Love to Tell the Story: Artists Release New Albums, Enter Literary Territory
By Christa A. Banister, senior music editor, gmclife.com
On the band’s upcoming album, Until the Whole World Hears, Casting Crowns gets back to the basics of faith, namely the importance of having a relationship with Jesus.
Although his goal is to “make as many albums as U2 has,” Casting Crowns frontman Mark Hall isn’t interesting in simply making music for music’s sake. In fact, if the multi-tasking artist/youth pastor has anything to say about it, he’ll never write a song that draws too much attention to itself musically.
“With our records, I’ve never really set out to a certain thing musically. Given that I’m a youth pastor, the music is the plate the meat is served on,” Hall says. “Sometimes I think there are some really great lyrics out there, but the message gets lost for that very reason. And when you’re in student ministry like we are, there’s an urgency to what we do. The message has to be there.”
Picking up from where they left off on 2007’s The Altar and the Door, Until the Whole World Hears, which hits store shelves on November 17, focuses on having that personal relationship with Jesus – the one that stands the test of time once you’ve left the comfortable confines of church and step out into the real world.
“On the last album we really dealt with the disconnect of who we are as believers and how we actually are at home, at work and how it seems so much easier to live for God when you’re at church because you’re surrounded by people who are like-minded,” Hall says. “They challenge us, and basically are our spiritual heroes. But those spiritual heroes don’t go home with us. So when you get home, it’s really just me and my own walk with Jesus. I can’t have my pastor’s walk with Jesus.”
And once someone’s walk with God kicks into high gear, Hall says that people will start “living their lives on purpose.”
“It just starts happening,” Hall says. “You may be able to motivate people into reaching the world for a good hour, but it's going to go away. In our culture, we've been trying to ‘shout them into shape,’ but that's just not going to happen. So this record is about once you start walking with God yourself, you're going to see the world how Jesus sees it. You're going to want to reach the world like He reaches it, and you're going to do it in His strength and not your own. Everything you do, you’ll do it until the whole world hears.”
Continuing the conversation sparked by the album, Hall also recently wrote a book, along with contributor Tim Luke titled Your Own Jesus: A God Insistent on Making it Personal (Zondervan).
“It walks through our songs with stories and sermon moments and investigates what it looks like to have your own friendship with God,” Hall says. “It blends perfect into the message of Until the Whole World Hears. The way I’m seeing what God is saying is that people don’t complete me. God completes me. So now I can pour into people. I think the reason that marriages struggle, that families struggle, that friendships struggle is because we’re walking into the relationship empty and expecting a person who is hurting to somehow fill us up and get us going. That’s a role only God can fill.”
For more information on Casting Crowns, check out www.castingcrowns.com.
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