CCM: There was a lot of “new” going on in your lives, and then tragedy happens. What have you’ve learned about the church—both in your role as a church leader, and then to suddenly experience the church responding to the needs of your family in that time?
CQ: We all experience grief or loss at some point. It’s just part of life, but tragically things happen that are out of our control. For instance, when we found out there was no heartbeat [with our son] and were in the hospital for two days, we were obviously believing for God to do a miracle and people were praying and we didn’t see that. For us, we had a choice. We could have blamed God, became bitter and harden our hearts to Him.

We made a choice as a family, as a church, to proclaim His goodness even in the midst of pain when things wouldn’t go our way. I think it kept our hearts soft toward God, and that allowed Him to come and minister to us. Through that, and because of our chosen response, we’ve experienced so many people [being blessed by us] for modeling that.

The truth is, even scripture talks about the enemy coming to steal, kill and destroy. I find it really interesting that when something happens, [so many of us] instantly want to blame God. The truth is, He’s good and He’s our comforter. My wife and I, and also our church, have chosen to turn to Him—to worship and thank Him, and to praise. Not that it was at all easy. It took a long time for my wife and I to be able to sing. I remember even less than a month after we lost Jethro, we’re back in church and singing songs like “Forever”… The ground began to shake / The stones rolled away…these songs about resurrection. Songs about what He did on the cross, and it was hard to declare those words—but we did.

It’s allowed people to find healing. My brother-in-law lost his mom to cancer and then his brother to cancer. He told me, “Because you guys have made the choice to declare, ‘God is good,’ it’s caused me to go back and allow God to work on my own heart.”

I know this is a long answer… God doesn’t change, only our circumstances change. I would say that me being a worship leader and a worship pastor, my response to Him shouldn’t change either. I needed to proclaim that He was good, that He was faithful, and I needed to write about it as well. A lot of the songs on Split The Sky came from that journey. Yeah, I felt pain, it wasn’t easy, but there were songs that I needed to be sung even though it was hard, songs that I needed to write even though it was hard because they were the truth, and I needed to focus on the truth.

CCM: What was the experience like to step outside of the Jesus Culture family to record something like this?
CQ: It was really vulnerable. I’ve never done a solo album. Naturally, my personality doesn’t like being out front, so [I’m wrestling with] this awkward, “Everybody’s-here-for-me” kind-of moment. Today, people were texting, etc., which I love all the encouragement, but it is really vulnerable. Like, “Here’s a piece of my heart. I hope you guys like it.”

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