drdavidevans.co.uk

Probably the most common question I get asked is how I came to write ‘Be Still’,  so I’ll attempt a brief but hopefully definitive answer here.

Background

I actually wrote the song - words and music - in about an hour one evening at home in Winchester back in 1985 during some private devotional time. I hadn’t particularly planned to compose a worship song that night, indeed I’d previously written only a few pieces for congregational use (all probably best forgotten now!). Although the song itself came ‘all of a sudden’, the underlying ideas had doubtless been brewing for some time. There were two aspects to this. The first was personal: I’d become frustrated with what I felt was the narrowness and superficiality of much contemporary (i.e. popular) worship material and was yearning for a deeper spirituality. My ensuing search for depth led to exploration in a number of different directions - hymn writers ancient and modern, poets and mystics, devotional authors from different church traditions etc. The second was more theological: charismatic-type churches like the one I was involved with at the time were (and indeed I think generally still are) tending towards a theology in which worship is seen not so much as an end in itself but rather as a means to an end - the ‘bringing down’ or ‘manifesting’ of the presence of God. Such an approach, it seemed to me, had more in common with ritual pagan invocation than with the pages of the New Testament which clearly teach that God is in fact already with us, indeed within us, as we gather together, and that we simply need to accept this by faith. In other words, the presence of God is the very foundation of our worship, not some goal we are seeking to achieve by it. So, at the time of writing ‘Be Still’ these twin concerns were percolating below the surface - the need for contemporary worship material with a more profound spiritual message, and in particular one that encouraged people to recognise by faith the wonder of God’s presence already in their midst. 

Composing and dissemination

Returning to the evening in question, as I pondered, a song started to form itself, words and music evolving together, and I allowed myself to be be taken on a journey, a personal response to the profound realisation that God himself, eternally loving and holy, was actually there, present with me in my humble living room. Afterwards, I filed the song away thinking little more about it until preparations were being made many months later for the 1986 South and West Bible Week, a large Christian event my church was involved with. As a regular pianist at such conferences I was invited to a music planning meeting in Southampton where new songs for the event songbook were to be chosen, and I tentatively offered to give this small gathering the first public airing of ‘Be Still’. If I remember rightly there were about 15 -20 people present, and as I strummed my guitar and sang through the verses I kept my eyes tightly shut so as not to view the negative reception I was sure my poor efforts would be receiving! However, as I dared to open them upon completion, I found, to my my utter shock and amazement, that the group had been profoundly and visibly moved - unusually, many were on their knees in an attitude of prayer, several gently crying. I’d never had a reaction like this before to anything I’d performed and it was not a little scary - my new composition had been the channel for something supernatural and although it was ‘good’ supernatural, it was definitely out of my comfort zone… 

‘Be Still’ continued to make a deep impression on people when it was introduced at the South and West Bible Week, and afterwards, unbeknownst to me, it spread quickly throughout the UK, finding a home in many different denominations, both modern and more traditional. Interestingly, this happened almost entirely by word of mouth, at least for the first few years. There was no widely available recording until the song was used at Spring Harvest in 1989, and then, in the early 1990s, its profile was further raised by becoming a staple on BBC TV’s Songs of Praise, after which it began to be included in hymnbooks and collections of worship songs in the UK and abroad. From the mid to late 1990s it was, according to CCLI, the most popular contemporary hymn/worship song used in UK churches. In 2012 BBC Songs of Praise viewers voted it as their third favourite hymn of all time. 

Closing remarks

So, since being hatched that evening in 1985 ‘Be Still’ has veritably taken wings and flown, making an important contribution to church worship over the past thirty-plus years, touching many, many lives, and leaving me feeling utterly amazed and humbled. Had I known back in 1985 that the song was going to be so popular, though, I might well have reworked some of the lyrics and melody before releasing it into the world, my more developed critical skills being now only too aware of its compositional flaws. However, any attempt to remedy these would probably just lead to its ruination, for much of the work’s secret seems to lie in its innocent, trusting simplicity. Another reason for its effectiveness appears to be the manner in which it alludes, often quite subtly, to a range of iconic bible stories and scriptural references, serving to gently spark the worshiper’s imagination and helping to make the whole perhaps greater than the sum of its parts. I have to confess that not many of these allusions were consciously planned - here is a link to a sermon by a Church of Ireland minister discussing some of them: Forthefainthearted.com. He concludes that, ‘the breadth of biblical theology encompassed in this one song is vast’,.

On the video page you will find a selection of some of my favourite recordings of ‘Be Still’ from Youtube. 

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————