The Walk: Real Stories of Faith

Gary LeBlanc spent 35 years in hotels and restaurants, and by the end of it he had engineered his life so he never had to set foot in a kitchen again. "I had worked my way out of the kitchen a half dozen times," he tells Kurtis Parks, "only to have something happen in the hotel, and somebody would go, wait a minute, Gary does food." As a Hilton managing director in Virginia, he finally had people who had people who ran the kitchens.
Then Katrina hit New Orleans — his hometown, where he came up in the business. His daughter lost a home. His grandmother was evacuated, fell days later, and died a few months on. Watching the coverage, he began recognizing former coworkers being airlifted onto the overpasses. "It wasn't just seeing this incredible humanity need. It was seeing people I knew." He drove down and cooked. What he found there set everything in motion: "I saw food being served that was keeping people alive, but I didn't see love. I didn't see professionalism. I didn't see a chef's acumen. I just saw people scooping and running."
What followed was nine months of arguing with God. "I said no. I said, here's eight other names. These are people that could do this better than me. Do you need phone numbers?" Then God spoke audibly — two words, feed people — followed by a quiet question he still carries: "How many men asked you to go back in the kitchen? And you said yes."
The hinge of the episode is a failure. Gary's first meal in the Katrina zone was 400 portions stretched to 440 plates, and when he finished, 40 people were still standing in line. "I was broken. I ran into the woods behind the kitchen and I cried like a child." He demanded God make him taller, stronger, smarter. The answer reframed it: "I can use you. But you're gonna have to let go of yourself." Twenty years and more than 39 million meals later, he says they have never run out again.
He describes being convicted while handing a plate down out of a mobile kitchen window. Mercy Chefs no longer serves from windows. "We serve from the ground, eye to eye with the people that we're serving." Their end-of-night debrief isn't the meal count — it's one question: who was your one? He also tells two stories he calls creative miracles, including a Thanksgiving where 800 prepped portions somehow fed nearly 1,800, and a Haitian pastor whose reframe has stayed with him: "They've all heard the gospel. What they've never had is the gospel intersect their life in a moment of need."
The theology lands when Kurtis asks about faith and risk. "You have got to pour out to receive." Gary unpacks it: "If the Lord comes to me and he's gonna pour out oil and my pots are full, I've got my oil. I don't have his oil. I want his oil." He admits he fails at it. "I still go back to my business mind — what's your cash reserves, what's your flow number. That's not Holy Spirit math. That's man math."
Asked how any of this counts as worship, he doesn't hesitate. "Worship is anything that you offer up to the Lord." He lists what he can't do — after-school care, elder care, cutting trees, blue tarps — and lands on what he can. "But I do food. Food is hard. They can't do food. I can do food. And that's my worship." On what he expects at the end: "I'm not expecting the Lord to say, look what you did. I'm expecting to have the opportunity to say, Lord, look what you did."
"Worship is anything that you offer up to the Lord." — Gary LeBlanc
IN THIS EPISODE
He spent a career escaping the kitchen. Six times he worked his way out, six times he got pulled back.
Katrina was personal. Watching the airlifts on television, he recognized former coworkers being set down on the overpasses.
What was missing wasn't food. "I saw food being served that was keeping people alive, but I didn't see love."
Nine months of saying no. "Here's eight other names. These are people that could do this better than me. Do you need phone numbers?"
Then God spoke out loud. Two words — feed people — followed by the question that ended the argument.
The 40 people still in line. His first meal ran out, and the answer to his prayer was not what he asked for: "I can use you. But you're gonna have to let go of yourself."
Who was your one? They stopped serving out of mobile kitchen windows so the team would stand eye to eye.
Pour out to receive. "If the Lord is gonna pour out oil and my pots are full, I've got my oil. I don't have his oil."
Worship is the offering, not the song. "I do food. And that's my worship."
