Pat Barrett is an Enneagram 7 which means… he likes to have FUN! Always quick with a joke and ready for an adventure (or brunch), Pat sits down with Sarah with his guitar in hand to talk about the songwriting process. He’s joined by his buddy Benjamin, and together they share the story of how Pat led Benjamin to Christ. It’s a powerful moment you won’t want to miss.
Show Notes:
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Transcription:
Pat Barrett:
(Singing). Even singing that, that was a prayer, truly. And I didn’t have to make a big song out of it, honestly. But when we wrote it, I was, “Oh my gosh. That’s what I need to sing.” That was the song I sang under my breath for this album probably the most, was that chorus.
Sarah Taylor:
His name is Pat Barrett, and welcome to the Passion Meets Purpose Podcast. The whole point of this podcast is God gives each of us unique gifts and talents. And once we figure out sometimes at an early age, what those are, it’s that sweet spot. You know you’re in your lane.
Pat Barrett:
Yeah.
Sarah Taylor:
And then we learn how to put that on display to give back to the world. Because you know that living a story for yourself is nowhere near as good as living the story that God would write. We celebrate that on the Passion Meets Purpose Podcast. And for some people, it’s playing basketball, or writing books, or for you it’s writing songs, and a couple other things that I want to talk about. So first of all, welcome.
Pat Barrett:
Hey. Thank you.
Sarah Taylor:
And we’ve got your buddy Benjamin here as well. Hey, Benjamin.
Benjamin:
Hi.
Sarah Taylor:
Hi.
Benjamin:
Thanks for having me.
Sarah Taylor:
Thank you. I asked both Pat and Benjamin to keep their guitars close at hand, because at any moment during this podcast, they could break out into song.
Pat Barrett:
Just like in life, just like a musical, a walking musical.
Sarah Taylor:
I feel like that’s how life is meant to be lived.
Pat Barrett:
Yeah. Exactly.
Sarah Taylor:
And I think that’s actually a good place to start, because even this morning, you mentioned growing up as a pastor’s kid you framed all that you were learning, theology, God, all of it through music.
Pat Barrett:
Yeah. It was through music. It was also, I don’t even think I knew it until I looked back on it how much faith and melody were fused together for me. And the sound of faith to me wasn’t necessarily someone preaching. It was the sound of people singing, and singing something they believed, or wanted to believe, and that sounds different to me, to my heart, honestly. So there was something about, when I became interested in music, and writing, there was this element of connection and communion with God that I just felt when I would sing those types of songs. And some of it is my upbringing. But some of it was, I think it was a desire to continue, maybe after I’m out of my parents’ care, or something into my future, “Wow. Can I keep singing these songs? I think I can sing this anywhere. I don’t think I have to be in the church to sing this. I think I could be in my car.”
Now I’m learning I can sing songs of faith raising my kids, and have that impact my perspective, and yeah. I can’t separate the two now. Anytime I write something, even if it’s fun, there’s this element of, “Oh. I needed to sing that.” And I’ve found that God, he’s not afraid of what we feel. Sometimes we are. He isn’t. And even our disappointment, and our, gosh, it sounds weird to say, but let’s say someone has hurt you, and you’re angry. Even going to God, and saying, “I’m angry,” all of a sudden, anger isn’t a point of shame. It’s actually a doorway to communion, to experience God, and the pain, and the hurt. So yeah. Even if I wasn’t doing music full time now, it’s not going anywhere. If I became an accountant tomorrow, which I shouldn’t, don’t let me touch your taxes, or spreadsheet, music would still be this part of my life that’s, “Okay. God, let’s talk.”
Sarah Taylor:
Mm-hmm. I was listening to your record, one of the songs that jumped out, you were mentioning writing to process your feelings. I was listening to Better Hands, and I have a daughter that’s getting ready to go to Kenya, and I can barely put into words what it’s like as a mother to let her get on that plane, and go to the other side of the world. And when I was listening to that song, and processing, it was helping me get those emotions to God, just like you said.
Pat Barrett:
Right.
Sarah Taylor:
Take me through writing that song. Were you in a similar place? There must’ve been something you were trying to control.
Pat Barrett:
All of it. Yeah. I hear the leading question, and I feel the accusation, and it’s right. It’s true, and it’s true. I feel like that with most things. I’m like, “Oh.” And I don’t even know it in the moment when my metaphorical hands of my life are trying to grasp, and hold, and control. I usually find out based on the anxiety I feel because of it. So I’m starting to lose sleep. I’m starting to have all this. My wife does real estate. The real estate market’s crazy. Those are the practical things that impact our family. And you feel all of a sudden you’re losing sleep. Your attitude is affected in ways that life is hard enough, and difficult enough on its own. We don’t have to make it more difficult. Even Jesus said that in this life you’ll experience trouble, but take heart.
