The Story Behind “Bow,” A Worship Song Of Joy And Celebration, by Jeremy Quillo

Worship leader and songwriter Jeremy Quillo, also a founding member of Sojourn and featured vocalist on several of our worship records, tells the story behind his song “Bow.”  You can view the chord sheet to “Bow” from our These Things I Remember page, and hear it on Last FM:

The song “Bow” pretty much came from a desire to see more songs of joy and celebration in the church. I was seeing some changes in the musical “trends,” not just in our church, but in many churches across the country. Some churches that sung nothing but simple, modern worship choruses were all of a sudden singing hymns. Churches that used to sing nothing but hymns were adding “contemporary” services.

In Sojourn, we launched at time in a lot of our lives that was very heavy, spiritually speaking. There was a lot of disillusionment; a lot of frustration with the church. The majority of our songs were “weighty,” which was great because the Church overall was (and is) lacking the ability to lament, to confess, to cry out to God. I was in no way setting out to come up with a “cure” or “fix” for something that was wrong in the Church when I wrote songs like “Bow” and “Mourning Into Dancing.” Instead, I wanted to add to what we already had.

It was simply a desire to balance our “serious” tone with a tone of celebration. Not just “happy” songs where we sing about how Jesus takes all our problems away, but about true joy that only comes from God; true hope; true life. In addition to that, it is an expression of many, many people all worshiping the Lord together; every knee bowing and every tongue confessing.

So with “Bow” you’ll see in the lyrics words like “hope,” “light,” “endures.” I hope that the songwriters in the Church, including Sojourn, will keep celebrating that hope with new songs. Psalm 95:1 tells us “Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.”

Nuff said (for now!).