East Texas Baptist University senior writes original worship song, performs at 2024 Texas Baptist Annual Meeting

In the spring of 2023, Hannah Hopkins, a senior at East Texas Baptist University (ETBU) and Texas Baptists’ 2024 Prestidge Endowment Music & Worship Scholarship recipient, transferred to the school with a passion to lead worship. She’d heard the original song “New Day” performed by Lampsato, ETBU’s worship band, and wanted to audition to be a part of the group.

Chris Smith, director of Lampsato and professor of Worship Leadership at ETBU, said Hopkins “impressed us with her audition.” That same day, she was invited to sit in on a Lampsato practice.

Hopkins was impressed and “felt really at home.”

Encouraged by her experience at the band's practice, Hopkins inquired about changing her degree plan from music education to worship. Smith said it was “the Lord’s providence” that Lampsato provided her an opportunity to pursue her passion for worship.

“She [joined Lampsato] the next spring, and she just fit in immediately with our culture, with the friend group,” said Smith. “She's just an extraordinary student, an extremely talented musician, and so even though she was a transfer student …  it feels like she's always been here.” 

Creating “Clothed” 

Each academic year,  Lampsato works on a recording project, complete with “a couple of covers, maybe an original or two,” that is recorded and released on music streaming platforms in the spring. Smith said the purpose of the recording project is to allow students to exercise their creativity.

“We really encourage students [that] this is a place to write original music, to be creative. When we think about scientists saying the universe is constantly expanding in all directions, I think it's because being a creator is an attribute of God. He cannot not create, and when we create, we are acting in the image of God,” said Smith. “So while we certainly don't shy away from covering other great worship songs at all, I really try to push a creative element into this [project].” 

In March, the band started to toss around ideas for an original song to add to their most recent project. 

“I just started thinking to myself, ‘Man, I really wish I could write a song.’ I've always wanted to do that, and I've always prayed that that would be something that the Lord might gift me with, but I've just never been able to. So, I just thought to myself, ‘I'd really like to write a song,’” said Hopkins. 

So, Hopkins started brainstorming song ideas and remembered one she’d written down previously. This idea would become “Clothed,” the original song she led at the 2024 Texas Baptists Annual Meeting.

“When I got the idea for ‘Clothed,’ I was reading this daily Bible reading plan … and I was in Genesis three, and when I read Genesis 3:21, it said that the Lord took garments of skin and clothed Adam and Eve. This was after they sinned in the garden, and I was like, ‘Man, that's amazing that God – we turned away from him and we made ourselves enemies to him – and literally the first thing he did was seek out Adam and Eve in the garden and clothe their shame … and gave them that grace that they needed,” said Hopkins. 

Hopkins noticed a theme of being clothed throughout scripture. 

“I feel like I hear that a lot in the Bible that God clothed us in different ways and I started thinking of, you know, he clothed the lilies and he clothed us in righteousness and he clothed us in glory in Revelation. I was thinking through all those things, and I just thought, ‘Man, that would make a good song,’” said Hopkins. 

She said she had never written a song before, so she “didn’t think anything of it.” 

“I heard my friend [who was a songwriter] say one time, ‘If you ever have an idea, just write it down. You might come back to it one day.’ So I did. I wrote it down, and I wrote the scriptures down that I thought of, and I left it alone for a couple of months until the song kind of came to fruition later,” said Hopkins.

Since “nothing had really come up” for an original song for the recording project, Hopkins decided she was going to try to write “Clothed.”

“I just started typing it out on my notes, trying to figure out the words to this song. I spent that day in class and the next day in class, and I wrote the whole thing in my notes app on my phone while people were chatting back and forth,” said Hopkins. 

The next week, Hopkins played the drafted song for Smith. He said “there was so much potential from the very beginning,” and suggested that it be added to the project. 

“He had a couple of ideas to try and refine it a little bit, and we just kind of verbally processed through the song together and figured out what was the goal of the song and what was the thing we really wanted to focus on,” said Hopkins. “[Smith] was like, ‘I think this would be really good for a recording project if you're willing to share it with the group. So, I kind of built up the courage, and I shared it with [the band], and they loved it.” 

“It wasn't long after that we played it for the band, and they were just in love with it, but we had to refine it a little more. So we're in rehearsal, we got out a big whiteboard, and we're writing down lyrics. ‘What's another way we can do this phrase’ or those kinds of things,” explained Smith. “We spent several weeks just tracking the song in our rehearsals and then several weeks into the summer creating some final mixes until we felt like we got it just right so we could release it on Spotify and YouTube. Then, we debuted it at our student-led night of worship back in the spring on campus, where all of our worship bands come together.” 

