Highlights from my interview with Chris Tomlin
Back in the summer I sat down with my friend Chris Tomlin, singer, songwriter, worship leader and pastor at Passion City Church. You can listen to that interview here or better yet, download from iTunes for Free.
Here are some highlights from the interview with Chris, as captured by Brian Dodd originally in this post he did.
- “We’re trying to navigate who’s in our church…Who’s at the core.”
- “The church is not a physical building. The church is people.”
- “It’s (leading worship) serious business because you’re dealing with people.”
- “I’m trying to write the songs for the church. I’m not trying to write the next radio hit.”
- “From cribs to the end of life we want one central theme in this church, the glory of Jesus Christ.”
- “It’s the greatest mystery I’ve ever known.” – Paul McCartney on song writing.
- “At the end of the day I am trying to write a response to God.”
- “He (Louie Giglio) started building me up and believing in me, mentoring me…Everyone needs someone who believes in you.”
- “The poorer you are, the richer in faith.”
- “The biggest thing in planting a church is to listen…listen more than you talk…Leading with humility.”
- “God gives different people different influence at different times.”
- “What is going to change the world is a few. The few people will live and die for it.”
- “When you’re becoming a band mate, you’re hiring a friend more than a musician.”
- “Anyone who does leadership…. it’s so tough because you make decisions that affect a lot of people…Anyone who has a sense of care and compassion carries that.”
- “It’s good that the pastor does not see the worship time as a warm-up for his message.”
- “He (Giglio) is completely engaged with us.”
- “When you get done (with your worship set), it’s not a time to sit in the green room.”
- “Louie makes edits to what I’m thinking all the time.”
- “At the end of the day, the pastor is the lead worshiper of the church. As a musician you have to put yourself under that.”
- “You’re not going to change the church past where the pastor thinks it ought to go.”
- “Will you give me simple songs God that people can sing?”
- “Songwriting is not a weird or magical thing. It takes work and we take it very seriously. You don’t just sit down at a piano and start playing. You have to work at it. Same thing with writing songs.”
- “I always pray that the Presence of God on these songs is what will connect with people.”
- “You don’t just cruise through life by yourself. You have to have people all along the way that God has placed in your life to take you to the next step and help you understand what God has wired you to do.”
You can follow Chris on Twitter.
And I can’t wait for the new Passion 2012 Live Album that will release in March. If you were at Passion 2012 earlier this month, you had the chance to sing the songs that Chris, Christy Nockels, Matt Redman, Kristian Stanfill, and the rest of the Passion crew have written for the global Church and will soon be available to all.
