, we went right after the sex conversation right away. I took them out individually and told them if you ever have any questions at all about anything, lets keep the dialogue open.

Probably year ago, I took my 13 year old out to sushi to have this conversation. And he goes, “yeah… it’s kind of weird sitting here talking about this.” We kind of laughed, but I said, “You know what’s really weird? To think there are kids your age thinking everything you’re thinking and they have nobody to talk to.”

When you start thinking about it like that… I could have those moments, or I could go play a couple more shows. I mean, come on. I wouldn’t miss it.