Tyler Roberts has been at Red Rocks Church for sixteen years, which in worship ministry terms makes him an elder statesman. He says so himself: everything looks the same, but everybody keeps getting younger, which can only mean one thing.
Red Rocks started in 2005 with a plain goal, to be a youth group for adults, and a tagline they still use: make heaven more crowded. Tyler's arrival in 2010 tells you what the early days felt like. The church met in a rented red barn at the back of a theme park, a quarter-mile walk from the parking lot, with a wedding chapel on one side and a haunted house on the other. He auditioned on Halloween, singing "Our God," with a miniature train going by outside and a man in a Jason mask running around with a chainsaw while girls screamed. That was a normal Sunday.
The origin of Red Rocks Worship is less glamorous than people assume, and better for it. When the church went multi-site around 2011, there were suddenly two campuses, two worship teams, and nobody really in charge. Tyler is candid that they handled it badly at first. The fix was a question: what if we prayed together and wrote songs together? They started meeting Fridays at 8:30, praying for half an hour, then writing, on the theory that a song all of them liked could be sung at both campuses. The songs were mostly not good, he says, and he advises against going back to listen.
What happened next was an accident. Around 2013 the staff wanted to record a Sunday-after-Christmas special called Holiday Hangover so nobody had to come in that weekend. Leadership asked whether the worship team had any songs, didn't much care what they were, and recorded them. Weeks before it aired, someone asked whether they could put it on iTunes. For one day only, the Rooftop EP was the number one Christian and gospel EP there, because the whole church downloaded it. Then those songs came back around on the weekend and the church already knew them. They had become the congregation's songs.
Tyler's picture of a Red Rocks Sunday is worth the episode for worship pastors. They like to throw good parties, and they describe themselves as a front porch for prodigals, taking the father in the parable literally: he threw a party the moment the son came home. So song one is loud and full of energy, songs two and three go upward into high praise, the message lands, the response time leans into songs like "The Lord Is With Me," and then they send people out. We're not here to just play church and have a big audience, he says. We're an army.
He walks through the multi-site structure in useful detail. Every campus has a worship pastor who sits on the campus staff, reports to the campus pastor, and dotted-lines to central. Those pastors own resourcing, developing, recruiting and pastoring their teams; central supplies the set lists, the Ableton sessions and the creative. Brussels, now ten years old, has grown into its own thing. He's honest that they've failed more than they've gotten it right, and have tried to fail forward.
On set lists, the rule is at least fifty percent Red Rocks songs, sometimes seventy-five, sometimes all of it. They write to fill gaps in their own church, and right now the gap is song ones. When they bring in an outside song, it usually comes out of the message.
Then Kurtis asks the question every church that releases music wants answered: why do your people actually sing your songs? Tyler refuses to give a formula, and says plainly that what the Lord chooses to breathe on is what He chooses to breathe on. But he does explain "The Lord Is With Me." Pastor Shawn Johnson learned a few years ago that he has a rare form of Parkinson's disease, and asked the team for a song to go alongside a book he was writing about it, something people could anchor to in the hardest season of their lives. They wrote it, the church preached a series on it, and suddenly everyone's story was connected to one anthem. Tyler says he doesn't even have to set it up anymore.
That leads into the strongest charge in the hour. When the team writes, they're in the lobbies, down front at the end of service, in Thursday morning prayer watching their own people's names scroll on a screen. And they're in Scripture, which Tyler says too many worship leaders neglect. He isn't talking about charisma or being able to sense and shift a room. He's talking about a depth you can't gain, weren't born with, and aren't talented enough to supersede, and he includes his own dry seasons in the indictment.
The record is called Promised Land, and the title came out of the worst six weeks of his recent life. The church forced him to take a sabbatical, which he'd never done and isn't good at. Two weeks in he was going crazy, sitting on his bed while his wife was at work and his kids ran wild, telling God that this gift didn't feel like a gift. What he found underneath was that his identity was wrapped in what he did, that he needed the validation and the affirmation, that he had to be doing things to feel like enough. The answer he got back: the promised land isn't on the other side, or in the standing ovation, or in the approval he'd been chasing from certain people. It's the presence of God, which he can't outrun, because Jesus already did the work.
Then, as it happened, they recorded at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, which Tyler is careful to say is not the promised land. But twenty years earlier, Pastor Shawn and some of the founders stood at the top of those same rocks, looking out over Denver, crying, asking people to give to a church that didn't exist yet. There's video of it. Ten thousand people came, nearly all of them their own church, sold out, on a November night that should have been snowing and somehow wasn't. Production ran three hours behind on lighting so there was no real soundcheck. They went full send and hoped God would be in it, and He was. At one point they cut the band and let ten thousand voices carry "The Lord Is With Me."
He closes on faithfulness. A mentor once told him deep roots grow great fruit, and you can't grow deep roots if you keep getting ripped up and replanted. Every move is traumatic; the plant spends its energy finding water again instead of bearing fruit. He's clear that God does call people out, and that some people are called to a place while others are called through one. But if you're on the fence, don't take a step until you hear clearly, and the way he's known it wasn't time was never an audible voice, just the absence of peace. Jesus is the Prince of Peace, so follow peace. Tyler left a dream job, a full-ride scholarship, his family and a house he'd just bought to come to Denver. None of it made sense on paper. He's felt no peace to leave since.
"Some people are called to a place and some people are called through a place." - Tyler Roberts
ABOUT TYLER ROBERTS
Tyler Roberts is worship division director at Red Rocks Church in Denver, Colorado, where he has served for sixteen years and helps oversee both the church's campus worship teams and Red Rocks Worship, the church's recording collective. Founded in 2005 with the vision of making heaven more crowded, Red Rocks Church now spans four Denver-area campuses with a fifth on the way, plus locations in Austin, Texas, and Brussels, Belgium, and prison campuses in Colorado. Red Rocks Worship has released songs sung in churches worldwide, including "Good Plans," "Living God," "Never Gets Old" and "The Lord Is With Me." Their live album Promised Land was recorded at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in November 2025 during the church's twentieth anniversary celebration, and released in 2026 on Provident Entertainment.
IN THIS EPISODE
A church that met in a rented red barn at the back of a theme park
Auditioning on Halloween with a man in a Jason mask outside holding a chainsaw
Friday mornings at 8:30, praying first and then writing songs to stay unified
How the Holiday Hangover special accidentally produced a number one iTunes EP
A front porch for prodigals, and why the father threw a party
How the multi-site worship structure actually works, campus by campus
The fifty percent rule for set lists, and writing to fill their own gaps
The story behind "The Lord Is With Me" and Pastor Shawn's diagnosis
Why he thinks worship leaders are neglecting the one thing they can't fake
The forced sabbatical, and what he found underneath his need to achieve
Ten thousand voices at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, with no real soundcheck
Deep roots grow great fruit, and why replanting yourself is traumatic
Called to a place versus called through a place
Why they released multiple versions of one song, and the key change that fixed it
LINKS
Red Rocks Worship: https://www.redrocksworship.com
Red Rocks Church: https://www.redrockschurch.com
Red Rocks Worship on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@redrocksworship
Red Rocks Worship on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/redrocksworship
Kurtis Parks: https://www.kurtisparks.com
Worship Leader: https://worshipleader.com
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