People are naturally wired to look forward to things, and yet even the best moments in life have a way of not quite living up to what we imagined beforehand. Newlyweds eventually find their feet back on the ground, those who retire can find themselves wrestling with boredom, and even someone who has lived a genuinely good life may reach the end of it wondering if this is really as good as it gets. Paul addresses this honestly in 1 Corinthians 15:19, saying that if our hope in Christ only covers this present life, then we are people to be pitied above all others.
But that is not the kind of hope Jesus offers. He does not simply make our days on earth a little more manageable or meaningful, though he does that too. He promises that life continues beyond death, and that the hopes and longings we carry through this life will find their true fulfilment in eternity. Our expectations are not wrong; they are just too small for this world. The best that awaits every believer is not behind them. It is still ahead, in the life to come.
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.
There is a kind of songwriter who writes about joy the way a carpenter builds a chair: with patience, with structure, with the full expectation that someone is going to sit in it and feel held. Mark Bishop is that kind of songwriter, and Where Do Blessings Come From?, his upcoming collection for Sonlite Records, is the most deliberate thing he has made in years.
The album arrives July 17, with pre-save and pre-add already open for listeners who have been circling it since “Grandkids,” the early 2025 single that quietly burrowed into Southern Gospel playlists and refused to leave. That song, like much of what Bishop does, wore its feeling plainly, without apology. The new record expands that instinct into a full thesis.
“This album, if it has a theme, seems to be about recognising the good in life,” Bishop says. He is measured when he talks about the work, choosing his words the way he chooses his chord changes, carefully and without waste. “It seems to be about healing of heart and mind in troubled times. It’s about recognising that our best times are not behind us, but that our happiest moments still wait somewhere in the future.”
That idea, that the best is ahead and not behind, runs like a current through the whole project. The opening track makes no attempt to be subtle about it. Lines like You’re thinking your best days have come to an end, you’ll never be that happy again, oh yes you will hit with the blunt comfort of a hand on the shoulder from someone who actually means it. Bishop is not interested in hedging. He writes with the confidence of a man who has thought this through.
The focus track, “Over and Over Again,” pulls that confidence into a broader frame, retelling the stories of David, Daniel and the Exodus as evidence for a chorus that insists: God has proven Himself, over and over and over again. There’s not a mountain that He can’t move. He doesn’t have anything left to prove. It is revivalist in structure, anthemic in delivery, and it works precisely because Bishop trusts the material. He does not oversell it. The history does the selling.
Across the record’s full arc, which moves between the six singles that have been trickling out since early this year and a handful of previously unheard songs, Bishop covers terrain that stretches from the kitchen table to the cosmic. He talks about grandchildren and grief, about faith held on to through bewilderment, about the specific texture of gratitude. It is the range of a writer who has been paying attention for a long time.
“There was no love before God,” he says, shifting into something closer to a poet’s register. “Just an empty void. He not only created the heavens and the earth, He created an inner universe of love and peace and overwhelming joy that was as new as the mountains and the seas.”
He continued, “And He created blessings; little nods and kisses from an eternal plane. Blessings are little artefacts of God’s love that have leaked down from heaven. It’s a love so grand that not even Heaven can contain it.”
It is that kind of language, unhurried and unafraid of its own weight, that separates Bishop from a field crowded with capable performers and competent craftspeople. Southern Gospel has always had room for both types. What it gets less frequently is the writer who can make a theological statement feel like a personal letter. Bishop does that consistently, and on Where Do Blessings Come From?, he does it across an entire album’s worth of reasons to believe that something good is still on its way.
“God gives us hope,” he says simply. “This world most often promises much more than it can deliver. But God promises our greatest joy is yet to be experienced.”
Where Do Blessings Come From? releases July 17 on Sonlite Records.
The man who won over America’s living rooms on The Voice is trading concert stages for a church pulpit, and he’s at peace with every bit of it.
Todd Tilghman has never been the kind of artist who does things halfway. When he stepped onto The Voice stage and won Season 20, he didn’t just walk away with a trophy. He walked away with a renewed sense of purpose. That same intentionality is driving his latest decision, one that will leave a noticeable gap in Christian music’s most compelling group. Tilghman is departing TrueSong.
Since forming in 2022, TrueSong has carved out a genuinely singular lane in Christian music, serving as resident artists at both the Ark Encounter and the Creation Museum, two of the most visited faith-based destinations in the country. The group built something rare: a tight, road-tested sound rooted in vocal harmony and songwriting craft, and a loyal audience that showed up for it. Tilghman was central to all of it.
But somewhere between the tour dates, the writing sessions, and the long stretches away from home, something shifted for him.
