Welcome to free2worship.com!
free2worship.com brings you fresh new worship songs from the heart and pen of Dave Hill. Believing that worship through music invokes our inner most being to commune with our creator, Dave makes his songs available at absolutely no cost to those who wish to use his words and music to enhance their relationship with God, to inspire others in their relationship with God, and to make God famous in our generation.
What a great time to be living! The world is getting smaller and smaller and the time has finally arrived when anyone, anywhere in the world can get music straight from the heart of the artist. The songs on free2worship.com come directly from the songwriter, and are recorded in live worship services or on desktop equipment, in a grass roots effort to share them with you as quickly as possible. Just think about it, churches around the world can be singing a new song to the Lord, while the author's pen is still warm.
If you like the songs you hear at free2worship.com and you would like to use these songs to help lead others into worship then by all means help yourself to the music; after all, that's why we make it available. Simply register as a member (for free of course) and you immediately have access to download all mp3s, song charts, and lead sheets. Join the free2worship experience today and join us with the Psalmist, David, when he says:
"But let me run loose and free, celebrating God's great work, every bone in my body laughing, singing, "God, there's no one like You!" - Psalm 35:9a (The Message).
For more information on the free use and licensed use of our music please read our Terms of Use and visit our FAQ and Copyright pages.
Dave Hill is an Area Worship Pastor at Pantego Bible Church in Fort Worth, Texas. He is an alumnus of Dallas Theological Seminary and has a Bachelor of Arts in Music Composition from Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Mo. Dave resides in Arlington, Texas with his wife Sherri and their three children Lauren, David, and Alex.
Dave's Story. I remember when I was bout nine years old, my brother and I got some little portable AM/FM radios for Christmas; mine was red and his was white. Those little radios opened up a whole new world to us - the world of music. We were constantly changing the channels listening to all different kinds of music. We lived in the Chicago area at the time and somehow as we scanned the stations we almost always landed on WLS or WCFL.
My brother's and my interests in music sky-rocketd. Seeing our interest in music, my dad brought home an acoustic guitar for each of us one summer day just as school was out for summer. I imagine he was hoping those guitars would keep us entertained for the summer, but little did he know they would entertain us for the rest of our lives.
I remember learning my first chords and learning some songs from a songbook. I worked up three or four songs and then went to perform them for my mom and dad.
Red River Valley,
God Didn't Make Little Green Apples and
The Witchita Lineman were a few of the first songs I played and sang.
My guitar playing excelled when I started learning to play songs that I liked on the radio. Every week I looked forward to getting my allowance and walking to the music store to buy a new 45. Okay, so now I'm really dating myself, so for those who don't know, a 45 was a small record of a "single" hit song that was being played on the radio. On side B, there was another song by the same artist usually from the same LP (Long-play album). Buying a 45 can be compared to downloading an mp3 of a hit song today.
My first 45 record was a song called
Everything I Own by a group called Bread. Some of my other favorite artists were the Beatles, The Guess Who, Simon & Garfunkle, James Taylor, Gordon Lightfoot, America, Chicago, Neil Young, Carol King, Carly Simon, and Jackson Browne - to name a few. Wow, what a great period of singer-songwriters. As a nine year old, I was in heaven between my 45's and my baseball cards.
My brother and I are like night and day. He liked songs with heavy electric guitars and loud bass and drums while I was drawn to the acoustic sounds of the guitar and vocal harmonies. There was just something about that sound and I wanted to learn how to play and sing that way. Occasionally I would buy a songbook or sheet music to learn to play certain songs and eventually I learned to figure out the guitar chords to songs by listening to my records.
When I was about eleven we moved to Florida and it was there our family got plugged into church. Church was a great outlet to me for music and I started playing in the church orchestra and singing in the choir. At about 14 I started to play around with the piano and became highly motivated to learn to play and sing. I was able to speed up the learning curve by learning to play chords on the piano, just like I'd been doing for years on the guitar.
I started to write music about that same time and while I think I wrote some partial songs with the guitar my song writing really took off while learning to play the piano. Within a year I was playing and singing songs I had written in church, and was regularly helping lead the singing in our youth group, in children's church, at youth camps, for the "Jolly Sixties" and in nursing homes.
Staying involved in church was a great blessing for me durring my high school days. I clearly remember one of our church services where the pastor charged the youth to commit their lives to the Lord's service and I felt the call of God on my life and committed to serve Him in vocational ministry in music. When I graduated there was no doubt that I should pursue something that involved music and ministry.
I enrolled at a Bible College in Springfield, Missouri where I majored in music composition and Biblical studies. It was there that I met some wonderful life-long friends and my lovely wife, Sherri. After graduating, Sherri and I were married in her home town of Mishawaka, Indiana and we moved to Dallas where I planned to further my education in Theology at Seminary.
While attending Dallas Theological Seminary I was blessed to be able to lead worship part-time for several churches in the area. Whenever I wasn't employed part-time by a church I was involved with the worship ministry in our home church, Pantego Bible Church.
When we started to have children, Sherri and I committed to her staying home as a full-time mother and that meant that I needed a full-time income. God miraculously opened a door for me to work in engineering in the aircraft industry. I remember perfectly the day that I started training and I remember learning that our insurance began that very day. And yes! They covered pre-existing materniTy. My son, David, was born that night. What an incredible sense of timing God has!
If you know anything about the aircraft industry you know that the work comes and goes in waves of government contracts. In the aircraft industry you're often either working over-time or getting layed-off. After several lay-offs and re-hires I decided that I wanted something a little more stable.
A friend at church hired me to help him with his roofing business, then another friend hired me to help him track capital expenses for an amusement park which eventually opened the door to work full-time with the point-of-sale department. It was during this time that I was once again voluntarily leading worship for a start-up church when God reminded me of His call and of the desires and strengths He had placed in me to serve Him in ministry leading worship. All these years had passed but the desire to pursue full-time ministry never subsided.
The timing was right with my job and I put my resume together to start looking for a church where I could serve full-time. God was gracious to allow me to keep working at my current job while being employed part-time by our home church as an assistant to our worship pastor. When we built a new building I was invited to a full-time position and the timing couldn't have been better.
God is amazing in all He does and in the ways He directs our paths. As I look back I can clearly see that there is order in all the chaos. God's timing is impeccable. His direction is intentional. And His blessings are overflowing. Today I serve as Worship Pastor at Pantego Bible Church and I thank the Lord daily for what He's done in my life and I look forward with great anticipation, to what He's going to do today and tomorrow!
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Published on: 2006-10-02 (1464 reads)
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