So the other day (sunday), my company got some free tix to Steven Curtis Chapman’s All Things New Tour, featuring Casting Crowns and Chris Tomlin as opening acts. We got the free tix because of some of the work we did for Shaohannah’s Hope, which is Steven’s adoption ministry. We were given 10 floor tickets, (13 rows from front stage!) as well as special "Meet and Greet" passes, which basically gets you backstage after the concert where you can shake hands and talk with Steven. Super cool

The concert started out with Steven leading the entire stadium in prayer, lifting up the night to God. As he finished praying, Casting Crowns came on and started their set, playing songs from their self-titled album. The members of Casting Crowns are all involved in their local church’s youth ministry, and apparently they do worship every Wed night for their church. If I’m not mistaken, that’s basically how Casting Crowns started out, they just put a put a name to the faces of the people that were leading the youth ministry’s worship band. Another cool thing was that Steven Curtis Chapman came out for their last song and sang with Casting Crowns (he did this with Chris Tomlin too).

Next up was Chris Tomlin, who I had noted previously was one of my favorite worship leader. Chris’ music is even more incredible live (especially if you’re only 13 rows from the front!). He did a lot of songs from his new “Arriving” album, including Holy is the Lord, and How Great is Our God. Chris also played some of his older songs, like We Fall Down (one of his first songs he wrote 10 years ago), and Forever. At one point, he got the entire stadium to whip out their cellphones and turn them on… which produced a nice starry effect, and I thought was hilarious ;p Watching Chris on stage, you could see he really wasn’t performing like some rockstar. He was leading worship, in most cases he would just sing the first few words and then step back and just let the audience sing the words.

After intermission, Steven Curtis Chapman finally came on for real. I havn’t really listened to too much of his music, so I didn’t really know many of his songs. He is a really superbly talented guitarist, watching him do all that complicated fingering on the guitar fretboard makes me wish I could do that… alas, I can only do simple-ish G / C / D type chords Anyway, Steven really knows how to put on a show, I guess after being in the business for so long you know how to run a smooth show. He did a mini-show of his older songs as Casting Crowns was tearing down and Chris Tomlin was setting up, which was cool. He also did a short medley of love songs for his wife, along with old pictures of him with bad 80’s style hair. Though I must say, I think when I grow up, I also want to have a rack of guitars that I can swap in and out, one for each song.

After the show, we all got backstage, where we stood in line and waited for Steven to show up. Since there was actually quite a few people with meet and greet passes, we didn’t get to spend too much time individually with Steven, but I did manage to shake his hand, get his autograph, and have a picture taken with him. Steven is really a phenomenal guy, he is really an amazing musician and he’s got a huge heart for his adoption ministry. He and his wife have 6 children (!), 3 of whom are biological, and the other 3 are adopted from China. Even though I never really technically worked on the Shaohannah’s Hope account, I am really proud that my company is able to help out with just a small part of this ministry.

So that’s my recap of Steven Curtis Chapman’s All Things New Tour. Now go check out the some pics and movies I took during the concert