John Mark McMillan has always felt slightly out of place in worship music.
Not because he isn’t good at it—his breakout song “How He Loves” is still echoing through church sanctuaries two decades later. But because the whole idea of “professional Christianity,” as he calls it, began to feel unsustainable.
“Professional believers can’t ask normal questions,” he says. “You end up splitting yourself in half just to survive.”
He’s talking over Zoom from his home in North Carolina, reflecting on the last decade of his life, which included a quiet but seismic faith crisis, a retreat from church stages and a painful season of caregiving and loss. Now, with his new album Cosmic Supreme—a full-on return to worship music—he’s doing something most people don’t: coming back to the thing he deconstructed.
But this time, he’s doing it on his own terms.
Severance, But Make It Spiritual
McMillan compares his past life as a worship leader to the show Severance, where workers surgically split their work and personal selves.
“My worship leader self was like my ‘innie’—polished, confident, always on message,” he says. “But my real self, my ‘outie,’ was asking all these hard questions. And those two selves couldn’t talk to each other. I felt like I was slowly dying from that divide.”
There wasn’t a dramatic exit. No viral tweet, no public renunciation. Just a quiet veer—fewer worship sets, more club shows, more introspective albums that leaned into ambiguity.
“I didn’t want to pretend anymore,” he says. “I felt irresponsible being seen as a spiritual leader when I didn’t have any more answers than the people in the room.”
The pressure to produce more worship music after a hit—more anthems, more “How He Loves” moments—only deepened the dissonance.
“Art doesn’t work like YouTube,” he says. “You can’t just repeat what goes viral and call it meaningful.”
He stopped writing songs for church. Stopped leading worship. Started exploring what faith looked like when no one was watching.
And then, ten years passed.
When Deconstruction Isn’t Enough
“I’ve said before, fundamentalists aren’t fundamental enough and deconstructionists don’t deconstruct far enough,” McMillan says, smiling like he knows that’ll ruffle feathers. “We all stop at our point of comfort.”
He’s not wrong. For many young Christians, deconstruction became a rite of passage—questioning authority, unlearning toxic theology, stepping back from institutions that caused harm. But very few are talking about what happens after the breakdown. What do you build back? And with what?
For McMillan, the long road through deconstruction didn’t lead to cynicism. It led back to faith—but a different kind of faith.
“After all the questions and doubts, I realized: I still love God. I still want to be the kind of person who tries to love Jesus. And honestly, I still think church is a beautiful idea, even if it’s a deeply flawed reality.”
That tension—the ache to believe while holding space for mystery—is what makes Cosmic Supreme so compelling. It’s a worship album for people who aren’t sure they like worship music anymore. It’s uncool on purpose, heartfelt without being naive, reverent without being performative.
He wrote much of it while caring for his father-in-law, who was dying of cancer. In those months—trapped at home, unable to plan a tour, overwhelmed by the practical demands of grief—he began quietly singing praise choruses to himself.
“Not because anyone needed to hear them. Not because it would help my career. Just because I needed something to hold onto.”
The songs wouldn’t leave. Some were years old. Some were brand new. Eventually, he realized they deserved a home.
The Blessing of Being Uncool
McMillan laughs when he describes the aesthetic of Cosmic Supreme: ‘90s church nostalgia, oversized chapel shirts, VHS-quality visuals.
“I wanted it to feel like it might be a joke—but it’s not. It’s genuine. We’re just owning the cringe.”
The irony is that the sincerity is what makes it radical. In an era where everything is meme’d, aestheticized and analyzed to death, simply choosing to mean something is subversive.
“I think people like us need permission to feel something again,” he says. “We’ve been too cool, too skeptical, too burned out to let ourselves hope. But I don’t want to live like that anymore.”
Cosmic Supreme isn’t interested in being the next big thing. It’s interested in being true. McMillan hopes people sing the songs—at home, in churches, in community—but he also knows some won’t. And that’s fine. The point isn’t performance. The point is presence.
“It’s not a tool,” he says. “It’s not the thing that gets you to the other thing. Worship is the destination. That’s the whole point.”
Becoming Whole Again
The most theological moment in the interview doesn’t come from a quote about Jesus or church—it comes when McMillan talks about wholeness. About letting the fractured versions of himself finally merge into one human being. Not a brand. Not a persona. Just a person.
“I don’t want to be two people anymore,” he says. “I want to live one life.”
The world may not be built for that kind of integration. But maybe the Church could be. If it made space for people who don’t have it all figured out. If it stopped rewarding certainty and started honoring sincerity.
And maybe Cosmic Supreme is McMillan’s way of showing us what that could sound like—a little awkward, a little outdated, but weirdly beautiful.
“I’m just trying to do a really good job of not knowing everything,” he says. “And still showing up to love God anyway.”
