Chris Tomlin interview
10-08-2003
by Robin Parrish

Robin: Most people seem to know you by your songs. At least, more so than anything else. Can you give us an idea of how you got started as a writer and a worship leader?

Chris: To me, it's really cool that my songs preceed me. You know, everybody wants to have an identity, but it's hilarious to me, going into a choir room and looking through what they're singing, and seeing "'Forever,' written by Michael W. Smith." (Laughs.) That's really humbling. (Laughs.) But seeing all these songs being used all over the world -- to me, it's big responsibility.

When you're writing songs for the church, you're not writing songs for you anyway. You're not writing songs to build your identity, you're writing songs to reveal the identity of God and build the Kingdom. So you know it's really happening when no one really knows that it's you, but they're using your songs all over the world. To go and see "We Fall Down" in every different language I can think of... To see "Forever" sung in Argentina and South America and Africa...

Does it trip you out?

It's unbelievable. Only the Holy Spirit is behind that, because there's no marketing plan that can do that. There's nobody that good! (Laughs.) The Holy Spirit, I think, really uses whatever he wants to lift up God's name all over the world. And if it's one of my songs, that's just awesome.

I started playing music as a little kid; my dad taught me how to play. I've always had a heart really sensitive to God, to do what he wanted me to do. I started out playing just little small things in my church. To see people really connect to God through my songs, I really loved that. I didn't know that was being a worship leader. It was about fifteen years ago, and there was no "Modern Worship movement," there was none of that going on. But I loved it because I could play and watch people connect to God. It wasn't just me playing songs on a stage with people listening. It was more than that.

So I started trying to cultivate that, and learn how to do that, and I got better and better at it. I was horrible at it at first, but I knew God had given me this calling to minister to people through music in this way. So I went to college and started leading worship there. That was at Texas A&M University, which has about 45,000 students. On Tuesday nights, they would have these groups of a few thousand people that would come out for this Bible study thing called "Breakaway." And that's still running strong today.

It was there that I met Louie Giglio, and we started traveling together and doing worship together. He had this idea called Passion, to specifically target the college generation, to call these students to a life of living for God's glory. We never set out to make records with Passion or anything like that, it just happened. They recorded it, people were interested in it, and when the first Passion record was released, it became the number one record in the nation. It was out-selling everything. There was no marketing, there was no radio play. So we were like, "Wow, God must be doing something amazing here, because we don't even know what we're doing." And now here we are today, and it's been like seven years or something.

And now there's a record label...

We started our own record label called Sixstepsrecords. It's our little family; it's real small. All the artists are from Passion. We partnered with Sparrow, because they really caught the vision of what we were doing. From the business side of things, it was a smart arrangement, because we knew they could help us create even more awareness of what we were doing. Sixsteps is just a simple family of artist/worshippers which includes David Crowder, Charlie Hall, and myself. We each have strong values, individually. I lead worship at my home church in Austin, Texas, when I'm home.

I remember reading a press release about you helping to plant a new church...

We just planted a new one, yeah. I was in Houston, helping plant a church. I'm home in Austin as much as I can be, which isn't that often, because of my travel schedule. And yet, as a record company, we're really new and small. But God has been using our songs all over the world, and that is just amazing.

Why is it called "Sixsteps"?

"Sixsteps" comes from II Samuel 6, where David was taking the Ark of the Covenant back to Jerusalem. The Ark was a symbol of the presence of God. And the Ark had been stolen by the Philistines during a war, and the Philistines didn't want it anymore. It was devastating the place; it was causing all kinds of havoc. Anybody who got close to it was killed, because there was such a presence of holiness. Even David's people -- they carried it on a cart, which wasn't right. God had always told Moses to carry it on poles. And now they were carrying it on a cart. So everybody who got close to it was killed, because they weren't doing what God told them to do.

Finally, they leave it at this guy's house for a while. And his house is completely blessed, everything's going great for him. Eventually, David's like, "This Ark is the presence of God, we've got to have it back in the City of God." So they go down to get it, and David takes thirty thousand men to go get this Ark that's about the size of a chest. They're that in awe of it. So David chooses these guys to pick it up. Can you imagine, in reality, being one of these guys who's chosen to pick it up? All these guys have ever heard is the story of how the last people to touch the Ark were killed.

But they put it on polls and they picked it up, and the Bible says when they had taken six steps, they set it down, and celebrated and had a worship service. They were thanking God they were still alive, after just six steps. So Sixstepsrecords is our way of saying that we don't ever want to go too far in life without thanking God for his mercy, that we're still breathing, and that even in the midst of his holiness and our sinfulness, his mercy still covers us, and that his presence is still with us.

What do you draw inspiration from for your songs? What do you like to read about, talk about, think about...?

I love to read. I read all the time. I love stories about ordinary men doing extraordinary things. I love biographies. I've read several biographies lately, including one about John Adams that was amazing. I didn't know much about that guy before, aside from him being president and one of the founding fathers. I read this one book that's all about what happened in this one month of April, 1865, when these men saved America and charted the course of who we are. I really get inspired by these stories of incredible men who rose to different occasions. Real people doing real things that make a difference.

