Worship happens when God inhabits the praises of His people.

Just as the ancient Levites, priests, and musicians led the Israelites into battle with songs of praise and worship, a new generation is discovering the power of a broken and contrite heart, lifted up to God in expressions of love and adoration.  But for Terry MacAlmon, leading the Body of Christ into praise and worship is neither a recent phenomenon nor a carefully orchestrated career choice. It is a compulsion driven by a hunger and thirst for the unmatched presence of God.

“There is a fine line between being a worship leader and a worship artist,” Terry explains. “I’ve been considered both, but neither adequately describes what I do. What I really have is a ‘presence of God’ ministry. I know that phrase catches people off-guard, but I am not out to lead people in songs so they can have a good time. I am out for people to have a life-changing experience as the atmosphere of God fills the room. I desire to see people have their bodies touched, their minds renewed, and their wounded hearts healed.”

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The son of an elder in the Pentecostal faith, Terry learned early the value of being immersed in the Presence of God. Indeed, he says, his first encounter with the awesome power of God’s presence occurred while he was yet a newborn infant. Born with cranial stenosis, a premature closure of the soft spot in his skull, the doctors gave him less than a month to live. But with Hannah-like faith, Terry’s mother cried to the Lord, “If You let him live, I will give him to You for Your service." 

“I feel like God gave me something when He healed me,” Terry muses. “I don’t have a word from the Lord on that, but I believe that when He healed me, He also deposited something—the musical side of the gifting that I have been blessed with.”

As a toddler of only three, Terry sat beside his mother on the piano bench and began sounding out “Jesus Loves Me,” a song he had learned in Sunday School. He played his first solo in church when he was five and by the time he was eleven, he assumed the role of church pianist.

“I had the Midas touch when it came to music ministry, ever since I was a tiny little boy,” Terry declares. “Nothing fazed me. By the time I was twenty-one, I was conducting a hundred-voice choir with a live orchestra. Everything I did succeeded.”

Music ministry, however, was not always so kind to Terry.  “I think I built up a subconscious arrogance in my heart of hearts. I thought, ‘I’ve got the Gift. Everything I do is going to be great.’ Then I decided to start a church in Colorado Springs, and suddenly nothing I did had any favor on it.” The church eventually folded, and Terry was available to travel, but invitations to minister were few and far between. “Not even churches with fifty members had any interest in me coming to minister,” Terry says.

What he assumed would be a few months dry spell turned into an eight-year drought. Even paying the rent became a challenge, and at one low point Terry and his wife found themselves in the welfare office hoping to keep their electricity on. It is a true saying that promotion comes from the Lord, and Terry notes that God had to allow the desert time to prove that to him. “If God does not promote you, there is no true promotion,” he declares. “I hope I never have to learn that lesson again. The scripture says a man’s gift makes room for him, but there has to be a deeper understanding of that teaching because my gift made no room for me for eight years.”

“I went from everything succeeding to nothing succeeding,” he continues. “People stayed away from my ministry by the busloads. Somewhere along that line I started wondering if I ever had a gift or calling from God. Then in August of 1998, while attending a conference I heard the Holy Spirit whisper to me, ‘Gather the worshipers.’ God never let up. He would wake me up early in the morning and repeat His command. When I finally gave in and began a weekly meeting focused on worshiping God, He began to bring people in. Within six months we had people from forty-three churches gathering every Wednesday at noon—people from every denomination and no denomination—just basking in the presence of God.  It was my time, because I was now in His timing.”

For the next six years Terry’s mid-week ministry flourished, drawing everyone from businessmen to college students, international ministers to homemakers. As people experienced an hour in the presence of God, Terry saw estranged families reconciled, marriages on the brink of divorce re-ignited, physical bodies healed, and ministries launched. With the global impact of Terry’s unique ministry expanding, one might expect a continuation of the same old thing. After all, nothing succeeds like success. But sometimes, Terry notes, you have to let go of the good to grasp the best.

“We could travel all year long outside of the United States and never fulfill all the invitations we are getting,” he says. “We want to touch as many people as we can. We have had to let go of our weekly commitment here because there is a higher calling to the more complete Body of Christ around the country and around the world, but we still meet quarterly in Colorado Springs as an outreach to our city.”

Since 1999, Terry MacAlmon has seen his ministry explode. In addition to his live ministry, Terry has recorded 11 albums with sales exceeding 1 million units.  

“My ministry is a remnant ministry” Terry explains.  “It doesn’t appeal to much of the mainstream church in America. There are a lot of people who are taken off-guard and don’t even understand it when they encounter the presence of God. But there is segment of people who know their Savior well enough to know that there has to be more than three songs, a sermon, and an altar call. There is an inner place that became available to us after Christ completed His work on the cross. It is the Holy of Holies—a place where we can go in and sit with the Father. It is a place of intimacy where the Father shares things with His children that He refuses to tell them in the outer courts.”

With musical maturity and a spiritual sensitivity that easily draws people into the presence of God, Terry MacAlmon writes songs that are intimate, passionate and above all, real.Terry’s many live worship recordings, as well as his instrumental releases, find a ready audience among seekers, believers, and worshipers in the church and around the world who seek the intimacy of the secret place with the Father.     

Music from these gatherings is available on Live Worship and I Came To Worship You CDs.

Terry often leads worship in conferences, retreats, worship seminars, and churches throughout the United States. As a psalmist, he often sings prophetically over congregations, cities, and nations.