Mo Pitney simply starts the conversation about Jesus with his music

By John Herndon, KentuckySings.com

WILLIAMSTOWN, Ky. – There’s nothing fancy about Mo Pitney.

Nothing.

He takes the stage as one of the headline artists in the 40 Days and 40 Nights of Christian Music at the Ark Encounter, but he looks like he’d be just as happy on his front porch as he is in front of several thousand music lovers.

There are no videos playing during the 30-minute set. There’s no backup band. Just Mo, his wife Emily, a couple of stools and Mo’s guitar.

And music. Simple music. Powerful music. 

Simple, powerful music with every lyric and every word pointing people to the cross. It’s exactly where Mo Pitney believes his Lord has placed him along his faith journey. 

“The more that I have walked with Jesus, he has started to teach me how Nashville has kind of taught me about the tools I need to write songs,” Pitney says, “and how he wants to hijack that and use the creativity that comes from writing music and presenting that through songs to tell stories.”

They are stories about life. Stories about everyday living. Some openly praise God. Some subtly tell a Christian story or use a biblical reference. Regardless of the lyric, Mo’s goal is always the same.

“To tell stories that, whether directly or indirectly, bring people to the cross of Jesus Christ and present the gospel in a compelling way,” Pitney says of his goal when writing or recording. “I am starting to find that the more I participate in the Holy Spirit and write songs,, the ending of every message, whether a song or a story that I tell, is the fact that only Jesus can untangle the mess we are in.”

At the Ark Encounter on Aug. 15, that was apparent. The audience was decidedly Christian with many descending on the northern Kentucky attraction to bolster their faith and be uplifted. Pitney and his wife fed that hunger, mixing in old hymns like “Nothing But the Blood of Jesus” and “‘Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus” with the late 1960’s Jesus Movement classic, “They’ll Know We Are Christians By Our Love” and some of his own compositions.

But most of Mo Pitney’s concerts play to crowds who love Hank Williams, Merle Haggard or Buck Owens. And when Pitney moved to Nashville in 2010, he might have had his own sights set on becoming another in that line of great singer-songwriters.

“I signed a contract with Curb Records in 2012 or 2013,” Pitney remembers, “and a year or year-and-a-half after I signed, I had a pretty radical born again experience. I didn’t know if God was calling me to be a mainstream country artist that follows Jesus or if he was going to start affecting my heart. It’s been kind of little by little, one layer at a time that he turned my messaging toward the cross and (being) Christ-centered and I have gone along that over the last 10 years.”

At the Ark Encounter, Pitney closed his set with a powerful composition, “When The Children Cry,” which draws on Revelation 11:18, which says, “The nations raged, but your wrath came, and the time for the dead to be judged, and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints, and those who fear your name, both small and great, and for destroying the destroyers of the earth. (English Standard Version)”

The song points to a day when Christ will make all things new. The lyrics are so powerful and Pitney’s emotion so prevalent that the crowd was completely silent until Pitney strummed the final chord. 

But a good portion of Pitney’s songs are like his “Ain’t Bad For a Good Ol’ Boy,” from his “Ain’t Looking Back” album. “It’s about a humble male thankful for what God has given him on the outskirts of town, which is a wife and a couple of kids and a dog and a nice front porch to play the guitar on.”

It is Mo Pitney’s story.

Another cut from that album, “The Old Home Place,” carries a subtle biblical reference. “I love that verse that no one who puts their hand to the plow and turns back is fit for the kingdom of Heaven,” Mo says, referring to Luke 9:62. “That chorus in The Old Home Place is why did they tear it down? Why did I leave my plow in the field and love for a job in town?

“I am always looking for a parable that can be connected to the parables of Jesus in what I am singing.”

However, it wasn’t always easy. For several years, Pitney, who had moved to Nashville while in his late teens, struggled with how to incorporate his ever-growing faith with his music. “There was a time I didn’t know how to reconcile my record deal with Curb Records in Nashville with the desire to live whole-heartedly for Jesus Christ in a way like ‘pick up your cross and follow me’ or ‘deny yourself and follow Jesus.’”

Pitney’s varying emotions wrestled for four or five years, but he says, “the more I wrestled, the more His iron sharpened my iron and it started to sharpen what I was put in Nashville to do.”

And Pitney believes his mission is to introduce people to Jesus Christ through his music. “Today will be a full gospel show,” he said shortly before taking the stage at the Ark Encounter’s Answers Center. “Most of my shows are kind of starting the conversation with the audience. If you are to evangelize someone on the street, you kind of want to start the conversation and see where you have common ground. 

“Paul goes to the men in Athens (Acts 17) and starts talking about their idols to The Unknown God. He is using their idols to talk about Jesus. Some people idolize their cities. Some idolize money, some people idolize family. Some idolize their dogs. So I start the conversation based around the things that they love. And in my appeal at the end of the day, the things you love were created by someone. And all He asks is that you thank Him for what He made instead of idolizing what He made.”

Pitney, who grew up in a small Illinois town, was around the church as he grew up. Two grandparents were Baptist preachers who loved Jesus. But, around the time Mo, already in Nashville, was about 19 or 20, his life was transformed.

“I started to encounter the Holy Spirit in ways I can’t even describe and my life was forever changed,” he says. “I was freed from difficult sinful habits the second He touched me. It has never been the same.”

It is the power of the simple gospel. And Mo carries that message in a genre that songwriter Harlan Howard once called, “Three chords and the truth.”

Country is the music of the common man’s journey through life. And it is the vehicle God provided Mo Piney to share the message of Christ. “Historically, the church has complicated the gospel and missed the point. Rain got on the farmer. Rain got on the Pharisee. Jesus called the lame, the fisherman and the farmer. He presented the simple gospel with clarity.

“I have a song about a father that misses his son and is asking his son to come home. The song is about the Prodigal Son. I have another song about planting seeds and pulling weeds in our lives and bearing fruit.

“There is a writer named Dallas Frazier who had a radical conversion experience, from Nashville, he said something that really helped me. There’s something he termed inside and outside Christian songs. Inside songs are those holy to the Lord as praise and worship songs. Outside songs are songs like (Frazier’s Oak Ridge Boys’ hit) ‘The Baptism of Jesse Taylor.’ They are songs that are more like John the Baptist and evangelical. They talk to the unbelievers in the court square. At some point in the night, I want to present the hope of the gospel.”

Pitney sees another powerful lesson in the life of Peter. “There is something about Peter’s life. There’s something that’s been kind of connecting me to. Jesus talked about Simon Barjona. I think that Simon Peter is in the lineage of Jonah. Jonah threw himself overboard and got swallowed by a fish. Jesus worked out the negative traits in Peter that were like Jonah when Jesus was in the belly of the earth and rose from the dead. 

“On the shore, He called Peter and Peter does what Jonah did. He throws himself into the sea and swims to Jesus instead of away from Jesus like Jonah did. Instead of being swallowed by a fish, Jesus asked him to swallow a fish,” Mo says, referring to an account in John 21.

“I think there is a connection to those two stories, how if we are running from God, life swallows us and if we run to Jesus on the shore, Jesus presents our life to us with his hand. So run to Him and not away from Him.”

** You can listen to Mo Pitney’s music on streaming services such as iTunes, Spotify and Pandora. He also has a YouTube channel and you can order CDs from his website, http://www.mopitney.com.

**40 Days and 40 Nights of Christian Music at The Ark Encounter, presented by Abraham Productions, continues daily through Sept. 9, 2023. For more information see http://www.arkencounter.com or http://www.abrahamproductions.net.