Aaron Shust has achieved another first.
The award-winning CMA artist has released his first live recording album, “Love Made a Way.”
It is his eighth album overall. His label, Centricity Music, wanted the live recordings.
“That’s petrifying,” he said. “There’s something inviting and welcoming about going into the studio, and if you make mistakes, you just do it again. And so there’s something exciting about a live record.”
Shust’s awards include Songwriter of the Year at the GMA Dove Awards in 207 and Song of the Year for “My Savior My God.”
However, with his background as a worship leader, live performances are his favorite part of the music process.
“Writing and every part of the process has its own joy.”
When worship music is performed with people who join in, “Heaven is listening to the praise. That makes the performance extra special.”
Cameras were used to capture the making of the “Love Made a Way” CD. That in itself was daunting, Shust said, because he saw his facial expressions live. He also had just lost his voice the weekend before, but overcame that challenge.
“I was trying to remember the chords.”
The album was recorded in The Tracking Room, a Nashville icon located close to Music Row and where One Sonic Society filmed a black and white video. To differentiate the Shust recordings, his crew set up the stage on the opposite end of the room.
Some of the songs are new, while others are Shust classics.
The track list is:
1. Heartbeat (Live)
2. My Hope is in You (Live)
3. Belong (Live)
4. You Redeem (Live)
5. Ever Be (Live)
6. God of Brilliant Lights (Live)
7. Cornerstone (Live)
8. Death Was Arrested (Live)
9. Resurrecting (Live)
10. My Savior My God (Live)
11. Lead On (Live)
“You Redeem” was the first single off the album.
More information is at aaronshust.com.

A new book provides a fascinating insight into the world of former President Obama’s outreach to faith-based communities.

Michael Wear is an evangelical Christian who served in Obama’s Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships in the White House during the president’s first term. Wear directed faith outreach during the 2012 re-election as well.

Wear also is founder of Public Square Strategies LLC, a consulting firm aiming to build bridges between secular and religious institutions with shared goals.

The story of how a young college student became a White House staffer is told in “Reclaiming Hope,” published by Nelson Books/Thomas Nelson. The subtitle is “Lessons Learned in the Obama White House About the Future of Faith in America.”

Wear writes about how through a series of coincidences he basically walked up to then-Sen. Obama in a hotel and asked for a job with the future presidential campaign. Wear, a college student at the time, persistently stayed in touch with Obama’s staff throughout the 2008 campaign.

He told me his contributions to the administration included bring people together “who wouldn’t have been in the same room” talking about feeding the hungry and how the church can help the unemployed. The Faith Based Office put him in touch with “people on the ground” who were doing good things.

Wear talks about how the 2008 and 2016 Republican campaigns missed the boat by not reaching out to faith communities and how President Trump did.

He also talks about hope at the intersection of faith and politics and poses some challenging thoughts for Christians.

Family and music are both a way of life for Christian duo Grayson/Reed, and they wouldn’t have it any other way as they have found a certain balance in their lives.

Husband and wife duo Molly Reed and Mike Grayson are releasing their new CD “Walk” on Jan. 13, 2017, just shy of their fourth anniversary in February.

Molly granted me a telephone interview in early January to talk about “Walk” and other topics.

Up until forming Grayson/Reed recently, Mike and Molly worked in separate musical careers. Mike was lead singer for MIKESCHAIR for 13 years, where he released three full-length albums and five Top 5 radio singles. Molly was a member of duo City Harbor and is a popular songwriter, having penned hits for a variety of crooners from Marie Osmond to Amy Grant to Francesca Battistelli.

They have a 2-year-old daughter, Grailey. Molly said that she and her husband had wanted to do music together but did not know how or when it would happen. When they were pregnant, they didn’t wan to be separated by their careers so they took a leap of faith and trusted the Lord with their future.

That led to the Grayson/Reed duo.

“It’s been incredible, just getting to do music together as husband and wife,” Molly said.

