Pat Barrett is wearing a denim jacket. He knows you’ve noticed.
“We project the person we want people to see,” he says. “I mean, I’m wearing a denim jacket right now because I want you to think I’m cool.”
He laughs. But the joke lands somewhere real — because Barrett, who co-wrote “Good Good Father” and “Build My Life” and has spent years as one of the most recognizable voices in modern church music, has been thinking seriously about the gap between the version of yourself you perform and the one you actually are. And about why that gap tends to get wider, not smaller, inside a worship service.
“There’s a version of me that I’ve brought into church rooms before,” he says. “The one that feels safe. The one that’s acceptable. But I’ve also had these moments thinking, ‘Why does it feel inappropriate to bring my actual thoughts and emotions into worship?'”
For Barrett, the problem isn’t stylistic. Certain feelings get welcomed into a Sunday service: joy, surrender, confidence. Others — confusion, fear, doubt — get quietly discouraged. The Psalms rage, groan and lament. They ask questions that don’t resolve. Modern worship often skips straight to the resolution, and Barrett thinks that disconnect is worth taking seriously.
“Limiting the full expression of devotion to God to one kind of thing is, at best, unhelpful — and at worst, it encourages hiding,” he says. “I’ve felt that. I’ve done that. I’ve walked into a worship set thinking, ‘OK, I guess I’m supposed to feel this way,’ even though I don’t.”
He’s aware of the irony in all of this — a successful worship leader critiquing the performance of worship. Underneath the self-deprecation is a genuine reckoning with how easily performance creeps into spiritual spaces, and how often churches unintentionally reward it. Barrett points to Jesus’s warnings about public religion — don’t make your fasting obvious, don’t show off when you pray, don’t perform your holiness. “That’s a very countercultural invitation — just be with God. That’s enough.”
For worship leaders specifically, his advice is blunt: let what you do on stage be 1% of what you experience with God the rest of the week.
“Otherwise, you’ll be standing on a platform sharing 100% of your God moment — and it’s the only one you’ve had all week.”
His new album Burn In Us, a Worship Together Sessions record released this week, is Barrett’s attempt to put this into practice. Recorded live at Gnome Studios in Nashville — stripped-back arrangements, no production gloss, a band simply in a room — it reimagines songs from his 2025 album I’ve Got A Fire with the simplicity of a small church service. Barrett grew up in one of those small churches. He hasn’t shaken it.
“I think simplicity had something to do with it,” he says. “These recordings remind me of that kind of offering. It was so powerful to me growing up, and it’s still powerful for me today.”
Powerful, in Barrett’s framework, doesn’t require polish. It requires honesty — songs about mystery, songs about doubt, songs that start in the tension and stay there rather than engineering their way to resolution.
“If you have a song about mystery, or feeling overwhelmed, or your family, or deep questions about faith — it’s weirdly inappropriate not to include those in worship,” he says. “We’ve made it so vertical, so tightly defined, that we’ve left out huge parts of the human experience.”
Some of his most serious spiritual practice isn’t musical at all. It’s noticing. “You’re in a room with two people, and then someone important walks in — and suddenly, you feel like they deserve more of your attention. Why did that happen? What does that say about what I value?”
Most churches don’t talk about that kind of work. Barrett thinks they should. Because if worship is supposed to shape people, it has to start somewhere true — not the version that’s polished enough to perform, but the one that’s harder to sing.
