In a short amount of time, worship artist Brian Campbell has seen the prophetic words spoken over his life start to come to fruition. On the weekends, he's dutifully and faithfully serving Medina Community Church in Akron, Ohio, as a worship pastor. On the other days of the week, he has found himself traveling the globe, leading worship at events, festivals and tours in the United States and Europe.

And now, heading into 2014, Campbell is preparing for his latest album release with the ministry-minded Come&Live label, as well as a new single—"Your Goodness"—produced by Matthew West. 

Campbell would be the first to tell you he's surprised at how quickly things have unfolded, and yet he'd also say that he's never one to limit what God wants to do with people who are willing to serve Him. I sat down with Campbell earlier this year to get to know him, and to hear about his road to being a global worship leader.

So, you've had quite the year, Brian. Tours, events, Creation Festival...

It's been an exciting year—just crazy stuff happening. The short of it is God just opening up doors in really simple ways. It's loving people, and then as a result of that, doors are being opened.

You're not from around here [the West Coast], are you? Where's home for you?

We're based out of Akron, Ohio, and we do like 150 events from there a year, and it's in connection with local churches. We were doing like 20 to 30 events a year between 2007 and ‘11, and what really changed to do the amount of what we're doing right now has really been just kind of focusing on the needs of the local church, and saying, "How can we partner with you and come along side your teams and what you're doing?" The result of doing that, it centered our hearts and shifted us to a place of really serving the body.

You're a worship pastor at a particular local church?

I am. We're real plugged into our home church, so we're on the road like three to five days a week and then I'm home for Sundays, usually.

Just for our readers, tell us about yourself. What's your story? How did you get where you are today?

I had this powerful awakening in my faith when I was in foreign missions in Italy in 2005. I came back and just started having these times of worship with friends—with God, really—and started writing from that place. The result of writing just started opening up opportunities to record and then the recordings kind of necessitated the need for a band and a team. 

That team actually connected me back into the local church, which was really cool, and it's been this journey of exploring what that looks like and what it means to be a musician and, more importantly, what it means to be a son. God has been working that out in my life and I've been asking that question to God, "Who do you say that I am?" The more that we're answering that and asking that question, the more that God is just kind of opening up doors to ask that of other people, too, and to have them ask that question of God. Then, just from that place, he reveals destiny and purpose. It's been a really fun year.

Was it in Italy where you really; felt the worship calling on your life?

Yeah. It was pretty powerful. It was definitely outside of my box and what I thought.

What happened?

I got into ministry there and just had some people say some things that they felt were very poignant to my life. They proved to be really powerful things, and they shook up my ideas of what I thought my life was going to be. There was a choice to either ignore that and continue on my path, or go into this dis-equilibrium state and let God begin to work and give up control and let Him see what He wants to do.

...Letting Him write the story.

Exactly. The writing of that story was really started in that time and it was almost like just a shift in path. From that place then just continuing on that path and that's where I've been ever since.

What was your path before? 

I think it was just confusion. I think that was really it. Bouncing to different things and stuff like that. Then when you encounter something like that it just kind of keeps pulling you back to that encounter and it's really that simple. It's not like that I'm doing this thing or I'm creating this system where when I mess up, I have this or penance period and then I work my way back to God. At the end of the day He looks at me and sees His son, and then from that place I begin living in the reality of that.

You've got a project out?

Yeah. We released it with Come&Live this past year. That in itself has just been a really neat thing.

What a great fellowship of artists. Have you been able to meet some of the others?

I have, actually. One of the goals for this year is to hang out with some of the guys. I've been writing with Jason from the Ember Days and hung out with Joel (from Ascend the Hill), in Tampa this year, too. A couple of the guys… Preson Philips is with them and he's in Tampa and there's some guys in Phoenix, too. Really neat community and a really neat heartbeat behind it.

That's great. What's next for you?

Really, I feel like we're in this season of just saying yes to whatever God puts in front of us and just trying to love people well and love our families and all that stuff.

What are the dreams and visions God's shown you for where this is going?

I think since we started touring, seeing this really preparation season for awakening that's going on in our country right now, and I think there's literally thousands of guys like me that are around the country and around the world really that are really prepping the Church for awakening. That is really exciting to me, whatever that looks like, and whatever our role in that would be is awesome.