CHAPTERS
00:00 Welcome
02:43 Out Of The Kitchen
04:39 Katrina Made It Personal
05:07 Nine Months Of Wrestling
09:12 The Day He Ran Out
11:13 If You Feel A Call
15:34 When The Gospel Intersects Need
21:51 Pour Out To Receive
28:27 This Is My Worship
31:02 Why The Local Church
ABOUT GARY LEBLANC
Chef Gary LeBlanc is the founder and CEO of Mercy Chefs. He spent 35 years in the hotel and restaurant industry with no formal culinary training, learning on the job under some of the best in the business — Paul Prudhomme was his first executive chef. In 2005 he left a hotel executive role in Virginia to volunteer in his hometown of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and founded Mercy Chefs the following year. The organization has since served more than 39 million meals across 42 countries with the help of over 20,000 volunteers, and now runs roughly 400,000 meals a month globally alongside permanent community kitchens in Tampa, Portsmouth, Richmond, St. Louis, and Nashville. Its programs include family grocery boxes, Feed the Force for military families, young parent cooking schools, and back-to-work classes. His wife Ann is co-founder, and two of their children work in the organization. They are based in Portsmouth, Virginia.
LINKS
Mercy Chefs — https://mercychefs.com
Volunteer with Mercy Chefs — https://mercychefs.com/volunteer
Feed the Force — https://mercychefs.com/feed-the-force/
Mercy Chefs on Facebook — https://facebook.com/MercyChefs
Mercy Chefs on Instagram — https://instagram.com/mercychefs
Mercy Chefs on X — https://x.com/MercyChefs
Mercy Chefs on YouTube — https://youtube.com/@MercyChefsOfficial
Mercy Chefs on LinkedIn — https://linkedin.com/company/mercy-chefs
SPONSOR
This episode is brought to you by Planning Center: the all-in-one software to help your church schedule volunteers, plan services, and stay organized. Start free, no credit card required.
https://www.planningcenter.com/?utm_source=worshipleader&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=the_walk&utm_content=episode_195_gary_leblanc
Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Carl Lentz led Hillsong NYC — thousands in a weekend, celebrity mentorships, an Oprah interview — until his extramarital affair became national news and, as he puts it, "that chapter that God had given us to entrust just collapsed." Six years later he and his wife Laura have written Overcoming Infidelity, and in this conversation with Kurtis Parks, Carl talks about what the years since have actually required.
He opens by naming what Instagram never showed: a church that was "way bigger than us," led by a man who "had some serious cracks everywhere." The difference, he says, is what you do with them. "There's a couple deep in my soul that I made a decision to ignore and to overlook and to allow to fester. And eventually that leads to extraordinary pain." His summary is blunt: "When you let sin do what it does unchecked, the collateral damage is severe."
Carl rejects the idea that fame changes people. "Fame isn't really the thing that changes anybody. It just is a big spotlight, exposes who you've always been." He adds that the claim is always made by someone who has never had influence. On gifting he's equally direct — charisma "functions in sin, out of sin, good, bad," and what sits underneath it is what needs care. His warning to leaders: handle the things you don't want to handle, because eventually they will handle you.
He talks about preaching from open wounds rather than scars, and about refusing to live in shame over what he did. "We can't curate our testimony. So if I'm gonna stand on my testimony that Jesus is the redeemer and he's the God that can lift every head, well, I gotta do it now too." He describes the discipline of holding one story about himself instead of three: "I'm healing, God's redeeming. I can do nothing about the past. I can do everything about the right now and where I'm headed."
He also takes apart the label that follows him. "God is the one that gives grace. We can destroy our reputation, our platform, but grace is a gift from God given without merit. You can't fall from grace." On critics he's unbothered — "I'm not in that courtroom, brother" — though he's careful to add, "I definitely care about what people think. Anybody who says otherwise, I don't trust them. It's how I care."
The back half is practical. On telling their children, the hardest chapter to write: "As the guy who started the party, you can't leave when the songs get a little bit uncomfortable. You gotta dance through it all." On marriage: "Marriage is beautiful. It's not hard. We make it hard" — and most contention, he says, traces to somebody not sharing a thought or a feeling until the distance stacks up. On doing it alone he's emphatic that it can't be done, and offers to celebrate anyone who proves him wrong. And on accountability culture in the church, he walks through a checkbox conversation and shows how easily he used to pass: "You know how to lie too." Honesty is the goal. Accountability is only what helps you keep it.