Scriptures also say that in the Psalms, it talks about needless bruises. You don’t have to cause the needless pain, which is our desire to control things that we never could. So I think about that a lot. Our phase of parenting even, we don’t have a baby in the house anymore. My youngest is six, and we’re watching their friend group, and their peer group, and all these influences now that are coming in stronger. And there’s going to come a time when they’re not in our house. We want to give them a solid foundation. A lot of it honestly is the parenting aspect, like, “Wow. God, I can’t control them really at the end of the day. I can help model for them, and in all of it, I can tell when I’m not trusting you God with them by the way I’m parenting.” And that Better Hands thing, how do you hold it?
It’s, how are we to hold all this unknown? And I know that his hands have been far more capable for far longer than mine. That’s why (Singing). Even singing that, that was a prayer truly. And I didn’t have to make a big song out of it honestly, but when we wrote it, I was like, “Oh my gosh. That’s what I need to sing.” That was the song I sang under my breath for this album probably the most was that chorus.
Sarah Taylor:
See, this is why we put the guitar in your hands. Let’s do this with a couple other of your songs real quick. You mentioned earlier this morning before you played Build My Life, that that song is about the long game. I loved what you shared about the long game.
Pat Barrett:
Yeah. Yeah. Life I feel this a lot. There are things that I want for my life that God is comfortable taking his time with. In scriptures, we hear about finishing the race faithfully, which is if you ask any runner, which I do not run. Do you run?
Sarah Taylor:
Used to. Used to run.
Pat Barrett:
Marathon is always, “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do it. I bet I could if I trained,” but the pace of it is so important in the way that the tendency to try to outrun God. You start with a lot of passion, but it’s the way you finish that matters along the way. And even if that song took forever to write, it took years. The chorus came at one time. The verse came at a different time. The bridge came at a different time in different even parts of the world. The chorus was written in Scotland with a pastor friend, and it felt like it mirrored the journey of life for me where I want. I’m learning that faithfulness and obedience is a miracle that’s slow, and you want certain things to develop slowly. You want a fruit tree to develop slowly.
I had a friend, this reminds me of the story, a friend that planted a peach tree, and it was a sapling, and it started to fruit early. And he was excited about it, but he woke up one morning, and the branches had fallen off, because the tree couldn’t bear the weight of the fruit.
Sarah Taylor:
Wow.
Pat Barrett:
And you’re supposed to prune it. And we’re always so concerned with, “Oh. With the fruit, the result, the end thing,” when really in the word integrity, it’s a structural word. It helps you bear the weight of what comes next. And I just think about that with Build My Life. (Singing) It’s a building metaphor to me. I want a life that can weather the hardship, and sometimes no storm, no problem. The foundation really doesn’t matter as much unless it’s tested.
That’s why you can probably skate for years unscathed on certain things, but the moment the wind picks up, I found it as an invitation to God to just reset my footing. Anytime life starts to shake, I feel the mercy of God just say, “Okay. Let’s look down. What are we standing on? Oh. I’m standing on my career right now. That’s the thing that I’m finding most peace in. I’m standing on whatever, popularity, or I’ve worked really hard, and I feel really knowledgeable about this thing. I’m standing on my own wisdom right now in this.” And the moment that starts to shake, it’s always an invitation to just reset your feet. And that’s a long. I want to be 80 on a rocking chair with my wife, and just, “Wow. He was right. The house can stand.”
Sarah Taylor:
Benjamin, I’m going to bring you into the conversation.
Benjamin:
Oh. Here we go.
Sarah Taylor:
Well, you’re here. But I hear there’s a really beautiful story. You and Pat do more than just play music together. Your friendship runs a long time, but there’s a beautiful story of something that he did for you that was monumental in your life.
Benjamin:
Yeah. Honestly, he gave me his time. That was probably the biggest thing. This was several years ago. I was a different guy, and a mutual friend had been trying to get me to come to church for almost two years, and I just wasn’t interested in doing it. We were hanging out one night, and he was like, “Hey. I got to go pick up a guitar from a friend of mine. Ride with me.” And it was Pat, and he picked up this guitar from Pat. And I was like, “Who’s that guy?” He’s like, “Oh. It’s my friend Pat.” So he seemed pretty cool, and I got coerced into coming to this event by this same friend, and it happened to be a church-based Christmas party, but I didn’t know that that’s what it was. And I just saw this-
Pat Barrett:
Got you.