Todd Tilghman (Courtesy arkencounter.com)
“Honestly, at the end of the day, I know that God’s got a call on my life to do certain things, and I want to be able to do that,” Tilghman says. “But I feel like the number one call on my life is my wife and kids, and all the traveling and being away was kind of putting a strain on that. So I kind of wanted to prioritize them, number one, but also didn’t want to say that what I am doing is just kind of secondary.”
It’s the kind of honest tension most artists quietly carry but rarely say out loud. For Tilghman, keeping it quiet was never really an option.
He is leaving TrueSong to return to pastoral ministry, stepping into the role of pastor at Grace Point Church in Bristol, Tennessee, alongside his wife Brooke. It’s a homecoming of sorts, a return to the calling that shaped him long before television cameras and record deals entered the picture.
“I feel like God opened that door too,” he says. “Kind of brings my anxiety to life, to tell you the truth, doing this kind of stuff. But I got to open the door for Brooke and me to go back into pastoral ministry, where I can serve by her side and also with my kids and also be there at home with them.”
The decision isn’t just about stepping back from TrueSong. Tilghman is clear that this is a full exit from touring life. “Really, for the most part, probably 99%, I’m coming off the road completely, whether it’s TrueSong or solo, off the road completely.”
That’s a significant statement from someone who has spent the better part of recent years building a music career with real momentum. But listen to him talk about his time with TrueSong and it’s obvious this isn’t a departure rooted in frustration or burnout. It’s something quieter and more deliberate than that.
“I’ve genuinely loved this, doing this with these guys, singing, doing the writing, the traveling, all the things that we’ve done together, I’ve loved,” he says. “And I’ll miss all y’all.”
There’s a warmth in that farewell that feels earned. TrueSong isn’t just a project Tilghman passed through. It’s a chapter he gave himself to fully, and he knows it.
Fellow TrueSong singer Jay Arview confirmed that the group will carry on. The current configuration of TrueSong will continue its residency at the Ark Encounter and the Creation Museum, with no immediate plans to add another member.
For Todd Tilghman, the next chapter starts in Bristol, Tennessee, with his wife beside him and his kids nearby. By his own measure, that’s exactly where he’s supposed to be.
If you have never placed your trust in Jesus Christ as your personal Saviour, the gift of eternal life and the freedom that comes with being forgiven are available to you right now, today. The guilt you carry, the longing to feel clean and whole, and the desire for a life with genuine peace and purpose are all things God can address the moment you turn to him.
You can speak to him honestly and ask him to forgive your sins and take over the direction of your life. A simple prayer of surrender, telling Jesus that you are giving him the rest of your life and asking him to make you the person he wants you to be, is something he will absolutely respond to. He does not turn away anyone who comes to him with a sincere heart, and the life that follows is one he will guide and shape with both faithfulness and care.
Everything that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I certainly will not cast out.
There is a particular kind of grief that doesn’t stay still. It moves, it searches, it looks for somewhere to go. For Autumn Nelon, it found its way into a suitcase packed with toothbrushes, yo-yos, crayons, nail polish, Bibles, and baby wipes, then boarded a plane bound for Malawi.
This month, Autumn flew to Africa on a mission trip that her family had long dreamed of taking together. The Nelons, that beloved pillar of Southern Gospel music, had talked about going. They had hoped to go as a family, the way the Nelons did most things, shoulder to shoulder, in harmony. But on Friday, July 26th, 2024, that future was taken from them in an instant. Jason and Kelly Nelon Clark, Amber and Nathan Kistler, their assistant Melodi Hodges, pilot Larry Haynie, and his wife Melissa were all killed in a tragic plane crash while en route to join the Gaither Homecoming Cruise to Alaska. The Gospel music world went quiet in a way it rarely does.
And yet, here is Autumn, making the trip anyway.
She spent the past month doing what people who come from Gospel families know how to do when the world falls apart: she got to work. She fundraised. She bought supplies. She asked, and people gave. Toothbrushes and balls for the children. Coloring books and markers. Yo-yos, because joy matters. Diapers and wipes, because need is practical before it is anything else. Bibles, because that is the bedrock of everything the Nelons ever stood for.
It is hard not to see the weight of what she is carrying over there, and not just in the luggage. The mission trip The Nelons hoped to take together is now the mission trip Autumn is completing for them, and perhaps with them, in whatever way love persists after loss.
The Southern Gospel community, which rallied around the Nelon family in the devastating aftermath of the crash, is now rallying again. Prayers are going up across congregations and fan communities alike, asking that God uses Autumn in a mighty way on the red soil of Malawi, among the new friends she is only just beginning to meet.
There is a moment, somewhere in Malawi, where a child might pick up a yo-yo that a grieving young woman bought with money strangers gave her, in memory of a family that sang about heaven their whole lives. That child will not know any of this. They will just know the yo-yo, and the person who brought it, and the smile that crosses her face when they play.
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