Home By Sunday

About two years ago, an unexpected opportunity came along. A friend who worked at a record label in Nashville approached me and some of the guys I make documentaries with about doing a project for a band called Casting Crowns.

Okay, obviously I was pumped. This was a big deal and a great career opportunity.

If I’m honest, I was also really nervous. Sure, there was all the requisite self-doubt about not being good enough to work on a project this big, but mostly what I was anxious about was what it was going to be like to work with a bunch of famous Christian musicians.

Casting Crowns has won tons of awards including a Grammy and are one of the most successful acts in Christian Music history. Perhaps most impressively they were the soundtrack to my youth group and church camps growing up (along with DC Talk, Jars of Clay, Mercy Me, and Third Day—all of whom, if I’m being really honest, kind of blurred together to me before this project.)

I had just come off of working on a documentary called Ends of the Earth—about a bunch of Papuan church leaders and missionary pilots working in really rugged areas to share Christ’s love. These people were humble, committed, and quietly doing really amazing work. Now, I was going to have to work with some Christian rock stars driving around in fancy buses from arena to arena.

The label had a vision for what they thought the project could look like. They wanted us to follow the band on a multi-city tour and capture the challenges of going on the road as musicians. I showed up to the first concert like a bumpkin with really no idea what to expect. The whole world of the music industry was totally foreign to me. We got to the back of the arena and I found the head of security to get our all-access passes. I then stepped backstage and into a whole new world—crews running around getting stages built, instruments and cases being unloaded, sound checks going off, trucks beeping, power tools whirring, logistics being shouted, merchandise tables getting set up, bands rushing around. It was a whirlwind.

I stood there with my jaw hanging open as this hive of activity unfolded around me.

“Are you Chris?”

I was pulled from my daze to see a blonde woman who seemed to be running everything, standing in front of me.

“Uh yes,” I said, glancing at my nametag to make sure.

“I’m Melanie Hall, VP of Operations for Casting Crowns—and Mark Hall’s wife.”

(Mark is the lead singer of Crowns.)

“Come with me, we need to chat.”

And she vanished off into the flurry of activity. I jogged to keep up with her.

“So you are the film crew who are here to do a documentary about us?”

“I, uh, well, yes ma’am.”

Melanie seemed like the kind of person I should say “yes ma’am” to. She wasn’t what I had envisioned a famous musician’s wife being like. She was more like an ER nurse, summer camp director, elementary school principal, pastor’s wife, and mom all rolled up in one. She commanded authority not because she was mean or strict, but because she seemed like the most competent person in the room—any room … and you kind of wanted to do what she said so she would either give you a hug, a smile, or a gold-star sticker.

Melanie took me and the other two guys I was with to an empty conference room and started asking us questions about who we were and what our vision for the project was.

“Oh great,” I thought. “She is about to discover we are not a real Hollywood film crew, call Provident, and get us fired.”

I was tempted to puff myself up and try to frame everything in a way that made us seem bigger and more important, but instead, I decided to just be honest—mostly because whatever puffing I might do would still pale in comparison to this band’s successes.

“Six months ago, I was working at a missionary organization,” I said. “Before that, I lived overseas and worked with other missionaries as a writer. I’ve done some documentary film projects I’m proud of, but they’re probably not on the scale of what you guys have experience with. I really just want what I do to make a difference in people’s lives by telling stories that give them a glimpse of how much God loves them.”

Instead of yelling at me, Melanie smiled and seemed to visibly relax.

“I was hoping to hear something like that,” she said. “I’d like to tell you a little bit about who we are …”

As we talked, Melanie realized we weren’t some big film crew coming in to manufacture drama. We were just a few guys with a little skill and experience who wanted our work to mean something. And as I listened to her, I discovered this is exactly who Casting Crowns were too—well, except they are musicians and not filmmakers … and they are guys and girls … and they are much more well-known, and experienced, and …. but you get what I am saying.

The point is, they are a group of people who have been given gifts that they want to use in a way that draws people closer to God.

And the fame and the success haven’t gotten in the way of that.

Mark is a youth pastor. I mean really. He is more of a youth pastor than he is a successful musician. And I would imagine if you tracked his energy week-to-week you would find the majority of it goes into pouring into the kids in his youth group. And it’s been that way for the past 20 years. (He actually has been a youth pastor for closer to 35 years.) The other band members are all from the same church (mostly) and actively serve there. They all see what they do in their church as their primary work. The music stuff just flows out of that.

Touring with them felt more like touring with a traveling ministry than what I had thought rock band life would be.

They eat cafeteria food together. They homeschool their kids in buses. They do Bible studies as a band. Mark and Melanie take other bands and artists under their wings and show them how to serve God as musicians in a way that is both effective and humble. Before each concert, they spread out through the arena and pray over the people who will be there. They pray for the local churches, the pastors, the leaders, and the people who are hurting. Every single time.

And then on Saturday night, regardless of where they are in the country, they point their busses back to First Baptist Church Eagle’s Landing in McDonough, Georgia so they can be there to lead worship Sunday morning and so Mark can hear from junior high kids about how their weekends went. And they are there in that church from Sunday until Wednesday night after youth group, when they hit the road again. And that’s the way it’s been for two decades now.

And Mark and Melanie will tell you that is the secret to why their music has touched so many lives. It’s not because they are the best musicians—it’s because they are listening to the stories of how God is moving in their community and sharing it with the world. That is what makes it so powerful.

I’ve never been more wrong going into a project—and I’m so excited to share their stories with you.

Home By Sunday: The Casting Crowns Story is out in theaters on November 30th. CastingCrownsMovie.com

I hope it blesses you as much as it has me.