Laura Hackett Park’s New Album & Worship Leader Tips
Laura Hackett Park has a lot to celebrate this October. She will be releasing her five-star critically acclaimed album on October 21, called Love Will Have Its Day from Forerunner Music, which is the official record label of the International House of Prayer of Kansas City where Laura is a worship leader. She also recently married fellow worship leader and label mate Jonas Park in a ceremony on October 4 — in fact, she graciously agreed to conduct an interview with us here at RGH after just returning from her honeymoon.
The album Love Will Have Its Day features songs that are quite personal, inspired by special events in Laura’s life. The album has very strong vocals and a broad range of songs that can be comforting to people in many ways. For example, “Got Something Going On” was written for her new husband and their special bond and perseverance. The song “Beautiful Heart” was written about a friend who was a singer and had a terrible vocal injury and had to process losing their gift. “Lift Up Your Head” was inspired by a friend who was dealing with chronic pain.
Track List:
1. Changes Everything (Intro)
2. The Love Inside
3. Lift Up Your Head
4. Beautiful Heart
5. Song of Destiny
6. He Shall Reign (Son of David)
7. King Jesus
8. Anger
9. I Feel His Love
10. Got Something Going On
11. Brilliant Light
12. Cover Me
The album was produced by legendary multiple Grammy and Dove Award winning producer Brown Bannister in collaboration with producer/songwriter Ben Shive.
Congratulations on your marriage. Can you give us a little insight on that as well as your new album?
Being married rules and it’s awesome. [laughs] I love my husband, and we had an amazing time on our honeymoon. We went to the northwest and just recently got back. But yeah I wrote a song called “Got Something Going On,” which is one of the last ones on the album for my husband and kind of about our journey. I wrote it back a year ago or so before we got engaged, just about how we kind of fought for each other and our relationship and decided hey let’s keep going, we got something going on.
How did you come up with the concept for the new album and the title itself?
My last album was like five years ago, and it was my first ever recording of songs of my own like that, and it was really more of a soul searching album, really learning how to communicate with God and use music. That was five years ago and these past few years I have just been writing a lot and just sitting on a lot of different songs and I am a full time worship leader so a lot of songs I do are more like corporate worship stuff, but I really find expression with playing from my own heart and really talking with the Lord when I go home and write songs about life and songs about people and all about God. This album is songs that are just personal and dear to my heart. There is a few worship songs I do. I came to the table with a ton of songs and Brown Bannister the producer who is amazing, he really 
helped me narrow it down, and we picked ones that we could really explore musically and that is what I wanted was to branch out and really try different sounds, and that is how the song picking came about. Once I had all of the songs narrowed down I realized that they are all really carrying a message of hope kind of from different angles. We were trying to figure out what the best title would be, and Ben Shive the other producer was like, what about Love Will Have Its Day, a line from the song “Lift Up Your Head,” and I was like, “That is it.” Just the belief that love is going to win, and there is hope no matter what the circumstance, whether it is a difficult relationship or you have been wounded or sick, love is going to win. The love of Jesus Christ is going to win at the end of the day when Jesus returns, so I felt like it just summarized it totally and everything else sort of came into place from there and built a great song order and so forth.
What was it like working with Brown Bannister?
Oh my gosh. He is so amazing. He really is, just an amazing person. Obviously he is talented and he is so good and pulling creativity from people, and that is what I was really amazed by. He would just pull out the best in everyone around him. He is also just an amazing person, just so kind and loving; he loves Jesus. I was very deeply impacted from being around him.
As a worship leader would you mind giving some advice to someone interested in the same path of ministry?
I mean that is a loaded question. [laughs] Because I think worship leading is an amazing job, but it is also a place of servanthood, and it is not just about you, but at the same time you have to be fully engaged yourself to really lead well and that is really hard to do because I have a bunch of people sometimes. But I think the best advice that I would be able to give is to really sing the Word in the secret place: that has really helped me and kept me in line because it is really easy to start performing and trying to just please people and get them involved and all happy and connected. But really staying connected with the Lord in that dialogue, like how do I talk to God, how do I keep this going even if it is just a song and music. I think the Scripture, especially the Psalms, have so much language to really talk to the Lord and stay grounded in a truthful way, so we are not just off in our own imagination but really starting to start a conversation with the Lord. I think singing the Word takes that conversation and ramps it up times ten; music has so much power to affect the heart. You can go away from a concert and you can remember like a bunch of different choruses from it. You go away from a sermon and you can only remember maybe one word. When you take the power of the Word with music you suddenly remember so much more, and it really renews your mind.
