His name is Josh Baldwin. He’s a songwriter, a worship leader, a husband, a father, as well as an avid golfer. Kind of a side note here, a disclaimer, we take a deep dive on golf. That’s what we love about the Passion Meets Purpose podcast is once you find something that someone’s passionate about, they can talk about it. Get ready for a great conversation on worship leading and golf!
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Transcription:
Narrator: Purposely: your life, God’s purpose. Listen at onpurposely.com.
Josh Baldwin: When the Lord promotes you, then He is the one that sustains you. But when we try to promote ourselves, then we have to keep sustaining that. We have to keep that wheel going. I’m like, man, I don’t, I’m bad at that. I don’t want to do that. I want to be promoted. I wanna be moved to the next thing whenever it’s the Lord’s timing. And then I know He will be the one to help sustain that and keep that moving.
Sarah Taylor: His name is Josh Baldwin. He’s a songwriter, a worship leader, a husband, a father. And we’re gonna talk about all of it in this upcoming podcast, as well as how he is an avid golfer. Kind of a side note here, a disclaimer, we take a deep dive on golf. And I don’t know much about it, other than my perspective that my husband is a golfer. And I know that it’s the world’s longest hobby. So, we kind of bond over that a bit. That’s what I love about the Passion Meets Purpose podcast is, you know, once you find something that someone’s passionate about, they can talk about it. And that’s what we’re here for. So, we’re gonna talk about worship leading, and we’re gonna talk about his hobby. And please enjoy this conversation with Josh Baldwin.
Okay, Josh. So, what I hear is that your dad was a musician and also led worship. And so I feel like I already understand how you got your start.
Josh Baldwin: Yeah, well, you know what? My dad he’s actually a pastor, but he, he grew up playing music and he was in like a, you know, rock and roll band and all that stuff. And so when he became a pastor, he was in this Methodist church and they didn’t have any music. And so, he just had his electric guitar and he would just like do music and worship and be the pastor, the preacher. So, I grew up in that and yeah, that’s where I got my start was playing drums for him was actually what got me going.
Sarah Taylor: Did you, at that age ever imagine that you’d be where you are today, that this is what you were gonna do?
Josh Baldwin: No, I, I mean, I. I think at that age, I was probably 10, 11, 12 when I started playing drums. And then, you know, we, our little church in North Carolina, I started, I was drumming as a 12-year-old and I mean, you know, it wasn’t good. It was, I was a 12-year-old drummer and I, you know, in high school growing up in music, I loved music. I loved, I mean, Stephen Curtis Chapman was like the reason I wanted to play acoustic guitar and write songs. And my dad, my dad wrote songs. And, but I didn’t, I never thought that, yeah, I would get to do this at all. I mean, you know, you dream about things, and I would play music and pretend like I’m Stephen Curtis Chapman or whoever in a concert. But that was like, you didn’t, you, I didn’t just dream and think like this, that would actually happen. I just thought I love this. And, you know, as I got into high school, I started leading worship and that’s really where I realized like, okay, I think this is like, like, and I, I don’t just love this. I feel like I’m called to this. I feel like this is like gonna be my job in, in a sense, you know, and just who I’m supposed to be.
Sarah Taylor: Whenever I hear of a kid that plays the drums I instantly think of their mother.
Josh Baldwin: Yeah, I, no, that’s, you should. We, my parents bought, I remember they bought me this drum set and we put it in the in the garage. And so, I got to play in the garage and it, but even then it was like, it was just a little house in Charlotte that we had. So it was, you know, you heard it throughout the whole house. And I would, I, and not just that, they got me that because I had gone around throughout the whole house with pens, and I would just be, you know, banging on things and, and the pens would explode and like ink go everywhere. And so, the drum, they kind of like, they were like, okay, instead of getting ink all over everything, let’s get him drums in the garage and it’ll just be loud, but he won’t destroy our furniture.
