Multiple-time Grammy nominee artist Tauren Wells says he will continue to write, sing and tour even after he launches a new church in 2024 with his wife Lorna, saying that singing is part of who he is.
"I'd die if I didn't do the music," Wells told Christian Headlines, smiling. "I'd shrivel up into nothing."
That's good news for Wells' fans, who also are enjoying a new EP from the 10-time Grammy Award nominee, Take It All Back, which includes a new version of Crazy About You and the title track, which is a collaboration with We The Kingdom and Davies.
In January, Tauren and Lorna Wells will launch a new church plant, the Church at Whitestone, in Williamson County, Texas. The church gets its name from Revelation 2:17: "To the one who overcomes, He will give a white stone with a name engraved on it that only they know."
"We're gonna be the lead pastors, [and] we're gonna have an amazing team," Wells told Christian Headlines. "Everything God does best, He does through teams. And so we're putting together a great team. It's just another lane on the highway. I feel like the music has been the tip of the spear or the arrowhead. And I feel like the church is going to be the balance – the feather on the back – that we're going to continue to move throughout the world to change people's lives."
Wells is one of the more decorated artists in contemporary Christian music, having placed 19 songs on Billboard's Christian Airplay chart, including seven in the Top 10 and three at No. 1: Famous For (I Believe), Known and All My Hope. Before he went solo, he was in the group Royal Tailor.
Wells was a young man, he said, when he felt God calling him to service in the local church.
"I was 20 years old when I feel like God first put in my heart the dream to galvanize people around the vision of the local church, to elevate the gospel, to bring people into their purpose, and to send them out to do what they've been uniquely designed to do. So I've just been exploring different ways to do that all along," Wells said. "... And when I got married to Lorna, we knew that we would be in ministry. We knew that we would be together in ministry; she grew up in a pastor's home. So it just was a natural fit to think that one day she would be in some type of pastoral leadership position. So she became the worship pastor of the church that we both worked – at her dad's church. And she was on staff there for 10 years, I was on staff there for eight years."
Tauren and Lorna Wells have four young children.
"God crystallized it in our heart very early on that we wanted to help people discover their God-authored identity through wholehearted relationship with Jesus," he said. "... Honestly, we've just been waiting for the right time."
Wells said the verse from Revelation 2:17 about a white stone sparked his attention around 2015. Then, about two years ago, he was driving on the outskirts of Austin, Texas, when he saw several buildings with the name "whitestone." White limestone, he learned, is underneath the city.
"It was a confirmation," he said, "that we had found the place that God put in our heart years earlier to serve."
Photo courtesy: ©Getty Images/Joshua Blanchard/Stringer
Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
