Voices in My Head Podcast – Episode 606: Steele Croswhite Captured By Grace

Well, welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I am your host Rick Lee James, and I am so glad for all of you who are here listening today. Thank you for coming back again. Today my guest on Voices in My Head is Steele Crosswhite. He is the founder of the worship collective The Rock Music, and he's a pastor at The Rock Church in Salt Lake City, Utah. And 20 years ago, Steele helped make a new church community made up of people searching for grace more than religion. Their first album, Captured by Grace, was recorded in a garage studio during those early years of faith. And now, two decades later, the rock music has released a fully reimagined 20-year deluxe edition, giving new voice and new life to those early songs. Steel joins me today to talk about this project, and I'm so glad. It was great to meet him just a few minutes ago. So here we go into our conversation. Welcome, Steel Crosswhite, to Voices in My Head.

Well, thank you so much for having me, Rick. I appreciate it. And that was quite a tee-up of our ministry. Well done. Thank you for that setup. I appreciate it.

Well, thank you. You know, it makes it easy when I get these wonderful press releases from Emily at Turning Point Media. Yes, helps connect us. She does such a great job, and I've had a privilege of working with her for some time, and so she always gives such good information. So, uh, just a shout out to her today. And, and, and the press material, speaking of that, they describe the original project Captured by Grace, and it's being written in really these early days of faith. And I love the idea that they were recorded in a garage and kind of shaped into what they became. Can you tell us just a bit about kind of the— maybe help us look back 20 years ago to the whole imagining and creating of this? And there's almost something very romantic about that idea of a band meeting in sort of a garage-like setting and starting to record music. And I'd just love to hear more about that. Take us back there and kind of tell us where the roots all this came from.

Sure. Well, 20 years ago, uh, some humble beginnings. We're still walking day by day in God's grace. I was a different person then.

I—

God had changed my life. I had been personally in a secular band, had been touring with some large groups, uh, well-known secular artists like Sheryl Crow and Maroon 5 and Foo Fighters and, uh, Train and these huge bands. And Jesus had changed my life by grace, Rick. That's what had happened. I went into a small local church Uh, my sister had invited me to go there, and, um, I heard about the grace and the love of Jesus in a real fresh new way. And, uh, to, to make a, a very long story short, it's like a light switch went off in my heart, and suddenly I, I knew that my life should be about Jesus and making music for him. And, uh, our pastor, who is still one of our teaching pastors at our church, had said, hey, what are your thoughts about going and recording original Christian music for our church? And we were humbled. We are small, and we're, you know, we're still growing church, but real small then, like 30 people. And, um, and so, uh, long story short, I went into this garage. God had given me a piano. I had a little piano, or actually a huge piano in a little kitchen that, uh, I had inherited basically from producing music around town. And somebody gave it to me as payment, and I said, sure, I'll take this upright piano. And I started writing these songs, all birthed in that place of God has changed me, I matter to the Lord, I've been captured by grace. I want a real worship desire that I had gone from one kind of life to a new kind of life. But not just that. Also in Utah, you know, the least evangelical state in the country, not a lot of people know about the grace and love of Jesus. Super religious state, but not, not the full love and grace that God captures us with. And so those songs were kind of written in haste and in some way like response, like a lot of zeal of I just want to get these songs out. And, and, and so I did. I went into a garage-type studio, pretty humble. We did the best we can. I think it still sounds great. All original, you know, all organic instruments. Nothing's fake still. That's the truth today. Nothing not original instrumentation-wise. All but real bass and drums and guitars and keys. And, and, and so, yeah, so that album was released 20 years ago in kind of that spirit behind it of look at what God is doing in Utah. Look at what God has done in my life. 'Look at what God is doing in our church.' And at that time, all of these people were coming in and getting saved and hearing about Jesus out of this broken state we live in. And, and, uh, it's really been kind of a framework and a springboard for our whole entire music ministry that began really 20 years ago. And that's what we're celebrating now, is 20 years later, look at what God has done.

