Tomlin’s third studio record and first in two years, the album’s guitar-driven pop melodies were recorded in Austin, Texas, home to Tomlin and the church he co-founded, Austin Stone Community Church, which has grown 500% over the last year-and-a-half. Produced by Ed Cash (Caedmon’s Call, Kathy Mattea, Bebo Norman, Bethany Dillon), Arriving tips the scales more toward corporate worship songs than devotional, melding wisdom, gratitude and celebration into a single package.
“I feel as though we’re like this landing strip in the desert for our great, incredible God to arrive on; a way for Him to come into people’s lives,” Tomlin says of the album’s metaphorical moniker inspired in part by Isaiah 40.
Crafting nine of 11 songs for the record, Arriving also features Indescribable, the first radio single from the project written by Laura Story. Already the top most added song last week at radio on R & R’s AC chart and listed as the PDAdvisor’s highest AC gainer, producer Cash calls the song “one of the best songs I’ve ever heard.” Tomlin says, “I instantly fell in love with it because of the grandness and otherness it paints of God. The expressions of God in the song are so big. In my head I heard this song being sung in an arena full of people screaming it to God.”
Songs that Tomlin wrote for the album include Holy is the Lord, which was birthed in preparation for Passion’s OneDay03, where 20,000 college students gathered on a ranch in Texas. How Great is our God is a song Tomlin identifies as the anchor to Arriving. “It’s about the greatness of God and how there are anthems ringing throughout the world by his people and by the heavens praising His glory.” Already, crowds are responding to the anthem, as at a summer 2004 Willow Creek Arts Festival. “We’ve never had this kind of response to a song. People won’t let it end. They just keep singing. I had no idea this simple chorus could turn into something this big,” Tomlin says, amazed.
“I am so excited about what’s going on!”he continues. “I pray that people will know more and hunger more after God because of these songs. People are changed because of God arriving in their lives. Grace changes people into people with hope.”
Unfailing Love, written with Cary Pierce of Jackopierce, an A & M group labeled a frat-rock band by Rolling Stone, also features vocals by four-time GRAMMY, 47-time Dove Award-winning Steven Curtis Chapman. Tomlin and Chapman will be performing the song live in concert on Chapman’s All Things New 70-city, six-month tour beginning this fall. Tomlin will be performing in the middle slot with opener Casting Crowns on this major market tour anticipating an average of 6,500 people per night.
Rooted in Passion’s collegiate movement that the New York Times calls “Christian Music’s New Wave,” Tomlin has also written songs used by tens-of-thousands of churches worldwide; he has five songs in the CCLI top 60, nine in the top 500. He is further finishing his first book, which is currently untitled and slated to release on Multnomah early next year.
