LATROBE, PA – As part of the upcoming Life in Christ Week, award-winning Christian recording artist Mark Schultz will perform at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 20, inside the Saint Vincent Archabbey Basilica.
“I just tell real-life stories of how God works through real-life situations,” Schultz said. “My hope is that people will be inspired to walk closely or closer with God than they were before they walked in for the concert.”
In addition to Schultz's performance, Life in Christ Week, running from Jan. 17-23, features prayer services, discussions, volunteer work and other special activities. All on-campus events are free and open to the public and the College community.
Schultz’s songwriting career, spanning well over two decades, features more than a dozen albums and 20-plus singles. Originally from Colby, Kansas, the 55-year-old singer and songwriter plays the piano and acoustic guitar. He previously performed inside the Basilica in 2000.
“It was absolutely gorgeous and really inspiring to me,” Schultz said of his initial reaction to being inside the Archabbey Basilica for the first time. For the roughly 75-minute concert Tuesday, Jan. 20, Schultz will sing and play the piano. “It sounds best in there, just piano keys and vocal,” he said. “It’s magic in there.”
Every January, Saint Vincent College celebrates Life in Christ Week to commemorate the sanctity of every human life in conjunction with Martin Luther King Jr. Day and mark a week of prayer for Christian unity. The week holds special meaning for Schultz, who was adopted at a young age and later adopted two daughters.
“One daughter is from China, and one is from the same adoption agency that I came from. I know what it feels like to be adopted by Christ because I had godly parents who were a great example of that,” Schultz said. “It's never been hard for me to understand how we're adopted by Christ. The next step for me when I adopted was to get to see from the father side. Being adopted and being the one who adopts, that just gave me a kind of full-circle moment.”
Schultz’s journey as a songwriter began more than 20 years ago while he was working as a youth director at a church in Nashville, Tennessee. His boss, who was serving as pastor, recognized Schultz’s talent for songwriting and encouraged him to write songs about the experiences he was having as a youth director. Thanks to that encouragement, Schultz wrote a collection of songs and later rented out an auditorium in which to perform his first concert. The show sold out, record label representation was present, and Schultz was on his way. True to his roots, however, he continues to travel to Nashville where he does most of his songwriting inside a chapel located on the First Presbyterian Church campus.
“I sit down at the piano, and what I love about writing inside a church, just like the Basilica, is that when I get in there, I start to feel music. I sit in there and I get a sense of the lives of the people who have come before me, and these melodies come to mind, and these stories start to unravel,” Schultz said. “Somebody told me … your gift is [you] take real life and turn it into art and hand it back to people so that they can easily access it and get to walk around in it. That to me is what great songwriting does.”
Now residing in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with his family, Schultz has been nominated for numerous Dove Awards, presented by the Gospel Music Association of the United States in recognition of outstanding achievement in the Christian music industry. He won a Dove Award in 2006 as his CD/DVD “Mark Schultz Live: A Night of Stories & Songs” was named Long Form Music Video of the Year.
More information can be found at markschultzmusic.com.
