Platinum-selling, Dove Award-winning recording artist Mark Schultz releases his long-awaited fifth studio album, Come Alive, on August 25.
One of Christian music’s most acclaimed singer-songwriters, Schultz’s first new studio album in nearly three years is also his most personal recording to date, inviting listeners to “come alive” through these songs birthed by stories of hope, loss, joy and redemption.
New for Schultz, working with more than one or two producers for an album, Come Alive features the distinct and masterful touches from multiple Grammy Award winner Brown Bannister (Amy Grant, Third Day, CeCe Winans), Shaun Shankel (Beyoncé, Hilary Duff), Bernie Herms (Natalie Grant, Avalon) and Paul Mills (Third Day, Bluetree).
The album also features collaborations with such hit making songwriters as Bart Millard and Barry Graul of Mercy Me, Matthew West, Joy Williams and Herms. The combination of talent and Schultz’s own vision for this album results in his most thought-provoking, musically diverse project to date.
“I would hope that when people listen to this CD they can identify with the struggles within the songs, but at the same time know that God is the same God through the struggles as He is during the triumphant moments," says Mark.
"Christ, who began a good work, will finish a good work. It may not be on your own timeline or not even the way you imagined it, but He promises He will. There’s a bigger picture out of our control, but God has made these promises and I want to hold onto that.”
“He Is”, the first radio single from Come Alive to release July 10, is an expression of this hope that was inspired by the stories of two families battling cancer.
“Payton Cram was a girl who came to one of my concerts in Michigan with her dad,” Mark recalls. “I was really amazed at her maturity for her young age, even as she had cancer. When the cancer started to get bad, I flew up and spent a day with her and prayed with her and her family. She was a beautiful girl. She was never going to blame God for her cancer. She never asked ‘Why me?’ She just always knew there was a bigger purpose in it.”
During the same time Payton was fighting cancer, Mark learned from his wife, Kate, about a missionary family whose fourth child was born on a Friday and on Sunday they found out the mother had terminal cancer.
“The father of the family said, ‘Well, we can’t praise God on Friday and curse him on Sunday…We have to trust that He knows what’s going on,’ and that’s when the idea of ‘He Is’ was born,” says Mark. “He is, He was and always will be. It’s a pretty important message–no matter what kind of rough road you are riding through.”