A reminder of God’s provision

Lampsato was invited to lead worship at Cliff Temple Baptist Church in Dallas in April, where Hopkins first led “Clothed.” Prior, in February, Tom Tillman, director of Music & Worship at Texas Baptists, extended the invitation for the band to lead worship at the Texas Baptists Annual Meeting. 

Tillman heard “Clothed” at Cliff Temple and spoke highly of the song, so Smith was confident it had to be included in their setlist for Annual Meeting. 

“Tom just fell in love with it. He was like ‘This is incredible!’ So when we got asked to lead at the meeting in Waco, we were like, ‘We've got to do ‘Clothed,’” said Smith. “That's our song, nobody else is going to do it [and] we know Tom's a big supporter of it.” 

Hopkins said she was “excited and touched by people’s engagement” with her song at Annual Meeting. 

“I never expected people to enjoy it this much or relate to it this much. You know, you're your own worst critic, and so I didn't ever expect it to get the exposure that it got. I just expected it to be Lampsato’s recording song and then move on from there. But people just really grabbed on to it, and I was shocked,” said Hopkins. 

Hopkins said she is “so glad that the Spirit is working through that song,” and she’s “impressed with how God is using it” because it was “the Spirit who gifted [her] with the song.” 

“I tell everyone that it was not me who wrote that song. I've never written the song before, so I'm pretty convinced that it wasn't me who pulled this song out. I'm pretty convinced that it was just the Holy Spirit speaking through the scriptures to me and giving me those words,” said Hopkins. 

Tillman said Annual Meeting attendees were “obviously really moved by the song,” as he received positive feedback after Hopkins led the song. 

“It was a proud moment for me since this was the year Hannah had received the Prestidge music scholarship that helps worship studies majors at Baptist universities prepare for leading in the church,” said Tillman.

Smith said the reception and feedback from attendees who connected with “Clothed” is “one of the highlights of [the song’s] existence.”

“We heard so much positive feedback the entire time we were [in Waco] … We kept hearing, ‘Oh, we just love ‘Clothed,’” said Smith. “[On] our Instagram and Facebook, we keep seeing people talk about it, and so we’ve really seen the song kind of explode a little bit. We're over a thousand streams on YouTube and Spotify, and so we're really excited.” 

Hopkins said despite “talk of publishing the song,” her heart for “Clothed” is that the Lord would use it to touch people’s lives. 

“[“Clothed”] is continuing to reach people every single day, and that's just honestly the only goal. I didn't write it for it to be this huge thing, that's honestly just a sidebar,” said Hopkins. “[But] I'm really happy with the way that we have recorded it and the way we've done it. I know that it's been utilized on the campus a lot since we released it. It's been led in a lot of worship services, and I think that's honestly our main goal for it is just to have it be our song, a song of worship to everybody who enjoys it.” 

Hopkins’ hope is that “Clothed” would serve as a reminder of “God’s provision for us and how he keeps his promises from the very beginning.” 

“That's the reminder that I wanted to give through “Clothed” was God's provision for us [and] how we don't need to worry about anything because he is going to provide for our physical needs, he's going to provide for our spiritual needs and he has since the beginning of time, and he hasn't failed to do that yet and he won't,” said Hopkins. 

Smith said he hopes the song communicates the “unbelievable message of the gospel” and shows that “God is still inspiring creative people.”

“Worship music can be so controversial, and we're always talking about ‘Pop music gets new, popular music gets old,’ but, you know, the scriptures say sing a new song. So, to let people know that God is still inspiring people of all ages, of all genders, to write for his glory, I would love for people to take that away,” said Smith. 

He said it is a “culmination as a professor” to see students like Hopkins write and sing a song like “Clothed.” He said the song’s creation shows the fruit of Texas Baptists’ investment in the program. 

“It just shows me that they get it, that they've digested the totality of what we're talking about. That worship is more than just writing about feelings or emotions, then all that is accomplished together,” said Smith. “So, I hope people … realize that that's going on, especially sharing it at something like the Texas Baptists meeting where those people invest in our school, they invest spiritually, they invest monetarily, and just to let those people know that that investment is working, that people are learning the gospel and is being proclaimed through our program.” 

Hopkins said her Lampsato bandmates were a “very integral part of making this song” and of her “journey as a worship leader.”

“If I had to [summarize] what Lampsato is into one sentence, it's really just a family of believers with a common goal of leading God's people into worship, and I think that it's a really special thing to be a part of,” said Hopkins. “To get to do that is such a privilege.” 

You can stream “Clothed” on Spotify and YouTube.