They drew from a deep well of family experience to write “Fight For You,” one of the six titles on “Walk.” Some inspiration also came from a video of Eugene Peterson and Bono talking about an alleged lack of authenticity in Christian music, according to a Grayson/Reed press release.

The song draws from the couple’s marriage and fighting through the hard times that come with any relationship, Molly said.

Modern culture presents a distorted view of love in which it’s OK to run away when a relationship becomes difficult, Molly said in the press release.

“But the reality of love and a God-ordained marriage is you fight through those moments together, and you fight for that person and for their heart,” she said.

Response for “Fight For You” has been great. She said one person said they were leaving their spouse, driving away, when the song played, and they changed their mind. Another said it would be the first song at their wedding.

The title track, “Walk,” is a sassy, stimulating vocal that talks about how Christians must walk the walk in their faith, or “living out what I speak about … a little more action,” the song states.
Molly was quick to point to the track “Bloom,” which was written for their daughter, to tell her to pray and always rely on God and know He’s there. The song talks about how the world will try to break you, but urges you to not let the world steal your hope.

Molly also said she is grateful for the duo’s fans.

“Thank you to anybody who checks us out,” she said.

The website is graysonreedmusic.com. There is information about their tour and links to social media.

A new author wants your worship life to be the opposite of boring.

John Hambrick is part of the leadership team at Buckhead Church, part of North Point Ministries in the Atlanta area. He’s also the author of the powerful new book “Move Toward the Mess: The Ultimate Fix for a Boring Christian Life” by David Cook publisher. The foreword is by Andy Stanley.

Hambrick is speaking out against Christians getting stuck in a rut. It doesn’t matter if your pastor gives boring sermons. It doesn’t matter if the music is dull. Jesus was always in motion. Hambrick writes that if Jesus were boring, the Pharisees would not have killed Him.

Hambrick said, in an interview, he coined the phrase “Move Toward the Mess” at his church. Most of the ministries there were already moving toward the mess. He decided he needed to write about the concept.

Most Christians would rather stay in their comfort zone, he said. “We started to realize if you want to follow Jesus out into the world … that’s what you’ve got to do. There first mess that God starts to move toward is mine. I struggle with things. fMy life is sometimes messy, relationally and spiritually. I think there’s a side to all of us that would prefer to stay in our comfort places.”

One of his favorite stories in the book follows the life of a couple named Leroy and Janelle, who are famous in Atlanta for “Hot Dogs and Prayer.”

In December 2005 they moved to the Capitol View area of Atlanta. They hoped to flip a house. Then the economy tanked. The neighborhood got worse.

The couple decided to do something for God’s Kingdom. They picked the worst area in the neighborhood — a corner with a brothel, crack house and halfway house — and set up a weekly ministry called “Hot Dogs and Prayer.” The couple offered to pray for people who accepted free hot dogs. The drug dealers, prostitutes and other locals laughed at them while accepting hot dogs. Then, slowly, some began to ask for a prayer.

The stories that really broke the couple’s hearts, Hambrick said, were from the sex workers, who “without exception were mostly girls who had been molested” at age 6 or earlier.
Today, Leroy and Janelle have a ministry called Serenity Steps for those sex workers.

“They’re having a significant impact,” Hambrick said.

You don’t have to move to the inner-city to make a difference. So Hambrick asks people, “What would it look like to move toward the mess in your context?

“Move Toward the Mess” has discussion questions that would make it great for small groups or individual study.

The book is available from major booksellers. More information is at http://www.johnhambrick.net.

The widow of NFL center Grant Feasel is sharing her family’s story to help warn others about the dangers of sports-related concussions.

Cyndy Feasel lost her husband Grant in 2012 to cirrohsis of the liver due to alcoholism, which was connected to a degenerative brain disease called CTE. The CTE in turn was caused by a lifetime of receiving concussions from playing football.

Cyndy shares her story in a book by Nelson Books titled “After the Cheering Stops: An NFL Wife’s Story of Concussions, Loss, and the Faith That Saw Her Through.”

The couple, which had three children, divorced about a year before Grant’s death, ending 29 years of marriage. They made peace shortly before his death.