Sarah Taylor: Another thing that it makes me think of is like, I’ve started to notice a trend with other artists like yourself, that I’ve interviewed where there’s this pivotal moment where either you get the drum kit or, or Chris Tomlin, it was, he got ill, and his dad got him a guitar and he was bored in bed. Yeah. So, he started to play the guitar. I’ve heard this story so many times and I think my kids are always just on a screen. What are they missing? That what hobby are they missing because I haven’t put a spatula or a guitar or whatever it is, the thing, yeah, that’s gonna light ’em up?
Josh Baldwin: No, that’s that, that’s true. That I’ve thought about with our kids too, because I mean, they’re currently on screens right now so that we can even be talking cuz I’m home alone with them. We bought, we did actually get my son some drums, but we went the route that we couldn’t go when I was drumming, we got electric drums. So, he can just put the headphones on and you know, and all you hear is just the beating of the sticks on the rubber pads.
But no, it is true, and there are those pivotal moments. I remember the one I was 15, 15 or 16. And I’ve been playing drums in my church for like three years. I was like the preacher’s kid who also plays drum. You know, I was like musician slash sports guy. And my, my youth pastor, he said, hey, we, we were just doing worship for our youth group. It was just like; we’d put on a CD. And for those of you don’t know, CDs were what we used to listen to music. Its compact disk is what that stood for. And actually, in my junior high it was cassettes, and then we went to compact disc. But he was like, we, we would love to have some live worship in our church, in our youth group. And so, he is like, you should, your dad leads worship. You should just learn how to play the guitar and lead worship. And I was like, all right. And then, but he, he actually gave me a guitar and taught me like a few chords, and he didn’t even play well, like he was bad. And my dad was like the one that was really good. But my dad didn’t wanna like push anything on me and which looking back, and like, I appreciate that now. He, he wanted me to like fall in love with it because it was something I, and not feel like, oh my dad does this, I’m supposed to do this too.
But I remember that moment. My youth pastor taught me like three chords and he’s like, hey, why don’t you just start practicing, see if you do this. And so, I did, and that was like what you were saying, those pivotal moment. I, everything kind of shifted and I realized like, oh, I, this is like, my heart just lit up. It later moved to like song, I had one of those moments with songwriting too, and.
Sarah Taylor: I wanna hear.
Josh Baldwin: Okay. Yeah, it was I went to this ministry school and, well I left, so after high school, after I graduated high school, I I went to a college, Lee University and I really only went there because all of my best friends from high school went there or from youth group. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I didn’t wanna really go to college, but I didn’t know what to do if you didn’t go to college because I didn’t have like a career that I was like, I wanted to play music. But back then, this is, I graduated in 97, and back then, it’s not like you just thought, I wanna be a worship leader for the rest of my life. No and, and so I just went to college for two years and I didn’t go to class much. I, I, I would, I would stay in my dorm room, and I didn’t, I wasn’t a bad kid, I would like listen to worship music and play guitar, and I loved to play basketball. But I finally realized like, hey, college is probably not for me and I’m wasting my money and my parents’ money.
And so, I finally dropped outta college after my sophomore year and went to a ministry school in Charlotte. And the school that I went to, they had like, you know, it was a, it was a school, a ministry school, Bible college, but they also had a track you could do for like, if you wanted to lead worship in the chapels. And their only catch was you could only lead songs that you write. Which is kind of crazy. And I thought, well, I’ve been leading worship in youth group and like, I’ve been leading worship for all these years. This is crazy. Like, I, I feel like I’m good at this and I’m called to this, but I’ve never written a song. But at four I was like, but I know this is what I’m called to, so I’m just gonna try to write a song. And I really just wrote a song so that I could get up on stage and lead worship, which I don’t know if that’s like the, the best thing to do, but what it did was like, it lit this fire in me to also, it helped me see, oh, I wanna do this with my life too. Like, I feel like I’m one of those guys that needs to get like shoved into his destiny in some ways are tricked into it. You know, it’s like, I feel like the Lord’s like, hey, why don’t you do this? Oh, look where you are, you’re where you’re supposed to be.
