Popular music by Jared Anderson include Great I Am, Rescue, and others.
The path for new Centricity music artist, Jared Anderson, is anything but typical. He lives with his wife and six children in Colorado, where he ventures outside to check the chicken eggs every day and makes breakfast for his family. His first instrument is piano, not guitar, and he’s drawn more to songs that make you feel something in your soul over those that try to explain something to you. And Anderson, who is now a worship leader and Christian music artist, isn’t afraid to confess this proclamation from his past, “I promised myself that the two jobs I would never hold in life would be Worship Leader and Christian Music Artist.”
Music has been a part of Anderson’s story since he asked his parents for piano lessons when he was eight years old. He found a love for the instrument that carried him all the way through a degree in musical composition at Oral Roberts University. Anderson was taken with classical and jazz arrangements and admits that he had his misgivings about worship music, which sometimes contain simple melodies and repetitive lyrics. However, it was right in that time of scrutiny when Anderson’s worship pastor asked him to help out with the church’s music program and Anderson gained one of those labels he was certain he’d never have.
Following his graduation in 2001, Anderson somewhat reluctantly joined the church’s worship staff. Despite his reticence, he never felt a peace about doing anything else, and finally, God stepped in to ask for something big. “It was 2005,” Anderson recalls, “when the Lord told me, This is the year of obedience. He wanted me to commit not just my actions, but my will also. By the end of that year, I remember having a real change of heart. It wasn’t about the music anymore. As I began laying down my hang-ups, doors slowly began to open. I wrote a couple of worship songs that started getting recognition on the CCLI Chart (Christian Copyright Licensing International) and were being recorded by other artists.”
One of those songs was “King of Kings” that Anderson wrote with Ed Cash, who happens to be Chris Tomlin’s producer. Cash played it for Tomlin and the two re-worked the song into Tomlin’s “Almighty”. For most relative newcomers, such an opportunity would be met with overwhelming gladness. But for Anderson, it was a little difficult to accept the changes that had been made to his song. He had never been to a Passion conference and he realized a February conference was planned for Houston, a bit closer to his native Colorado Springs than the usual Atlanta events. There’s a charming innocence in his next thought. “I’ve got this song that they’re doing and I bet I could get in free.” He and his wife were a little late arriving and they found their seats just as Louie Giglio was finishing his introduction. Then Tomlin took the stage and began, You have no rival. You stand alone. The heavens worship before Your throne. There is no one like You. “I knew no one had heard it before, but then everyone started singing it and I thought, well that’s pretty amazing. I can’t argue with that.”
