About Me
Hey… my name is Mark Roach. I’m a singer/songwriter/worship leader from St. Louis, MO. I’ve been on staff at Morning Star Church since 1999 and recently released my debut worship project with Myrrh Records on July 24, 2007.
I’m amped about how this site can and will resource the church as a whole, and will be working diligently to get more and more stuff out here that you all can use! I’ve included multi-page .pdf’s for chord charts on all of the tunes on this site—congregational keys, capo charts & chord diagrams on each song—so check those out! Please let me know if there is anything that you’d like to see on this site and I’ll do what I can to make it happen!
Many blessings…
Mark
My Songs
A modern translation of the 23rd Psalm, I actually wrote this song during the five-hour drive to the first tracking session in Nashville. While I had never really thought about writing a worship tune based on that Psalm, it came as no surprise to me as the declaration in the lyric was exactly what I needed to remind myself at the time.
I remember looking out at my congregation one Sunday—seeing hands in pockets, people counting ceiling tiles… I began to think about all that God had done for the people in that room, and yet it somehow didn’t seem to be enough to warrant a few moments of authentic worship. We’ve all been there… unable to focus, not really engaged for whatever the reason… I felt the need to capture, in song, snippets of the Gospel story and a reminder that passionately worshiping Him is the very least we can do.
My aunt had this 88-year old baby grand piano that she needed to get out of her house to make room for some furniture—she hadn’t used it in years, and she decided to bless my wife and I with it as a gift! Within the first few days of it sitting in my living room, I sat down and was meditating on the vastness of God… as I attempted to describe God, with both scriptural reference and poetic expression, I was quickly reminded of the simplicity with which He identified Himself to Moses: “I Am.”
I often find myself writing worship songs from an emotional perspective. Frequently in the writing process, I’ll reflect on my most awe inspiring moments of corporate worship and try to write something that may somehow draw others to that same place. That was the case with this song… I remember sitting downstairs one Fall evening with my guitar. An idea had been tugging at me for a few days and I decided to try to hammer it out. To this day, I have no clue what that idea was-something all together different began to surface.
Blog
We got the refreshing opportunity to attend a small start-up church here in Belgrade, MT yesterday. It was called ‘Connect Church’ and has only been meeting for about 6 months. Solid music, good teaching and a warm, welcoming congregation. Kinda reminded me of our early start-up days back in ‘99 although their meeting space was quite a bit more intimate than what we had… those were the days!
So you may have already seen the post on my blog regarding my Alaska trip… as much as I enjoyed the trip, I was actually not even on vacation. I was brought into Cordova by the folks at Cordova Community Baptist Church as the featured guest of a small worship conference. The conference
This past weekend was the 3rd in our 4-part series called "Any Questions?" It’s been a great series so far, taking spiritual questions from our congregation and building messages around biblical answers to them. This week our new Youth Pastor, Matthew Skroblus, tackled the oft asked question: Why Do I Still Feel Guilty? He did a great job up there and the Worship Design Team was certainly made aware that we have another option in terms of a teaching pastor once in a while. It’s always great to throw someone in their 20’s up on the platform,
It was a good weekend overall… must admit, though, I didn’t really feel 100% back in the swing of things—two weekends playing out of state, I come back and it’s the first weekend of our Lead Pastor’s summer vacation (he’s basically gone all of July) and on top of that we did this kinda Family Service type of thing. So, I guess it just didn’t feel as much like ‘home’ as it usually does coming back after a few weeks away. That said, there really is something special about coming home and leading with a sense of familiarity. I know we’re
Wow… it’s been a while since I’ve penned one of these, and now I’m a week late on this one. Time just seems to slip through my fingertips. Hey last week we found ourselves in Little Rock, AR at The Church at Rock Creek. Richard Wentz is the worship Pastor over there and we met at this cool conference called re:create that I’ve been to for a couple years in Nashville. Anyway, the ministry there is quite cool, and we had an absolute blast.
this past weekend was a crazy one… big weekend in the life of our church, honestly. The numbers came in a few weeks ago regarding the financial commitments for our building initiative Love. Loud. and while it was a lot of money—and represented significant sacrifices from many families in our congregation—it fell substantially short of the figure we needed in order to actually build.
This past weekend was, of course, Mom’s Day. Usually, we get a packed house on Mother’s Day weekend, but for whatever reason (maybe the ridiculously dismal weather) we were not only light on attendance, but a bit blah as well. Now, my friend Gary Durbin in Florida points out in his most recent WorshipSource confessional the importance of not measuring worship by the congregation’s response, but focusing instead on God’s pleasure… good reminder for all of us, I’m sure, and so I’ll move on. :)
Ok, this one’s really late, I know, but I have to mention this… we had Mike Lewis, also known as the Jesus Painter, come and be a part of our Celebration services—the culmination of our Love. Loud. initiative. He is truly an awesome guy, and what he does in worship
Last week, I got the not-as-rare-as-it-used-to-be privilege of coming to my own church as an attender. Ryan, our Associate Music Director, led worship and I was out in the congregation holding my son in my arms and singing to my Creator—my son singing gently in my ear throughout the worship set… it doesn’t get a whole lot sweeter than that.
Ok, so it was the weekend after Easter… if your church is anything like our church, the staff is all in recovery mode for most of the week, trying to catch up on sleep, time with family, and anything else that was virtually ignored during the weeks prior to Easter. We were no different, and while Saturday seemed much like a normal service, when we all arrived Sunday morning it was easy to see that we hadn’t quite recovered yet. :) Setlist was as follows:
Filled With Your Glory - Jon Neufeld, Tim Neufeld
Worship Set
Your Grace is Enough - Matt Maher
Indescribable - Laura Story
Amazing - John Newton, John P. Rees, M. Roach
From the Inside Out - Joel Houston
feature tune: Love Loud - Ryan Redding
Schedule
Mark is the Worship Arts Director at Morning Star Church in O’Fallon, MO and leads worship at all three services on most weekends. Service times are Saturday - 4:30pm and Sunday - 9:15am & 11:00am.
For a detailed schedule of Mark’s additional dates, click here.
