Catholic worship leader Sarah Kroger: Music should challenge and change us

CNA Staff, Aug 13, 2024 / 06:00 am

When 50,000 Catholics recently gathered in Indianapolis for the National Eucharistic Congress, one of the powerful voices leading the praise and worship music was Sarah Kroger, a 37-year-old Nashville-based Catholic singer-songwriter and worship leader with numerous albums under her belt, her most recent released in May titled “A New Reality.”

Kroger was invited to the congress by Bishop Andrew Cozzens, who spearheaded the U.S. bishops’ National Eucharistic Revival, and immediately knew she wanted to be a part of it. 

“I think I didn’t fully understand what we said yes to before going. I don’t think any of us did, maybe, as is often with the Lord, just the whole thing was completely mind-blowing to me,” Kroger told CNA in an interview. “Honestly, I’ve done conferences for 15 years now and I felt like this just had a completely different feel to it.”

She emphasized that it felt like the attendees were “hungry” and “ready to go from Day 1.”

“They just were excited and truly there for Jesus,” she added. “It just felt like we were all together and unified and in the same space and going after the same goal, which was just to encounter the Lord in the Eucharist and truly just be transformed by that and be filled up so that we could be sent out into the world as new creations.”

Kroger called her experience at the congress “profoundly beautiful to be a part of” and believes “we’re going to be experiencing the ripples from this event for a long time to come.”

From stage fright to embracing her gift

The singer-songwriter was introduced to music from a young age through her parents, who were also Catholic music ministers. She was part of the children’s choir at their church and took piano and voice lessons but was scared to sing in front of people. But after attending a Catholic camp when she was a junior in high school and experiencing contemporary worship music for the first time, she learned how to have a personal relationship with Jesus through worship music. 

“There was a speaker on that retreat that was speaking to the whole room, but it was one of those moments where it felt like the light was just on me, and he said, ‘If you have a gift from God and you’re not using it, you’re denying the glory of God within you,’” she recalled. “And I just felt like he was convicting me in that moment. And God was inviting me to step out in faith and to start saying ‘yes.’”

From there she never looked back and began cantering at her parish, despite her fears of singing in front of others, and now she “can’t imagine doing anything else.”

‘Leading people into an encounter with God’ 

Kroger admitted that she doesn’t love the term “worship leader” because she views her role as one of “leading prayer.”

“We’re up front and we’re on stage a lot of times but it doesn’t mean that I’m the one that knows all the answers in the room,” she explained. “It’s more like I’m a student just like anyone else in the room. I just happen to have a microphone and I can sing and I know how to lead a moment of prayer, but really what I’m trying to do is just lead people into an encounter with God and lead myself and in the same way and make space for God to do whatever it is that he wants to do in the room.”

When discussing how Catholics should worship through music, Kroger explained that she sees worship as “drawing us into the presence of God, and that should be something that leads us to repentance.”

“It’s not just something that’s supposed to make us feel good and kind of placate whatever we’re walking through — I think there is a place for that for sure,” she said. “But I also think that worship should challenge us and should change us and should make us really take a good hard look at how we’re living our lives and confront whatever is unholy in us so that we’re challenged to leave that place of worship … and change the world.” 

“So worship to me is about repentance and challenging us to live different lives and lives that point to God.”