“He spoke, and I did music,” recalls Chris. “I think it was like a hay ride [laughs]. [Afterwards], he came up and asked why I wasn’t doing music at Breakaway. I said, ‘Hey, I asked.’”

Chris ended up leading worship there from 1993-1995.

“My first impression of Chris as a college student was a joyful and sincere guy,” says Matte. “His heart was big for people and always ready to help. None of us, including Chris, could imagine all that God had planned. But Chris was a willing and useable vessel.”

After graduating, Chris went to work for Dawson McAllister’s ministry, then landed at a church in The Woodlands, Texas, north of Houston. “I started leading [worship] at the Harvest service at [The] Woodlands Methodist church, which was more of an outreach service to the community. The Woodlands became a good place to travel out of, belong to a community. My main life was traveling on my own and doing my own ministry.”

Chris stayed there for five years, playing 150 dates a year and also doing another one-year stint at Breakaway, which, by then, was meeting in A&M’s new basketball arena, the only venue that would hold it.

The first song that hinted at what was to come was one he penned at a camp with Louie Giglio: “We Fall Down.” “That would’ve been around 1995,” says Chris. “I wrote it just for the folks at the camp to sing around what [Louie] was talking about.” In reality, Chris wrote a song that would find a home in churches all over the world. And Giglio would go on to become his mentor and record label chief.

Chris signed with Giglio’s start-up, sixsteps Records, in 2000 and, over the next five years, released three studio albums and a live CD to increasing acclaim, establishing him as a foremost writer of modern worship.

Remember that medical career Chris Tomlin was interested in? Well, his new album, "See the Morning," which released earlier this fall, should forestall that a bit longer. Packed with more of the modern worship anthems that are his signature and one of the year’s quickest-rising radio singles in “Made to Worship,” it seems ready to repeat the trajectory of his previous record.

Chris has also been asked to contribute a song for "Amazing Grace," a motion picture releasing early next year about the life of William Wilberforce, who led the movement against slave trade in Britain. “[Wilberforce] was influenced by his friend John Newton, who wrote the song ‘Amazing Grace’ and was a slave trader,” says Chris, who was given the daunting task of writing an extra part to the hymn for the soundtrack. “At first, I said, ‘No, you don’t mess with that.’ And, then, God got me thinking about slavery, and these words just came out – ‘my chains are gone. ...’ It’s very close to my heart. I went and did some research – that last verse, “when we’ve been there 10,000 years,” was added later once people started singing it ... it’s not in his original poem. I found the original last verse [and reinserted it].”