Anna Golden Opens Up With Shannon Bream About Heart Behind ‘Church’ Album
By Movieguide® Contributor
Fox News host Shannon Bream sat down with worship singer Anna Golden, who had a lot to share about her latest album, “Church,” and how she weaves scripture into her music.
“This album is so personal to me because of my experience in church and just the way that I love it,” Golden told Bream. “I’m not aloof to the fact of what church means to so many and what it’s meant to me before, too. [It’s] kind of been a place of pain, a place that felt like, man, it wasn’t what I thought it should be. It wasn’t what Scripture said it was supposed to be.”
“And I think that most people who are in church for a long time can share that sentiment, and I never want to seem, like, insensitive to that because I’m aware that church hurt is something that is really real,” she said. “And there are things that happen that just aren’t fair. I think, with me, when I transitioned off the church staff in 2020, I had this moment with the Lord of being like, you know, I’ve always loved your church.”
Even though Golden loved the church, she couldn’t understand why it didn’t feel like a safe place for her at the time.
She told God, “I need you to help me see your bride how you see it. Like, why is it that scripture? It’s the epitome of what the relationship looks like. For marriage, like, you call the church your bride. You love it; you’re coming back for a pure, spotless bride.”
“’The book of Revelation is this love story to the church. So tell me, tell me what you see,’” she continued. “’I want to see it how you see it again, not through the eyes of humanity or the pain that I’ve had.’ And that kind of just embarked the entire record.”
Movieguide® previously reported how Golden healed from church hurt:
“Working in ministry, it’s like you see behind the curtain of things, and you see that…people are people no matter what building they’re in, no matter what title they’re in, no matter if there’s a pastor in front of their name or not. Obviously when [I was] younger, I didn’t really have the wherewithal or the discernment to know that, so it was crushing. I remember my first year working in ministry and being like ‘People do what?!’ and it was just devastating to me.”
…Going to counseling helped her to work through some of those feelings. Eventually, she began working for a church in Dallas called Shoreline City Church, and the pastors there helped her to heal even more.
“I saw through the lens of healthy ministry and healthy leaders, like the way that it really started to heal my past…these little cracks in my heart,” Golden said. “I knew that when I got out of counseling, I had…scabs, but I didn’t have scars yet, so I knew wherever I was going, it could have gotten worse or we could have healed.”
Though Golden suffered hurt, she still loves the church and believes it had a huge impact on her life. In her teens, the youth group even saved her life.
“Leaders that were only a couple years older than me, leaning down and be like, ‘Hey, did you eat lunch today?’ The simple things of like, being a teenage girl in a ministry and like having people lean in, and just really to honor that and to honor the role that the church has played in my life, and through this album, I really wanted to give resources to the church to the worship leader,” she shared.
Golden wrote an ode to the church that “raised” her, a song called “The Church I Grew Up In,” sung by Tasha Cobbs Leanord. Some of the lyrics read:
You couldn’t tell me there wasn’t healing in those walls
You couldn’t tell me angels didn’t walk those halls
On a Wednesday night and Sunday morning
We didn’t have much, but Jesus loved it
If you wanna know why I am the way I am
It’s the church I grew up in
“I’m a worship leader before I’m an artist. Like I work full time at my church, serving on Sundays,” the singer said. “I wanted songs that worship leaders could put on their setlist that are filled with faith and hope; everything is rooted in Scripture. If we have such a small amount of time on a Sunday morning to sing together to usher in the presence of the Lord together, I wanted to make sure that the songs didn’t just fall flat, that they were anointed, that they were completely scripture-based faith.”
She wanted to create songs that would resonate with listeners, that would teach them scripture and “the power of the word.” She feels grateful that God trusted her with the songs and acknowledges the transformative power of God through the music.
“I think we’ve seen it from the beginning of time through Scripture—the way that the Lord uses music to soften hearts. He used it to soften the hearts of kings and to turn nations literally through a harp in David’s hand,” the artist said. “I think that there’s something so spiritual and so emotional about music that it just reaches areas of you that maybe you wouldn’t have opened up before.”
“It really does till the soil… And I think that within music, it really is something beautiful—the way that it can reach people who would never want to necessarily hear the message of the gospel,” Golden shared.
The Christian Beat previously called Golden an “artist who writes her music as a direct reflection of scripture.” This can be seen through many of her lyrics, especially in her song, “Psalm 91 (I Will Say).”
Presently, the singer serves as a worship leader at Shoreline City Church in Dallas, Texas, which she calls her “favorite place.”