Praising Gods in Music

“The music of the Gospel leads us home,” said the 19th century minister F.W. Faber in the volume, Oratory Hymns.

Richard Mojica, director of Verbo Music, would emphatically agree with that, and he’d take the idea a step further: Music is one of the major ways God has given us to worship and exalt him for his overwhelming grace and love in our lives.

Richard and his team are using their musical talents to evangelize those who haven’t committed their lives to Jesus, and to provide music for praise and adoration through highly professional live performances, cassettes, and CD’s. Through music seminars, they’re teaching other believers across the evangelical spectrum how to draw near to their Creator through worship.

“In the last year we’ve touched about 200,000 people through live appearances in seven countries. I can’t even estimate how great a number we’ve reached through the tens of thousands of cassettes we’ve sold in this period,” Richard says. The son of a professional musician, Richard learned to play keyboards as a child in his native Nicaragua. By his early 20’s he was one of the country’s top musicians, with jobs such as playing at a reception for Sandinista President Daniel Ortega.

But Jesus had other plans for him. Leaving a potentially lucrative career in secular music, he and his wife, Blanca, dedicated their lives to Christian service, and as a minister with Verbo Managua he increasingly became involved in pastoral care and with leading worship groups.

Then he started playing and producing songs for Miami-based Verbo Music. This brought him in contact with dozens of gifted musicians and singers from churches in different Latin American nations. These contacts gave him the idea to showcase the excitement and style of live praise meetings in their churches. The next in the resulting series of “Live from...” albums is scheduled for Columbia.

A spiritually gifted arranger and song writer as well as a keyboards expert, Richard soon found himself producing all of Verbo Music’s albums—a job that required his family to move to Miami. Since the music outreach is a non-profit ministry, returns on the sale of worship and instrumental albums pay expenses and provide resources to purchase musical equipment and instruments that are donated to Hispanic congregations in different countries.

“We’re following the vision that has always been in our hearts: to be a support and blessing to our own family of churches and to the Body of Christ—not only by recording the best possible music and by promoting praise and worship seminars, but also through financial support of growing churches,” he says.

In addition, Richard’s abilities have opened the doors for Verbo Music to work with other groups that are producing praise albums. Two recently released Spanish-language efforts— one by “Exaltacion” in Quito, Ecuador; and another by “Discipulos a las Naciones” in Guatemala—resulted in part from intensive imput by Richard’s team.

Both works highlight Verbo’s commitment to pass on freely to others the blessings and talents the ministry has received. “We fully understand that we must be faithful in small things. We’re not waiting to become some big well-known ministry before we start giving,” Richard concludes.