Sarah Taylor: I love that. I relate to that so much. Let’s go back to CDs for a second. Those little discs that most cars don’t even have a CD player, but my van still does. So, I could get a physical copy of your latest album, but you had to get those redone.
Josh Baldwin: I was just gonna say, I have a fun story with that. I was out on tour this past spring with Phil Wickham. And, you know, I did what you do, you take merch, I took my CDs, my Evidence album. And I mean, thankfully we, we ended up halfway through the tour, we sold out of the albums. So, we had a little break in the tour, so I reordered albums and got ’em back for the next day. We go out, and the, the day after our first night on that run, I, we got emails and people were saying, Hey, we bought an album last night, Josh Baldwin Evidence, and we put in our car, and this all of a sudden, it was two, like a two, a man and a woman and they were basically, I think it was like, like a, a teaching for kids on like the Revolutionary War. I don’t, it was, it was called the Patriot Doctor and it just comes on. It’s like, okay, Uncle Johnny, we’re ready for, but I was panicking, and I thought, well, maybe this is just like one family and they have like a six CD changer in their minivan and they got ’em mixed up. And, but then we, so the next day we were like, okay, let’s just check these. So, I started unwrapping them and every one we put in were all Uncle Johnny and his Patriot Doctor. And so, I panicked. But luckily, we had only gone one night with it, so we had to trash all of those, reorder and, but it’s a great story. And had I not thrown all those away, it might, might have been a good little like, hey, limited edition evidence album featuring the Patriot Doctor by Uncle Johnny and I don’t know what her name was.
Sarah Taylor: I think it was Nancy. Hold on Nancy. Was it Nancy? I don’t know. Let’s get the actual clip. Here we go.
Josh Baldwin: Clip plays: “Hey guys. So not long ago, I had to reorder some new evidence CDs. The last run we were out, I got word from people who had purchased the new run of CDs that something was just a little bit off. So, I wanna try this out. “Hello, everyone. Uncle John and I are happy to be with you again. Yes, we are Aunt Nikki, and I can’t wait to present Aunt Carol’s next story. Well, now let’s see if I can guess who it might be about. You give me a hint, Uncle John. Okay.” Guys, we threw those albums out. We got a whole new batch of Evidence albums, and they work. I’ve tried them and we’re bringing them this week to the last run of Hymn of Heaven tour with Phil Wickham and Vertical Worship is our special guest. Come on out worship with us, buy some albums. Love you guys.
Sarah Taylor: That’s a special kind of gift.
Josh Baldwin: I, I, you know what? My prayer is that everyone who purchased the Patriot Doctor, Uncle Johnny is just getting blasted with Josh Baldwin Evidence album right now that, that would be really awesome, but I doubt that happened. That was probably just a little blessing for me.
Sarah Taylor: You did you just wrap up the Hymn of Heaven tour?
Josh Baldwin: We did. We just finished it couple weeks ago.
Sarah Taylor: Cody Carnes, Phil Wickham, what a crew.
Josh Baldwin: It was so fun. We, it was too much fun. Honestly, it didn’t feel a job at all. It was just amazing and some of my favorite people in this world. I mean, Cody, he’s a golf buddy of mine around here. We live close to each other, so we play golf a lot. And then Leland came out and I’ve known Leland for years. And Kim Walker Smith, I mean, it was just, it was great. And Phil is just the sweetest man that’s ever walked this earth. I mean, he is just, he’s great. And he was so he’s so pastoral and just like, he just like really shepherds everyone that’s around, you know, he just cares, and it was great. The nights were amazing.
Sarah Taylor: I was gonna say I’m having fun with sound effects today. So, this is your favorite sound. (sound like hitting a golf ball) You only post your, like garbage shots on Instagram.
Josh Baldwin: I, I mean, I that’s true. I just want, cuz here’s the thing that happened. I post a lot about golf, and I think it’s cuz I just feel comfy. Like sometimes I don’t post enough about what I actually do and songs and all that. I don’t know why, but golf feels like a safe place to me. And so, I, I, I post a lot, but because of that, people just assume that I’m really good. And I get texted a lot from buddies or Instagram messaged from people. And they’re like, we wanna play with you or, you know, my friends want to, and I’m like, I’m not like good. I just play a lot. But so I feel like it’s important to, to post the shots that are bad so people can relate to me and I can, you know, be very comfy to people, but I love it.
