Kendall Payne

I spent the week at the National Pastors’ Convention this week and it was wonderful. It’s been awesome. There have been great speakers (including Will Willimon, Rob Bell, and Bill Hybels) and some great musicians (Tommy Walker, Ken Medema, Sons of Korah). One artist who struck my fancy was Kendall Payne. She is a wonderful artist. She has this beautiful song called “Fail” that’s actually a love song. She shared how in her first week of marriage her husband informed her that there is a “proper” way to put the toilet paper on the roll. She had never heard such a rule. After he showed her she broke into tears and she realized that she would fail him in thousands of ways and he would fail her in thousands of ways. And later she wrote “Fail.” It’s beautiful and honest. It’s a real love song—one that doesn’t focus on a utopian view of love that can’t be maintained, but instead acknowledges that we fail one another ‘again and again and again’ but that we can still persist together despite those failures. She also played a beautiful song called “that’s why there’s grace” which is the title album of her newest CD. I recommend that one too. She also debuted a song, which was wonderful. I’m just sad it was a debut because that meant I couldn’t get it on one of her CDs, but I’d encourage you to keep an eye out for her and for it….the title is something like “he could ask the same of us”.