"Accountability is not the goal. Honesty is the goal. Accountability is what helps you maintain honesty." — Carl Lentz
IN THIS EPISODE
The cracks were always there. Carl describes a church that was "way bigger than us" led by a man with "serious cracks everywhere" — and says the difference between leaders isn't whether they have them, but what they do with them.
Fame is a spotlight, not a solvent. "It just is a big spotlight, exposes who you've always been."
Charisma is morally neutral. "That functions in sin, out of sin, good, bad. It's the stuff that the charisma's under that requires extraordinary care."
Preaching from open wounds. He distinguishes scars from open wounds, and admits he was doing the second while believing he was doing the first.
The disgrace argument. "You can't disgrace another person. God is the one that gives grace."
One story instead of three. "If I believe a different story, my kids lose again. Laura loses again."
Gratitude on the calendar. "There's a two-minute break right there at twelve thirty to be grateful."
Accountability culture doesn't work on its own. "You know how to lie too."
CHAPTERS
00:00 Welcome
01:14 What Instagram Never Showed
03:34 Why They Wrote The Book
04:58 Charisma And Responsibility
08:40 Preaching From Open Wounds
12:51 The One True Story
15:07 You Cannot Fall From Grace
25:07 Victim Or Builder
32:38 Telling The Kids
40:02 Honesty Over Accountability
ABOUT CARL AND LAURA LENTZ
Carl and Laura Lentz are the authors of Overcoming Infidelity: 10 Conversations to Help You Heal the Hurt (Simon & Schuster), written in alternating chapters so that both the partner who committed the infidelity and the partner who experienced the betrayal are heard in their own voice. For years they led Hillsong NYC. Today Carl works as a church consultant and coach helping people reclaim their identity after marital failure, addiction, and other personal crises, and Laura works as a coach helping women heal from betrayal, rebuild trust, and find their voice. They co-host the Lights On podcast and live in Tulsa, Oklahoma with their three children.
LINKS
Carl Lentz on Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/carllentz/
Laura Lentz on Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/lauralentz
Carl Lentz on Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/CarlLentz4/
Lights On podcast — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lights-on-with-carl-lentz/id1747789103
Lights On on YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/@lightsonwithcarllentz
SPONSOR
This episode is brought to you by Planning Center: the all-in-one software to help your church schedule volunteers, plan services, and stay organized. Start free, no credit card required.
https://www.planningcenter.com/?utm_source=worshipleader&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=the_walk&utm_content=episode_194_carl_and_laura_lentz
Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Danny Gokey did this interview from his car, minutes after walking out of a recording session, and apologized twice for the signal. It's a fitting entrance for someone who tells Kurtis later in the episode that he almost never cancels anything.
He's in a new season professionally. After a first post-Idol deal that fell apart, he was dropped, and remembers thinking that if you can't make it off American Idol, maybe you can't make it at all. He signed elsewhere and had a good run, then Capitol, and is now with Red Street Records. He repeats what the label head told his manager back then, apparently without irony: I don't know why I'm signing Danny Gokey, but I believe I'm supposed to. Please don't make me lose money. He says he's got a lot of new music coming, and that this batch feels like the best work he's done.
The reason why leads to the best story in the first act. On American Idol he sang whatever got a reaction, the growl, the gravel, the Michael McDonald and Michael Bolton textures, because that's what drew applause. Then he was in a studio with producer Bernie Herms, who stopped him mid-vocal and said that would sound great if he were Michael Bolton, but he wanted to know what Danny Gokey sounded like. Danny was thirty-three, and says nobody had ever asked him that. That question started the work of finding his own voice, and he credits the years since with turning experience into something like mastery.
