The Foundry Story

What is the Foundry?  The Foundry is a historic brick building located less than five minutes from downtown Nashville TN.  It actually was the original foundry where metal parts were made for Marathon Motorcars factory (of 1912), which now houses an arts community situated just down the street from the Foundry.
 
So what makes the Foundry so special? Aesthetically, it is a very cool, artsy and earthy building that was renovated into a coffeehouse/music venue.  But what real makes this facility so remarkable is that God has been working in this old Foundry since 1993, forging and refining His people into useful pieces for His Kingdom.  This unlikely place has tons of history... His Story is in it!
 
The journey all started out of a men's Thursday night prayer meeting, made up of mostly musicians with a few business guys mixed in.  They gathered in an upper room with no furniture… just Bibles, candles, guitars and hand drums. These young “twenty somethings” were searching for what God had in store for their lives, and in this intimate and honest setting they became stirred and challenged by the revolutionary words of Jesus. As they stretched to follow His words they found that they were beginning to escape from their mostly self-serving life styles to venture into a life that included the poor.
 
One night they decided to take Jesus at His word and go and try to “minister to the least of these.” (See Matt. 25:31-46)  So they grabbed their guitars and bongos, some food and a van to pick up some homeless folks. With hot dogs, beans and coffee they served about a dozen lonely men. Then they all worshipped the Lord together - and something mysterious and eternal happened that night, something that has never stopped.  After experiencing this one obscure outreach on the “wrong side” of town, a vision was birthed of serving the poor and the lost with a specific purpose of “giving to those who cannot repay.”  (See Luke 14:12-14)
 
But the vision that was evolving and burning in these young men was two fold… the vision also included redeeming music and the arts and using these gifts for God's glory.  The young men began to see that God desired to use the combining of these two elements “creativity and compassion” for salvation and sanctification of men and for ushering in of the last day Harvest.  As downtown outreaches increased and expanded from homeless to nursing homes to prisons to tackling Nashville’s inner city, the vision developed into a non-profit ministry called Provision – it was simply about the “meeting needs.”  The Foundry became the home base for Provision International.
 
The Foundry opened as a coffeehouse where artists sang their songs, and at 10PM an all-night worship vigil began.  These days and experiences are beyond description.  God ambushed many people in this intimate and unusual setting.  During these Friday nights a type of “musical prayer” began to evolve which was an intensely individual and corporate experience.  The result of these divine encounters was that an extraordinary wave of compassion washed over multitudes of the poor and the lost starting with Nashville’s inner city and then into the nations!  Although in the early of the Foundry we experienced the Kingdom of Heaven touching earth, there is another wave coming... the big one is still coming!
 
As we gave ourselves to serving the poor, the Lord began to give us songs... many songs.  These simple songs became somewhat an underground movement, but there they been waiting and fermenting for such a time is this.  These songs began to touch our hearts and change our lives.  They became fuel to our fire.  They became known simply as the Foundry Songs.  We hope they touch you as they have us.  It is a joy to share these with you! 

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