“If I’d only known that what I loved the most would end up killing me and taking away everything I loved, I would have never done it,” Grant told Cyndy weeks before his death.

Cyndy calls Grant’s issues a “slow fade.” She did not realize the extent of his brain injuries until his death; CTE can only be diagnosed by performing an autopsy on the brain, she said. The damage happened over the course of his lifetime of playing football.

To understand their marriage, you have to start at the beginning of their relationship, she told me. They met while attending Abilene Christian University — he was a Southern California guy on a full football scholarship and she was a Texas gal.

Their first date was a blind date, but she had already seen him around campus. At 6 feet, 7 inches, he was the tallest man she had ever met — and handsome. The two Christians had a great deal in common.

“I knew he was a different kind of guy,” Cyndy said. “A beautiful mind.”

Grant loved poetry, music and art. She had never known another guy on a first date to be into those things.

Grant was a gifted football player — and extremely intelligent. He won every academic award and was an academic All-American. He was accepted into every dental school in Texas but chose to put off a medical or dental education to play football. He was drafted by the Colts.

“We were kids in our early 20s,” she said. “One percent of people in the world would get a chance like this. Who wouldn’t take it, right?”

Cyndy calls those the good years. They traveled a lot and met lots of people. Grant worked hard and she was a stay-at-home wife. However, even before then, she worried about the physical toll the game took on Grant.

He had a concussion in his senior year of college. He blew it off. That served as a red flag to Cyndy, whose sister had fractured her skull in a serious fall. But people didn’t really talk about concussions at the time.

Grant would later suffer another serious concussion within the last five years of his NFL career during a game at Mile High Stadium in Denver. He went back into that game despite experiencing tunnel vision. Other symptoms included nausea and head pain. However, there was no sports concussion protocol in the 1980s and 1990s.

I asked Cyndy if pro sports organizations are doing better about dealing with concussions.

“I’m trying to wrap my mind around all of how big this picture is,” she said in response. Grant played football from age 8. “I think they’re talking about it more and there’s more awareness. But parents and people cheering the NFL games … I don’t think everybody understands the visual the brain is like gray Jello. I never dreamed the brain is made out of a soft substance like butter. If I had known that, I would have begged Grant on bended knees not to play.”

Grant’s brain was “jiggled” around in every play every day from age 8 to age 32.

“I think the NFL knows it and I think they know there’s a huge problem,” she said. “I think it’s all driven by money. It’s like a gladiator game, and I think we forget that it’s a human face.”

Cyndy said she posts...

Pastor Lucas Miles is in the early stages of producing a historical documentary of Nimrod, a person from the ancient world who is mysterious but very relevant to people today.

The Book of Genesis says Nimrod was responsible for building the Tower of Babel. Jewish tradition backs this up, Miles said.

Nimrod also was responsible for the creation of Ninevah and Babylon. The word “Nimrod” means something like “We will rebel.” Miles said he believes “Nimrod” was more of a title than a real name, but he does believe this was an actual person.

Jewish tradition believes the Tower of Babel was not only a tall building but a revolt against the flood of Noah’s Ark. The builders believed that the building would protect them if God sent another flood; however, God had promised not to do another worldwide flood.

“This was a group who did not trust God,” Miles said.

Nimrod also is connected to the ancient Greek and Egyptian religions as well as freemasonry and even Islam. It is believed that Nimrod’s body was cut into pieces and spread throughout the land. Legends about his life sprang up in different cultures such as Babylon, Ninevah and even among the Philistines. His legend was turned into a “god,” possibly including the Egyptian sun god and Horace. He may have been connected to Apollo or Zeus, Miles said.

“Almost every ancient people group has a story that relates to Nimrod,” he said. “He was a vile guy, one of the first dictators, one of the first socialist dictators in how he constructed the cities.”

Nimrod is even connected to Baal, the false god who plagued the Israelites in the Old Testament. That could be because Nimrod is credited, in some legends, as having slaughtered an ox or bull, which is connected with that false god. That legend says that when Nimrod died, he became a giant bull.

