John Mark McMillan regularly hears from fans asking when he’ll play in their cities.
“Someone will message me and say, ‘I love your music! How come you never come to Chicago?’ or whatever town they’re in,” said McMillan. “And I message back, ‘I was in Chicago last week.’”
McMillan, a Christian musician widely known for the song “How He Loves,” has been making a living as an artist since the mid-2000s, touring and releasing music independently. Over the past couple of years, he’s noticed that it’s become harder to reach and connect with his audience, and making a modest living as an artist—at least, the kind of artist he wants to be—seems almost impossible.
McMillan’s latest release, Cosmic Supreme, has been his most successful to date in terms of streaming. It’s a reflective album with a vast emotional scope. McMillan’s warm, low baritone register gently draws in listeners on “All My Life” before catapulting them into the throes of a bombastic, ecstatic chorus. The song manages to be both raw and anthemic without morphing into a glossy, saccharine hype refrain.
Cosmic Supreme is inspirational without wandering into sentimentality, and the language of faith feels fresh in McMillan’s voice rather than worn-out and overused. Despite the album’s numerical success, McMillan looked at the escalating cost of touring, his meager streaming income, and the demanding social media landscape and decided it was time for a change.
In September, he announced that he is retiring from his full-time music career. “This will be my last tour,” he wrote on Instagram. “Money has never been my primary motivation, but the financial burden of living in a world where music has little or no monetary value has made it hard to find a sustainable model.”
In his post, McMillan shared that he wants to write books, support up-and-coming artists, and focus on local projects.
Over his career, the 45-year-old singer-songwriter has seen significant shifts in the Christian music world—the dominance of contemporary worship music has evolved from the guitar-driven rock of the 2000s to the arena-rock anthems of groups like Elevation Worship, and the number of people involved in the production of most popular worship music has shrunk to a small, interconnected cohort.
Based in North Carolina, McMillan has always been somewhat of an outsider in the contemporary-worship-music industry. His song “How He Loves” was controversial—the lyrics “heaven meets earth like a sloppy, wet kiss” sparked debates about poetic language in worship music, and McMillan eventually granted fellow artist David Crowder permission to change the lyrics to produce his own cover of the song. After Crowder’s revision of the lyrics to “heaven meets earth like an unforeseen kiss,” the song’s popularity grew.
McMillan’s 2020 album, Peopled With Dreams, was all about “re-enchantment.” He has described Cosmic Supreme as a “charismatic worship album,” emphasizing mystery, wonder, and personal encounter. He foresees a future in which he continues to make music but doesn’t rely on it for his livelihood.
McMillan says he’s working on a book about reenchantment and developing a series of graphic novels. He’s thought about starting a podcast. He also wants to start a local singing club with two rules: “You have to sing, and it’s phoneless.”
McMillan talked with CT about closing the book on his full-time music career and about his persistent belief that music has the power to connect us to the divine.
You announced your decision to step away from touring and full-time music. Was there a last straw or moment that made you decide it was time for a change?
It was a combination of a lot of factors, but the final nail in the coffin was having to advertise through algorithmic content. It’s so hard to reach people. There are so many artists on the road, and the cost of touring is rising. It’s become so much more work for less money.
At 45, I have a handful of options if I want to make it work: I can go back to grinding it out in a van or fire some of the guys in my band and play acoustic all of the time. Or I need to sort of dig into the worship industrial complex. I say that in an endearing way—I have so many good friends in that world. I would have to make what I do a little more conventional.
I love touring so much. I would tour for free. If it was just rehearsing and traveling and setting up and playing the shows, I’d be happy to do that a month out of the year. But I don’t get to do as much of the other things I love when I’m beating my head against the wall with the algorithms to try to sell tickets for shows when the margins are so small.
When you’re doing this and trying to make content, you wake up every day and think, If I can’t think of something to post, am I going to lose money? I feel like I have to think of something snarky or funny to say so that people stop scrolling and listen, and all of a sudden you realize that you’re dumping 80 percent of your creativity into marketing.
While touring this summer, I would have these sleepless nights, waking up thinking, Why isn’t this tour stop selling? It feels like you have to trick the algorithm into showing people that you’re going to be there.
After those sleepless nights, I thought, What if I didn’t do this anymore? It was the first time in 20 years I actually considered not doing it. I have never considered it before because it’s what I loved, my identity was tied up in it. Now I think it’s okay to reimagine my place in the world.
And if I wake up in a year or two and think, This was dumb, I can always come back to it.
Some Christian artists have been able to supplement their touring income by performing at churches. You’ve mentioned that pivoting to worship music doesn’t interest you, but is there space for artists like you to tour churches? Has the church tour circuit changed over the course of your career?
Churches are great because they don’t usually have a profit motive and sometimes they have bigger budgets. Usually their goal is just to get people in the doors. If they break even, they’re excited.
I love playing churches where I have a relationship, but when I don’t have one, things can get a little awkward. The pastor wants to come out and talk in the middle of your set, and you want to be respectful, but it’s also like, “I don’t know you, and I don’t know what you’re going to say.”
And oddly enough, we get more participation in non-church venues. When we play clubs, people are more engaged. People are more respectful and reserved in churches. Between songs at the club, the audience will talk, and I encourage my band guys to talk to each other and other people in the audience. In churches, it can just feel awkward. You don’t always feel that energy.
The other thing is that, these days, churches really want big worship songs, or they want you to come in and do Sunday mornings. And now every city has a megachurch that has something as good as a concert five times a weekend.
What parts of touring and performing still make you want to make it work? Are there things that you’ll miss that make you second-guess stepping away?
There’s nothing like the way it feels to play music for people. And I don’t mean that it feels good when an audience applauds my work; I mean the connection you feel to other human beings is so great.
I could get really weird about this—maybe you’ll have to Christianize it a little for me—but you know how some cultures have these shaman figures? They aren’t in charge, but they are a conduit. They’re just there to help you connect with God. Performing is like being that conduit. The best nights, I totally disappear in it, and I hope the audience doesn’t even know I’m there. They’re just connected to this higher thing, to the Holy Spirit.
It’s easy to forget how that feels in a world where we’re all just stuck in our headphones all the time. It feels like church and sporting events are the only places you can feel that any more. For me, seeing people and hearing them sing, it’s that feeling.
I wish I had a more righteous answer. But I think in those moments we are accomplishing something good. Those moments are why I’m here. I like to say that I don’t do anything that keeps you alive, but I want to remind you why being alive is a thing worth doing to begin with.