Wow, that's fascinating. I, and I appreciate you sharing about that, and I think it might be surprising to a lot of listeners to hear about Utah just kind of being that the way you described it. And it is a very religious place in many ways, uh, just simply because of the Church of Jesus Christ, you know, of Latter-day Saints that's there. Yeah. So what kind of— I'm very interested in what kind of relationship the church there has with sort of your community. And when I mean the church, I mean the Mormon community with the way that you encounter there the people, and maybe I assume it would be a little bit different mindset in other parts of the country where evangelical Christianity is a bit more the majority kind of monoculture in different places, and in Utah it just has a different feel. Are you able to describe maybe some of those differences? And then when you encounter people and how you're sharing about Jesus versus the way that maybe the people there have experienced it.

Oh, for sure. Um, first, uh, yeah, like that stat that Utah is less than 3% evangelical, or a better way I think to say it is Bible-believing Christian.

Gotcha.

Less than 3%, which makes our entire state a mission field. Uh, Mormons, the Latter-day Saints, we love them. They are wonderful people. They really are tremendous neighbors, tremendous, um, citizens, uh, you know, they have a real affection in their faith and their kindness, and there's so much there. Um, yet at the same time, Rick, it is important to share, and it's not a, it's not a secret, nor is it a, in any way, um, a slandering of them or anything like that. But we have a very different understanding in our understanding of Jesus and grace and the Bible and the inerrant word of God But what we have found, to answer your question, in our relationship is that Mormonism, or the Latter-day Saint faith, is largely based, at least culturally and certainly theologically for their faith, in kind of a works-based faith, meaning that there is an understanding of God's grace, and yet there's these practices that go into place without going into too, too much detail. But so much practicing that goes into place of the ways of showing their faith that really becomes kind of a works mentality of being married in the temple or having to tithe, or, uh, baptisms and ceremonies and things like that, that become— and, you know, also, um, just a— in keeping kind of this idea that God, God does most of the work and we do the rest. That's kind of the best way to explain it. Like, God does 95% of the work, but we show him that we're serious about our faith with that 5% return of our moral and righteous living. And what we have found is that largely our church is made up of so many former Mormons that have over time been hurt by that. Because as you know, we cannot stop sinning. And if our perspective of the Lord is that we can't do enough for him, eventually there is a large exodus from the LDS faith where people say, you know, I can't do this. I can't. I can't do it. I've thought the wrong things and done the wrong things and said the wrong things. And God must be so mad at me, and I can never get back to that, that I can't prove to him. And where we are, that Jesus is, come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. And here's the grace of the Lord, and this is what it means to be saved, and I've done this work for you. And as you and I know, as the believer knows, that Jesus changes us from the inside out. And so our church is largely made up with people that are so hungry for that grace, um, and so hungry for that understanding of the love of the Father that is displayed through Jesus. And, and so we just love it. I mean, we just love it. We don't, we don't make a practice of telling everybody in the whole wide world that Mormons are bad and, and, and whatever. We do make no qualms about the fact that we have a difference in our understanding of, of, of grace and faith and salvation and heaven and all kinds of stuff. But we just say, come on in. You know, in fact, our motto is interested in God but not religion. As a church interested in God but not religion. And people just flood in and we love them and tell them about Jesus and God does all the rest. And, and that's what we're doing. So our relationship with the Mormon Church is, is tremendous, actually. We have a lot of friends and partnerships in terms of community good and things like that. You know, obviously it's, it's the predominant religion in our state and they have quite a lot of influence. And so we partner with them on social things. But we make no qualms about the fact that we're different in our understanding of the Word of God and who Jesus is.

Yeah. Well, and you know, as someone who works in a hospital context as a chaplain myself, I can very much appreciate that because one thing that I am always doing is I am working with people of multiple beliefs and multiple faiths and multiple— honestly, there's not even a shared morality that everybody has whenever you walk into a setting like that. And I have never felt it does anyone any good to hide who you are in the midst of that, even if you're there meeting with a person and trying to meet them on their ground and understanding of their meaning and purpose and where they find value and all that. And I love the respect that you show as you speak about this. And I think it comes out in your art too, that you're defining who you are, but not at the expense of being derogatory to someone else, you know.

Absolutely.

And I love that, you know, one thing that for me um, which I know comes out in your music a lot, is for me the starting place of faith is John 3:16, where we, we are told first and foremost God loves us so deeply. Amen. And, and, and going to the next verse, that he didn't come to condemn us but that the world through us, through him, might be saved.