One form of Baal’s name had Allah in it, Miles said. The early roots of Islam are not spoken of within their religion now, but it is connected with Baal/Nimrod, he said.

“Nimrod was the first type of anti-Christ,” he said

“We’re tracing this, bringing in experts,” he said. There will be re-enactments like you would see on the History Channel. There is no distributor yet, but the ones he has spoken to have given good feedback, he said.

The filmmakers hope the audience will draw their own conclusions “and evaluate their own lives and what they’re putting their trust in,” he said. He hopes they can grow a deeper relationship with God.

Miles recently returned from Africa where his film team shot a documentary for the Oasis Network for Churches in Kenya.

Miles is the author of the book “Good God,” which shows how God can be good in the midst of a sin-sick world. Free study guides are available for the book. Contact Miles’ team on social media or by email or online: [email protected] or GodGoodthebook.com

— Jason Reynolds

Lucas Miles seeks God in church, in movies and in books.

Lucas produced the movie “Rodeo Girl” with Kevin Sorbo and is producing a new film, “Crowning Jules,” which is in the works. A 2017 release date is likely as the producer is hunting for a distributor as of September 2016.

“Crowning Jules” is a teenager adventure comedy along the lines of “Ferris Buelller’s Day Off” meets a non-Christmas version of “Home Alone” meets something from the teen years of the Olsen twins, Miles told me. But with a family friendly theme.

It’s a story of two sisters who had drifted apart with the loss of their mother. They journey together to Boston for a beauty pageant and rekindle their bond.crowning_jules

The sisters are played by real life twin sisters Elizabeth and Jacqueline Labadie. “They do finish each other’s sentences” in real life, Miles said.

The Labadie sisters just graduated high school recently and have moved to Los Angeles to pursue careers. They have recently appeared on ABC’s “The Middle” sitcom in guest starring roles as college students at the school where the main female lead attends.

“We’re crossing our fingers hoping that can become more of a recurring role,” Miles said.

The sisters have done several other projects, including a small part in “Rodeo Girls.”

“Crowning Jules” also stars Kevin Farley, brother of the late Chris Farley, and, for fanboys everywhere, Kristy Swanson of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” fame. Swanson plays a “super villain” much like Cruella Deville.

Miles, the producer of “Crowning Jules,” said he recently saw a cut of the film and it looks good so far in post-production. He plans to hunt for a distributor in November 2016 at the American Film Market show in Los Angeles. The process of finding a distributor can be complicated, but attending various film festivals is a good way to market a film, he said.

Miles is pastor of Oasis Church in Granger, Indiana and the principal and founder of Miles Media, Inc., a film production company. He also is author of the book “Good God,” a title that talks about how a good God is sovereign in the midst of a sin-sick world. My previous story on the book is here.

A free study guide is available for "Good God" by contacting Miles' team at [email protected] or GodGoodthebook.com.

Miles said he became involved in films after dabbling previously in music management for a Christian recording artist. He filmed videos and films as a student.

He said he believes that Christians can and should have influence in the film business.

“D.C. and LA are two of the most influential places in the world. I really believe that the church should have influence in both of those places, and we really need to be praying for opportunities for influence.”

— Jason Reynolds

Spiritual warfare is real. This story is about a fictional take on spiritual warfare.

Julie Hall is the author of the “Life After” trilogy. Book One, “Huntress,” was released in Nov. 2015. Book Two, “Warfare,” will be released in fall 2016.

Hall, who used to work in youth ministry, said her series is in the young adult fiction category and should appeal to both the Christian and secular markets. The series draws upon biblical themes but is not a biblical description of Heaven, Hall told me.

“Life After” follows the adventures of Audrey. “Huntress” focuses on Audrey’s death, which is only the beginning of her adventures. God gives her the assignment to go into training to learn how to fight the devil and demons. Audrey makes mistakes along the way, which a person in Heaven would not do.

Each book in the trilogy focuses on Audrey’s interaction with each of the three identities of God in the Trinity: Book One focuses on God the Father; Book Two, The Holy Spirit; and Book Three, Jesus.

