Yet, in time, he found a new message to address with his students and it led to new songs. "We are always looking for what is off in the distance and God has placed you right where you are, to bloom where you are planted, to love the people around you and point to the people around you to the God that you know," he says, encouraging people to just do the very next thing God is calling them to do. "People that won't go to church, people that probably won't go buy a Christian record, they're not going to click on YouTube and watch a bunch of preachers, but they'll sit next to you in class. They'll ride with you to work or they'll sit at your table during your lunch hour and God has planted you there -- not so that you can get a better job one day -- it's so you can know Him and make Him known right where you are. That's what I've been trying to pour into my students and pour into people and remind myself is that [accomplishing] big things for God is really just reaching the person sitting next to you right now."
The Very Next Thing is the first Casting Crowns record since Hall's battle with cancer. During a routine trip to the doctor to deal with acid reflux, Hall's doctor decided to do some scans and found a tumor on his kidney that turned out to be cancerous. He admits the diagnosis caught him by surprise. He was attending a funeral when he got a text from his doctor asking him to call. "When I read that, it was just that feeling you get when you look up and see the blue lights in your rearview mirror," says Hall, a married father of four, who worried about breaking the news to his kids. "It stopped me. Everything around me stopped and in that very moment all I could think was, 'This is about to happen. This is about to happen to me. I'm the youth pastor. I'm the guy that helps everyone else get through their stuff. I'm the encourager. I don't know how to do this part.'"
To read more click here: Billboard
Backstreet Boys discuss their residency in Vegas with Billboard
If you ever wanted to know about their song I want it That away and if it ever made sense to you Backstreet Boys says that it doesn't...hmm never really thought about it until now. I guess it makes sense to me but some a long the way it doesn't. Here is what they had to say about the song.
“Well it’s funny, we actually were OK with the lyrics when we heard it first,” Carter told HuffPost. “And then the president of JIVE records at that time ― I mean he’s a genius ― but he and some of the A&R people wanted to change the lyrics.”
“To make the song make more sense,” Richardson chimed in.
The Backstreet Boys were releasing the album with JIVE and so the label having a problem with the nonsense lyrics could have derailed the single.
“We hired some really well known producers at the time to redo the song,” Carter continued. “So, there was another version of the song out there and then we listened to it back. Then, we as a group voted on it and said, “No.”
The legend ends here. No more speculation into how the band could not realize what they were doing.
To read more click here: Huffington Post
