Cindy Cruse-Ratcliff is the worship leader at the ever-popular Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas. She is also the co-leader and writer (with Israel Houghton) on Lakewood's first album, We Speak to Nations and the latest, Cover the Earth.

Cindy took some time out to talk with Gospelflava.com about her relationship with Israel Houghton, Pastor Joel Osteen and of course, to discuss all about worship.


Gospelflava.com: Why is worship so important?

Cindy Cruse-Ratcliff: I think that it's one of the main communications with God. It's like prayer set to music. It is such a vital part of our every day life with God. The Bible says to "pray without ceasing." Praise and Worship is one of those ways that we can offer up prayer to the Lord. It edifies us and glorifies the Lord. It draws us closer to Him. It brings us to His presence. It brings us joy. It encourages us. It strengthens us.

Our communication with the Lord is the mainstay of our relationship with Him. I look at worship as one of my ways to communicate with the Father. You can tell Him what you're thankful for, how you feel; your most joyous feelings to your most intimate feelings for him. I think that without worship, our relationship with the Lord becomes one-dimensional.


Gospelflava.com: How do you approach the fact that you are the worship leader of such a multi-cultural, multi-racial choir?

Cindy Cruse-Ratcliff: My own musical tastes are varied. In my own listening to music, I love different styles. So with me being myself, that's going to come out.

I came from a multi-cultural church —Covenant Church in Dallas, Texas. I've always had a love of seeing a mixture of skin color and social status come together. It's the kind of mixture that you know the Lord wants to see, the kind of mix that we are going to see in heaven.

Cover The Earth

The 300 plus voice Lakewood choir, directed by Dakri Brown, stands out on the Psalms 34 based “Bless the Lord”. This midtempo masterwork features the organ and guitar work of Aaron Lindsey and Derrick Horne respectively to give it a Gospel edge..... See full album review.

When I came to Lakewood, the music was not as varied. It was not as multi-cultured. I could really see (when I came on board) how I wanted to infuse that into the music. When anybody comes to church, they want to hear something that they can relate to, whether in music or in the sermon. I think that's why Pastor Joel (Osteen) is so phenomenal. What he has to say is so practical. He can relate to absolutely anybody.

When I introduce a new song into our repertoire, I constantly think about what the mix is, about the balance between black and Latin, rock and alternative. I listen to very broad strands of music. I think about the old people wanting to hear something traditional, and the young people wanting to hear something that they like to. I really try to keep a balance of all the mixtures, because when you look across our audience, you have young and old, rich and poor, black, Spanish, Asian and white.

We have tons of people that come from Catholic backgrounds, denominational backgrounds, the black church. You gotta have something for everybody if you're going to keep them engaged in worship. Our main goal is when they come in, they can enter into worship. If you constantly do one style of music, somebody's going to be left out. So we just try to keep it mixed up.


Gospelflava.com: Can you explain the part that the Senior Pastors, Joel and Victoria Osteen play in the whole worship experience at Lakewood Church.

Cindy Cruse-Ratcliff: First of all, they are both worshippers. They're not musical people, but their heart is for worship. They love to see people encounter the Lord. They are very involved. Even when we do a song list, we always submit that to our pastors. We just try to make sure that what we do supports what Pastor Joel's doing. If his heart is being led in a direction, it's our job as the minstrels to make sure that he has support to do what he's doing.

We talk about how the service flows. We talk about the musicianship. We talk about songs. They have lots of input into what we do musically. They're not musical people so they can't tell us what they want on a technical level, but certainly they can tell us what they sense in the Spirit. We just try to make it happen.


Gospelflava.com: There is a tremendous camaraderie between you and Israel Houghton, with whom you've worked with on recent albums. Can you talk a bit about that chemistry?

Cindy Cruse-Ratcliff: Israel is a very relational person and I'm a very relational person. Israel has a real heart to see people excel. It was about three years ago that I called Israel to invite him to the church for the first time. It was at a very difficult time for me, because I was here at the church by myself. I was doing every service. I was just overloaded. I just really called him and begged. He was very gracious to come and start imparting to the choir and the band. Our relationship grew as far as his relationship to the church.

Our relationship is unique. Israel is a very strong and unique person. I'm kind of a strong person in my own right. It's really kind of unbelievable how the Lord meshed us together. It's very much a brother/sister kind of relationship. We play hard. We fight hard. We work hard. We've had some trying times in our relationship. I believe that it's really caused our friendship and our relationship to grow and to get even stronger.

