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The Holy Spirit is God’s guarantee that his promises to us will be fully kept

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TEXAS GOSPEL VOLUNTEER

God has made remarkable promises to those who follow Jesus, including eternal life, the forgiveness of sins, the assurance that death is not the end, and the hope of one day ruling and reigning with Christ over all of God’s creation. Ephesians 1:13-14 tells us that when we heard the true message of the gospel and believed, we were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who serves as a guarantee of everything God has promised us until we receive it fully.

Think of the Holy Spirit as a down payment, a deposit that God has already placed in the life of every believer to confirm that the rest of what he has promised is still coming. God does not make promises and walk away from them. The presence of the Spirit living within us is real evidence that our inheritance is secure and that the fullness of what God has in store for his people is yet ahead. What we experience of God now is a foretaste, and the best is still to come.

In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of the promise

Ephesians 1:13

Eighteen Mile’s debut album Peace Be Still brings bluegrass gospel’s most compelling new voices into focus

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AMY TURNER

They grew up inside someone else’s ministry. For years, the five young musicians who now call themselves Eighteen Mile built their chops and shaped their faith on the road with the Steve Pettit Band, learning what it meant to play music in service of something larger than themselves. It was formative, honest work. But it wasn’t entirely theirs.

“As a band of songwriters, this album is special,” says Carson Aaron, one of the group’s founding members. “It’s the first project we’ve worked on where we’ve written almost every song.”

That shift in ownership, from interpreters to authors, is what makes Peace Be Still, the group’s debut for Mountain Home Music Company, feel like more than just a promising first record. It feels like an arrival.

Formed in South Carolina by Aaron and his partner Savannah, alongside siblings Jack and Hallie Ritter and vocalist Emily Guy, Eighteen Mile signed with Mountain Home in the summer of 2025. The label’s A&R Director Jon Weisberger wasn’t hedging when he described their appeal. “Eighteen Mile’s distinctive identity and commitment to their vision deeply impressed us,” he says. “We’re excited to help bring their music to a wider audience.”

That vision is already part of Bassist Hallie Ritter’s lead single “Above the Clouds.” It has become a reliable presence on the Bluegrass Today gospel chart, followed by Aaron’s “What Mercy Means” and a luminous take on Kristyn and Keith Getty’s “Living Waters.” Each release has built momentum in the way that matters most in this corner of the music world: steadily, genuinely, without shortcuts.

Produced by Andy Leftwich, Peace Be Still carries the emotional weight that only comes from lived experience. The arrangements are polished without feeling laboured, and the performances carry a confidence that doesn’t announce itself. Whether the band leans into straightforward bluegrass or lets the arrangements breathe into something closer to contemporary folk, the result is music that feels at home in both the church hall and the festival field.

The album’s title track is perhaps its centrepiece. Written and sung by multi-instrumentalist Jack Ritter, with Rob Ickes contributing resonator guitar work that is as sympathetic as it is technically masterful, the song crystallises everything the band is reaching for. Its lyrics trace a prodigal arc familiar to anyone who has taken a longer road back to themselves, and arrive at a refrain that functions almost like a breath:

“Peace be still” He says to me / Grace unmeasured, boundless, free / Keep me Lord from unbelief / Let me rest in perfect peace.

The rest of the album moves through doubt overcome by faith, fear quieted by the certainty of salvation, and the recurring recognition of grace that costs the receiver nothing but demands everything in return. Two covers round out the set: a tender treatment of Ron Block’s enduring “He’s Holding on to Me” shows the band’s roots, while “Living Waters” confirms they can bring reverence to someone else’s song without losing their own voice in the process.

“We know the stories behind each song because they are our stories,” Aaron says. “The common thread through all these songs is the grace of God that has transformed our lives. In several of the songs, you’ll hear a clear invitation to consider His grace; we offer that invitation because each of us have heard God say to our souls, ‘Peace Be Still.’ We hope you find the peace of God in this album.”

There is something quietly remarkable about a group of young musicians who spent their early careers playing other people’s music and emerged not bitter or impatient, but grateful and ready. Eighteen Mile didn’t need to reinvent bluegrass gospel. They simply needed to find the words for what they already knew to be true.

Peace Be Still is out now on Mountain Home Music Company.

The Rogers Family keeps right on blessing Southern Gospel with their joyful new single

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JEFF TURNER

There’s a moment near the top of “He Keeps Right On Blessing Me” when Kim Shields’ piano intro gets gently shouldered aside by a brass section so unapologetically jaunty that you half expect it to tip its hat on the way in. It’s a musical entrance that announces itself without apology, and it sets the tone for everything that follows.

The track is the third single from the Rogers Family for Horizon Records, and if you’ve been paying any attention to the Southern Gospel world lately, you already know this North Carolina family has been building something quietly remarkable in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

“We are so excited for the release of ‘He Keeps Right On Blessing Me,’” the group said in a newsletter sent to Texas Gospel Canada. “When we heard it for the first time, we knew immediately that we needed to record it. It’s a toe-tapping, hand-clapping song that will get stuck in your head, in a good way! We pray that as you listen you will be reminded of the many blessings of God in your life.”