But in writing songs of worship, I find that it's often a response. It's a response to God when you're awakened to something in your life again -- when you're awakened to God, to his hope, to mercy, to the cross. You respond to that, and the songs just start coming. Mostly that's inspired by scripture, just seeing something like Psalm 136, where after every line it says, "His love endures forever." I thought that was really interesting how it was intentionally repeated line after line, and I wanted to capture that, so "Forever" came out of that. In Revelation 4, it says, "the elders fall down before him, they lay their crowns. And day and night, they never stop saying, 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty who was and is and is to come." So "We Fall Down" is just a real simple song that came out of that.

I co-write a lot of things. I once thought what an awesome word for God "famous" is, because everybody in our culture understands that word. They don't understand "holy," they don't understand "glory," they don't understand "worthy," they don't understand "mercy" or "grace." Those are church words to most people. But everybody knows "famous," because we live in an American Idol, Star Search, cheesy world. Everybody gets that, so I wanted to reclaim that word for God. And that's who he is. Psalm 19 says, "The heavens declare the glory of God." There's not anywhere you can go -- telescopes won't even reach that far, where the heavens are not pouring forth the greatness of God, day and night. All of creation tells of the greatness of God. All of the six billion people on this earth, and all who have ever lived and ever will live, will all one day confess Jesus Christ is Lord. Can you imagine every person that's ever breathed saying, "Jesus Christ is Lord"? That's fame in the greatest sense! The Bible so many times talks about the indellible fame, the reknown of God in all the world. So that's what inspired the song "Famous One."

Louie Giglio and I write songs together. He gave me a little piece out of his journal that said, "All of you is more than enough for all of me" -- it was scribbled down with all of these things about God. So I just sat down with my guitar and was looking at that... You know, Psalm 115 says, "Not to us, but to your name be the glory," and I thought, that's exactly what we're trying to say here again, but say it in another way. We're always trying to say that with Passion, and everything in our music: "Hey, let's get past ourselves and realize that the world revolves around God, that he doesn't revolve around us, and that we revolve around him." And I loved how that said that in Psalm 115, so I started thinking about how I could shape that so that people could actually sing it. Even the person who's tone deaf, who has no rhythm whatsoever and can't sing anything, who doesn't know anything about melody or chord changes -- how could I create a moment for them? And I don't hit it all the time, but I try to create a moment where they can sing it out and it's a memorable melody.

I think that's why your songs seem to catch on so much, because they're--

Simple!

I wouldn't describe them as simple. I just think they're very memorable. You hear it once and you've got it. They're fun to sing along to.

And I love that people get so much enjoyment out of them! People always say, "What's better, the lyric or the melody?" And I'm like, "You cannot separate them." Absolutely not. I don't care how great your lyric is, if you don't have a great melody, no one's going to remember it, and no one's going to sing it. It's not going to last. "Amazing Grace" would not be "Amazing Grace" without that melody. That song has lasted because it says a great, profound thing, and it has a great melody that gets inside people's minds. Because sermons -- how many sermons have you heard that you can quote from right now? You can't. But you can quote from all kinds of songs, because they have melodies that go with them. Melody is so important, it's such a big deal. So I try to create that, I try to think about how I can do that -- about how I can make it so it's singable by anybody.

Another thing I've noticed about your songs is that... A lot of people will write songs about God -- "God is this, God is that" -- but most if not all of your songs are written to God. "You are this..." Is that intentional?

There are two ways of looking at songs when you're writing about God -- you can write vertically and you can write horizontally. I try to write both, but most of it is vertical. There's a sense of talking to God, because that's where the real intimate worship experience comes from. You want to get personal, you want to sing to you. You wouldn't talk to your wife and call her by her last name. So we try to write songs in the mindset of how people are going to respond to them. Do we want people to present God as big as we possibly can? Yeah, I want people to see a big God.

Why is that?

Because when people see a big God in relation to our lives, when their needs are met that way -- not when we're just like, "help me, help me, help me!" -- when we see God as real big, things start lining up. Like, "God is in control. He is huge. And I want to know that God. That's who I want to put my trust in." So I try to stay away from being real self-centered in my songwriting. Maybe that's what you hear when it's not a lot about me, but it's a lot about God. When you put God as big as you can, that's applicable to everybody in the world -- whether they like it or not, whether they know it or not! (Laughs.) Because God is truth, and Jesus is truth.

I love how animated and excited you get in talking about this stuff. I can tell you love what you do.

Oh yeah! I could talk all day.

Okay, last question. What is God teaching you lately?

Numerous things. One thing is that he continues to teach me about prayer. I just feel like I'm horrible at it; I feel like there are so many things about praying -- that's where the inner life comes from, is having that relationship, that communion with him in that way. Jesus said, "When you pray, go in your closet. Shut your closet." And I don't think he was talking about a physical closet, but just a space where you can be with no distractions and it's quiet. I think great leaders and people who have great power, are people who have really cultivated a lifestyle of being quiet and listening. And I want to be that more -- I want to be a better listener of God. I want to learn how to pray when I'm working out, when I'm running, when I'm playing golf. I want to learn how to pray not just in a specific, "quiet time" -- I want my first option, my first instinct in any situation, every day, to always be prayer. Paul said to pray without ceasing; I don't think he meant all day long, have your head bowed and your eyes closed. I think he was talking about a lifestyle of conversation with God. I want to learn more about that, because I think the great men of the faith understood that.