By Timothy Cockes, NOBTS News
NEW ORLEANS (NOBTS) – “Crescent City Worship”, a newly-named collection of students, staff and friends of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary (NOBTS) and Leavell College, has released their first ever album featuring Dove award-winning vocalist Meredith Andrews.
The seven-track album, recorded live at the 2024 Abide Women’s Conference this past February, was released June 7 and is available now on all major music streaming platforms. The Abide Women’s Conference, held Feb. 23-24 at NOBTS and Leavell College, challenged more than 1200 women to embrace a calling to be “Women of Prayer.”
“Upon accepting my position here, Dr. Dew asked if I would work on an album project as soon as I got here,” said Nate Jernigan, associate professor of music and worship for NOBTS and Leavell College. “A year and a half in, this is the culmination of that first attempt.”
Jernigan explained this collection of students, staff and friends of NOBTS has been leading worship in various settings at the school and around the country without any formal designation up to this point.
This collection of around 20 or so musicians will now be known as Crescent City Worship, named after the nickname of the city of New Orleans, and the live album will serve as the group’s first official release.
The group will represent and connect back to NOBTS and Leavell College anywhere they perform, and will essentially serve as a music publication arm for the institution.
Jernigan said the group worked for several months to prepare songs that wouldn’t just work well for an album, but would specifically serve the women at the Abide Conference the best.
“That was our number one goal before recording an album, and I think even that’s pretty key for our students to see,” Jernigan said.
“Our goal cannot be to record an album at all costs. So, what songs will meet these ladies where they are and help them to engage with a Holy God who desires communion with them in the midst of this conference?
“Then we started to think about how can we arrange these songs in unique ways that would feel fresh and could serve both the ladies at the conference and churches who get a chance to hear the music.
“We also are seeing a trend of having modern contemporary music having such a short shelf-life, that we want to think about specific songs that we can re-work, re-arrange and add our own personal New Orleans touch on to extend the life of a song that we feel like can be an enduring song.”
Titled “Live at the 2024 Abide Conference,” the songs included on the album include:
“The Joy” by The Belonging Co
“The Lamb, The Lion, The King” by Meredith Andrews
A medley of “Only a Holy God,” and “Holy, Holy, Holy”
A medley of “Holy Forever” and “Our God Reigns”
“Come Thou Fount”
“Abide” by Aaron Williams
Meredith Andrews had just released her song “The Lamb, The Lion, The King,” shortly before the Abide Conference.
Jernigan said the conference was a “unique opportunity,” for members of Crescent City to perform with her and be encouraged by her.
Andrews will return to perform with Crescent City Worship at the 2025 Abide Conference next February.
Jernigan said this album’s release fulfills a specific vision for Crescent City Worship, but more broadly helps fulfill the institution’s mission to serve the Church.
“Of all the name options we could think of for the group, Crescent City is the name of our city, and we were put here by the Southern Baptist Convention for a strategic purpose,” Jernigan said. “We (NOBTS) literally exist to train students to serve our churches.
“So, ultimately our goal is to serve the Church, specifically Southern Baptist churches. One way that we can do that is certainly by training students to go physically to those locations, I think another way to serve the churches in our constituency is to capture music that we believe is worth singing in our churches and to package them in a way that is creative, accessible for most churches and provides ultimately some resource for them to continue to find new music to sing.”
Jernigan explained the group has plans to release music videos for the songs on the album in the future, as well as tutorial videos on how to play them in the style they were performed at the conference. Crescent City also plans to record new albums during this summer and at next year’s Abide Conference.
Additionally, NOBTS is also in the process of building a new music studio which will be used by the school’s music program and to record future projects for Crescent City.
Although releasing music will always be a goal, Jernigan said the ultimate purpose of Crescent City Worship has always been about something much greater.
“Our future hope is just to continue to serve the Church really well,” Jernigan said. “It really is Dr. Dew’s conviction that we have to do whatever it takes to serve the Church. It felt like beginning to record and work through all the challenges of doing so is a worthy task to take on.
“My hope is that we will dedicate adequate time and resource to training our students how to write, record music and create resources that will ultimately serve the Church. It’s a training ground for our students, it’s encouraging for churches and it’s providing resources for them.”
The full album can be heard and downloaded here.
