Grammy and Dove award-winning band Casting Crowns took the stage at St. Paul’s Xcel Energy Center Saturday night and rocked our innocent Christian souls.
Baytown, Texas group Leeland opened, showing off lead singer and child prodigy Leeland Mooring’s first tenor choirboy vocals and 3 of the 5 band members wearing snappy vests.
Their best song of the night was probably “Tears of the Saints” with its poignant “This is an emergency” chorus, although “Count Me In,” the first single off their new album, Opposite Way, finally got the crowd on their feet and engaged.
Even if you’re not a fan of Christian rock, odds are you’ve heard of Casting Crowns. The group’s third studio release, The Altar and The Door, has made an enormous splash with the faith community — including a debut on Billboard’s Top 200 chart (just below High School Musical 2’s soundtrack, actually) — and overall, CC has sold 3 million albums.
Pretty good for an Atlanta youth pastor and his friends gigging in their free time, eh?
The seven-piece band took the stage — bedecked with gold-trimmed red draperies, chandeliers and silver screens reminiscent of the stage upon which they performed as the first Christian band to rock North Korea — and kicked off their two-part set off with title track “The Altar And The Door.”
It was quickly evident the clapping was going to be out of control for the next couple of hours. Let’s face it; Christians can’t clap.
Favorite moments included the fiddle vs. guitar showdown of “Simple Gifts,” all-hands raised and gooseflesh galore during “Praise You In This Storm,” opener John Waller helping out lead singer Mark Hall’s heart-warming baritone on “Somewhere in the Middle,” and “If We Are the Body” (my wife calls this the Oprah song).
While some of the tracks off the new album seemed less popular with the crowd — perhaps because they weren’t worship songs, per se, or because they lacked words on the screen — regular KTIS listeners could probably sing the chorus of more than half the songs unaided.
While I love a good contemporary worship song, there’s something about that church organ sound — pulling back all other instruments while the organ hits a power chord like CC does on “Every Man.” It is simply as powerful as it gets for us hybrid-traditionalists.
Quoting Psalm 1 before launching into “Slow Fade,” Mark Hall reminded us we can’t lean on other Christian’s walk, and it was continually apparent he’s just a humble youth pastor doing the best he can to break down walls. It just so happens CC writes a heck of a song.
With 8-9,000 packed into Xcel’s seats, we indeed were Minnesota’s biggest mega-church — gathered in an arena where thousands pound $8 beers and cheer on hockey fights on any given weekend — to worship not the award-winning Casting Crowns, but our God.
Amen.
(photo lifted from CC’s site)
