Featured People
“Featured People” tells real stories of people in our church. In this issue, we invite you to meet… Damian HorneCreating New Music at Crossroadsby Greg Leis “Sing to Him, sing psalms to Him; 1 Chronicles 16:9-11 “Worship is not just singing songs. It’s the way we live our lives,” says Damian Horne, the new Worship Pastor at Crossroads Church. Damian attended local schools – Forest Lake Christian and Pleasant Ridge in his elementary school years and Magnolia Middle School and Bear River High School, sandwiched around missionary work with his family in Asia for half of his 4th grade year. Damian graduated from Bear River in 1993. “In junior high, my friends were involved at Combie Bible Church’s Youth Group, so that’s when I started getting involved in church. It was really during that time that my relationship with Christ became my own. I grew up in a Christian home, but it was in junior high that it started hitting me that I could make some choices here in life. “I started playing the trombone with a jazz band and a concert band in junior high and high school, and started learning guitar in my freshman year. I haven’t played the trombone in a long time, except when I want to amuse my children.” After graduating from high school, Damian attended Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. But, “I missed my band and I missed my girlfriend, so I moved back home and went to Sierra College for a year and a half.” Damian also attended Chico State University for a year. The “girlfriend” he spoke of was Andrea Shafer, whom he had met at Bear River High School. They had dated for six years before getting married in the summer of 1997. In 1996 the band was offered a contract with a major Christian record label in Nashville. “So I made the decision to take a break from my schooling and…started touring.” The band’s first album, Watusi, came out in 1997, to be followed by Vegas Car Chasers in 1998 and Glad You Made It in 1999. Silage played more than 160 shows that year, including touring with Third Day and Jars of Clay at various venues across the country. But, in 2000 Silage disbanded and Damian and Andrea moved back to the area after living in Nashville for almost two years. “I felt it just wasn’t for us anymore. We (Andrea and I) wanted to move back home, to have kids, and be near friends and family. I had a desire to play music for worship, not just Christian entertainment.” “I was on-staff at Sonrise from 2001 to 2006 leading worship for student ministries – high school, junior high, college and I learned a lot and had a ton of fun but after a few years I sensed that God was calling me to go deeper into worship ministry and minister… to adults as well. We were a young family and we weren’t really able to do the student ministry lifestyle all the time.” During this time, Damian also worked for his brother-in-law’s company, Church Multimedia, a business that installed video and audio systems for churches. In 2002, Damian bought out the audio-video editing portion of the business and opened his own sound studio in Auburn, Sonic Image Studio. In 2006, Damian began serving part-time as Worship Pastor for Elevation Church in Auburn. “We (Sonrise) planted Elevation as kind of a daughter/sister church… gearing more towards a 20-40 year-old type of crowd. It didn’t really turn out that way; God had other plans for it to be a multi-generational church. I was there for three years.” Although Damian had been working for other churches, he remained connected with Crossroads in various ways. Many of those same childhood friends he grew up with in youth groups had now been attending Crossroads for over ten years. And when the Horne’s returned to the area from Nashville, Andrea taught preschool at Crossroads Christian School until she became a mother. In 2007, Damian bought a guitar from Tony Logan and Damian also worked on two CD projects with Brian Steckler, Crossroad Church’s keyboardist and music director. Elevation Church does not meet on Wednesdays, so in the fall of 2008 “I just came in and dropped off a CD for Tony and Todd, saying ‘If you need any help or guests Wednesday nights, I’d love to do that.” Shortly thereafter (in early 2009) Todd approached Damian about the possibility of leading worship at Crossroads every other Wednesday night. After a few weeks it became clear that God was orchestrating a new ministry partnership which resulted in Damian being named Crossroad’s new worship pastor effective August 1. “I feel really blessed to be a part of this staff – where there’s great pastoral leadership, a support staff to help, a professional sound man, a musical director – everything’s well set up. “I don’t want to come in and switch everything around. I want to keep using the people that have been serving faithfully while at the same time look for new people who are skilled and called to worship ministry.” “I have a pretty large list of songs that have been sung at Crossroads. I’ll pick from that pool of songs for the most part. Being a songwriter, though, and an artist, I get excited about doing new songs. But I know that I can’t play all these new songs on the congregation every week. Otherwise, people are just watching you and not participating.” In the immediate future, Damian is looking to bring new talent into the Music Ministry. “Sometime this year we’ll be doing a church-wide audition.” A CD of worship songs sung at Crossroads and some new material is also planned. “I’m excited about seeing the church grow in its expression of worship and the freedom in doing so,” concludes Damian. “I’m anxious to see the church worship strongly with our lives. I’m excited to be where I see God moving and working… I love Jesus. I love my wife, family, & friends. I love creating new music & using it to lead people into the presence of God; worshipping Him in Spirit & Truth.” Click here to view Damian’s Pastoral Team bio Posted: October 02, 2009 | PermalinkFeatured People Archives >  
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Damian, 34, is an Auburn native and the father of three. He grew up in Lake of the Pines with his parents Bruce and Sue Horne, longtime attendees of Crossroads/Calvary Chapel Grass Valley. Bruce is a well-known local building contractor and Sue is a former Nevada County Supervisor.
“It was in high school, probably my junior year or so, when I went to Hume Lake Christian Camp (in the Sierra Foothills above Fresno). That’s where I first saw what you would consider to be a modern worship band…drums, electric guitar, bass, keyboard… That’s when I really got excited about how powerful music and worship could be.”
Damian and two of his high school friends formed the Christian musical group Silage, known for their “quirky but spiritually relevant lyrics and their constant mix of musical styles” (according to the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia).
“However, it was not an easy transition to go from the excitement of being in the Christian music industry to living with my in-laws and working part-time for my father doing construction. I didn’t get hired as a worship leader right away. It was a pretty humbling year. But it was a good year. I remember sitting in a church service and being convicted that I just needed to be willing to serve…just let go of the music thing and have a servant’s heart. Once I actually made that acceptance, I got a call from Pastor Eric Van Patten who was the high school youth pastor at Sonrise church in Auburn…to do student ministries worship.
The Horne’s first daughter, Chloe, was born in 2002, to be followed by another daughter, Macie, born in 2005. Dawson, their son, was born in the spring of last year.
In keeping with his Christian music background and preferences, Damian will chose from a wide range of worship music. “Learning praise and worship music in the late 80’s – early 90’s, I learned a lot of the older ‘Maranatha! Songs’. Right now I would say my main influences have been… leaders out of the Passion movement; Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman, and Tim Hughes…” Damian also has a love for the old hymns. “I almost consistently have at least one hymn in my (worship) sets. There’s a lot of great melodies, great theology…they’re just well known. It’s like singing a hit song that everyone knows. It’s really a nice thing in a multi-generational church.
