CHUCK DENNIE |
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Chuck Dennie, of course, is the long-time lead singer of By the Tree. I first saw Chuck along the river in Des Moines that Sunday night at the amphitheater. But I first met Chuck on his tour bus when he and the band were in Des Moines to play warm-up for the Newsboys. I'd already recruited Downhere to appear on my
Every Young Man's Battle DVD and I was hoping to recruit By the Tree, as well.
Chuck seemed more excited to meet me than I expected, and I soon found out why. He told me, "I love your book and I want to thank you for all you've done for my relationship with my fiancé!" He was very quick to support that DVD project in order to advance that message of sexual purity to anyone who would listen. In that video, Chuck talked about reading Every Young Man's Battle and then writing a song afterwards called Change, which appears as Track 5 on Win This War. He said, "We were writing songs for this new record called These Days and I'd just gotten done reading the book and it was still on my heart and in my mind, and one of the things I thought was that there is one sin pattern that I just can't get rid of, there is something that is just constantly hindering me. It's this battle that goes on with lust.
"Every young guy I've run into with our band and with the different guys you run into on the road...well, it just seems like it is something that the enemy has such a foothold in our lives over. It just makes you sick!
"So I thought I would just try to find some scriptures that would apply to my life. I was reading 2 Corinthians 3 one day and it talks about how our hope and confidence doesn't come from us alone, but that it comes from Christ. I thought, That's really amazing to know that this battle isn't in my hands alone, but that it is in the Lord's hands. Ultimately, when you try to get rid of something, you call it a change. I wanted to write a song about 2 Corinthians 3 and about change.
"Then I thought, Jesus went through every temptation and overcame them all perfectly! He's a super hero to me! So, I wrote this song called Superhero, but then I thought, Nah, that's kinda cheesy, so I made it into Change. It's just a song about asking God to come and change us, to make us different, to take away these sin patterns in our life. You know, to get things right and to make everything pure before the Lord."
As you can see, Chuck was writing songs about sexual purity even before God gave me the idea for my CD, and so from the moment Chuck heard about the Win This War project, he jumped into it with both feet as producer, songwriter, singer...whatever I needed. And he's followed through on that commitment and has been true to his word in every way. For instance, when he saw my song line-up, he liked nine of the twelve songs, but he felt that the other three were a bit weak and slowed the pace of the album. On his own, he quickly read Tactics and wrote three original songs that would better express the message of the book than the songs I'd selected myself. Talk about having your heart into a project! He has gone above and beyond the call of duty time and again, and he's always awesome to work with.
Thanks for your partnership Chuck,
Fred Stoeker
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