Summit Church Music
New Indie Christian Label Launches in Church Setting
When a community of musicians organically comes together for a common purpose, sharing core values and creative focus, something amazing happens. For the past few years, an incredible group of talented songwriters and musicians have been drawn to Raleigh-Durham, forming a vibrant collective, writing original music that has already been embraced by churches around the world. From this community, a new independent label – The Summit Church Music – has emerged, creating a new avenue to share these songs with the Church and community at large.
This week the label officially launches with the release of Our God Is Unstoppable from the worship collaborative Summit Worship. The album lauds God’s sovereign lordship over all creation. This certainty of God’s kingdom is an unshakable hope, and the songs on this album were written and compiled to help us realize God’s greatness in our every day lives. Our God is Unstoppable features the talent of the Summit Worship team, including Matt Papa, Hank Murphy, Kelby Dover, Mike Passaro, Kaimy Masse, Donovan Beadle, Branden Williams, Haven Sink and Raudel Hernandez.
With a shared desire to create culturally relevant, theologically sound songs that help inspire the listener to live in a state of worship, the common phrase heard among the community is “songs for all seven days.” The Summit Church Music is committed to producing songs that reach an audience outside the walls of the church and into the every day lives of listeners.
Our God is Unstoppable has already received early online success. When the music stream appeared on SoundCloud, a staggering 5,000 listeners logged on and listened to the project in 24 hours. Then on April 8, the album had an early launch as an iTunes exclusive, selling over 1,200 copies digitally in its first week.
The debut single “Create in Me” features artist Kelby Dover, and has just been released to radio. As worship leader at Summit Church, Kelby has been able to not only develop as a songwriter by creating music for their individual church body, but as a pastor, encouraging their church body to instill all forms of worship into their daily lives.
A key voice in the Summit community is singer songwriter Hank Murphy. His debut LP ‘One’, released in September 2013 and unofficially the first release from The Summit Church Music, debuted at #30 on Billboard’s Heatseeker Chart after selling nearly 2000 units in its first week of release. Hank’s immense vocal talent and passion for discipleship has helped build the music community at the Summit Church.
At the helm of this new label is Samuel “Sam” Fisher, Jr., who has spent his career developing artists in a variety of genres. After stints with powerhouse indie music distributor Redeye Distribution and independent label Yep Roc Records, Fisher’s intensive knowledge of label and publishing administration and music marketing, paired with a love and passion for developing songs and artists made him an easy choice to establish and direct The Summit Church Music.
“We believe in corporate worship, having the church body participate together in musically sharing our adoration of the father, but we also want to honor our commitment to raise up a community of musicians who write music that is entertaining as well as being theologically sound,” explains Fisher. “Songs that are made for the global church, yet stand alone as inspiration for every day life.”
Our God is Unstoppable is now available online and at retail outlets. The Summit Church Music is a member of and is affiliated with the American Association of Independent Music, The Gospel Music Association and the Recording Industry Association of America, and has distribution to the Christian market through Central South, and to the general market through Red Eye Distribution.
