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
‘Steps of Faith’ was actually the title of our very first message when we launched Morning Star Church in September of 1999. The first worship song I ever attempted to write, this song was penned to complement the message that Sunday morning.
The lyrics are drawn from the familiar story of Peter in the boat…
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
On Thursday, we got the opportunity to bookend the day with the bookends of the programs offered by Compassion International. We started the day heading out to one of the Project sites in Lima that has what’s called a Child Survival Program. This program is offered to mother/child units instead of children. Everything Compassion does is very holistic in nature and this program is no exception, offering a wide range of care for pre-natal moms through moms with children up to about 4 years old, when they can begin to register for Child Sponsorship.
does anyone else feel like the very first service of the weekend comes off as more of a rehearsal than anything? we battled that for the longest time when we were a portable church—sometimes we were still making sure microphones were plugged in when the service was supposed to be starting—but we’re battling it again. I think it’s ‘cause we’re coming into church in the middle of the day on a Saturday, half a day of lawn-mowing, mall-walking, kid-feeding, game-playing already under our belts, you know? anyway, we prayed it all out this Saturday and
so I made a strange decision last week, after years of pushing for more music up front at our services, always lobbying to maintain our typical 4-song set whenever possible… I decided that I’m going to try something over the next month or so. 3 songs. 3 songs in the 20 minutes or so that I’m allotted in each service. why? well, lately I’ve felt… I don’t know… trapped. constricted. have I really been allowing the Spirit to move in our sets? we’ve become much more polished in the last several years—especially after moving into our first facility. sure,
One thing that’s been weird the last year or so for me while leading worship at church has been getting used to in-ear monitors. I like ‘em a lot for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that (I think) my tuning improves with them as opposed wedges… the biggest flaw I’ve encountered is the lack of connection with a congregation—and really, I mean an emotional, internal connection rather than an outward, stage presence type connection. I think I’ve done a fine job in overcoming
Man, I’m bad at doing these right after the weekend, huh? Gary Durbin’s was practically up before our last service was over… :) oh, well…way to stay on top of things, Gary! :)
This weekend was one of those that started out brutally, but ended well. Ever have those? Well, mine was self-inflicted as I committed the cardinal sin of wireless in-ear usage on Saturday and neglected to change out my batteries before service. No idea where my head was…
this weekend was one of those crazy weekends for me when I have an engagement out of town on Saturday, but I drive back Saturday night for Sunday a.m. services. Of course, we have Saturday night service as well, so it makes for an odd weekend for the whole team in many ways. Ryan, the Associate Music Director at MSC, takes over as worship leader in my absence. This weekend I was in Urbana, IL (more on that in a later post) and we drove about 3 hours and 15 minutes back to STL, arriving at about 1:00a.m. If you know me at all, you know that even
Tough weekend at MSC, as we lost a special young nineteen-year-old girl to a fatal single-car accident on Friday. She was to turn 20 on Saturday, and our church—young as it is—had literally watched her grow up as her and her family have attended for virtually the entire nine-year life of our ministry. Couple that with the elation that comes with the 30+ baptisms we were celebrating at our Saturday services, and you certainly end up with a strange dichotomy of emotions—and maybe the very essence of the Christian walk.
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,
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.