I love, so my first passion and love as far as sports goes, was basketball and the older I get though, the less, well, the less opportunities I get to play. And then I just get scared that I’m gonna hurt myself, not be able to walk, you know, onto a plane or play guitar, break my fingers or so. I’m like golf is like a safe, old man sport.
Sarah Taylor: We have a lot of parallels. My husband loves to golf, and he used to love basketball. And he made the same transition you did for the same reasons you made.
Josh Baldwin: It makes sense. Doesn’t it? Yeah.
Sarah Taylor: How does Sheila your wife feel about how long it is, the world’s longest hobby?
Josh Baldwin: It is. She she’s figured out now. She’s like, she doesn’t like sports. She doesn’t care about sports. It’s funny cuz sports is kind of like my first love and then music and she really doesn’t care at all. But she’ll, she’s learned enough about golf now to know, like, are you playing nine holes or are you playing at 18? And when are you going? Why aren’t you going early in the morning? Because if you go early in the morning, then you can be done. You can be done by noon.
Sarah Taylor: What’s your tee time?
Josh Baldwin: Yeah. What’s your tee time? Why is it at noon?
Sarah Taylor: I want you waking up in the dark.
Josh Baldwin: Yeah. She’s like, well, why are, the kids need to be picked up at 3:30? Are you gonna be able to do that? Are you gonna go straight from the course? And then she’s like, when I go on tour or do something like that, she’s like, why don’t you take your clubs with you so you can play because she’s like,
Sarah Taylor: Yep.
Josh Baldwin: Why don’t you play when you’re traveling and not when you’re home.
Sarah Taylor: Get it outta your system.
Josh Baldwin: Get it outta your system. Yeah. But she she’s like, she’ll text me, like, what hole are you on? And then I’ll have to, you know, tell her the truth and tell her what hole I’m really on, and how long, when, how long do you think it’ll take you to play those last three holes? You know, I’m like, oh, we’re, we’re behind somebody slow, babe. They’ve been holding us up all day.
Sarah Taylor: I have gotten that text many times.
Josh Baldwin: I’m sure.
Sarah Taylor: It’s always the people in front. Alright, so where’s your dream foursome and dream location?
Josh Baldwin: I would love to play, you know what, I’d love to play with Chris Tomlin. I haven’t played with him yet. But I’ve played in a little tournament that he was playing at, but not with him. I’d love to play with him. I’d also, I mean, who wouldn’t wanna play with Tiger Woods? Although I feel like I would be a little bit or not a little bit, a lot nervous. But oh man, Tom Brady, I’d love to play with Tom Brady. Just like, okay, Chris Tomlin and Tiger Woods, Tom Brady, and me. That would be fine.
Sarah Taylor: And then what course?
Josh Baldwin: Oh, Pebble Beach or TBC Sawgrass. That’s another great one too. My dream if we’re dreaming, okay we’re dreaming, right? So, I want a course that’s like real, which I don’t know if they exist. I’ve heard in Texas there’s courses where they take all the most famous holes from all different courses and they, and it’s like one course. So that’s where I actually wanna be. Then you can actually play like the 18 most famous holes in all of golf on one course. We are really nerding out on some sports right now. Sorry. You’re like.
Sarah Taylor: That’s what I love about this podcast though. You do music, but you said sports is number one and,
Josh Baldwin: It is my passion.
Sarah Taylor: I think, I think a lot of artists that do what you do. This is what they do before they show. Toby Mac has his own Instagram just for golf.
Josh Baldwin: I actually talked to him at Top Golf not long ago, and we were talking about a song, and I was like, hey, we have to play golf together. I should have added him on my foursome. Okay. Chris is out. Toby’s in.
