Leeland

Leeland Mooring is learning he doesn’t want to be a musician or worship leader. At least, he doesn’t want to be only that. After two well-received albums, the man and band known as Leeland are calling others as they learn themselves to live a life fully-rounded to love and serve God. Their new album, Love Is On The Move, brings that point home with poignant vertical songs calling the body of Christ to worship and to allow that love to flow into action.

We spoke with Leeland recently to hear more details on the new album, their work in far away places and what they bring home after spending time preaching in Tokyo or ministering in Bangladesh.

Soul-Audio: So what were you learning as you head into the new album?

Leeland: We’ve learned a lot about our responsibility as musicians. Sometimes it’s easy as a worship leader or musician to look at the stage as your ministry and it’s easy to do. You walk off of the stage and you think you’ve done your ministry for the day. Then you go out for the rest of the day acting like everyone else and you’re not focused on giving the day to day interaction with people to God. So that’s been one big thing on our hearts – to give God our life outside of our music. How are we treating our wives? How are we treating our families? How are we treating our friends and strangers or people at home? What about the security guard and the people off the stage – the roadies? It’s how you’re treating people and if you’re being love to the world around you. It’s a question of if you’re giving God your entire life.

That’s been a real big theme for us. Obviously that’s the basics of Christianity, but that’s something we’ve been coming back to. It’s been a sweet, sweet thing. So that’s what we were feeling in the studio and that’s what we were going through. We were just really in a season of wanting to worship him. We started out as a worship band and so we’ve never been the band that feels comfortable entertaining people. Some bands are full of these amazing musicians and they’re all entertaining people and putting on incredible shows. Of course, we love having fun and entertaining, but our hearts most of all aren’t about that. When we focus on that, we fail miserably. But when we’re totally focused on loving God and giving the whole night over to God and worshipping him and keeping our eyes on him, it’s just amazing. Those are our best nights.

So we’re just getting back to that place again. Our hearts are returning back to that and we just worship God with everything we do. I think Opposite Way was a great album and had a really big impact on our generation. It had its season and its purpose and this season we’re coming into is just getting back to loving him and the intimate side of the relationship. Musically, we really wanted to make it sound cool. We weren’t focused as much though on making it sound super amazing. We wanted to get into the heart of the song instead and focus on that. But we were giving our all to make it sound cool in a sense.

SA: So the next album is the bridge between the two albums? Is that the best way to picture it?

Leeland: Yeah. It goes along with worship and action being together. Out of that amazing experience you have with God at church or this amazing experience with God at home, that should inspire the fruits of action in your life. That’s what Jesus did before he went and did all of these amazing miracles. Right after he fed 5,000 people and did this amazing thing, he went to the mountain and he sought God. He had a one-on-one time with the Lord. Then as he’s walking on the water after that, the Bible said he intended to pass up his disciples – he wasn’t even planning on stopping that way – but he saw they were so afraid from being in this storm and they were just freaking out afraid for their life, he does this great act of love and tells them not to be afraid and the storm just stopped. It just shows that Jesus’ actions were a constant thing for him where he wouldn’t just teach parables and then go home like everyone else. He would have alone time with God and that would inspire him to not think of himself, but to think of others.

So that’s what this record is talking about. There is another side of it that’s just very intimate. I hope people can just sit back in their rooms and play some of these songs before they go to school and worship and before they go to work. I hope this record helps people develop that intimacy with God, because sometimes we can really lose that and we focus too much on the religious aspect. God wants to bring us back to loving him, so that’s another aspect that we love about the record.

SA: What about current partnerships for you guys? I know you’ve worked with different non-profits in the past.

Leeland: We’re continuing to work with Food for the Hungry. They’re the ones we went on this mission trip with recently. We had a show scheduled in Japan and 50 Christian churches in Tokyo came together to put on this event in the city. A lot of unsaved people were there and a lot of Christians because it was for anybody. It was awesome. We preached the gospel and played some music and it was pretty awesome. Then we were in Cambodia and we were there for six days and then we went to Bangladesh for about four days. We saw what Food for the Hungry was transforming communities in those places, which was just awesome.

SA: When you go back into the studio having seen that, that has to change everything.

Leeland: Yeah it really does. Our worldview has really been opened the last couple of years. The amazing thing is really just seeing how massive or the magnitude of the body of Christ. It’s just so huge. It’s a lot harder for me to slack up on my walk with God or have a day where you want to veg out and you don’t want to think or be spiritual. But it’s harder to have those days when I’m thinking about the Christians in Cambodia living their life for the gospel or the Christians in Bangladesh who are sacrificing way more than I am to follow Jesus.

So it’s also really encouraging as well to keep you going in your faith in America here. I came over to the States and got a cold glass of water out of my fridge when I got back and that just felt amazing. [Laughs] I should never ever complain again. I’m just so blessed. So we’ve definitely been changed and we’ll definitely bring a lot of that to the tour.

Photo Credit: Robert Hill – www.innerlight-productions.com

• www.leelandonline.com
• www.myspace.com/leelandmusic

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