An Interview with Writer/Arranger Craig Adams

Craig, you and I have a long history together. I've known you for over 30 years. We went to First Church of the Nazarene [in Nashville] together in the ‘80s, and you were in the youth group there. Your youth choir actually premiered a youth musical I helped create called “We Believe: Rapping Up Our Faith.” It was innovative at the time.

Craig: [Rapping] “We are called to be ho-ly…”

Vince: Right, we basically rapped the Creed! It was a learning tool for teens and had a lot of fun songs. I appreciate you, and—especially on behalf of our Discover Worship listeners and members—we want to thank you and LifeWay for providing us with such great music that we've been able to share with our churches. It's been an incalculable blessing.

Craig: You and all the folks at Discover Worship are all great partners. So, it's a privilege and an honor. Thank you for the opportunity to partner with you guys and to be with you today.

Vince: It's going to be fun! Well, start by sharing your musical background with us.

Craig: I was raised in a musical family. My father was also raised in a musical family, but my dad was really the first of his family to pursue music vocationally. He was a songwriter for The Benson Company as I was growing up –

Vince: Steve Adams.

Craig: Yes, Steve Adams is his name, thank you. Don't want to forget Dad…sorry! So, I spent my childhood years tagging along with him, really growing up in the Great Circle Benson building. He was worked with folks like Bob McKenzie, Bob Benson, David Clydesdale, John Coates, and Greg Buick. Those guys were all his peers, and I grew up watching and learning from them.

As I got into my early childhood/mid-childhood years—around I guess age 9—a few people took me under their wings and mentored me for a long time: Greg Nelson being one of those, John Coates being another, Kathy Hill, Sue Gay, Sarah Huffman, Lynn Hodges. I ended up spending about every day of my childhood through my teenage years in and/or around the studio with them. By then, my dad had developed his own publishing company that was a subsidiary company of Bill Gaither’s company, Alexandria House (which no longer exists either). I grew up around album production and concept development and graphic designers. I really feel that my whole life really has been some kind of preparation the role that I now play for LifeWay. I really don't know how to do anything else but mow my lawn!

Vince: Tell us about your role at LifeWay Worship.

Craig: I serve as creative director there. I essentially oversee three streams of work for LifeWay Worship: all of our choral and orchestral resources, musicals, anthems …the whole nine yards. We have a great editorial team there: Ken Barker, Danny Zaloudik—those guys are just top shelf. I oversee the development of those resources along with congregational resources that are made available at lifewayworship.com. My good buddy Charlie Sinclair leads that work for us. And so, I oversee the development of those resources and then song publishing. We also have a small roster of exclusive songwriters.

I mentioned Charlie Sinclair. Do you mind if I just chase one quick rabbit? Because this is a very contemporary story, and I’d just love to ask people to pray for him. Two weeks ago, Charlie's wife, Kate, had brain surgery. She had a mass removed, and the initial report was incredibly good: they were able to get everything. However, the pathology report came back yesterday, and it's really, really bleak. So, if you think about Charlie Sinclair—anybody who's listening or watching—if you don't mind praying for Kate Sinclair, they have three little kids (all of them under the age of 10), and things are really dire for them. My mind is honestly a little preoccupied with them. I heard from my brother in the faith Charlie today. I love him dearly, he’s a talented guy, and he's facing a mountain. But God can move mountains.

Vince: He can, and he does. Well, your father wrote some great songs: “Peace in the Midst of the Storm,” “One Flock, One Shepherd,” other songs?

Craig: “All Because of God's Amazing Grace,” “Where the Spirit of the Lord is,” “God Said It, I Believe It.” Those are probably the more popular of his that have been published in a lot of different denominational hymnals. So again, I've just been around songs and songwriters and publishing and album production my entire life, and it just kind of spilled into relationships building into this role at LifeWay. I've been there 13 years and love it. Absolutely love the team, love the work.

Vince: So, when you write and arrange, what is your process for that?

Craig: I don't write a lot these days primarily because I'm around songs and songwriters so much, and truthfully, I feel a little bit of paralysis when it comes to writing. I hear a lot of songs and so much of what I hear has already been said a million times over. So, the “diamonds in the rough”—the great songs—they don't come quite so frequently, you know. It's not that they don't exist, they certainly do, but it's just harder to get to those. So, I usually write out of necessity. If there's a slot I need to write for a project I’ll write for that, and when I do, I usually start with the Word just because we're creating resources for the church. And so, I'll start with the Word, and research the concept of the musical that I'm working on. Or, if there's a particular song I feel like needs to be written, spend time in the Word and time in prayer. And then I sit at the piano. That's my home, always has been. I just sit at the piano and begin to carve out a lyric idea or two and begin to kind of sing through that. Singing and piano have always kind of been my “hand in hand.” So, I try to carve out melodies that are easy to sing for people, sensible for people to sing, and then ask the Lord for inspiration. That's my writing process.