Sarah Taylor: Another thing about your wife, Sheila, that I’ve heard is that she calls it the billboards?
Josh Baldwin: She does. I love how little she knows about stuff like that and just doesn’t care. She, listen her lack of knowledge and anything like, doesn’t, has nothing to do with her confidence. Like she is the most confident woman and she, yeah, she’ll, she’ll text and ask about like, okay, how, how are we doing on the billboards? And I’m like the, what are the bill? The billboards, babe, what are you? Yeah, she’s precious.
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I wanna read something that you wrote about your family, and then I want you to talk about it. You say, “I remember it like it was yesterday. I was in my twenties, single and living in a little house in the mountains of North Carolina. I would go outside late at night and pace the dirt road next to my home, praying for my future wife and children. I wanted to be a dad so badly. I was given an amazing dad. And I knew that one of the greatest joys of my life would be to be a father. The Lord answered my prayers and gave me two wonderful children who are the joys of my life. And he allowed me to marry the most amazing woman I’ve ever laid eyes on. Thank you, dad, for being a great father and friend. My dream has always been to be a dad, just like you. Thank you to Ellie and Bear for making me a dad. I love you so strong.”
Josh Baldwin: Wow. I’m like tearing up. I’m like, who wrote that? Yeah, I, I forgot. I wrote that on Father’s Day. I was in my 20, my late twenties and leading worship at this little church in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, which is a little town in the mountains of North Carolina. And I lived in this little, what I thought was a haunted house by myself. And it was just a dirt, I had a dirt driveway, long dirt driveway. And I would just walk around and pace that driveway and just ask the Lord what, what is going on? Why, what am I doing? Why, where am I? Why am I here? Why am I alone? Lord? And yeah, just pray. I, I, I pray obviously for a wife, for someone, but I also knew I wanted to be a father my whole life. I just like knew that I was gonna be a dad and I was gonna be a good dad. And most of that was because I knew I’ve had such a great dad. He’s like now he’s, he’s like one of my closest friends now.
Yes. I just, I looked forward to having that relationship with my kids and. And the Lord he’s just, he’s so faithful. Cuz, I thought, I mean I was 31 when we got married, when, and I didn’t meet my wife until I was 29. And we got married when I was 31 and didn’t have, we had kids, actually my daughter was born on our one-year wedding anniversary. And then six months later we got pregnant again. And I cried, not out of joy, out of fear of how am I gonna protect and take care of all these people. But I, yeah, I just remember this past Father’s Day, it hit me when I just thought about, I looked around and saw like all that the Lord’s given me and thought, man, don’t forget those days when you were pacing the road, just like praying, crying out to the Lord. And, and dreaming and, and just sharing your heart with the Lord. And he, and it didn’t look like it was going to happen. You know? I mean, I’m sure people got get married people way later than I did, but when you’re in like your late twenties and you’re up in the middle of nowhere in the mountains, North Carolina, I just. I would’ve never looked, you know, 12 years ahead or 15 years ahead and saw what I see now. It was, I, I dreamed it, but I didn’t think it was actually really going to happen.
I wrote a song about it, the all throughout my history, your faithfulness has walked beside me. And, and I think about those times on that dirt road, when it was just me and the Lord and I was crying out like, and praying in hope, but also that thing that like David did in the Psalms where he’s just like crying, like, Lord, where are you? And like, what’s going, you know, why me and why am I here right now? And I have all these dreams in my heart and why aren’t they happening right now? You know when I want them and need them to happen.
And then looking back, I think, wow, I am so glad that I got to have those moments with the Lord where I just cried out. And I felt like this hunger and passion that sometimes it’s harder to feel when you’re living in like the overflow or the blessing that you prayed for back then. There’s sometimes I’m like crying out for like some of that passion that I felt like I had when I was like hanging on and thought I was gonna be alone. And it was just me and him or I would’ve been alone. That’s what started that post, that me thinking about all that. And I was like, okay, I’ve been so blessed.