I just really believe that the Lord brought him along side me to help me for this time. It's kind of been a roller coaster at times, because with all the things that's going on at the church and with Israel's ministry exploding, there are a lot of things that we have to weigh and balance, work and shift. It's very unusual.

We both write easily together. We have strengths and weaknesses in different areas. We strengthen one another. It's a unique mix that the Lord has brought together. It's exciting to me. I love working with Israel. He's so incredibly talented that it just makes me sick! (Editor's note: Cindy laughs after making this statement). Israel just brings a great flavor to what we do and I'm honored to have him as part of the team. God has used him to help us grow in a lot of areas and hopefully we have done the same for him. He's an awesome man of God.

We Speak To Nations

If you’re looking for an album filled with scats and vocal acrobatics, then this isn’t it. But if you want an awesome praise and worship experience that expresses the joy of a vertical relationship with God, then “We Speak to Nations” is yours. With one exception, every song was penned by Cindy Cruse-Ratcliff and Israel Houghton..... See full album review.

Gospelflava.com: Dakri Brown is a member of Israel Houghton and New Breed. He is also the vocal music director at Lakewood Church. What does Dakri bring to Lakewood's choir?

Cindy Cruse-Ratcliff: Wow! I've been under a lot of choir directors. The cool thing about Dakri is that he has such a gentleness and love for the people. That really translates to the choir. They just really soak that up.

Dakri has a great relationship with them just on a personal level. They want to sing for him. They want to respond to his commands and direction. He has such a servant's heart towards them that they have that same servant's heart back to him. Again, I believe that the Lord has brought him to this house for such a time as this. I know that he is a huge part of why the choir has grown. He brings a lot of great things. He brings enthusiasm, and yet he has such a humble, giving, loving, serving spirit that it balances the energy that you see on the platform. Our people love him. He's such a great guy that you can't help but love him.

Gospelflava.com: Why did you pick the title Cover the Earth for Lakewood's sophomore project?

Cindy Cruse-Ratcliff: It all goes back to our first album, We Speak to Nations. The history of Lakewood Church has been so missions-based. For forty years they have really supported overseas missions. I believe the first year that I was here was the culmination of this seven-year program that they had called, "Seven Years of Harvest". They poured almost 30 million dollars into foreign missions over that period. So the church has always been about the nations. That was our whole swing for the first album.

When it came time to start writing for the second album, there were so many things that had built off of the songs that we had written for the first album. Songs like, "I Will Sing", "You Are Good" and "We Speak to Nations" were talking about how we worship and how we lift up our praise.

We really came to a point where we felt like there had to be a response to our praise. The Lord had given me a scripture several months ago out of Zephaniah, of how He sings and rejoices over us when we worship Him (Zephania 3:17). I told Israel that I have this idea of a song called, "Sing Over Me". I hadn't written it, but I had this idea based off of that scripture. So a couple of weeks later, Israel came back to me and said, "I've written the song."

I was like, "Wait a minute. I was supposed to write it with you." He said, "I couldn't help it. It just came to me in my sleep." There were some things that we wanted to change and we came up with the finished product.

When we came to write the song, "Cover the Earth", there were so many strands running through all of the songs of how we wanted God to visit us; about His response to us for our worship towards Him. It's not just a one-way issue. It's not just a monologue, but it's a dialogue. When we communicate with Him, He communicates back to us.

When we first sang "Cover the Earth" with the choir, there was something so powerful about the song. The message was so simple. With the first album we wanted to speak to the world about how we feel about the Lord; the purpose of the second album was so simple —we wanted His response. Even in the song "Cover the Earth", it basically says, "Let me be an instrument Lord to exalt and to extend your name to all the earth." So there was no other album title [in the running].

There were other titles that the record company came up with. But Israel and I were very firm in our hearts that (Cover the Earth) was the message that we wanted to send with this album. We just want the glory of God to visit us. We want it to cover us. We want it to saturate us. When we lift up our worship to Him, we want to be open for his response. We don't want it to be all about what we are doing, but we want to take the time for his response. We want to really bask in that and not be so quick to move on to whatever else needs to be done.


Cindy Cruse-Ratcliff has great deal of responsibilities in leading worship at this mega-church. Don't worry about her though, she's anointed to do it. Her prayer is that God's glory will not only cover Lakewood church, but that it would Cover the Earth!!