The capacity crowd at the 1st Mariner Arena in Baltimore is bouncing in unison to the most widely sung music on the planet today. The catwalk above the arena is shaking.
Chris Tomlin grabs the microphone and asks the crowd if they’re ready.
“I feel alive, on God’s great dance floor!” He leads the packed venue in singing and jumping.
Tomlin is out touring the country with his latest studio album, “Burning Lights.” In January, it topped the Billboard 200 charts. But unlike those who’ve enjoyed performances by Beyonce, Johnny Cash and a host of others who’ve played this Baltimore hall, after these fans stream out the doors they will have ample opportunity to sing Tomlin’s songs again, as one.
That is the secret to Tomlin’s success – the stage, the lights, the band – aren’t about him. As lively as his shows are, the point is not to get you inside the doors. The point is to get you singing in church.
“I strive for trying to write something that people can sing, that people want to sing, and that people need to sing,” Tomlin explained before the show.
Tomlin is the undisputed king of worship music, a genre of Christian music sung on Sunday mornings all across the world and increasingly played on Christian radio stations. The music is simple, devotional and easy on the ears.
“We would say that Chris is the most prolific songwriter in the United States now, in this past decade,” said Howard Rachinski, CEO of Christian Copyright Licensing International, the company that tracks what music is used in churches around the world.
In 2012, CCLI paid out $40 million to artists and musicians, and Tomlin got a healthy slice of that pie. Churches around the world used 128 songs he wrote or co-wrote last year, Rachinski said.
CCLI estimates that every Sunday in the United States, between 60,000 and 120,000 churches are singing Tomlin’s songs. By extrapolating that data, Rachinski says, “our best guess would be in the United States on any given Sunday, 20 to 30 million people would be singing Chris Tomlin’s songs.”
In their last two reporting periods, Tomlin had the No. 1 most-sung song and five of the top 25.
Search YouTube for “How Great is Our God” or “Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone).” Black, white, Asian, big churches, small ones are all belting out Tomlin songs. A lot.
For perspective, consider Tomlin’s musical success against one secular counterpart. In 2012, Katy Perry’s record sales dwarfed Tomlin’s, but Billboard reported her songs were played 1.4 million times on the radio. Using CCLI’s low-end calculation, Tomlin’s songs were played 3.12 million times in churches.
Growing up Tomlin
Chris Tomlin was reared in Grand Saline, Texas, heavily influenced by country music. His dad taught him to play the guitar.
“I learned all country music – Willie Nelson, and Johnny Cash, all those kind of guys. Those are what my dad played and I played. And I played at my church as well,” Tomlin said.
Tomlin went to college to study sports medicine. “I just didn’t know the music would take me here. I loved it and I was getting opportunities to go play, and when I say go play I was starting to write songs of worship even (as) a young kid. I didn’t know really what worship music was, what a worship leader was, any of that. I didn’t know any of those terms,” he said.
Today, at 40 years old, he is the artist most associated with worship music.
While in college he began singing and writing in earnest. As a senior, he said, he was getting invitations to lead the music for Christian conferences with 10,000 students.
He knew his music was resonating with crowds when he got a call from EMI Publishing after his song “We Fall Down,” which was released in 1998, starting being played in churches.
“I was just writing songs for the church and from there they just started taking off.”
The compositions are considerably different from pop music. They are simpler, and he takes pains to write them that way.
“I’m thinking as that comes out of my heart as a song of response, I’m trying to think, how can I form this so that everybody, people who are tone deaf, who can’t clap on two and four, how can I form this song so they can sing it, so that it is singable?”
Part of that process comes from his love of country music, the simplicity of that music and the stories those songs tell. His goal is to write songs that communicate what people would like to say to God.
“Now, that doesn’t happen all the time. I mean, I write so many songs that you never hear because they are not any good.”
Tomlin is the worship pastor at Passion City Church in Atlanta. He leads worship there twice a month and beta tests all his new songs on the congregation. Tomlin is also a major draw as the worship leader of the Passion Conferences, a series of Christian conferences around the world. In January, the conference packed out the Georgia Dome in Atlanta with 60,000 college-age students. Billboard magazine noted the conference helped push up pre-sales of Tomlin’s latest CD.
His songs are so sought-after that, even before they’re released on CD, they start showing up in CCLI’s online database.
“His songs have probably had the most immediate impact on churches that we have seen in history,” Rachinski said. “Even before you get to street release [of a CD], churches are already networked and engaged with his songs.”
Don’t look for a crossover
Other contemporary Christian musicians, as the music industry designates them, have crossed over to mainstream pop with some success. Tomlin said he has no designs on making that leap.
He also doesn’t need the money. Over the course of his career he’s sold 4.2 million albums, had 6 million digital downloads, a number of sold-out tours, and of course, the copyright royalties.
Tomlin said money isn’t what motivates him to write and perform.
“I feel like I have a responsibility, that God has given me a gift to write songs for his church that people listen to and that people are coming to expect now,” he said. “When I make a record I feel that responsibility that worship leaders, churches are going to say, ‘Hey, are these some new songs we can sing in our church?’ And I don’t take that lightly, and I don’t go, ‘Oh let’s go do something else fun.’”
“I haven’t invented any new instruments, I haven’t created new chords that no one has ever played. I play the same chord that every band plays, we play the same instruments up there, the melodies are melodies. The difference to me in the music is that I ask that God’s presence be on it and that people, when they sing these songs, sense that God does something.”
The spotlight is on Tomlin even more than ever after starting the year a top the Billboard charts. As he tours the country at bigger and bigger venues, he would prefer to step out of the spotlight, away from the microphone, and let everyone else sing.
“People would be mad that they paid for a ticket for that. So I do that just occasionally, but that is what I love.”
He said the night before, at the Theater at Madison Square Garden, he took as much time as he could to step back and let everyone else sing.
“It was just so beautiful, because I feel like it says something. It’s not just like, ‘Hey, listen to me sing.’ This is all of us together. I think when you step back from the mic and it is not about you – and yeah, the light may be on you, but this is about all of us singing. This is about a bigger story, it’s about a greater story. It’s about a greater name than my name. My name is on the ticket, but this is about a greater name.”
Read more: CNN’s Belief Blog
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