Arranging? I usually start by carving out a rhythm chart to be the framework for everything then moving on from there. If I'm arranging for choir, I move next from the rhythm chart to the choral chart. Then from there I know what holes to fill in with orchestration or whatever. So, it just kind of depends on the context.

If I'm arranging for an album, I usually sit down with the artist and capture some audio. I'll sit at the piano and hammer out just all different kinds of ideas—chord progressions, keys—and see what works best for the artist, where they really feel at home. Then, I'll work on tempos to make sure those are right before carving anything else out. So, it depends on the context of the project I'm working on as to what the process would be. But there's nothing in the world I love more than a blank piece of paper. That’s where I really love to live.

Vince: Well, you know a lot of people are intimidated by that. But you love that.

Craig: I do!

Vince: I think another thing that plays into this is that you've always been associated with the local church. In fact, you’re a music pastor right now. Tell us about that.

Craig: I've been working for four years at Clements Baptist Church in Athens, Alabama. The pastor there is Tim Anderson. Another friend of mine, Cliff Durin, had been down there a couple of times to help them during a season when they were without a worship leader. The pastor had said, “Cliff, I really need somebody to help me maybe for three to six weeks. I think I've got a guy lined up who’s going to come full time, but I need somebody to bridge the gap. Do you know of anybody that you would recommend. Cliff said, “You gotta call my friend Craig.” So, I went down originally to be there for four weeks…

Vince: It always starts like that!

Craig: Yeah, the first week I was down there the pastor came to me said, “The guy I thought was coming is not coming. Do you think you could stay longer?” And I said. "Well, let's see how the next couple weeks go because I have a full-time job and it's an hour and 20-minute drive from my house to get here." The first week I was there, the church baptized seven people, the next week they baptized nine, the third week they baptized six or seven again, and then five the next week, and I thought, “What is going on here?” I mean, the church is literally right smack-dab in the middle of canola and cornfields and soybean fields outside of Athens by about twelve miles. So, if you want to go to church there, you've got to want to go to church there.

The church runs about 900 people. Out in the middle of these fields is this really good-sized campus, and the sanctuary is amazing, the media system there…I walked in I was like, “What is going on?” And the Lord began to work on my heart. The pastor came to me the fourth Sunday I was there and said, “Do you think there's any way you would consider being here part-time?” And I said, “You know what? Let me pray about it with my wife. But, man, I'm really drawn to what's going on here on the discipleship level.” So, I've been there almost four years now and really love the people, love the pastor. He's an extraordinary leader. He's the kind of guy who literally every morning (including this morning before we got here) between 5:30 and 6, sends a text to every deacon and every staff member. He says, “Here's where I'm going to be today in ministry. Here's where I'm headed in my study. I invite you into that. Here are the things I want you to remind your people about.” He's not hard to follow. I mean, what an extraordinary leader! I've learned a lot from him about leadership in the time that I've been there, but it's just a great church and people who want to do life together and want to do the Word together.

We have a choir. We have a small orchestra, a band, a student band, student choir, children's choir, and all of that infrastructure was there when I got there. The guy who was there full-time before me, Glenn Price, did a really great job building the program. Honestly, I just feel privileged to be in the room every week.

Vince: Well, we're Facebook friends, and I love your posts about how you love your church. I just think that's great! You actually have a great affection for worship and for the contemporary church today. What are your aspirations for worship? Not just music, but the whole worship experience for today’s church?

Craig: Well, in the context of where we are at Clements, I can tell you that the people there are a family-oriented people. I would want that for any congregation I can think of. I think multi-generational involvement in worship is becoming really, really important. There are a lot of people blogging about it, a lot of people writing about it. You can see Facebook posts or Instagram feeds even, people asking “should we have the kids back and worship again?” I've always been an advocate for that just because I have memories as a child of sitting in a pew next to my parents and my grandparents and seeing the Lord work in their lives as they would worship, as the Word would sink into their hearts and minds. I think there's power in that generational experience. My parents and grandparents always appreciated and valued watching the Lord do the same thing in my life, when the family was together worshipping, and so, I think that's becoming increasingly important…

Vince: And it [multi-generational worship] actually goes against the flow because a lot of modern worship is very focused from a stylistic standpoint. You know, they're the singing the top 15 CCLI songs. There's not a lot of musical diversity. In contrast, multi-generational worship is really the both/and of the kingdom.

Craig: It is. I don't know how much time we have here, but I'm passionate about this topic. When you start talking about, you know, the more modern templates for worship... I have nothing against technology. I have nothing against all different kinds of musical styles. I work on different musical styles every day. What concerns me today is that presentational worship has become the methodology for a lot of churches, and it's left a lot of people in the congregation absolutely silent. When I read and study the Word, I don't think that's what God wants for us nor do I think it's what he wants from us as a people. I think [worship] is a “we” kind of moment. At Clements, we have the lights up in the sanctuary everywhere, not just on the platform, because the corporate experience is something that we value.

