Louder Than The Music

Popular worship band The City Harmonic have announced that they are to part ways next summer after a final tour. Their 'Benediction Tour' will see them travel across North America featuring unique nights of worship performing the best songs throughout their career, with each show recorded and compiled into a final live worship album.

Announcing the news, the band released the following letter:

We came together to rehearse on a crisp October afternoon in 2009 in an old church filled with wooden pews and beneath a looming pulpit, to try our hand at writing new worship songs. Though we’d already been leading worship together for years at conferences and events in our area, in taking a name and writing new songs of worship together we crossed a line in the sand--the starting line of an incredible adventure, and we crossed it together as brothers from different traditions, but the same Christ.

What God has done with four guys from a steel-town and some humble songs for the Church has been incredible, but we write today with bittersweet news: the finish line is in sight for us as a band. For The City Harmonic, this coming season will be the home stretch, with our last shows together occurring in the Summer of 2017.

The City Harmonic was always about uniting the Church in worship, and we’re eager to gather our friends and family in Christ together over the next season as we play our last shows together. While some dramatic event might have made for a better story, this is a healthy decision made between friends and the right thing at the right time. There may have been ups and downs, while ministry and the pressures of career and other things weighed on us, but this recent season has been a reminder of what’s most important to us.

As we traveled the country last Fall, working to bring churches together in united mission, Eric often said that “if this is the last thing we do, it’s worth it.” Though it wasn’t the end, it was certainly a moment in time that crystallized our values. Through this process it has become clear that our work together should live on as a call for the Church to embrace a simple idea - that the Church is better working together. For every tree that sprouts, a seed dies, and our prayer is that The City Harmonic is a seed of things to come in cities all across the world.

As many of you may know, Eric left the band earlier this year to focus on regaining his health and planting a church. Josh aims to be closer to family and community and Aaron is excited to produce and write on his own again. Meanwhile, Elias and his family have been involved in a church plant in Nashville where he’s been working to train Worship Leaders with a renewed personal focus on writing songs for the Church to sing. In many ways, we’re closer as friends than we’ve ever been, and in a space of wanting each other to thrive.

With all that said, we’re not done making music just yet. With these things in mind, we’re excited to bring things into focus for one final season. This Spring we will again travel across North America on what we’re calling “The Benediction Tour.” It will be a unique night of worship in a handful of cities, filled with our favorite songs throughout our career (and maybe some news ones) and fresh ideas, scripture and liturgy, testimonies and prayer. Most importantly, each and every show will be recorded and compiled into a live worship album.

This adventure has taken us places we never could have imagined, and allowed us to get to know and see so many incredible people, and we hope to see you again this Spring. While we are still in the planning stage, we certainly have cities in mind that we can’t imagine missing.