In May 2020, The Heart Creative released their debut, 15-track album. The Heart Creative is the worship community of Heart of the City Church in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Under the leadership of Pastors JO and Raydeane Owens, Heart of the City Church has seen thousands come to know Jesus over its lifetime. The ministry has had a profound, ever-expanding impact in their region.
The Heart of the City Church itself has ministries ranging from ones for the homeless and welfare to single moms and people transitioning back into the workforce, to law enforcement and first responders, to future visions of seeing places of commerce pour resources back into their community. This is a bible-believing, gospel-centered, Holy Spirit-filled, gifts-using, lost-reaching, Jesus-loving church.
The Heart Creative's mission: to facilitate significant encounters between God & people through creative expression. At the helm of The Heart Creative is worship pastor, Seth Owens. I had a chance to connect with Seth to ask him a few questions.
What is the worship experience like at Heart of the City Church?
The vision statement for Heart of the City has always been “to be a people after God’s own heart.” And, that comes from the description of David in scripture, who was a man after God’s own heart. We have the privilege–and this isn’t the case in every church–to have lead pastors that are passionate about fervent worship. They’re not just about the teaching of the Word and the “Okay, we’ll sprinkle in some worship.” We really believe that worship is a part of the main dish at Heart of the City Church. So, it carries a lot of weight with us.
How did The Heart Creative get its name?
From 2006 to 2014, The Heart Creative–that is, the worship department for Heart of the City–was led by a wonderful lady named Kirsten Tuttle. She was the worship pastor and leader that I kind of grew up under. Then her and her husband, Joe, planted a church in Phoenix in the summer of 2014. So, I transitioned into leading worship at that point.
From then on, we became Vessels Worship Community. And, then after a few years, as we started writing more and more songs and getting closer to the idea of releasing an album, we rebranded ourselves to The Heart Creative. We did this for a couple of reasons.
One reason why we rebranded was that we wanted to be in alignment with the name of our church, Heart of the City. We wanted our brand to really reflect the church. The other reason was we felt like 'creative' was a word that really helped express who we are and what we do. We believe that worship is so much more than the music and the creative element; we really want to represent creative expressions of worship.
Why record and release music? What do you desire to see happen with this album?
We're always looking to answer the question: How does what we do lead to people being saved? How does this--whatever 'this' is--lead to people encountering God and knowing Jesus? We believe that releasing an album to the world with songs that have been birthed from the story of Heart of the City and what we’ve experienced with God could be a way for people to encounter Him, who may never otherwise step foot in the four walls of a church facility.
We believe that we're entering into a new era at Heart of the City Church. For us, we want to walk into an era of greater creativity, greater production, greater cohesiveness within the creative department. To me, this is like a journey of us continually putting out different forms of art and creativity to help people encounter God.
Kevin McNeese started NRT in 2002 and has worked in the industry since 1999 in one form or another. He has been a fan of Christian music since 1991.
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