And amen.

When we, when we start at that place, it's such a beautiful place to begin, you know, with, with a God who loves us that much and moves us away from, from that works-oriented thing where that can crush us so much.

And if we're honest with ourselves too, Rick, that, that is what we need— the love of the Lord. Like, I need it. I need to be reminded over and over again that, that he has saved me from myself, that he has saved me from my own desperate attempt to try to be enough for him, and has simply settled that. Yeah, I mean, it's like each day I wake up and I try to remind myself through God's word that it's like he looks at me and he says, I'm already pleased with you. You are enough, and I love you, and I love you, and I've forgiven you. And now, now let's go.

Yeah.

And, and that, that gives me the permission to say, I have totally blown it in sin. I make mistakes all the time, and I don't need to run from that or hide, because God looks at me and says, I, I know that. That's why I came. I love you. Let's deal with it. Let's deal with that. Let's, let's work in that. Let's go. I will help you by the power of the Holy Spirit to give you both the power and the desire to do what pleases me. And, and so there's no initial standing point of condemnation. It's that place of grace that it starts for me and our church, and for— and should for our believing friends— is that the Lord has come to seek and save the lost, and he has changed us by the power of his Holy Spirit and forgiven us. And now we can be free to be open before him so he can transform us to be world changers by the power of the gospel and the Holy Spirit. And I love that. Sorry, I'm talking a lot, but That's why I love you, Lord. Amen. Yeah. All right.

I always like it when the guests talk. That makes it a good show. So that's great. Well, moving in just a little bit deeper into sort of this past 20 years in your ministry, and we've talked a lot about your context of where you find yourself, but in reading about this whole process, I was reading about the loss of your father years ago. It sounds like at the kind of the start of all this, whenever this was beginning. And I wonder if you're able to, if you could, as you're listening through the songs from that time period and then kind of reimagining them again for this new project, I wonder where you hear for yourself not only some of that grief, but maybe where some of the healing that has happened too in the midst of that journey that you've been on. I know we have complicated feelings when we lose loved ones, and I always remind people when I meet with them and they're grieving the loss of someone, that that person always matters. And that grief never fully goes away because that's— it's the way that love expresses itself. And so I feel like that's coming through in some of the music and the reimagining. And I wondered if you felt free to just talk to us a little bit about some of that journey too, and your faith journey.

That's a great question or great setup. My dad died about 5 years, 3 years, 3 or so, about 3 to 5 years before this original Captured by Grace came out. He was my best friend and, and he was a believer, and yet he was the manager of my secular band.

Yeah.

And, and when he died, it was sudden and tragic and unexpected. And at the very beginning of launching my secular band, So he passed away, and my secular band was like a movie. I mean, we were on tour buses and airplanes and radio stations and MTV and VH1, and it was— and all of that grief was mixed in with all of this success that he and I had worked on together. Yeah. But the truth of the matter is, and I'm not saying this just for your show or to make it sound dramatic, is that I was not the man that he wanted me to be. At that time. He, he was a good man, uh, and I know that there were so many habits that I had had at the time and just ways that I was thinking about life and pursuits that would just be like so not— not only dishonoring to the Lord but also like as my dad. Like, who are— who am I now? Like, what, what has happened here over this course of this year, these years? And so coming back into this church setting because I had some understanding of the gospel of grace at a young age, but coming back into it freshly in my 20s after having some of this success and being re-engaged with the grace of the Lord, felt like my roots were going back down into who in some ways he had raised me to be. And, and it felt like home. It felt like, it felt like, okay, this is where I'm supposed to be. This is what music is for. Because I play music with my dad. I mean, he played in churches and I played with him in churches. And so it was like, Wait a second, what am I doing over here when this is where I was supposed to be all along? And so to talk about that grief inside of my music, especially that album, you know, probably the most significant song that encapsulates some of that pain or much of that pain is a song called Matters. And that song Matters is about walking through these dark times of our life and really questioning as Christians, you know, like if we're supposed— if God loves us so much, then why do we feel so bad all the time? Why do I feel so sad or heartbroken or quite honestly terrible and, and lost even? And yet in that moment, we have to remind ourselves that we matter to God. There's a, there's a line in that song that says, and in the blackest of my years, it says this, it says, and when we are just alone and I'm kneeling at your throne, will you show me then how in the blackest of my years you collected all my tears and what you did with them? And that line was specifically written about the loss of my dad. Wow. And now there's been so much more tragedy, sadly, as life goes on, that those lyrics bring reality to. But, um, but the point of that is that in that moment, God uses our pain, and he does use our pain and our grief, and he does collect our tears, as it says in Psalms. Not one drop, not one moment of pain Does he not know? And not— and not only that, will he show us one day how he used it for his glory and for our joy somehow. And so there is a lot of healing in just the music being made for the Lord that has to do with my dad and my relationship with him, because that's where it began, right, with him and I. And, uh, and yet beyond that, lyrically, there are some things there that really mean so much to me. Um, and the song Captured by Grace, you know, just the reality of like, I need you when I wake up, I need you when I go to sleep, everything in this life is broken except you've captured me by grace. So much of that comes from an understanding that even on my best day, I still have lost my dad. I've, I've still— I've still encountered a broken world, and I've been captured by his grace. And so there's a lot of undertones of that for sure.

