Lyrics Page
The Church I Grew Up In
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Sep 24, 2026 updated
Hymns (Live) album
Verified editorial review
Song Meaning
Tasha Cobbs Leonard doesn't sing this track so much as narrate it, opening with a specific memory: "when I was ten years old, my father was called to lead a ministry, to start a church... in a little small town, maybe 450 people." The building they were given had no bathrooms, no windows, no offices — her own mother said tear it down.
What follows is a description of watching her father rebuild it by hand, a carpenter installing doors and windows while the congregation of seven adults and seven children met inside anyway. Zechariah 4:10 asks "who has despised the day of small things?" — a question this story answers before it's even posed, since the whole account is about a promise seen in a building most people had already written off.
The most specific image in the track isn't the construction — it's her father praying on the floor, "clothed over his head," while she watched as a child. "Much is taught, but most is caught," she says, naming the moment she started catching intercession rather than just hearing about it. Acts 2:42 describes the earliest church devoting itself to prayer and fellowship in exactly that kind of small, unglamorous gathering — the shape this testimony insists God still shows up in.
Lyrics Verified by Editorial Team
When I was ten years old, my father was called to lead a ministry, to start a church. And we started in a little small town. It probably was, how many people live in Scriven? Maybe 450. Not 450 thousand. 450 people okay
And there was this building. We were in an organization, and they gave him this building. That when we pulled up. My mother's kind of petty y'all. She was pretty much like, oh, yeah, they can tear this down. Yes this is, we need to go back and Jessup
But my father, he looked at this dilapidated building. It didn't have bathrooms, it didn't have offices, no windows. He looked at it and he saw a promise, he saw a vision. And I remember coming home every day from school. They would reroute us coming home from school and send people to come pick us up from school and drive us over this Scriven for months
For months we would do this, and we would do our school work. My father was a carpenter, and we would do our schoolwork as they would build this church from nothing, making it into a sanctuary. And I remember him building the doors, installing windows, and creating a bathroom, creating a fellowship hall. The sanctuary is at about 50 people, maybe. And I remember him, some days we were coming in from school when my father had, like he would wear, like, robes or blankets over his head, and he would be laying in the floor, praying in the floor with a robe of clothes
He would be clothed over his head, praying for the power of God to meet his people. We started with seven, seven adults and seven children. And I remember us being in Bible study and people would be delivered and set free. We would come in and we have moments of prayer with seven people, that God would you create something that changes lives in this room. And again, as a ten-year-old girl, I'm watching because my father, Bishop Murphy, tell us all the time that much is taught, but most is caught
And I was catching intercession. I was catching how to invoke the presence of God and how to invoke a move of God. That's the church I grew up in. And God's church is still alive today. I said, God's church is still alive today
The miracles I saw then, it gave me the faith to believe in the miracles that God is doing now. God's church is still alive. This song is called The Church I Grew Up In