Sarah Taylor: I’ve heard you speak before about how, kind of like your youth pastor handed you a guitar and taught you, and you’ve had some other people along the way speak these prophetic words over you and over your life. And I think you’ve spoken before about like, if those don’t come to pass at the time you think that they’re gonna, you start to think something’s wrong with you. That’s like your first place you go. Do you wanna talk a little bit about maybe one of those words and, and how maybe it’s come to fruition now and, and maybe it happened differently, but, but someone spoke something over you a while ago and what that means?
Josh Baldwin: Yeah. I mean, that’s so true. I feel like, like my teens and mostly my twenties though. It’s like the time when it seems like, and maybe this it’s like this for a lot of people in those years, those formative years, when you’re like figuring out what you want to do with your life and how, what it looks like. It feels like a lot of times you need people like that around you to speak those words, to keep you going, just to keep you like dreaming and hanging on. But it can get frustrating because you think, oh, if somebody said this or somebody heard the Lord say this, or if the Lord’s saying this to me, then, I guess it’s happening like next week. So, I better get ready, you know? And it doesn’t mean that. It means like, I don’t know, maybe next week, but also, probably not. And probably years down the road. And so, you have to remember, or I just feel like that I’ve, I hear the Lord saying, okay I’m telling you this to, to give you hope to know that I have a plan for you. Those are there, but also don’t forget, when I don’t know what to do, or I feel like I’m trying to make it happen when it, when it’s not time for it to happen. I have to remember. Okay. What was the last thing that I felt like I heard him say? Or where was where did he plant me last? And if that’s like, go back to that and be there.
And, and I would get words in my twenties when I was alone and leading worship at that little church in North Carolina in the mountains. And these, that, and I was writing songs by then, but I would get these words, like you’re gonna write songs that people are gonna sing all over the world. And you know, and these, these, it was these grandiose, like, you know, stadiums and anthems that the whole, you know, all this and I’m like, oh, that’s awesome. And I would just like, I, you know, I would definitely be like, oh thank you, Lord. But then also, really? Like, I’m living in my little house here in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, no one knows who I am. How is that even gonna happen? Like, I can’t even, I don’t have money to record one song and I’m not even a good songwriter right now.
And you know, just that kind of thing. It was, it was those times where I felt like the Lord was like, “Don’t worry how it’s going to happen, that’s my job. You stay, I have you here, so be all in, a hundred percent here.” And it’s just kind of this visual. I always got this visual of like these dreams that I have, and it was like a garden of dreams that, and garden of words, and like prophetic promises and words that I’ve been given. And I almost felt like I, it was my responsibility to water them. But I feel like the Lord was like, no, your responsibility is to where I have you over here. And, and I was a worship pastor at that moment. So, at that moment, I’m like, or he was like, “Your responsibility is to pastor these people, and you let me pastor your dreams, let me water your dreams. And as you are taking care of what I told you last, and where I have you planted, then I’ll breathe on these dreams and they’ll, they will come to fruition in time, and it’ll be in the right time.” And, and that’s so important. Cause I think nowadays, I mean, it’s always been like this, but there’s something about even social media. It, it helps people feel the need to just make things happen, you know? And I feel like, well, my, our pastor, he always says this, like when you, when the Lord, when the Lord promotes you, then he is the one that sustains you. But when we try to promote ourselves, then we have to keep sustaining that we have to keep that wheel going.
And I’m like, man, I don’t, I’m bad at that, I don’t wanna do that. I want, I want to be promoted. I wanna be moved to the next thing whenever it’s the Lord’s timing. And then I know he will be the one to help sustain that and keep that moving. And so yeah, those was those words that I got back then, that they held me and they kept me somewhat sane in those lonely moments, but I didn’t know how to make them come about myself. I think just trusting in the Lord throughout the years is what’s, you know, brought it about.
Sarah Taylor: You were to pastor the people in front of you when he was gonna pastor your dreams. My last question for you is actually about your most recent song that we have on the station, which is There Is Freedom, and you have all these declarations. Is that in the bridge of the song? Is that where that’s happening?