Benjamin:
… some guys hanging out, and I end up in this conversation. And this guy was like, “So what are you doing this weekend?” I was like, “Man, it’s actually the first weekend I’m in town in a long time.” He is like, “Oh. You should come hang with us on Sunday.” I was like, “Dude, I’m in.” I was like, “Where?” He is, “Grace Midtown, eight o’clock.” I was like, “I’ve just committed to going to this church.” Yeah. So Pat led worship. This Australian guy was preaching. I remember he preached his variation of the Beatitudes, and I remember him saying, “Blessing are those who made bad decisions last night,” and I just started crying so hard. I couldn’t stop.
And Pat would just, I don’t know why he liked me. He didn’t ask me to play guitar. He didn’t ask if I played guitar. He just asked me if I wanted go to brunch, and it was so common, “Hey. Let’s go meet for brunch.” And he never asked me to believe anything. He never asked me what I believed. He just spent time with me. And I feel like that just was happening. And one day I looked back, and realized, “I think I believe what these guys believe.” Faith had become believable to me, not because of what I was being taught, but because of what I was seeing and experiencing with people giving me their time. And it’s 12 years later, and we’re still here.
Sarah Taylor:
How does that make you feel?
Pat Barrett:
Like a mess. I feel like it just got emotionally tricked. Well, no, when I look back, gosh.
Sarah Taylor:
I know. He had tears in his eyes. Oh. Bless you.
Pat Barrett:
When I look back on that, don’t look at me. I think sometimes I feel all this pressure. We all feel like pressure to, especially when you grow up in church, you feel pressure to share, “Oh. I got to live in the world. How do I share my faith?” I think it’s a really beautiful question, but when Jesus talked about it, he just said, just be light. Someone said that he delivered a guy, and the guy says, “I want to follow you.” He goes, “I just want you to go tell your town how good God’s been to you.” I never felt like I was evangelizing. What’s wild to me about what you just said. I wasn’t, “Oh. I need to take Ben out to brunch.” It didn’t feel like that to me.
Benjamin:
Or me.
Pat Barrett:
Yeah. Well, and I think that’s important, because I want. It’s amazing to me the testimony of something that happened when you weren’t looking for some testimony, or some story, or some thing. It just helps me. Honestly, it blows me away, and just, I just love you. I’m glad you’re my friend. I think you would’ve been my friend no matter what. But-
Benjamin:
That’s the thing that was real about it, because I’m a pastor’s kid too. We had different experiences from our pastor fathers, but I was just so skeptical of anything. I could smell your evangelism. I had to get tricked into going to this Christmas event.
Pat Barrett:
I can smell your evangelism.
Benjamin:
A mile away. Not going to buy it.
Pat Barrett:
This ain’t my first rodeo.
Benjamin:
No. No. No. The first rodeo to invite me to a Christmas party for two.
Pat Barrett:
Yeah. But it wasn’t evangelism, and it’s not the healthy that need the doctor. It’s the sick. His point, there was no end goal. The end goal was just building relationship with me, because he enjoyed being around me, or really like brunch.
Benjamin:
I love brunch.
Sarah Taylor:
I know you love brunch.
Benjamin:
Brunch was great. My lord.
Pat Barrett:
Can’t deny brunch.
Benjamin:
But yeah. That was the thing. It impacted me so much, because it was real. And I just knew this guy actually believes what he believes, and I’m questioning now what I believe. And I think that’s when you really come into contact with truth, when you come into contact with not just an idea, but real faith that’s not temperamental, and isn’t pushy, and it doesn’t have an agenda, and then you see what scripture means when the Holy Spirit will do this.
You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to do anything. All you have to do is love, and then watch. And it for sure changed my life, and I never made a commitment. I just looked back, and, “Oh. Man, I’m not comfortable living how I did live, and I’m really excited about this new way I’m living. And I think I’m following Jesus now. I’m not sure.”
Pat Barrett:
Still not sure. Here we are. But I think.
Benjamin:
I think he’s going on.
Pat Barrett:
I think he’s that way. Over here. Over here. Come find me.
Benjamin:
Remember that sermon you preached? Goodness.
Pat Barrett:
Yeah. Yeah.
Benjamin:
Thanks for having me. Yeah.
Sarah Taylor:
Oh. You guys, thank you for sharing that. How long have you guys been playing together?
Pat Barrett:
Six months after that.
Sarah Taylor:
Okay. Do you have a favorite song to play a little medley of together?
Pat Barrett:
Ooh.
Sarah Taylor:
This is your guys’ choice.
Pat Barrett:
(Singing). Well, Ben, it was so great about, it’s funny where you play music at a church years ago, over a decade ago, but then now last record when I recorded it, Ben’s in the room with me, and we’re recording these songs. It’s not just, “Oh. We play music sometimes.” We’re playing together all the time. And then when you go from not just the songs done, let’s play together, but part of the creating, and I don’t know. It just felt different. So Shelter was my favorite one to play, because it felt different to me. And we also did a tour, which is Ben and I playing acoustic just up there, just wailing away, (Singing). This is my favorite from the recording still.
