Worth Dying For

biography

Worth Dying For are a young five-member worship rock band from Modesto, California. The group is made up of Lead Singer and keytar player Christy Johnson, lead vocalst Sean Loche, drummer Josh O’Haire, guitarist/vocalist Micah Berteau and guitarist Nathan Parrish.

Birthed in the city-wide outreach of Calvary Temple’s weekly youth event, “The Stadium,” Worth Dying For aim to shake this generation out of its lethargy and despair. The band is more creed than career, more mission than music. And the music—aggressive guitars, searing vocals and heart-provoking lyrics—speaks for itself.
“Jesus Christ and music are the two things that consume the thoughts and lives of this band,” says Sean Loche. “Combine the two, and you get what we love to do: worship. We are ordinary people who have a desire to show others how to fall in love with God in a deeper, more passionate way. The music that God has used us to write has changed our youth ministry and our city. Now, God has put it on our hearts to let these songs resonate in the hearts of the young people across this nation.”

Josh O’Haire adds: “Everything we’re doing from the ministry to the music, we want it to make an impact on this generation. We see so many young kids each week… so much that they go through. Broken homes, depression, suicide. In mentoring them, I’ve seen how they feel like they’re not a part of something… Our goal is to give them hope and something to be a part of, something real.”

“Our dream is to see lives changed,” Sean continues, “to ignite and empower them to go out and do big things… It’s not just about us playing songs, but helping them connect, letting a revolution begin with them.”

“We wrote our song ‘Revolution’ a little over a year ago,” says Micah Berteau, guitarist/vocalist. “The idea was to empower kids with the truth. We are the sound of a revolution; we can use our voices to tell people about God, to lift a generation up… We know we have to give up all we are to see this revolution happen in our city. When a generation realises that, that’s when a revolution can begin. As the lyric says, ‘Today is the day we’ll give it back to you.’”

Many of WDF’s songs are born in personal times of worship, time alone spent with God in prayer and study.

“The biggest place we’re seeing growth as a band is lyrically,” Micah says. “As we keep growing in God, he begins to give us even deeper, more mature songs. ‘At Your Cross’ is a great example. I’d been praying for a song to take us past the level we were used to, a song that would tap into a deeper presence.” He says the song spontaneously came to him at a youth camp during a worship service. Not forced or planned, but a natural result of being ‘at worship.’”

Sean continues, “We have a different sense of Christianity than some do. We talk about duty, the forces of darkness and spiritual warfare, and we try to empower our kids, not to sit back but to engage, to stand up and realise that when they do that, they are empowered by the king of kings to fight the darkness. With Jesus on their side, nothing can stand against them…”

And their message, like their music, holds nothing back.

Guitarist Nathan Parrish sums it up. “For me, you can’t really fight the darkness of our culture, you can’t really stand up and be who God made you to be, unless you have ammunition to fight. When I was growing up, there wasn’t anything for us to worship with, nothing to identify with. The music didn’t belong to us… Today, with so much being fed to this generation, if they don’t have something, anything to hold on to, to connect with, they won’t be able to stand. Our desire is to give them something that can unite and empower them to stand strong and be courageous.”
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