Episode 395 - Solving America's Foster Care Crisis | Chris Tomlin

The Dream He Couldn't Shake Host Justin Forman sits down with Chris Tomlin, worship leader, songwriter, and founder of For Others, for a conversation about what happens when the platform God gives you turns out to be for something bigger than the thing you're famous for. He was 18, knew three songs, and had never led worship in his life. At the end of a youth camp week in East Texas, the speaker put a hand on his head and prayed that God would make him a psalm writer for his generation. Three decades later, the man whose songs the global church sings on Sunday mornings is in statehouses talking about the 400,000 kids in America's foster care system. Chris Tomlin helped shape modern worship music from the inside, back when radio stations told him his songs were "Sunday morning music" and nothing more. It took three albums before one got played. That same pioneering instinct — hacking a trail where no template existed — is what he brought to For Others, the organization he founded after a dream he couldn't forget and a question from his pastor he couldn't answer. Today For Others convenes best-in-class child welfare organizations, states, and donors around a single goal: ending the foster care crisis in America. Key Topics: - The prayer at 18 that set the trajectory of a 30-year career, spoken over a kid who didn't have any songs yet - Pioneering a new category: why radio wouldn't play worship music, and what six years of knocking on doors taught him - Hebrews 13:15-16 and the conviction that worship which doesn't change the world isn't finished yet - The dream of a filled stadium and an abandoned baby in the street, and the decade it took to understand it  - Good Friday Nashville: why he decided to give away every dollar before he knew there would be any - 400,000 kids in foster care, 400,000 churches in America, and the math that lit him up - Building For Others as a neutral convener rather than another agency, and why that became the secret sauce Chris's story is the entrepreneur's story in a different key: no template, no permission, no clear next step. Just enough light for the step in front of him. If you've been sitting on a calling you can't fully explain yet, this conversation is a case study in what obedience looks like before the plan exists.