Casting Crowns to play after Rockies’ game

Cast­ing Crowns will play at Coors Field on Sun­day after the Rock­ies host the Los Ange­les Dodgers at 1 p.m. Pho­to cour­tesy of Prov­i­dent Label Group

Are you hav­ing trou­ble con­nect­ing with you kids, espe­cial­ly now with all the peer pres­sure they are con­fronting as a new school year starts? Want an easy way to get in their good graces while putting them in good graces? Grab some tick­ets to Sunday’s Rock­ies game against the Dodgers.

Along with host­ing Los Ange­les, the Rock­ies are once again putting on Faith Day with Gram­my Award-win­ning band Cast­ing Crowns, which will enter­tain the crowd after the game. Faith Day also might bring the Rox some good kar­ma as they try to break a 17-game los­ing streak on Sun­days – a mod­ern day record.

While Cast­ing Crowns has gar­nered recog­ni­tion for its music, the band has not lost sight of its orig­i­nal pur­pose – youth min­istry.

All of our songs come from our min­istry in a local church south of Atlanta,” said Mark Hall, the front­man for the band “All the songs start out because of our Bible study or what is hap­pen­ing with our com­mu­ni­ty.”

The band’s newest CD, “Come to the Well,” which will be released Oct. 18, is a good exam­ple of that phi­los­o­phy.

Pho­to cour­tesy of Prov­i­dent Label Group

We were study­ing the woman at the well, John 4,” Hall said. “The woman comes to the well dur­ing the hottest part of the day to stay away from the peo­ple that know the things that she has done. There she’s talk­ing to Jesus about well water vs. Jesus water. And she just doesn’t get it — that well water will leave you thirsty but not water from Jesus. She’s stand­ing by a hole in the ground and talk­ing to the liv­ing well.

We think we have our life all fig­ured out. We know where we are going and how to get there and we just need Jesus to bless it and sprin­kle some Jesus dust on it,” Hall explained. “Well, every­thing in this life dries up, rela­tion­ships dry up. Mar­riages – Hey, I’m mar­ried to the most amaz­ing woman, but she doesn’t fill me. Jesus fills me so I don’t suck the life out of her or my friends. Jesus fills us so we can fill their lives.

I think about all the wells we draw from and what it would be like if we drew from him first. Jesus is not the end but the begin­ning”

If your young sports fan is strug­gling with find­ing him­self dur­ing the dif­fi­cult teen years then the band’s cur­rent release “Coura­geous” is a les­son for men to start tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty.

‘Coura­geous’ comes from teach­ing our high school guys that they have to step up,” Hall said. “A lot of them are pas­sion­ate about things that don’t mat­ter. In the Bible there are two Adams, the first Adam was stand­ing next to Eve while the ser­pent was talk­ing to her. He did­n’t step up. He was a pas­sive man. … Jesus, the sec­ond Adam, stepped on the serpent’s head. We need men to step up and be aggres­sive …. Instead of being war­riors we are watch­ers.”

Sounds like a theme song for the Promise Keep­ers or the Mil­lion Man March

Anoth­er song straight out of the Bible is “Spir­it Wind,” a song Hall wrote while in col­lege.

Pas­tor Randy was an old coun­try preach­er, he liked to lay it down,” Hall said. “He was teach­ing on Ezekiel and the val­ley of dry bones. And I looked around at the con­gre­ga­tion and I thought, ‘We are a val­ley of dry bones. I don’t know what we were before, but nothing’s hap­pen­ing now.’”

Hall recruit­ed the ser­vices of Steven Cur­tis Chap­man for “So Far to Find You.” And what a per­fect fit as the song is about Hall’s adopt­ed daugh­ter Hope. Chap­man and his wife are founders of the char­i­ty Show Hope that helps fam­i­lies adopt chil­dren.

We had just adopt­ed this lit­tle girl from Chi­na and she had nev­er seen a man before… For the first two weeks she wouldn’t let me hold her, and I was whin­ing to God: We spent all this mon­ey and time – about 3.5 years- and how that I had come so far to find her. Well God said, ‘How does it feel?’ It made me real­ize how much God has done for us and how hurt he is when we don’t come to him and trust him.”

It was not the first time Chap­man and Hall have hooked up. Chap­man is one of the per­sons respon­si­ble for Cast­ing Crowns’ world­wide name recog­ni­tion.

In 2003, the church band put out a CD and gave it out at the school. While one of the kids was at a bas­ket­ball camp he hand­ed the CD to Mark Miller of Sawyer Brown. (Note: Miller pro­duced Cast­ing Crown’s newest CD.) To make a long sto­ry short, Miller went on vaca­tion with Chap­man and the next thing the two musi­cians called Hall.

It was crazy,” Hall said. “I get this phone call from these guys when they are at the beach …”

And as they say: the rest is his­to­ry – a his­to­ry rich with acco­lades — three RIAA plat­inum albums, two plat­inum DVDs, two gold albums and a gold DVD, a Gram­my Award, 20-plus Dove Awards and an Amer­i­can Music Award.

But all of the band’s sev­en mem­bers remain root­ed in their orig­i­nal call­ing: “We’re still youth pas­tors.”

So for the price of a Rock­ies’ game, maybe you will find just the right for­mu­la to break down that wall your teen has erect­ed.

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