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for, for sharing that and being brave enough to, to enter into that painful place. Many people avoid it, and, and it, and it comes out later in harmful ways when they're, when they're not embracing the grief that's there, because that's part of, I think, God's process of helping us to survive and cope and move on. And I just, to speak to you this morning, something I know you know, but Romans 8:38 comes to my mind a lot when I meet people who have dealt with loss and the idea that there's nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ. And, and I, I love that in that list of things that Paul gives in that passage, and he talks about, you know, angels or powers or things present or future, but he includes not even death itself separates from that love of God. And, and whatever that means, whatever eternity looks like with with God and whatever it means with our loved ones, I trust that that means we're still connected, you know, that we are still connected with those who've gone before us. And, um, so I just, as, as a matter of speaking into this today, I just want to say thank you again and, and remind you of, of the nearness, uh, of your Father, I believe still, um, amen, keeping close through that love of Christ today. So, and I think you're doing a lot to me. Having never met him before, I think your dad would be very proud of you.

And thank you for sharing that. Yeah, that means a lot to me. Thank you, brother.

Oh, you bet. Well, thank you for talking about it some today. Um, you know, before our time runs out, and I really appreciated all that you've shared today, I, I've never attempted this myself, trying to go back to an album that I recorded in earlier years. And for me, for me, oftentimes I'll look back at my early things and go, oh my, that wasn't that good. I don't know if I, I, I Honestly, I'm not sure I would have the courage to go back and try to redo some of my things. And sometimes I even go, I'm not even sure I believe that anymore. You know, like, this just— because we just grow and we change as a person.

Yeah.

Was there, was there any of that as you approached this project? You know, I'd love to hear just a little bit about, as a fellow artist, because I think we all, uh, get help whenever we just do that artist part of us that goes, oh, I'm, I don't know if I can do this or not, but I'd love to hear more.

I think it's— I think it's necessary to say that there is this thing inside of us that God— well, I never feel quite satisfied with the music that we release and that I write or record because it's never quite there. And I think that's just because we're not in heaven. I mean, I honestly, I do. I feel like there's this broken, like, this longing. I, I can feel music. I can feel it in my body.

I can— it's—

and I see music in shape. I really do. It's weird how music works in my life.. And it's like the puzzle pieces in my mind are almost there by the time I release an album, but they're never quite perfect. And I think that's because Jesus says, well, wait, wait till you hear the show I got for you. You know, like, just wait. But all that to be said, really revisiting, revisiting these songs have meant a lot to me, both because of the— of what it did to kind of re-engage my zeal and like remember, because, you know, the Bible says that those who are wise will see in their history the faithful love of the Lord. And so it's neat to go back and be like, oh, look at all you've done, Lord. And so that, that was very encouraging musically. You know, it was really fun because the songs are different now. The melodies are the same, but the, but the reimagining, brother, they're just different and they're better. They're so much better. And the technology is better. My understanding of recording, even though I was already in the music industry at that younger age, it just has grown so much because I've been doing it for 20 more years. Yeah, the team that we built is tremendous. The tones that we get are amazing. And so it's really fun to go, gosh, I, I feel like there was that opportunity to go, man, I really loved the original. And though it makes me cringe a little because the puzzle piece isn't quite fitting perfectly, I can re-engage with that in a new way to say, this is what I want to do now with the sound of it. And, you know, most of the songs are very different than the original in terms of production. The only that's probably the closest one to true to the original is the title track called Captured by Grace. And that even is different. Even that is different. But all the other songs are, you know, reimagined, really. And it was really fun to do that, you know, to be like, what did— what do I feel like this song— as an artist, you would get this— what do I feel like this song wants to be now?

