Although Mark Schultz hasn't released new music in a few years, he certainly hasn't been idle. Between a cross country bike tour, the birth of his son, and a stint in Europe recording an instrumental album, the singer/songwriter has definitely filled his time well— and acquired a lot more experience to fuel his latest project, All Things Possible.

The 14 time Dove nominated artist is best known for moving songs such as “Letters From the War,” “Broken and Beautiful,” and “He's My Son.” His experiences as an adopted child, a husband, and now a father have shaped and refined his writing process, equipping him to speak grace into a variety of situations. Bill Lurwick of NewReleaseTuesday spoke to the artist about the adventures in his personal life and how that impacted his view of the God who makes all things possible.

You’ve been busy. Getting married, having kids, living in Europe and all kinds of stuff.  It’s been a couple of years now since we’ve had new music from you so we're thankful for All Things Possible, the newest from you.

Thank you so much. It’s been a lot of fun to do. The idea for the record was just coming from the perspective of those times in my life where I’m realizing I’ve gotten to do some really great things. Most of the time I realized how powerless I was and how powerful God was in that process, putting my trust in Him to do that instead of my own strength.

It ended up being the theme of the record.

Tell me about the writing process.  Being married and having a new baby boy now.  It kind of changed things up for you I think a little bit, didn’t it?

Yeah, for sure. First I’ll say this. The very first inkling I had to do this record was when I rode my bike across the country from California to Maine. I thought, “That sounds like a good idea” until I did it and realized how many mountains there were between California and Maine.

That’s when I started to take pictures of these kids, the orphans, that we were writing for, and I would cut their picture out and put them on my bike and say, “God, I know this person is important to you, so I’m going to ride for them today, but I’m going to ask for your strength to do it because I can’t do it on my own.” 62 days later we ended up raising a quarter million dollars and making it on a bicycle from California to Maine and that was like, “My gosh. All things are possible, if that can happen.” 

The other idea came from being adopted. I’d never met my birth mom or dad and I thought, “You know what? I guess I’ll just never know that heredity part of family, a blood relative, because I don’t know anybody that looks like me or laughs like me or has my sense of humor, like runs in a lot of families.”

When we had our son, my mom was here visiting us, and one morning he woke up and looked at me and his eyes were bright and he smiled.  That caught me off guard. It took my breath away. It took my mom’s breath away too and she said, “He looks just like you.”

I remembered at that point in time it was almost like God said, “No. I’m going to give you a blood relative and you’re going to start the whole process. It’s going to be right here.”

Finally my only blood relative in the whole world is my little guy who’s six months old. I didn’t even think that was a possibility.


That’s an amazing story of life coming full circle.

It’s really awesome. I’ll see him smile and I’ll see him laugh. Sometimes when I sleep I throw my arm over my head and block out my eyes with my forearm. The other night we walked in and we saw him doing that and she said, “He is his dad’s son.”

It’s wonderful to experience. There's a song on the record called “I Haven’t Met You Yet.” It’s me dreaming about his life, and though I hadn't met him, the chorus says “I can just see it now. You’re in your momma’s arms and she’s so proud. When you smile it takes our breath away. Watching you laugh and you crawl, I can’t remember life before you at all and the funny thing is I haven’t even met you yet.”

It’s really a neat moment on the record just to say, “God’s been so faithful and He really does make all things possible even when we don’t think it’s a possibility.”

I read that you wrote a song for ladies on this album called “More to You Than This.”

I was a youth director for about 10 years. It happens with both boys and girls growing up, but it’s really something women in our society are subjected to: if you look like this, people will really find you attractive. If you did this, if you dated more guys and gave yourself away, then it would really be great. It’s just a huge trap.

I wound up being a youth director and so I wanted to write a song called “More to You Than This” that said if you buy into what society says you should be, it leads to a lifetime of real struggle, but if you buy into the truth that God’s created you and you’re wonderfully made and you’re wonderful in His image—there’s such a strength in that.

I really wanted to encourage girls with that. I also wrote that song because I’m adopted, because I’ve met so many girls as we tour that are also adopted who think, “Gosh. Maybe nobody wanted me. Maybe I was abandoned.”

In this song and in those concerts where I see them, I just put my arm around them. I say, “God doesn’t make mistakes and you’re right where He wants you. There’s only one of you and He’s got a direct purpose for you.”

Hopefully they’ll see that through this song and be encouraged.

The song “I Gave Up” kind of reminds me of “Let’s Go” from way back in the day. Is that an accurate comparison?

That’s fun. I had an A&R guy a few years ago when I made the first record, and “Let’s Go” was a song on that record. He said, “When is the next time you’re going to do another something like 'Let’s Go?' It was fun and upbeat.”

That idea started when I was touring over in Europe, and we were making an instrumental record. We put all of our stuff in storage here in the United States. My wife was with me at the time, and we’d been away from the United States for a while.

She looked at me one day and said, “You know what? Do you miss any of our stuff?” I thought, “I don’t miss any of our stuff,” and I realized then that our time we were spending together and the fellowship we were having with other folks and churches overseas was all about relationships. I realized how much we overvalue the things we have in our life.

At the end of the time, her dad just passed away. We really realized, especially through him as he was passing away, life is not about stuff. Life is about people and your relationships and those relationships as they direct each other towards God. Hopefully that’s what people will get when they hear that song.

Mark, “It is Well” is a rewrite of the classic hymn. There have been a lot of remakes of this song over the years, but yours sounds distinctly different from other remakes I’ve heard. Was that really intentional on your part?

It was.  It's kind of a tip of the hat to my dad. When I was growing up at the Methodist Church, every time we would sing “It is Well,” my dad would smile and puff out his chest. He’d say, “Son, the reason you like this song is because you’re a Methodist. It’s a famous Methodist hymn.”

I thought, “How cool. We get our own hymn. That’s great.” Then I grew up and I went to other churches, and I realized they sang it at their churches too.

I love that song, and a lot of times I’ll lead the congregation while I’m doing a concert and we’ll do it acapella. I thought, “You know what? It would be cool after singing that hymn together to do it more modern.” It’s not even a remake of the song. It’s just a more updated rock version, which again is a tip of the hat to the old hymn, but I think it’ll be good for a younger generation.

“All Things Possible” is the title of the project and of course the song is doing really, really well at radio. Was there a tough decision on picking the single for radio?

It seemed to make sense. People will say, “How do you pick your singles?” and sometimes I’ll say, “Usually it’s the song with the title of the record so people can find the record very easy after they hear the song on the radio.”  Maybe it’s because I’m not very smart, or maybe it’s because I was in marketing when I was in college. That seems to be the easiest way. 

One of the great things that happened, again, on that bike trip when we rode across the country to raise money for orphans, was that we raised way more money than we thought. We got way more passion than we thought we would, and we realized it was in God’s strength. Not our own.

That trip alone, people started doing their own fund raising things because they got so motivated by what we were doing. Hopefully when people hear this song and come to the concert and hear the stories behind the song, they’ll be motivated to play bigger, to live larger, to say, “God, I’m going to get out of my box and I’m going to try to do something where you can help me to really make an impact for you in this life.” That’s the encouragement that we hope they get out of this record.

We're looking forward to seeing the impact of All Things Possible. Thanks for spending time with us at New Release Tuesday. 

Thank you so much for having me.