Marcos Witt—Fearless Border-Crosser
By Raya Kuzyk -- Críticas, 6/1/2007
When has one truly clinched a spot in America’s popular imagination? A Wikipedia entry, YouTube video clips, and a MySpace profile are all healthy starts. At 45, singer, songwriter, author, lecturer, and pastor Marcos Witt is one of the few middle-aged men who can claim all three. He’s also one of the few to have won three Latin Grammy Awards, sold seven million records, and written ten books, many of them best sellers in the Hispanic Christian markets in the United States and abroad.
| Books by Witt |
By 2002, fellow superstar pastor and best-selling author Joel Osteen [Su mejor vida ahora, Casa Creación, 2005 (Your Best Life Now, Warner Faith)] had taken notice. Osteen recruited Witt to head the Hispanic ministry at Houston’s Lakewood Church. As the largest Protestant church in the United States, Lakewood draws a reported 30,000 attendees to its five weekly services; its sermons are broadcast in English and Spanish in more than 140 countries via live webcasts and satellite TV. Witt’s Spanish sermons alone reach upward of 20 countries, and some 7000 congregants attend his popular Sunday services. Witt couldn’t have dreamt up a more prominent pulpit from which to address his loyal following, the broad reach of Hispanic Christians living in the United States and Latin America. And with every passing week, this congregation multiplies.
Asked whether he considers himself first and foremost a musician, a writer, or a pastor, Witt tells Críticas he’s “more of a communicator who uses music, writing, and speaking to help people.” (He’s as red-hot on the lecture circuit as he is in the chapel, speaking widely and prolifically on leadership.) He’s even lent his voice to an animated holiday feature film (The 3 Wise Men, released in Spain and France in 2003) and appeared in No te rindas (“Don’t Give Up”), produced by the faith-based organization Esperanza USA as part of its campaign to increase HIV/AIDS awareness in the Hispanic Christian community and shown in several cities nationwide in 2006.
But not all mediums have him on equal footing. Witt admits the act of songwriting comes more naturally to him than book writing, though they share similarities. And because his pop albums are as heavily theme-based as are his books—he writes predominantly biographical, motivational, and leadership-focused nonfiction—they’re that much more closely related pursuits. Sometimes, even, the balance shifts, and Witt discovers an ease in writing that mostly eludes him in music. “I have found an absolute joy when writing sometimes,” he says, “like all of a sudden it’s just flooding onto the page faster than you can even type.” This may be an occasional experience for him, but it’s not one born of dumb luck. Witt always goes to work on a book with a specific purpose in mind: to help people understand how God can function in their daily lives.
In 2003, Witt delivered a five-part sermon at Lakewood on an issue with which he says he’s grappled his entire life: fear. Witt admits to many fears, from bed-wetting as a child to his performance anxiety as an adult. The congregation’s response amazed him. “I realized that people are dealing with fear on all kinds of levels,” he says, “and that’s what led me to turn those talks into a book.” For Dile adiós a tus temores (How To Overcome Fear; Atria Books Español, 2007), which he dedicated to Lakewood’s Hispanic congregation, Witt turned each of those sermon segments into a chapter, adding several more addressing common fears. He says this book is about “helping people identify their fears, get on with their life.”
Though Witt preaches in Spanish, he has collaborated with other worship leaders at Lakewood on English-language albums; he recorded his own in 2003 and, in 2004, signed a distribution deal with secular powerhouse Sony. And though he’s written all of his books in Spanish, he’s already been translated into English, beginning with The Worship-Filled Life (Casa Creación, 1998). Strang Communications executive VP Tessie DeVore, former publisher of Casa Creación, says that although the book didn’t do as well as expected, it came out when “Marcos was not where he is right now ministry-wise, and we were not where we are as a publisher.”
Now, nearly a decade later, with a new book with a larger-scale publisher, the future looks promising. [Atria published English-language (125,000 first print run, hardcover) and Spanish-language (50,000 first print run, paperback) editions simultaneously, as well as Spanish- and English-language audiobooks.] Atria editor Johanna Castillo attests that so far, Dile adiós a tus temores has received “great support from both U.S. booksellers and librarians.” A foreword by Osteen may be just the push required for a total crossover into the Anglophone market.
Witt, however, is measuring the book’s success by a different barometer. He enthusiastically recalls having received an email from best-selling Mexican writer Carlos Cuauhtémoc Sánchez, who admitted the book had helped him work out personal issues with which he’d been struggling. “I felt so encouraged by that email,” Witt says. “If someone like [Carlos] was helped, that means many, many more people are being helped….”
“Our favorite activity as a family,” Witt says, “is to just walk into a Borders or a Barnes & Noble, pick out a bunch of books, and read together.” He’s referring to his wife of 21 years, Miriam Lee, who’s also a pastor at Lakewood, and their four children—Elena Jannete, Jonathan David, Kristofer Marcos, and Carlos Franklin. Though the boys all play musical instruments, 19-year-old Elena seems most readily poised to follow in her father’s footsteps. She joined him on his latest album, “Alegría” (“Joy”), recorded live in Chile before an audience of 20,000.
But Witt isn’t exactly raring to hang up his mike; he’s got several projects in the pipeline, one of which would garner him an even greater range of fans: fiction. “One of the things Jesus Christ did [most] was tell stories,” says Witt. “I’m fascinated with that.” He says he’s contemplating writing a novel, an inspirational work similar to Paulo Coelho’s, though “not quite as mystical.”
So does this mean Witt’s other pursuits will be taking a backseat to his literary career? Hardly. Two days after speaking to Críticas, Witt left for the Czech Republic to record an album with the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. The album, scheduled for mid-2007 release, will combine both rerecorded songs already familiar to Witt’s fans with entirely new pieces. “I’ve never done anything like this before,” he told us before leaving, “nothing this elegant.”
His fans might disagree. They show up in the thousands to hear Witt. They seem, from where he stands, to be increasingly united. “There are a lot of people who read my books and will hear me preach but will not listen to my music; in fact, there are people”—attendees of his seminars and conferences—“who don’t even realize I do music,” he says. “And I’m noticing that these worlds are beginning to merge.”
Witt attributes this success to one thing, plain and simple: authenticity. “Whenever I speak, write—even do a concert,” he says, “there is true respect, care, concern, and love coming from my heart, and I think they really sense that.” Atria’s Castillo similarly assesses the appeal of Witt’s latest book. “He is so straightforward and frank about his own past fears and problems,” she says, that “readers identify and embrace their fears.”
But there is more than honesty between Witt and his Hispanic readers, listeners, and congregants: there is understanding. Having traveled throughout Latin America for some 20 years (he says he averages 17 countries a year), Witt is especially attuned to the differences among the people of Argentina, Colombia, and Venezuela, for example. This puts him in what he sees as “a unique position to be able to touch the Latin American continent.” Strang Communications’ DeVore, who notes that Witt has “already grown tremendously on the English side of things,” also points out that he has the ability “to speak to Hispanic Americans like few do.” For Witt, there is little to differentiate his Hispanic fans in the United States from those in Latin America. Though they’re admittedly different in the socioeconomic and political issues with which they deal, “in things having to do with faith, passion, and excitement,” he says, “they’re very much the same.”
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Dile adiós a tus temores
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Señor, ¿en qué puedo servirte?
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