Sarah Taylor:
Same for you.
Benjamin:
Mm-mm.
Sarah Taylor:
What’s yours?
Benjamin:
Oh. Man. Hopes For You.
Sarah Taylor:
Oh. Gosh. What key is that in?
Benjamin:
I don’t know. It’s a tossup between that and Seen Known Loved.
Pat Barrett:
(Singing). Oh. I love that one too.
Benjamin:
Yeah.
Pat Barrett:
(Singing). Well, that was also one that was, you’re writing that thinking about your kids. It’s like, “Gosh. That’s what I hope for them.” But then the problem was we went to go record it, I was like, “I want these are my kids, because I want it for me.” (Singing).
Benjamin:
I was so mad.
Pat Barrett:
(Singing) God knows who you need you. Yeah. I had to collect myself before that. I called the guy I wrote that with Hank Bentley in Nashville. I called him after that. I was like, “Hank, the craziest thing just happened. I just got tricked by our own song. I thought we were writing something for somebody else. And I realized how much it’s a prayer for me.” So I can’t hear it the same way now.
Sarah Taylor:
I feel like I get to be an observer of your friendship, and your good times, and your stories. And it’s just because it’s the Pat and Benjamin Show. We just have a couple minutes left together. You mentioned you love brunch.
Pat Barrett:
Love brunch.
Sarah Taylor:
We heard the story of brunch. Is that where someone could find you every Sunday?
Pat Barrett:
Atlanta’s a brunch city. So you can find me there on weekdays. It’s Tuesdays. It’s Wednesdays, especially Thursdays. And it’s great, because it takes care of both, breakfast and lunch, extra bacon, always three eggs.
Benjamin:
Six bacons usually. Yeah. Double up. So if we’re on tour for sure, Sunday brunch driver is coming. Everyone is coming to Sunday brunch.
Pat Barrett:
We do pancake apps.
Benjamin:
Yeah, pancake apps, because everybody sees the pancakes, “Oh. I want the pancake, but I want the omelet.”
Pat Barrett:
But no, you don’t. You want a piece of a pancake.
Sarah Taylor:
You guys. That is a game changer.
Pat Barrett:
So you’re welcome.
Benjamin:
You load up. I know. It changes it.
Sarah Taylor:
I order the protein. I do the eggs, and the bacon.
Pat Barrett:
But you want a little.
Sarah Taylor:
I want a little taste.
Pat Barrett:
You want a slice.
Sarah Taylor:
Pancake apps.
Pat Barrett:
Pancake apps. Yeah.
Sarah Taylor:
The title of this podcast or this episode. Close this out with Good, Good Father. It’s what you’re most known for. I heard that someone else that wrote this with you, you both had different father experiences. In fact, on his birth certificate, there’s not a name listed-
Pat Barrett:
Yeah. That’s what he told me. Yeah.
Sarah Taylor:
… his birth father. And yet, he’s writing a song about God, which as a good father, which is hard to wrap our minds around, independent of what experience you had as a child. It’s hard to wrap your mind around the goodness of God with what we see here on Earth.
Pat Barrett:
Mm-hmm.
Sarah Taylor:
And talk to me a little bit about the impact you’ve seen come from that song, the stories you’ve heard.
Pat Barrett:
Oh my gosh. Yeah. I actually don’t even know where to start, because my visceral memory of even the verses of that song, or just the living room of my house, and it was something that the verses fell out, and the bridge of it fell out in 10 minutes, just scribbled on a notebook in their entirety, which always tells me just because something can be articulated quickly, it probably meant there was a work going on inwardly for long, years. What was fascinating to me was, for me, it felt like an invitation to clarity. I’d just become a dad. I was also feeling a lot of the weightiness of I’m going to invite my kids into the most important relationship that they’ll ever have, and they’re going to use me as their primary entry point to perspective. And that’s the song that helped me take that to God.
It’s not just I want to get this right. It’s just, I want to see you rightly. So I experienced the freedom of that relationship. So my kids can feel that too. I want to model that for them. But when I’d play it places, someone would come up to me, and say, “I had a great present, loving example of a dad.” Someone come up, and say, “I’ve never met my dad,” or, “I hate my dad.” And with some of my favorite, the stories that just rocked me the most were the people that said, “I’ve had so much bitterness towards my dad, and I feel like I can take steps towards letting God in to help forgive.” And that forgiveness part to me is always, there’s so much power there, so much freedom. And it’s simple like (Singing) Finding the deepest, most foundational reference point to my existing being in how deeply loved regardless of what I do, is liberating no matter what your experience, your earthly experiences, and its healing, and it’s good news.