Then the conversation goes where you'd expect it to and doesn't flinch. Talking about his single "Jesus Over Everything," co-written with DOE, Danny says Jesus brought meaning to losing his first wife, Sophia, to the show, to remarrying. He walks through Joseph and Job to make the point: what makes suffering survivable isn't an explanation, it's God being in it. When Kurtis asks how he actually walked through it, Danny is direct. He had faith God would heal Sophia. It went the opposite direction, and it turned into a funeral. He was angry at God, and he says a lot of it was ignorance and assumption, that God had abandoned him. He lands on John 6, where the hard teaching drives the crowd away and Jesus asks the twelve whether they'll leave too, and Peter says where else could we go. That, Danny says, is where he was: mad, and staying.
He warns about the thing he thinks does the real damage, assigning your own meaning to loss. This must mean I'm unlovable. This must mean God won't save me. Once you attach a meaning that came out of your own hurt, you miss what's actually happening.
The hope section is worth the episode for worship leaders. Danny points to studies on hope, to Romans 15:13, and offers a picture he clearly uses a lot: faith is the engine, hope is the gasoline. Hope is a vision, but internal rather than external, and it's what lets you see a better day before there's any evidence of one. He describes losing Sophia as feeling like an amputation of the soul, and says hope was the thing that kept him moving through it. He also connects belief and hope tightly: your core beliefs drive whether you're hopeful or hopeless, and wrong beliefs bring wrong emotions. He includes himself in that. He's been in hopeless places, believed wrong things, and says he's responsible for his beliefs, decisions, actions, reactions and feelings, which he notes is not what our culture teaches.
The middle of the episode is warmer. His parents made him sing, and he didn't want to. He remembers being twelve in the back seat, hearing his dad lean over to his mom and say your son's got a good voice, and being genuinely surprised. His first solo was at a water park karaoke stand, "Tutti Frutti," a scrawny kid with a growl, a crowd, high fives, and then straight into the wave pool. A youth pastor pushed him toward singing, and years later a pastor told him he was leading worship that day, to which Danny said no I'm not, and was overruled.
That leads to fatherhood, and the most quotable stretch of the conversation. His kids are thirteen and seven. He says the thing he'd tell a new dad is to model what you say, because kids see the frustrations and the interactions whether you intend them to or not. He's honest that touring cost him moments he wishes he had back. Then the framing: everyone is waiting for the macro moment, the career break, the money, the family unity, and nobody watches the micro moments, even though every decision is a micro moment that creates the macro one. Kurtis brings up The Liturgy of the Ordinary, and Danny takes it further: the ordinary is where you'll spend the most time, so it's where it counts.
There are good road stories too. In Richmond he got second and third degree burns on his leg an hour before a show when he knocked over a steamer, went to the ER, got the doctors to move him because twelve hundred people were waiting, and did the show an hour late, on pain pills, doing the choreography from a chair. He also describes a bout of vertigo this year severe enough that he feared something worse, and says the only thing he's cancelled all year was an eyewear expo his company had put $80,000 into, because he was on the freeway when the spinning started. The eyewear line, incidentally, came from Idol: everyone else had tattoos and cool hair, and he had glasses, so he bought a bunch of pairs and changed them every performance.
He closes on what he actually cares about now. He still leads worship at The Belonging Co, and says the new album leans more worship-heavy than anything he's done. His heart is the gospel, plainly: heaven and hell, the harvest is plenty and the laborers are few. He tells his wife's story. She didn't grow up in church, went to a service at twenty-one on the way to the club, understood one line of the invitation, prayed, went to the club anyway, and never stopped going back to church. She struggled afterward with why nobody had told her sooner. That became a song called "Tell Somebody," and a podcast he's building under the same name, alongside a ministry project called Hope Hill.
And when Kurtis asks how to actually be bold about it, Danny gives a one-line answer that doubles as a masterclass. He gets in an Uber and asks: do you go to church? That's it. It opens every time.
