Beauty Will Rise is a collection of 12 new and profound songs created over the past 15 months during the walk through the darkness of the loss of his daughter Maria and while God continued to meet him there on the journey. Part lament, part praise, part grief, part hope, part wrestling, part pondering; these tracks resonate as Chapman’s personal Psalms. It is a desperately hopeful, raw, personal, and honest recording that is likely the most important of his already incredible 20 plus year ministry.

Chapman announced the news on his video blog (http://chapmanchannel.typepad.com/scc/2009/08/steven-announces-new-album-beauty-will-rise.html) from Maria’s Big House of Hope, the special needs healing home that Show HOPE, (the adoption and orphan care ministry founded by Chapman and his wife Mary Beth) recently opened. The facility is named in loving memory of their five-year old daughter and is located in Luoyang, China. Maria’s Big House of Hope will care for orphans with medical impairments, such as cleft palate, clubbed feet, urological disorders, blindness, and neurological disorders.

For the first time in his career, due to the intensely personal nature of this project, Chapman made the album in a total vacuum while traveling all over the country on tour last fall and spring. From the rooftop of Maria’s Big House of Hope, Steven shared details on his blog entry about how the songs for this project came about:

“I am standing on top of the building that because of it’s name, represents something that we never would have scripted, asked for, or imagined. But, we are right in the middle of part of the beauty that God is bringing from the pain and ashes of our last year. I began this process a couple of months after May 21st, not really knowing if I would ever feel like I could sing, stand on stage again, or express the emotions, the grief and the loss in music. But, in the days that followed, I felt that God was allowing me to write my own songs, and that’s really what these are to me; a collection of my own songs, laments, ponderings, and God meeting me and my family in the grief and in the midst of our journey of the last year. It’s been an amazing, wild process; very raw, real, honest.”

The album’s first single, “Heaven is the Face,” will be released to radio on August 21st with the digital single available on September 8th. Album pre-sales of Beauty Will Rise begin September 25. Chapman spoke about this song via video blog as well (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnHM_2x-pBI) commenting that “obviously heaven has become a much more real place and something I long for more now than ever before. I can’t wait to see the face of my little girl that I long to see again. I’m saying to God, ‘you know my heart, and I know that heaven is so much more than that, but right now Lord, this where my heart is.’ So I’m just crying out to God with this song, and it’s as honest and personal as I’ve ever been, I just poured out my heart.”

Steven Curtis Chapman has sold over ten million records including two RIAA certified platinum albums and eight RIAA certified gold albums. Along with his Dove and GRAMMY © awards, Chapman has won an American Music Award, has recorded 45 No. 1 US radio hits and been awarded 56 Dove Awards, more than any other artist to date. A Since his recording career began in 1987, Chapman has recorded seventeen projects with Sparrow Records. A He has performed at the White House and has appeared on multiple national programs via CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, CMT, FOX News, the Hallmark Channel and E!, including Good Morning America, Larry King Live, CBS Sunday Morning, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and more. Chapman and his wife Mary Beth created Show HOPE in 2001 after bringing their first adopted daughter, Shaohannah, home from China. The ministry’s goal is to help families reduce the financial barrier of adoption, and has provided grants to over 2,000 families wishing to adopt orphans from around the world.

Beauty Will Rise track listing:

1. Heaven Is The Face
2. Beauty Will Rise
3. SEE
4. Just Have To Wait
5. Faithful
6. Questions
7. Our God Is In Control
8. February 20th
9. God Is It True (Trust Me)
10. I Will Trust You
11. Jesus Will Meet You There
12. Spring Is Coming

For more info on Steven Curtis Chapman, visit the JFH Artists Database.