Sewickley United Methodist Church band Leap of Faith releases debut album

Sewickley United Methodist Church’s contemporary worship service is now reaching beyond the church walls. The service’s band, Leap of Faith, released its debut album “The River Rises” on Aug. 11, and it’s streaming everywhere.

This project has been a long time coming. Leap of Faith began its musical journey more than 15 years ago.

“We formed because at the time, our church didn’t have a contemporary worship service. We saw that as a way of being able to draw new people into our congregation, and so we decided to start a contemporary worship service. It just so happened that we had the talent within our congregation to do so,” said Jack Moffett, a member and principal songwriter for Leap of Faith. “We’re about a nine-member band, including the typical electric guitar, acoustic guitar, drums, bass guitar, keys, piano, but we also have a saxophonist, a violinist, and of course most of us are vocalists as well.”

Following the formation of the band, they played a lot of more typical Christian modern worship songs. But after awhile, the creatively-inclined Moffett felt a calling to write music.

“So I wrote my first song. I showed it to the band and we put it together,” Moffett said. That song, “Even The Stones,” was performed for the first time at Sewickley United Methodist Church’s Palm Sunday service in 2011. It’s themed around the Palm Sunday events in the Bible and is track seven on “The River Rises.”

“We debuted the song that Sunday and got a lot of compliments. We continued then to write songs. Members of our congregation would tell us, ‘these are as good as what we hear on K-LOVE, you all should record these,’” Moffett said.

Moffett’s writing process starts small, with the germ of an idea that usually comes to him while he’s doing everyday activities like driving. “Maybe it’s something I heard in Sunday sermon, maybe it’s something else that’s caught my attention. I just naturally start putting a line to music, start singing it to myself,” he said.

He’ll come up with the lyrics and basic melody for a song, sometimes with a little help from his bandmates. Then he’ll deliver the ideas to the larger group so that they can breathe life into the tune.

“Once I feel like have a song pretty well fleshed out, in terms of the lyrics and the melody, then I’ll share it with my bandmates. We’ll get together at my house with some guitars and start figuring out what the chord progression should be and work it out from there. Put in harmonies, figure out what other instruments we want,” Moffett said.

“The River Rises” takes its name from the album’s second song, “Leaves Won’t Wither.” That track takes inspiration from Ezekiel 47, which describes a temple with water running from its threshold. “It runs out into the surrounding land and becomes a river, becomes the life-giving water to the animals, to the plants, to everything around the temple.

“We named the album ‘The River Rises’ because I see that as an analogy or metaphor for what our church does for the Sewickley community. We’re trying to bring this water out of our church to the community to give it life, to nurture it, and given that Sewickley, of course, means ‘sweet water,’ I really like that metaphor,” Moffett said.

In fact, on the cover of “The River Rises,” the members of Leap of Faith are standing in Little Sewickley Creek.

Moffett and his wife moved to Sewickley 21 years ago from Penn Hills, and they were in need of a new church. “So we checked out Sewickley United Methodist Church and the first day there, we felt like we were home,” he said.

In addition to finding a welcoming worship community, Moffett is proud to have the camaraderie he’s found in Leap of Faith.

“We’ve built up a very tight friendship, more like family. Every Wednesday night — Wednesday is our rehearsal night — and every Wednesday after rehearsal, a lot of us go out to Caliente and hang out for a couple hours. We’re all very close,” he said of the band.

Leap of Faith’s album “The River Rises” can be heard on streaming services including Apple Music and Spotify. More information about the band is on their Facebook page at facebook.com/leapoffaith.sumc.