Yeah.

You know, 20 years ago it felt like this. And now we've, we've, we've, we've played and we've worshiped with it and we've and we've performed it in so many different settings. What does the song want to be now? And so it was fun to kind of feel free to go into it production-wise to say, my job isn't to make this sound the same. My job is to make it sound new.

Yeah.

And keep the original passion. And so that was a trial. But oh my gosh, man, we were in the studio so much and just for months and just working through it and uh, meticulously kind of nitpicking all of the mixes and all of the production points and, you know, re-recording parts. And so it was a tremendous blessing and yet a labor of love to be able to go back in and go, okay, you've done so much, Lord, with these songs over the past 20 years. How can I honor you? How can I honor the rock music ministry? And how can I honor these songs without just, you know, crushing them with the weight of my expectation and my, my thing. So it was a lot of fun, and I, I am very proud, truly very proud of what we have released. I think it, it's a good encapsulation of what our ministry has become and what the songs are today. And so I'm excited for your listeners to take a, to take a listen to them.

Well, that's great, and I hope that we'll get to see some more things, uh, like this in the future. I, you know, I've recently noticed there have been some people who have been re-recording other artists' albums in their own way. You know, like, there's a young lady who a couple years ago released, uh, the complete album of Gravity by John Mayer. All of the songs on there, but it's her, you know, her interpretation. Uh, I've seen people, um, uh, just, there's been a few things like that. But I love this idea though. I think it does take a little bit of courage. To step back into your own music, but then to ask, like, so what would I say today? You know, like, how would I make it sound? Would I even want to, like, change the lyrics a bit? You know, like, would I look back as a seasoned writer and say, you know, this, this actually doesn't work as well as if I would have said it this way? You're speaking—

so on that note, there's two songs that we added lyrics to. There's a song called Your Reach that was written about that Romans 8 verse that you quoted earlier about how we cannot We cannot fall out of the love of God. And that song is about how, um, how God, no matter how far we feel like we can run or how far we feel like we've sinned, we cannot— we're always within his reach. And there's a lyric that we added that says, uh, it's not that I first loved you, but that you first loved me. I'm found in your affection of the song sung over me, all creation praising the King of everything. And that was added 20 years later. And then one other song called I Want You, which was about my longing to say, I want you, Lord. There's a line in there that says, uh, and for all these many years you've been the themes of all my songs. And it's, it's just beautiful to be able to go back and say, I want to say this now. I want to say this now. This has been proven 20 years. You've, you've been the theme of all my songs for 20 years. And, and it's still true that I— it's not that I love you, God, it's that you love me. And now I gotta just tell everybody. So it's cool to do that. Really cool.

Well, this has been a wonderful conversation, Steel, and I appreciate your perspectives. And thank you for taking time to share. For everybody listening today, I do just want to remind you that in the show notes of this podcast, it should be wherever you listen, you should be able to find a link to the album Captured by Grace by The Rock Church and Steel Crosswhite. I think is how it comes up under Apple Music. I was looking this morning again.

Yeah, so it's going to be, uh, Steel Crosswhite, and our ministry is called The Rock Music. And so we have lots— yeah, we have lots of different bands and lots of different styles. So your audience from, uh, they'll like, uh, they've got, you know, hymns, uh, him, bluegrass, all the way to rock and roll, which is what we are. And so all for Jesus. So The Rock Music, and you can check my name, Steel Crosswhite.

All right, well, thanks so much for being here and being one of the voices in my head this Thank you, brother.