“Huntress” is full of action, adventure and romance, Hall said. Audrey must face her doubts about God’s love. That is something that many people, especially teens, go through, she said.

Hall said that she had the most trouble in writing the theological aspects of “Huntress.” She wanted to write a story that would appeal to both Christians and non-Christians.

She said she did have doubts, however, about the books cross-over appeal to both markets. She thought the Christians who read the book early would hate it for not being truly biblical. She thought non-Christians would feel they were being preached at. She gave copies to Christians and non-Christians to endorse and was pleasantly surprised by the positive responses.

“The Christians understood it is a work of fiction and that I took creative license,” she said.

Hall said that Audrey’s relationship with God and her struggles with her faith is built on biblical truth. Meanwhile, non-Christians will enjoy the book’s action and fast pace and not feel like “I’m trying to shove Christianity down their throats.”

Hall said she wants her readers to take away the message that God cares about them and He does have a plan and purpose for their lives, even when they do not understand His plan.

“God is still there and God is still good. And that’s really what my protagonist struggles with, just feeling like she’s been forgotten or that God doesn’t understand her or God doesn’t know her. God is in control. And you can count on that and you can hang on to that when it feels like life is spiraling out of control.”

While she struggled with the theological issues, Hall said she thoroughly enjoyed writing the action sequences. She and her husband even took sword fighting classes together so she could write about that topic more accurately. (Hall is no stranger to an active lifestyle: She took kickboxing classes for years.)

Hall said one purpose in writing “”Huntress” is that she feels the young adult selection for Christians is lacking in quantity. The young adult fiction market in the secular world has exploded over the past decade. Christians need to champion the faith-based young adult fiction books that are out there — they need to look for them and support them.

Hall is doing her part in that. “Warfare” is in the editing stages. She is focusing on writing Book Three.

In “Warfare,” God will tell Audrey to stay in Heaven even while the devil attacks her family on earth. Audrey goes against God’s command to try to protect her family, and she must deal with the consequences of her disobedience.

This podcast also features Hall's comments on her and her husband's adoption of a girl from Ethiopia as well as her battle with Lyme Disease.

More information on Hall and her “Life After” trilogy is at

Christian lead singer Chad Mattson is celebrating 13 years of sobriety with the new album “Follow Through” with the band Unspoken.

“Follow Through,” from Centricity Music, will be available Aug. 26, 2016.

(Editor's note: All commercial music in my podcasts is used by permission of the artist who created it or representatives of the artist. I use limited clip lengths. I respect artists' copyrights.)

Unspoken bandUnspoken formed out of Chad’s quest for sobriety, he told me during a recent interview. His life turned around on a “self-made” missions trip to the Dominican Republic to get sober. That’s where he met guitarist Mike Gomez. The Lord led them to return to the States to preach and use music as a tool.

This record is “getting back to the first love that we had,” Chad said. Believers get busy and “tend not to finish it as strong as we started.” The album is a call to return to Jesus as your first love.

Unspoken is also composed of original band member Ariel Munoz, a drummer from Puerto Rico, said Chad, who is from Maine. They recently picked up a new member, a keyboard player from Bristol, Tennessee.

The band members did not want “Follow Through” to be a repeat of their first album, although it does have diverse styles like before. Chad described “Follow Through” as a lot of fun, upbeat with lots of victory while also featuring struggles and perseverance. Those are themes that everyone can relate to and be encouraged by, he said.

One title, “Life In the Death Of Me,” is like an autobiographical song of where Chad was at one time. Chad described it as soulful, hooky, hip-hop influenced. He calls it “my story,” and more.

“It’s all of our stories,” he said. “Jesus said that if a man wants to find his life, he has to lose it first. And if he wants to keep his life, he will lose it. This is really about finding life in Jesus Christ as we die to ourselves.”

He calls it real. The song talks about him waking from a dream and seeing his name on a headstone. Addiction was leading him in that direction, but the Lord “changed it all around.”

