Just one month after the passing of beloved worship songwriter Brian Doerksen, his first posthumous song has arrived ahead of his final album. And all it begins with a Whisper.
“Whisper,” the first song from Doerksen’s forthcoming final album, is available now, offering listeners the first glimpse of a collection of music Brian had already written and recorded before his passing. The full-length posthumous album is set to arrive October 2.
For a songwriter who spent decades giving the Church songs like “Refiner’s Fire,” “Light the Fire Again,” “Come Now Is the Time to Worship,” “Faithful One,” “Hope of the Nations” and “Today (As For Me and My House),”there is something particularly moving about knowing there are still songs left for us to hear.
Brian’s team acknowledged just how tender releasing this music feels so soon after his death.
“One month after Brian’s passing, releasing new music feels deeply tender,” they shared in to us in announcing the song. “We know this moment will be received in many different ways. Through tears, memories, gratitude, comfort, and perhaps simply a quiet pause to listen.”
But this isn’t a collection assembled after the fact. These songs were already Brian’s. He intended for them to be heard.
“These songs were already part of Brian’s journey. He wrote them, recorded them, and gave them to the world. Today, we have the privilege of opening the door and letting one of those songs speak again.”
And the fact that the first song is called “Whisper” feels almost impossibly appropriate.
Brian spent a lifetime writing worship music that encouraged people to listen. To God, to each other, and to those quiet places within ourselves that can so easily be drowned out by everything else.
As his team beautifully put it, sometimes the things that matter most aren’t shouted.
“Sometimes they arrive softly.
Sometimes they come quietly.
Sometimes they come as a whisper.”
Doerksen was one of the defining songwriters of the Vineyard worship movement and helped shape the language of congregational worship throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. His songs traveled far beyond Vineyard churches, crossing denominations, countries and generations.
Following his passing, Vineyard Worship remembered him as “one of the fathers of Vineyard Worship,” adding that through his “songs, leadership and friendship, he helped shape worship in the Vineyard and, far beyond that, the worship of the global Church.”
It isn’t simply another release in a decades-long career. It is an opportunity to hear something new from an artist whose story we thought had already reached its final note.
There will undoubtedly be tears attached to these songs, but for the millions who knew Brian primarily through his music, this final collection also offers a gift: a little more time with him.
“Whisper” is available now, with Brian Doerksen’s final posthumous full-length album arriving October 2.
