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.
“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.