"Most people perish in their comfort zone." - Danny Gokey
ABOUT DANNY GOKEY
Danny Gokey is a three-time GRAMMY nominee and Dove Award winner who first reached a national audience as a Top 3 finalist on Season 8 of American Idol. A former church worship director, he built one of the most durable careers in contemporary Christian music on the back of chart-topping songs including "Hope in Front of Me," "Tell Your Heart to Beat Again," "Haven't Seen It Yet" and "Rise." He has toured for a decade alongside Natalie Grant at Christmas, leads worship at The Belonging Co in Nashville, and runs his own eyewear line. Now signed to Red Street Records, he released the single "Jesus Over Everything," co-written with DOE, in 2026, with more new music on the way. He is also developing a podcast called Tell Somebody and a ministry project called Hope Hill.
IN THIS EPISODE
The label head who signed him and said please don't make me lose money
Bernie Herms asking a thirty-three-year-old Danny what his own voice sounded like
Why "Jesus Over Everything" is about Joseph, Job, and meaning rather than explanation
Faith he had that God would heal Sophia, and what happened when it went the other way
John 6, Peter's answer, and staying angry without leaving
Why assigning your own meaning to a loss makes you miss what's actually happening
Faith as the engine and hope as the gasoline
Romans 15:13 and what it means that God holds your hope
Being twelve in the back seat and hearing his dad say he had a good voice
"Tutti Frutti" at a water park karaoke stand, and straight into the wave pool
Micro moments, macro moments, and what he'd tell a new dad
Second and third degree burns an hour before a show, and doing it from a chair
Where the eyewear line actually came from
His wife's story, the song "Tell Somebody," and the one question he asks in every Uber
LINKS
Danny Gokey: https://dannygokey.com
Jesus Over Everything: https://ffm.to/jesusovereverything
Jesus Over Everything (official video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0vmq4ZV_E4
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/3CmSJA1TslbtlScrR9ZAfK
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DannyGokeyOfficial/
Red Street Records: https://www.redstreetrecords.com/
Kurtis Parks: https://www.kurtisparks.com
Worship Leader: https://worshipleader.com
SPONSOR
This episode is brought to you by Planning Center, the all-in-one software that helps your church schedule volunteers, plan services, and stay organized. Start free, no credit card required: https://www.planningcenter.com/?utm_source=worshipleader&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=the_walk&utm_content=episode_194_danny_gokey
Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Michael Sarver moved to Nashville in February after a lifetime in Louisiana and East Texas, and the conversation opens the way conversations with new transplants do, with gumbo, hot chicken, and the strange feeling of no longer needing to book a flight home. Then it goes somewhere else entirely.
He grew up Pentecostal, and jokes that the first place he went after the hospital might literally have been church. Music was around him constantly: live drums, real instruments, a choir he loved. But it didn't become his until he was eleven. His mother had remarried, and what looked like a good thing became an abusive one. Michael describes running to his room and turning music on, and finding that it shifted the atmosphere and shifted his spirit when he was frightened and in pain. That's when he learned music was more than a sound. Not long after they got out of that situation, he auditioned for a church choir with a minimum age of thirteen or fourteen, and got in at eleven. His first time leading was a Larnelle Harris song with what he remembers as about fifty key changes, and he says that was the day it went from wanting to do this to knowing it was his.
At fourteen he wrote his first song, "Broken Pieces," the night before a Sunday special he'd already picked a Phillips, Craig and Dean song for. He credits Steven Curtis Chapman as the reason he writes at all, someone taking the noise in his head and putting it on paper. He's written over 3,800 songs since. While other kids played football, he went straight home and taught himself to sing like Michael English and the guys from Avalon, always finding somebody stronger and pushing until he could do what they could do.
He's candid about the rest of it: legal trouble as a late teen, being bullied for years over his religion and for how little his family had, and real church hurt. He calls religion a poison that almost destroyed his faith. When his sister invited him to a church in Jasper, Texas, he sat there judging the pastor's wife for wearing makeup and the women for wearing pants, and recognized he was doing to those people exactly what had been done to him. What broke it was a worship rehearsal. The presence of God showed up in a room full of people who wore makeup and cut their hair and grew beards, and it undid the framework he'd been handed. That church is also where he met his wife, though not the way you'd guess: the man who kept shaking his hand every week and telling him somebody noticed him today, the one Michael found mildly annoying, turned out to be his future father-in-law.
