Christian music artist Laura Kaczor has released her third album, Love Enough. The songs touch on the themes of love, forgiveness, and grace.
“I do a lot of work with young people, with youth groups and with young ladies,” Kaczor told me when we sat down together at the International Christian Retail Show in Atlanta in July. “And I definitely wanted there to be a clear gospel message on the album.”
She says the title track is a summation of the gospel.
“It tells of how God will go to any lengths to find us and how his death on the cross was the ultimate sacrifice.”
Kaczor was born in Collegeville, Pennsylvania (the same birthplace as her parents), where her close-knit family occupied homes on the same street. While she was raised with Christian values and accepted Christ as a small child, she did not always remain true to those instilled beliefs.
“In my high school years I wasn’t living for the Lord,” Kaczor says. “I made some bad decisions, had some bad relationships. I ended up leaving church.”
Then, some friends from her high school invited her to attend church with them. It was an eye-opening experience for Kaczor who had never been exposed to contemporary worship music before.
“They had a really great youth program, and a big part of it was their music,” says Kaczor. “The youth pastor was very active, and he organized a trip to Creation Festival the summer before my freshman year in college.”
That trip, says Kaczor, uniquely impacted her life.
“I was just transformed, between the speakers and the worship, it just absolutely changed my life,” she says. “I wanted to commit any of my music endeavors to serving God from that day forward.”
Following that summer of change, Kaczor headed to the University of Pennsylvania, where, she says, her faith was put to the test.
“I was going to a very secular university, very worldly, and very much about the human achievement, that principle. In being a Christian on campus I was really making a stand. I mean even getting up and going to church on Sunday morning was a big deal. I got really involved with Campus Crusade for Christ while I was there and I also sang with a Christian a cappella group.”
While in college, Kaczor continued to hone her writing skills. She decided to record the songs to give her thoughts more permanence. Using a local producer out of south Philadelphia, she began with a few songs, then a few more. Eventually, she realized she had enough for an album.
With a trunk full of her independently produced CDs she headed for Nashville in 2006. The road to stardom was not as easy as she initially thought it would be.
“God doesn’t necessarily work as we think He would and certainly not always according to our time.”
Finding a female with a room to rent on Craig’s list, she settled in and began infiltrating the Nashville writer’s community. She found a great deal of support through writer’s nights but still had difficulty finding venues in which to perform her music.
“Everyone was very accommodating, helpful — but it’s also very challenging to sing on a regular basis in Nashville because there are so many talented people. And I was singing regularly in church for worship for various services, and even doing that is harder because there are so many amazing musicians and so many on staff at the churches in the area.”
In addition to contemporary Christian, Kaczor was performing Americana-style music during this time, which paved the way for collaboration with John Carter Cash on her second album. Wildflowers presented a mix of folk/Americana, but it also brought Kaczor back to her commitment to contemporary Christian music.
“After that project was over, I knew I wanted to do another Christian project. In fact, after that, I knew I wanted to do Christian music exclusively. That’s when I started my latest project, the Love Enough album.”
Produced by established Christian music producer Don Koch, Love Enough became an expression of Kaczor’s desire to positively impact the lives of others.
“My hope is that people, regardless of where they are in their walk, whether they are new believers or have been saved for many years, that this music would encourage them and minister to them. I hope that it helps people to more fully understand God’s heart towards them.”