Josh Baldwin: Yeah. Watch the lies break off and watch the enemy flee. I’m trying to remember my own song now. Watch the walls come, I have to sing it. When you just say it, it’s like,
Sarah Taylor: Yeah, that’s fine. Sing it, sing it.
Josh Baldwin: Watch the lies break off, watch the enemy flee. Watch the walls come crumbling down. When the people of God sing. Yeah.
Sarah Taylor: That is in essence, what you are helping people do. Like the power of words, the words that you are lending people. To articulate what they feel deep inside. That is a powerful song. And what’s it like to sing that from the stage and, and watch the reaction to those words and, and watch the reality of that become true in someone’s life.
Josh Baldwin: Yeah, it’s been great. It’s been you know, the, the cool thing about it is I haven’t, since that song came out, I’ve been on the Phil Wickham tour. So that’s been like kind of the only place I’ve had to like to sing it or lead it. And that it’s, we’ve started doing it as like an acoustic moment. So, we didn’t even play with the whole band, which made it even more special to me because it was just like the whole band, everybody left. It’s just me and my acoustic and, and the people. And so, it’s mostly just our voices. And when you get to, especially that bridge, when you get to that part where it’s everyone say, watch the lies break off, watch the enemy flee, when the people of God sing. There’s something so powerful when we all come together and join together as one body and make these declarations it’s felt really powerful.
And I think, I don’t think I realized like how much I would love singing that bridge more than, I love the rest of the song, but it all, I mean, the song started with the chorus, like a lot of songs do. And I, I loved it, I like immediately was like, oh, this feels special. But then when we wrote the bridge, I was like, okay, this is where things are gonna happen, this is where, you know, as we joined together, the belief and the just, yeah, the belief and reality that what the Lord said we could do and what we could have actually, as possible. And we will believe it together and as we join together, where two or more gathered, there he is. And where he is, there’s freedom.
Sarah Taylor: My last question for you is my favorite question to ask songwriters and artists, and everyone has a very unique, different answer. Why do we sing?
Josh Baldwin: Oh, wow. Why do we sing? You know what, I, I, I don’t know why. I don’t know how I would live my life without singing. I joke around singing all the time. I, I write songs about the Lord, but I write funny songs and dumb songs about daily life. And we have ’em in our home that we just like sing each other and they’re dumb, but they’re awesome. And they bring so much joy. Singing is just joy to me. It is, I feel like it’s the Lord’s gift to us to articulate joy. I don’t know, I’ve never, I never thought about it, but that’s, so now I’m going to really think about this. I kind of love that you asked me that and I don’t, I’ve never thought about that question before.
Sarah Taylor: I, I love as an interviewer, being able to ask someone a question they’ve never been asked before. And I think, no, I think that for you, you said it was joy, it was joy for you.
Josh Baldwin: It really is. And, and, and it’s not, I know that doesn’t even mean everything I sing is joyful, cuz I mean I’m from the south. I sing a lot of country songs, a lot of country type vibey songs and they’re not all joy. But there’s such a joy that comes out of it and it feels like it’s a release. I mean, even just throughout the history of music, singing has always been a release of like emotions and, and, and feelings and what we’re going through and just good or bad. It’s like, it’s like the Psalms in a lot of ways. It’s just, but it is, it is like joyful to me. It just like, it’s so much, there’s so much life in it to me. I don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t sing or if I didn’t sing.
Sarah Taylor: Well, thank you for sharing all the things that bring life to you and the way that you pour back out and give back to the world. And we’re gonna link up to all your, you know, ways that people can find you and your music in the show notes. And so yeah, I just really appreciate your time.
Josh Baldwin: Thank you so much. It’s so good to be here.
Sarah Taylor: Our thanks to Josh Baldwin and the team at Bethel music. Our thanks to Andrea Clyde for setting this one up with Boxer Poet and our thanks to Scott Carro, our fantastic producer with Terra Firma. Content coordinator, Rebecca Beckett, it takes all of us to make this happen. And I look forward to seeing you again in two weeks.
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