Making a Joyful Noise
Travis Cottrell Celebrates 25 Years Leading Worship For Beth Moore And Living Proof Ministries
By Yogi Collins
As a kid, I thought that once you hit adulthood and got married, the rest of life was just coasting—buying a house, car maintenance, having kids, graduations, etc. I had no concept of what I believe now, that life is really a series of hard things—lessons—with little breaks that allow us to catch our breaths. These lessons, should we choose to view them that way, are often God’s refining fire and give us opportunities to become, hopefully, more like Jesus.
When I spoke with my childhood friend Travis Cottrell, a Boone native who seemed to me to have found his calling early in his life, I realized I had the same naïve thinking about ‘calling’ as I’d had about coasting through adulthood. I’d been thinking that a calling was clear and single-faceted; I hadn’t considered that it might evolve, morphing throughout your life as you grow via God’s lessons.
It was Travis who tweaked my thinking. To me, his calling to serve the Lord through music and singing always seemed so clear, but when I asked him about it, he surprised me by saying, “I think calling is an interesting word. It falls under the umbrella of loving the Lord and having a desire to serve Him, then using the gifts He has given you.”
Born into Music
Still, not everyone finds their calling in life as early as Travis did. “I was raised in a house of teenagers because I came along so late in my parent’s life,” Travis recalls. “My brother was [almost] 18 and my sisters were 14 and 12, so I was raised in this world of 45 records and youth choir. I had one sister who played clarinet and another sister who played the piano and I was mesmerized by them both. My whole family sang choir at church. There was no scenario in my life that didn’t have music somewhere. I was quite literally born into it.”
Remarking how amazed I was in high school chorus when Travis, our pianist, transposed an entire song on the fly, Travis humbly praises his sister Cathy—his only piano teacher until college—saying, “Yeah, I guess you can just either do that or you can’t, but I credit Cathy for kind of forcing me to learn music as a concept rather than just as literal notes and for teaching me the bigger picture that whatever chord works in the key of C, you can play that same chord just in a different key.”
And while it’s the big picture that drives Travis, I wondered about his thoughts on creativity as it relates to his ministry as Worship Pastor at the 3,000-member Englewood Baptist Church in Jackson, Tennessee and as worship leader of the Living Proof Live conferences. After all, God is the Creator and music and the arts are ways we can commune with and express our love for Him. For Travis, it’s about using his gifts, walking through the doors God opens, and serving.
An Unexpected Blessing
And, because God seems to have a healthy sense of humor, it’s not surprising that one door God opened for Travis wasn’t something he expected. Travis had moved to Nashville with hopes of getting a record deal and becoming a beloved recording artist, but God had a different take on how He wanted it to happen. “I wasn’t offered the world on a platter like the idealistic twenty-something me thought it was going to happen,” Travis laughs. “I was just serving in my church in Nashville, leading worship when they needed me, and then some people starting asking me to lead worship at different events. I met a couple of influential people including a lady named Faith Whatley.”
Faith called Travis one day and asked if he would lead worship for a women’s conference led by Beth Moore. I asked them, “Why don’t you have a woman lead? It’s a women’s conference, why would you call me?” And she said, ‘We just feel like you’re the match and it would be good to have a man on the platform.’”
That was in 1998, and Travis has been leading worship for Beth Moore’s Living Proof Live conferences since then, something that has been an incredible blessing to both he and his wife of almost 25 years, Angela. “I think Beth Moore is the greatest leader we have seen in the evangelical world in this generation,” Travis admits. “I could not have higher respect and admiration for her. She is humble, compassionate, dedicated, caring, and considerate, and working alongside her has made me a better person, husband, worker, and friend. She has touched mine and Angela’s lives in countless ways.”
“One of the biggest things I have learned from Beth is the importance of the attitude of servanthood in a leader. ‘Go low’, she would say. Serve those God has put in your path. It never pays to think yourself higher than anyone, ever. I have watched her countless times prefer everyone around her over herself. And I believe the Lord loves that humility, and it’s one of the reasons He uses her so profoundly.”
The Ultimate Calling
Meanwhile, God also uses Travis profoundly as he continues to refine him for His purpose. “One big area God refines me is in the area of being a people pleaser. It’s hard not to feed the side of yourself that wants everyone to be happy with you when you are leading them in worship. Meeting their preferences, expectations, all of that. Ultimately, it is the Lord we are aiming to please. Sometimes that means we have to disappoint people and be okay with that. Comfort, familiarity, and tradition are not the goals of corporate worship, communion with God is.”
And even with such a clear calling in his life, Travis feels he’s constantly recognizing his calling because it changes and grows. But where the Lord has brought him is a blessing greater than he could have imagined. “Sometimes what your calling looks like will change but it’s ultimately the same: love God, serve Him, and love His people. As we get older, our gifts may change, you know? We’re good at things we weren’t good at 25 years ago. There are needs in our culture now that weren’t needs 20 years ago. I believe if we’re alive and breathing, we need to be asking God, ‘What is it that you would have me do?’”
Yes, what would God have each of us do? Followed by trusting Him when it isn’t going according to our own plans. “I look back at those watermark moments where things didn’t go the way I thought they would or people disappointed me and it’s the Lord walking me out of those moments into what is next,” Travis points out. “Those are the moments you wouldn’t give back for all the moments. You couldn’t have told me when I was in college that one day I was going to find this great, amazing, musical, spiritual, social fulfillment leading worship for women’s conferences for more than 20 years. But, here we are celebrating 20 years at Living Proof Live and it has been the greatest journey. I’ve experienced the most amazing things and have been able to serve with the best leader I’ve ever known or experienced in my life in Beth Moore. Her influence has changed my spiritual walk, my marriage, my parenting, everything about my life. That wouldn’t have happened without the failures before it or if everything had gone the way I thought it should have gone.”
This article was originally written for the Summer 2018 Edition of The Journey magazine.