That description, “toe-tapping,” isn’t marketing copy. It’s a clinical diagnosis.

Once the brass section hands things over to Samuel Shields, his delivery of the opening verse carries the kind of soulful assurance that sounds lived-in rather than performed:

When I wake up in the morning / And I don’t know what awaits / Cause every new day seems to have a trial / There’s one thing I am sure of / With every step I take / My Jesus will be there for every mile

Producer Roger Talley’s arrangement doesn’t stay in one place for long. It moves through key changes with the ease of a family that has been singing together long enough to communicate without words, and then sisters Rebekah and Hannah Shields step forward to carry the second and third verses, their voices adding texture and personality to a song that already has plenty of both.

At the centre of it all is the Adina Bowman-penned chorus, a melody so hooky it feels like it must have existed somewhere before:

And He keeps right on blessing me / Keeps right on keeping me / Oh, the Lord has been so good to me / He protects me from the enemy / He’s providing all I need / My Jesus keeps right on blessing me

The story behind the Rogers Family is the kind that Southern Gospel was practically invented to tell. The group traces its roots to Northeast Georgia, where Ray and Helen Rogers sang in local churches alongside their daughter Kim, who played the piano from the start. Kim later met Sammy Shields at a church in North Carolina, they married in 1999, and together they put down roots in the Blue Ridge foothills and raised three children: Rebekah, Samuel, and Hannah.

When Ray Rogers passed away in 2010, the next generation stepped forward. Not as a replacement for what had been, but as a continuation of it. Helen and Kim stayed close, remained active, remained passionate, and the family kept singing. That kind of tenacity has a way of showing up in the music, a quality of honouring what came before while making something that feels entirely present tense.

Today, the six-member group, Helen, Kim, Sammy, Rebekah, Samuel, and Hannah, travels and ministers together. Kim is still at the piano, which feels entirely right. Some things shouldn’t change.

“He Keeps Right On Blessing Me” is out now.

Surrendering your whole life to God opens the door to whatever he wants to do through you

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TEXAS GOSPEL VOLUNTEER

God is not looking for partial commitment; he is listening for the kind of surrender that says, “Here I am, Lord, do whatever you want with my life,” and that kind of openness can come at any age or stage of life. Giving most of yourself to God is not the same as giving all of yourself, and it is the full surrender that he is after.

When a person reaches that point of availability, the possibilities of what God can accomplish through them are wide open. He has a purpose and a plan for every life, and surrendering to him is the starting point for seeing that plan unfold. You may not know what he will do, but you can trust that what he does with a willing life will be far greater than anything you could arrange on your own.

And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me.

Luke 9:23

Les Butler marks 50 years in Southern Gospel music with a Nashville celebration

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AMY TURNER

Perhaps he wasn’t expecting a crowd. But then again, Les Butler has never quite understood the depth of his own reach.

When REAL Southern Gospel Radio threw open the doors of its Nashville-area studios to honour the man who has spent half a century shaping the sound, the stories, and the soul of Southern Gospel music, people came from everywhere. Florida. Michigan. Places in between that don’t always make it onto the itinerary unless something genuinely matters. And for the community that calls this genre home, Les Butler genuinely matters.

The Open House was billed as a celebration, and it delivered on that promise. There was food, laughter, and a commemorative cake decorated with a caricature of Butler himself, the kind of small, affectionate detail that tells you everything about how people feel about someone. Industry leaders, recording artists, radio staff, and loyal listeners filed through the studio, each one carrying a version of the same story: that Les Butler changed something for them, opened a door, championed a career, or simply kept the music playing when it needed someone to keep the music playing.

Among those who showed up were Tom and Rebecca Peck, Eddie Crook, Nick Bruno, and Lem Kinslow, names that carry weight in Southern Gospel circles. Their presence underscored what the occasion already made plain: this wasn’t a courtesy appearance kind of crowd. These were people who meant it.

“Fifty years of service is an extraordinary accomplishment,” said attendees throughout the day, a phrase that sounds simple until you start thinking about what fifty years actually looks like. It looks like thousands of broadcasts. It looks like artists who needed someone in their corner finding one. It looks like an audience that might never have discovered this music being handed a reason to love it.

Butler’s career spans broadcasting, publishing, artist development, and ministry, a range that speaks less to ambition than to a particular kind of restlessness that comes from caring deeply about something. Southern Gospel has always occupied a specific, sometimes underestimated corner of American music, rooted in faith and community and a vocal tradition that goes back generations. Butler understood that corner, respected it, and spent five decades refusing to let the world overlook it.

In the week leading up to the celebration, he received a wave of messages and videos from across the industry, congratulating him on the milestone. The volume of it said something that no single tribute could.

Some people become indispensable to a world not by dominating it but by serving it consistently, quietly, and with genuine conviction. Southern Gospel has that in Les Butler. And on a warm afternoon in Nashville, with the cake cut and the stories still going, fifty years felt like both a long time and, somehow, just the beginning.