American Idol happened almost by accident. He drove twenty-plus hours across Texas to Arizona to support his sister-in-law's audition, and made it himself. He went back to the oil rig between rounds, sweating it out and waiting for the next call. What he thinks made the difference was worship leading. On group night, when everyone around him fell apart, he was the one feeding lines and holding it together, because that's what he'd trained to do on a platform. He also had something most contestants didn't: he didn't need the show. He had a wife, two kids, a church he loved and good money on the rig. When producers went looking for the story about his dad leaving when he was two, he told them that wasn't a tree they were climbing today. He finished in the top ten of Season 8, and speaks warmly about Danny Gokey, who he says held him up during it.
Then the part he doesn't soften. He signed with Dream Records and went country, because everyone said country, the accent, the size, the Texas of it all. He explains it as a branding decision, sound and image as two brands that have to marry. And he says plainly that it was the wrong one. Not a detour God used, not a season of preparation. He says he liked being famous, chased what he thought would bring the most credit, and left his actual purpose behind. Around six years ago, right as COVID cancelled everyone's tours, he stopped. He gave back a large signing bonus, walked away from a deal, and spent his energy winning back a family he'd nearly lost and a wife he says he wasn't the man she deserved.
The restoration came slowly and through a local church, where he had no desire to sing and got asked anyway, ended up as worship pastor, and learned to tell someone kindly that singing isn't their gift. He says the shepherding changed his character more than the music did. Around year four he wrote a song called "Layers," about looking back through every layer of his life and seeing that God was already there before he ever asked Him to show up. He didn't think it was a worship song, and he started praying about why he'd written it.
That song is the seed of both EPs. He deliberately broke the rule about a cohesive body of work, because being true to layers meant being true to every style that shaped him. "Storms Don't Bother Me" is up and encouraging. "Fire" is a nod to the old gospel sound he grew up on. "Limitless" is built on the prodigal son but is actually about his own son, who went through a short season where it looked like he was walking away. Michael and his wife chose not to say I told you so. He asked one question, do you want to go home, and his son said yes, and that was the end of it. His son gave his blessing to tell it. He ties it to the limitless love of a father, natural and heavenly, and to the thing he calls his number one battle: shame.
The two EPs are seven songs each, which he chose on purpose. Layer One released August 21 and Layer Two follows on September 25.
"I actually made the wrong decision because I liked being famous." - Michael Sarver
ABOUT MICHAEL SARVER
Michael Sarver is a singer/songwriter and worship leader who was a Top 10 finalist on Season 8 of American Idol, going from the oil fields of East Texas to a national stage. He released multiple country singles and toured nationally before stepping away to serve as a church worship leader. He made his Christian music debut in 2025 with "Warrior," followed by "Victory Song," "All I Need," and the 2026 singles "Wonderful God," "Count It All Joy," "More Like You" and "Limitless." His seven-song EP Layer One released August 21, 2026 on S&G Music Enterprises, distributed by WieRise Music, with Layer Two following September 25. He has written more than 3,800 songs and now lives in Nashville with his wife and family.
IN THIS EPISODE
The year music stopped being background and became the safest place in his house
Auditioning for a church choir two years under the minimum age, and getting in
Writing "Broken Pieces" at fourteen, the night before a Sunday special
Steven Curtis Chapman, Michael English, Avalon, and 3,800 songs later
Church hurt, and catching himself judging people the way he'd been judged
The worship rehearsal that dismantled what he'd been taught
The man at church who wouldn't leave him alone, and who he turned out to be
Driving twenty hours to support someone else's audition and making the show himself
Going back to the oil rig between rounds of American Idol
Why worship leading is what carried him through group night
Why he calls the country years the wrong decision, in his own words
Giving back a signing bonus to go win his family back
"Layers," and the realization that God was already in the room
"Limitless," his son, and the only question he asked him
LINKS
Michael Sarver: https://michaelsarvermusic.com
Layer One: https://ffm.to/wmzbj1j
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MichaelSarverOfficial
WieRok Entertainment Group: https://wierok.com/
Kurtis Parks: https://www.kurtisparks.com
Worship Leader: https://worshipleader.com
SPONSOR
This episode is brought to you by Planning Center, the all-in-one software that helps your church schedule volunteers, plan services, and stay organized. Start free, no credit card required: https://www.planningcenter.com/?utm_source=worshipleader&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=the_walk&utm_content=episode_193_michael_sarver
Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Tyler Roberts has been at Red Rocks Church for sixteen years, which in worship ministry terms makes him an elder statesman. He says so himself: everything looks the same, but everybody keeps getting younger, which can only mean one thing.
