Photo by Detavius Niblack
[ WM ] Really? How do you handle that? Do you have any advice?
[ Chris ] Well, you know, I kind of take it a little differently from time to time. It’ s hard for me when I see it; I get shook a little bit. We talk about this a lot in our culture. How to never let the room or the people or the atmosphere dictate how we lead. Because we feel called to serve as priests, who are up here helping serve people, making a connection with them and God.
We have one hand reached out to the audience and we’ ve got one hand upward toward heaven. That’ s sort of a symbol of what we feel like we’ re doing and if we’ re letting someone distract us, you know, maybe it was just a bad morning for them. Maybe they don’ t want to be like that. But if someone’ s look on their face were to dictate if we feel like our day’ s going good, then we’ re in a bad spot.
Truthfully, I do still have those moments where I’ m like,“ What’ s going on if he looks like that?” Other times, I kind of count it as a bit of a challenge and I’ m like,“ It’ s going to be my goal to look this guy in the eye, not from the place of having a stare-down, but from the place that he would truly see that I’ m trying to make a connection with him- because of how much I believe in what we’ re doing in encountering the presence of God”. You know, I think we always want to keep in mind too, that we’ re on the front lines heading into battle. Worship leaders would be put at the front of the lines in the Old Testament with horns in their hands – which is the craziest thing – what commander would place the musicians at the front of the army heading out to battle? Like, it didn’ t make sense to me for the longest time until I realized,“ Oh … it’ s because whoever made that decision must have been absolutely certain that God was going to give the victory putting worship leaders out in front of the people with the swords.”
If that’ s our role, to be heading into a battle, then I truly feel it’ s a reminder. People have been battling all week long. If they are coming in and their arms are crossed or their heart is a bit hardened, or they are jaded or I don’ t know what people have been through … I kind of count it as a privilege( I try to) to go to battle for them. To want to go to battle on their behalf. I want to communicate that,“ Whatever is going on in your heart, I want you to see how much I love encountering the presence of God and
how much there is to gain in the presence of God. If I can, I’ ll go ahead of you and do this.”
[ WM ] That’ s powerful! Changing gears a bit, I’ ve been listening to the Evidence album from the Elevation Collective. Can you give me an overview of the goals or thought process going into this album?
[ Chris ] Sure. For starters, our church is very multi-ethnic. We have become increasingly so over the years we’ ve been around. I would say, in the last three to four years, we’ ve been more rapidly growing in diversity as a church. So, like anything, we’ re always analyzing,“ How can we better serve this?” Last summer, I had an idea about getting some of our friends and gospelstyle artists to record some of our songs. Israel Houghton is kind of like a cousin to our church. We’ ve had him in several times. We had the idea for Israel to just re-imagine some of our songs and have other artists sing on them. To me, it was the most fun idea ever!
We immediately hollered at Israel. Again, he’ s in maybe once every couple of months with our church and he’ s very familiar with what is normal for our weekend experience. He hopped all over the idea. He loved it because it
26 April 2018 WorshipMusician. com