Another title, “The Cure,” describes Chad’s knowledge of what it means to be broken and to seek a remedy. “I came out of the drug culture,” he said in a press release. “From what I can tell it’s even worse now than it was when I was in it. We’re all looking for some kind of answers, some kind of fulfillment. That’s been the state of humanity for thousands of years. But the good news is, there’s something to fill that hunger. There’s something to heal that pain. There is a cure, and it’s Jesus.”

Chad never dreamed of being a musician until he was saved. He learned God is not looking for our skills but for people who make themselves available to him, and when we do, He gives us abilities (or gifts). That's good, he said, since he wanted to play basketball but "was too short."

Jon Lowry, the bass player, said in a press release, that there is more praise and thanksgiving on “Follow Through.” The album’s first single, “Higher, expresses that sentiment. A soulful celebration that the band collectively wrote around an inspiring horn riff, the song is an unconventional praise song, the press release states.

More information about Unspoken is at http://unspokenmusic.com/site. You can learn about tour dates, buy their music and more. The album is also available on iTunes, Google Play and Amazon.

— Jason Reynolds

To simply call Dave Richardson Jr.’s new book, “Transparent,” an apologetics book would be an easy way to ignore what is underneath the surface of its powerful new look at why you believe the way you do.
Everyone makes assumptions.
“Those assumptions are the things that drive us and control us every day,” Richardson told me. “It’s like an autopilot in our head.”
I interviewed Richardson during the International Christian Retail Show. He was there to promote his book, “Transparent: How to See Through the Powerful Assumptions That Control You.”
He earned a bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary studies from the University of Portland, a master’s degree in theological studies from the International School of Theology and a MTh. in applied theology from the University of Oxford. He worked with Campus Crusade for Christ (or Cru) for 30 years, spending most of his time with professors.
The premise of “Transparent” came about from Richardson’s 20 years’ work with university and college professors, helping them connect faith with what they do. He researched how people come to faith and why some abandon it. He said that many Christians’ assumptions are not biblical.
While God is big in many people’s lives and they may have a good prayer life, the average person rarely asks, “How does God inform what you do at work?”
“They couldn’t tell you,” he said. “How does God make a difference in your work? Because He actually gives you knowledge about what you do.”
He recalled attending a conference about 15 years ago in which the late philosopher Dallas Willard was speaking to professors. Willard asked them who the smartest person was in their fields. He said if it was anyone other than Jesus Christ, they had named the wrong person.
“If Jesus does not contribute to knowledge in your field, then why does He contribute knowledge in your personal life?”
Christian professors go to class and teach the same way that atheists do, even at Christian universities, Richardson said.
Richardson is challenging assumptions at numerous levels, beyond the book.
He said he is starting up a new foundation, The Assumptions Institute. According to its website (theassumptionsinstitute.org), it “is at the forefront of helping families and churches reduce the number of Christian youth leaving their faith. Understanding assumptions can help us change people's lives.”
One of his tools is an app that helps parents walk through assumptions with their kids. Say the parent and child are watching a movie. The parent can take the app and in a few steps walk through the movie’s assumptions with the child.
Why is that important? Research shows that 60 percent to 75 percent of children raised within the church or a ministry will leave in their 20s, and very few will return, Richardson said.
“I know why it happens and I know when it happens and it’s not in the university and it’s not in the high school,” he said. “It starts in the kindergarten. And it starts with the basic assumptions we teach our young kids. And it’s really the church that pushes the kids out the door. And they don’t even realize what’s going on.”
The app (Critical Assumptions Test) is made for everyone, not just parents, but also for professors. Parents can use the app to prepare their children for the day they go off to university or career.
“When the world comes at them with all these wild crazy things, they’ll be able to discern quickly whether it’s true or whether it’s not so they’ll accept it or reject it and how that all relates back to their faith in Christ,” he said.
The book is available on Amazon. It will be available from major book stores Aug. 16, the date the app launches online. Richardson has three websites for more information:
theassumptionsinstitute.org
thetransparentbook.com
daverichardson.org