Red Rocks started in 2005 with a plain goal, to be a youth group for adults, and a tagline they still use: make heaven more crowded. Tyler's arrival in 2010 tells you what the early days felt like. The church met in a rented red barn at the back of a theme park, a quarter-mile walk from the parking lot, with a wedding chapel on one side and a haunted house on the other. He auditioned on Halloween, singing "Our God," with a miniature train going by outside and a man in a Jason mask running around with a chainsaw while girls screamed. That was a normal Sunday.
The origin of Red Rocks Worship is less glamorous than people assume, and better for it. When the church went multi-site around 2011, there were suddenly two campuses, two worship teams, and nobody really in charge. Tyler is candid that they handled it badly at first. The fix was a question: what if we prayed together and wrote songs together? They started meeting Fridays at 8:30, praying for half an hour, then writing, on the theory that a song all of them liked could be sung at both campuses. The songs were mostly not good, he says, and he advises against going back to listen.
What happened next was an accident. Around 2013 the staff wanted to record a Sunday-after-Christmas special called Holiday Hangover so nobody had to come in that weekend. Leadership asked whether the worship team had any songs, didn't much care what they were, and recorded them. Weeks before it aired, someone asked whether they could put it on iTunes. For one day only, the Rooftop EP was the number one Christian and gospel EP there, because the whole church downloaded it. Then those songs came back around on the weekend and the church already knew them. They had become the congregation's songs.
Tyler's picture of a Red Rocks Sunday is worth the episode for worship pastors. They like to throw good parties, and they describe themselves as a front porch for prodigals, taking the father in the parable literally: he threw a party the moment the son came home. So song one is loud and full of energy, songs two and three go upward into high praise, the message lands, the response time leans into songs like "The Lord Is With Me," and then they send people out. We're not here to just play church and have a big audience, he says. We're an army.
He walks through the multi-site structure in useful detail. Every campus has a worship pastor who sits on the campus staff, reports to the campus pastor, and dotted-lines to central. Those pastors own resourcing, developing, recruiting and pastoring their teams; central supplies the set lists, the Ableton sessions and the creative. Brussels, now ten years old, has grown into its own thing. He's honest that they've failed more than they've gotten it right, and have tried to fail forward.
On set lists, the rule is at least fifty percent Red Rocks songs, sometimes seventy-five, sometimes all of it. They write to fill gaps in their own church, and right now the gap is song ones. When they bring in an outside song, it usually comes out of the message.
Then Kurtis asks the question every church that releases music wants answered: why do your people actually sing your songs? Tyler refuses to give a formula, and says plainly that what the Lord chooses to breathe on is what He chooses to breathe on. But he does explain "The Lord Is With Me." Pastor Shawn Johnson learned a few years ago that he has a rare form of Parkinson's disease, and asked the team for a song to go alongside a book he was writing about it, something people could anchor to in the hardest season of their lives. They wrote it, the church preached a series on it, and suddenly everyone's story was connected to one anthem. Tyler says he doesn't even have to set it up anymore.
That leads into the strongest charge in the hour. When the team writes, they're in the lobbies, down front at the end of service, in Thursday morning prayer watching their own people's names scroll on a screen. And they're in Scripture, which Tyler says too many worship leaders neglect. He isn't talking about charisma or being able to sense and shift a room. He's talking about a depth you can't gain, weren't born with, and aren't talented enough to supersede, and he includes his own dry seasons in the indictment.