I'm seeing more and more benefit these days in our church with this multi-generational approach because the family unit as it exists outside the church is challenged. A lot of families don't spend time together at all…period! You've got Mom and Dad working one or two jobs. The family dinner table doesn't even exist anymore. Kids have 18 different ballgames to go to and school events. And, I'm discovering for some of our people—at Clements at least—the one time when they're actually all together in the same room for a lengthy period of time is during worship. So, there's power for the family in coming together. There's a unity there that is missing from the core of our culture these days just from a familial standpoint. Then it's just electric to see what happens when moms, dads, kids, teenagers all lock their hearts and voices around one central thought—a lyric and melody—and lift that. God moves in power and strength.

I think the other thing that's becoming equally as important is that we live in a culture where people really don't know what they believe anymore. There's so many signals! I got on my phone this morning, got on Facebook, and the number of conversations that I witnessed, if you will, within the first minute and a half of just scrolling through was just on all different kinds of life topics: culture, theology, psychology, everything. It's just amazing the amount of noise that comes into people's lives these days. It's no wonder that my generation has not done a great job in imparting theology. You go back to your musical “We Believe,” but that kind of foundational theology and philosophy even of life hasn't been shared very well by my generation to our kids and to the coming generation.

And so, we have a culture that's kind of deplete of belief and deplete of truth. I'm seeing more and more  at Clements (again it’s just my context) when we infuse our services with any kind of creed or any kind of liturgy, it awakens something within people because they're verbalizing or seeing or experiencing something that's foundational, that's concrete, a place where they can really sink their teeth. Feeling is important, and it's definitely a part of what we do with congregational musical worship, but it's not everything. And so, it's causing people to think about their faith a little bit more and dig deeper roots. I think that's becoming really important. A couple of really great articles were released this week by some leading Christian magazines, leadership magazines, that talked about how even mega churches these days have discovered that their people are really drawn to liturgies because they just don't have any absolutes in their life anywhere.

Vince:  It gives form and substance to what otherwise might be very ethereal.

Craig: Yeah, and then it actually makes the songs that we sing even more meaningful to know that we've walked through the Word together or walked through a creed together or a discipline together. Then the songs that we sing are born out of that even more naturally like breathing is to the human body, you know, and that's where exciting things happen and worship transformation happens.

Vince: Well, you're obviously excited about, even today, being able to influence your church and to be part of LifeWay Worship and the influence they have, not just the country but across the world. What final word of encouragement would you give to worship leaders and choir directors and people involved in congregational music ministry?

Craig: I'm very familiar with the "Monday morning syndrome."  There's always next Sunday, and it is hard work to get to next Sunday practically; to keep people excited about coming together; to keep people equipped spiritually, musically, socially, in every way. It is not a lazy man's job. I believe, any job in church ministry would be among the hardest jobs that there are out there right now, especially being a senior pastor these days. My encouragement is don't give up the fight. The work that you're doing is so very important.

What fuels me is one story from when I was 17 years old.

I had my first part-time assignment when I was 17 years old. I recently took the pastor who hired me out to lunch. His name's Paul Bane. I said, “Paul, I don't know what you were thinking, man. I'd only had my driver's license for a year, and you invited me into this ministry.” But I remember about eight months into that experience, one Sunday morning there was a gentleman who was one of our most faithful choir members. He waited around so everybody else was gone, and I knew he had something on his mind. I said, “What can I do for you?” He said, “Well, I'm gay, and I don't know what to do about it.” And I remember at 17 years old, and at that point I was in college studying music business, I remember thinking, "Well, the circle of fifths doesn't really matter a whole lot right now, you know…the fact that I can analyze an augmented German 6th chord doesn't matter a bit." That moment framed ministry for me in a brand-new way, and it caused me to realize that the vocation of music ministry is an incredible envoy into people's lives on a very deep level if we’ll be good stewards of those moments and be students of the Word first and foremost, and recognize that the work is really prayer – the work is not music, the work is not administration – the work is prayer, and then just to keep in the fight because the fight is worth it.

It's not always going to go well on Sundays.

I've had those Sunday's where I just get in the car going, “Is anything that I'm doing mattering at all?” Because, you know, we took a left turn at Albuquerque that was unexplainable in the middle of service. But it's the life stuff, the faith stuff, the moments like my buddy Charlie Sinclair's facing right now – to have the privilege to be there with people in those moments of life, and to know that what may have afforded you that opportunity is something as beautiful and as simple as a song, that's a privilege that's just so rich. So, just keep up the good work because it does matter, and next Sunday is always going to be there. Bring people around you who will help share in the journey. Instead of just being work, it becomes a beautiful, beautiful journey you can share with other people, and people will make the difference for sure.

Vince: Well, thank you for sharing your journey with us, Craig. If somebody wants to contact you, do you have a blog or a site?

Craig: The best way to reach me is my email address. It's all lowercase craigadams@lifeway.com is the best way to reach me.

Check out these other helpful blogs from Craig Adams:

• 10 Helpful Reminders for Singers
• How Worship Culture Has Been Shaped by American Idol