“A setback is a setup for something greater You had in store.” This lyric from Building 429’s 2019 hit, “Blessing I Can’t See,” seems to characterize the life of Jason Roy, the CCM band’s lead singer and founder. His parents divorced when he was only 5 years old, and after a nomadic life with his mother and an eventual court battle, he moved to Texas at 15 to live with his dad. Despite still more challenging times, Roy came to know Christ through the faithful ministry of a youth pastor, who also encouraged his singing and songwriting.
But salvation and, later, founding an award-winning Christian band didn’t mean Roy had it all figured out, he tells host Greg Stier on the Gospelize podcast on the Charisma Podcast Network.
“You would think that as long as I’ve been following Jesus, I would know that every setback is a setup, right? But in 2018, after 18 years of ministry and on the road, I got home from a long year of touring and got a call from my manager [who] told me that our record label had let us go,” he says. “Basically, they had fired us.”
But God.
Earlier that year, Roy had what he calls a “chance meeting” with a woman at his church who told him, “You know, I believe God’s about do something different in your life. And I want to invest in you when that happens.”
Roy didn’t really understand what that meant, so he thanked her and went on. But three days after the record label dropped his band, he and the woman had a meeting. He told her his news and that the label thought he was too old, that his ministry was coming to a close.
“And she said to me in that moment, ‘Well, let’s just call it a blessing we couldn’t see yet, because anybody who speaks that kind of word over your ministry has no place in your life … right?'” Roy says. “And then she said, ‘Now what would you like to do with the freedom that you have that you’ve never had before?’ And I’d never thought of it as freedom.”
So Roy told her what he called his “pipe dream”: “I’ve always wanted to start my own record label.”
“‘It’s a great idea,'” Roy says she responded. “‘Well, how much would that cost?’
“I just kind of stumbled toward a ridiculous number and threw that on the table. And then the sweet lady just kind of smiled and said, ‘Well, I’d be more than happy to cover that.'”
To hear more of what God did in the lives of Roy and Building 429, click here for the entire podcast. {eoa}
