In an unprecedented six-year span with nearly 4.5 million career album sales, a GRAMMY Award, an American Music Award, 23 Dove Awards and 8 chart-topping radio singles, Casting Crowns remains focused on discipleship through music. With lead singer and songwriter Mark Hall’s 18 years in youth ministry, the band’s message remains rooted in the student services he has led on a weekly basis since 2001, at Eagles Landing Baptist church near Atlanta. The songs start as messages for his 400 teenagers and their families. With boldly honest, hard-hitting lyrics, the band continues to challenge, strengthen and pour into the body of Christ, giving listeners a fresh, relevant perspective on loving God and loving people.
Living life with a kingdom focus, a reaching-out, loving-the-world-like-Jesus-does purpose – that’s the focus of the band’s fourth studio album titled Until The Whole World Hears. Millions of fans won’t be disappointed as these seven gifted musicians continue to speak truth into today’s culture through this new 12-song collection.
Hall says, “Our main purpose, above all else, is to know Him more.” It’s that unwavering desire and the intent of a personal friendship with Jesus that drives Casting Crowns and shapes its latest offering of message-centered songs into powerful tools for discipleship.
The title track on the album comes from a signature line in an e-mail from Roger Glidewell, Mark’s mentor in student ministry. Glidewell always closed his e-mails with the phrase, “Until the whole world hears.” Hall says, “Those simple words are a challenge to be intentional with the way we live our lives.” The lyrics were born out of John the Baptist’s life. “He was the voice crying out in the wilderness, eating grasshoppers, and speaking into the world about their sin. Speaking out in the wilderness is never popular but in the body of Christ, we’ve got to do it in love.” With a captivating rock style, “Until the Whole World Hears” also includes the voices of the congregation from Eagles Landing First Baptist Church, Hall’s home church.
“To Know You” encapsulates the Apostle Paul’s struggles and fears, and brings them down to a personal level for every believer. Steeped in Scripture, every line of the song is a declaration of total surrender. Hall explains, “In Romans 8:29, we’re told that God is conforming us into the image of His Son. His goal for my life is to make me like Jesus. To bring Him glory. Everything else is rubbish, Paul says, compared to knowing Him. And if my life goal is really to know Him and to honor Him, is He going to steer me off a cliff? No. Is this easy to say and hard to do? Yeah. But that doesn’t make it not true.”
The members of Casting Crowns each serve in student ministry in their local churches. “Our songs have always come from our ministry in the church,” Hall says. “They start as messages on Wednesday night, things we’re teaching our teenagers and their families. Our typical Wednesday night crowd is about 70% students and 30% parents. So we’re a family ministry and that comes out in the crowds who come to our concerts. You’ll see a six-year-old and a 60-year-old at a Crowns concert.”
After all the accolades, all the awards, all the time on the road and in the studio, why does Casting Crowns continue to do what they do? The answer is simple: It’s their calling – God’s calling on the lives of these seven committed and talented musicians. To pour their lives into the students and families God has placed in their paths. To set discipleship to music. To challenge and strengthen the body of Christ. It’s what brought them together in the first place and what keeps them going … Until The Whole World Hears.
Staff writer for ExperiencingWorship.com.