The record is called Promised Land, and the title came out of the worst six weeks of his recent life. The church forced him to take a sabbatical, which he'd never done and isn't good at. Two weeks in he was going crazy, sitting on his bed while his wife was at work and his kids ran wild, telling God that this gift didn't feel like a gift. What he found underneath was that his identity was wrapped in what he did, that he needed the validation and the affirmation, that he had to be doing things to feel like enough. The answer he got back: the promised land isn't on the other side, or in the standing ovation, or in the approval he'd been chasing from certain people. It's the presence of God, which he can't outrun, because Jesus already did the work.
Then, as it happened, they recorded at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, which Tyler is careful to say is not the promised land. But twenty years earlier, Pastor Shawn and some of the founders stood at the top of those same rocks, looking out over Denver, crying, asking people to give to a church that didn't exist yet. There's video of it. Ten thousand people came, nearly all of them their own church, sold out, on a November night that should have been snowing and somehow wasn't. Production ran three hours behind on lighting so there was no real soundcheck. They went full send and hoped God would be in it, and He was. At one point they cut the band and let ten thousand voices carry "The Lord Is With Me."
He closes on faithfulness. A mentor once told him deep roots grow great fruit, and you can't grow deep roots if you keep getting ripped up and replanted. Every move is traumatic; the plant spends its energy finding water again instead of bearing fruit. He's clear that God does call people out, and that some people are called to a place while others are called through one. But if you're on the fence, don't take a step until you hear clearly, and the way he's known it wasn't time was never an audible voice, just the absence of peace. Jesus is the Prince of Peace, so follow peace. Tyler left a dream job, a full-ride scholarship, his family and a house he'd just bought to come to Denver. None of it made sense on paper. He's felt no peace to leave since.
"Some people are called to a place and some people are called through a place." - Tyler Roberts
ABOUT TYLER ROBERTS
Tyler Roberts is worship division director at Red Rocks Church in Denver, Colorado, where he has served for sixteen years and helps oversee both the church's campus worship teams and Red Rocks Worship, the church's recording collective. Founded in 2005 with the vision of making heaven more crowded, Red Rocks Church now spans four Denver-area campuses with a fifth on the way, plus locations in Austin, Texas, and Brussels, Belgium, and prison campuses in Colorado. Red Rocks Worship has released songs sung in churches worldwide, including "Good Plans," "Living God," "Never Gets Old" and "The Lord Is With Me." Their live album Promised Land was recorded at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in November 2025 during the church's twentieth anniversary celebration, and released in 2026 on Provident Entertainment.
IN THIS EPISODE
A church that met in a rented red barn at the back of a theme park
Auditioning on Halloween with a man in a Jason mask outside holding a chainsaw
Friday mornings at 8:30, praying first and then writing songs to stay unified
How the Holiday Hangover special accidentally produced a number one iTunes EP
A front porch for prodigals, and why the father threw a party
How the multi-site worship structure actually works, campus by campus
The fifty percent rule for set lists, and writing to fill their own gaps
The story behind "The Lord Is With Me" and Pastor Shawn's diagnosis
Why he thinks worship leaders are neglecting the one thing they can't fake
The forced sabbatical, and what he found underneath his need to achieve
Ten thousand voices at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, with no real soundcheck
Deep roots grow great fruit, and why replanting yourself is traumatic
Called to a place versus called through a place
Why they released multiple versions of one song, and the key change that fixed it
LINKS
Red Rocks Worship: https://www.redrocksworship.com
Red Rocks Church: https://www.redrockschurch.com
Red Rocks Worship on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@redrocksworship
Red Rocks Worship on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/redrocksworship
Kurtis Parks: https://www.kurtisparks.com
Worship Leader: https://worshipleader.com
SPONSOR
This episode is brought to you by Planning Center, the all-in-one software that helps your church schedule volunteers, plan services, and stay organized. Start free, no credit card required: https://www.planningcenter.com/?utm_source=worshipleader&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=the_walk&utm_content=episode_192_tyler_roberts
Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.