And If Our God Is For Us...
Chris Tomlin is an interesting enigma. With nine no. 1 songs and over three million album sales to his credit, he's one of the most successful artists in music. At the same time, he's one of the least known. Ask anyone about Chris Tomlin and only a few will tell you they know him well.
There's a reason for the subtle mystery. All the songs, including such anthems as "How Great is Our God", "Forever", and "Holy is the Lord", the sold out concert dates around the world and the millions in CD sales, have never been about elevating Chris Tomlin, but about worshiping God.
"I just love that God uses me," he says, "but my role isn't to grab as much attention as I possibly can, but to really point people to God. I don't spend my time thinking how to make myself more popular, so maybe that why I there's a bit of a mystery there."
When Tomlin stands in front of a throng of believers, it's his desire to disappear, to surrender to the Holy Spirit and help others release the concerns of the world and focus on worshipping the God who created them. He's excelled at that calling for more than a decade and at the very heart of his ministry is an arsenal of songs that have become anthems, sung by believers all over the globe. His last three albums Hello Love, See the Morning and Arriving have been certified Gold®, signifying sales of more than 500,000 units and Arriving has been certified Platinum® with sales over a million, truly impressive feats in an ailing music industry. On the CCLI charts, which measure the songs used in churches, Tomlin has five songs in the top ten and 15 in the top 100.
He adds to that musical arsenal with a potent new collection of songs on his seventh studio album And If Our God is For Us... "For the longest time I had a different title for the album," Tomlin shares. "At the end of the day though, I really came back to 'And If Our God Is For Us...' I just love that statement because if you really believe in God, everything is possible. Miracles can happen and all things are available to you no matter what you are going through. There's a scripture that tells you that God is for you and who can be against you. I love the hope that's in that statement."
When it came time to bring that statement to life through music, Tomlin didn't stray far from home. This is the first album he's recorded in his own White Cabin Studio, located just down the hill from his house outside Atlanta. He again chose to work with long-time producer Ed Cash, but also recruited producer Dan Muckala, who has worked with Brandon Heath, the Backstreet Boys and The Afters, among others. "This is our fifth record together, so that's a pretty good history," he says of working with Cash. "God has used Ed in a massive way in my life and I didn't want to walk away from that, but I did want to take a new step. This is our 10th year, a decade of music, so I didn't just want to hit the cruise control and keep doing what we've always been doing. I wanted to push myself a bit."
The result is an album that is as lyrically substantive as people have come to expect from Tomlin, yet a little more musically adventurous. "I wanted something that would just explode through the speakers," Tomlin says. "When you hear the drums, it makes you want to move, but has the same heart of melody, same heart of worship. We didn't want to lose that. It's really cool because Dan had never done any worship music before, never produced any music written for a congregation. It was good that he could work with somebody in a different vein and let those worlds mix. Ed knocked it out of the park. He always does and Dan did as well. They approached it from a different place, but it's really great to work with both and I think people are going to really enjoy to hear this music because it has that fresh sound that you can only get when you kind of mix it up."
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