Brian McMaster: “Make What You Want”
Photos By: Gabriel Richardson Video Shot and Edited By: Chase Viken Let Known | February 2026
MAKE WHAT YOU WANT
Brian McMaster on Beauty, Truth, and Finding God in the Storm
Brian McMaster (32) has been in worship ministry since he was nineteen. Drums at twelve. Guitar at eighteen. A band in his early twenties with dreams to make it.
For over a decade, he served as a worship pastor, writing, leading, and yet carrying the invisible emotional weight of using his gifts uniquely, not formulaically. In this interview, he’s not speaking from theory. He’s speaking from the inside. And that’s why we want to listen.
At Let Known, we look for people who have said yes to God’s calling. Not because it was easy, not because it was platformed, but because it was true. Brian’s story is about formation. It’s about what happens when the title shifts, the ceiling lowers, and God invites you deeper.
A few years ago, Brian stepped out of being a full-time worship director. What followed were two years of pressure. “You gotta make it all happen right now,” he remembers thinking desperately. “Please help me, please help me, please help me.”
Scarcity crept in.
But something else did too.
Click below for Brian McMaster on Spotify:
Recently, while studying spiritual formation through Fuller Seminary, Brian began meditating on the story of Jesus asleep in the boat while the storm raged. He describes meditation as “grabbing hold of something… running it through your mind over and over.”
He shares that the last few years have felt like that boat.
Uncertainty.
Transition.
Financial strain.
Identity questions.
And yet, Jesus was still in it.
“My assumption about the world is not the assumption Jesus has,” Brian says. The world operates in scarcity. Jesus operates in generosity. “Yeah, you gotta work. Yeah, you gotta learn. Yeah, you gotta grow. Yes, it's going to be challenging. But the bottom line is that everything's gonna ultimately be ok.”
That shift didn’t remove the storm. But it reframed it.
“If I can't see God, it's probably because he's covering me… like his hand is over me.” Brian is learning to see difficulty not as abandonment, but as formation, saying, “Well, God is letting this happen. And so there's something here for me to learn to embrace so that I become more like Christ.” That is learned wisdom forged slowly through fire.
This realization has inspired Brian to new depths with his art. Brian doesn’t reduce music to a church category. For him, art is bigger than industry, genre, or platform.
“Good art… points to the thing beyond the thing.”
He explains, “I think that's the point of art… the stuff that really moves us is the stuff that is meant to be translucent.” Beauty, in other words, is not the end. It’s a window.
“I just want to bring beauty into the world. Because God is beautiful.”
That conviction shaped how he approached writing New Day Dawning, the song he composed for the Let Known, Skate to Recover, documentary following Tite in South Sudan. Listen to the song here:
Brian explains, “It was an honor to get to see clips of the Skate To Recover film and be introduced to Tite through his interviews. I think the thing that stood out to me was his hope for his home country. It seems to me that hope is either misinterpreted and weakened, or abandoned as foolish, but Tite is neither weak nor a fool. I needed to hear his story. He has been a gift to me, and writing New Day Dawning was easy, for the joy and hope Tite embodies is true, good, and beautiful. The new day is indeed dawning in South Sudan, and Tite is showing the world what it means to be the image of God.”
Beauty.
Truth.
Hope.
And when you witness someone embody those things, sometimes the song writes itself. He’s deeply aware that music forms us. “The language we use is really important.” Songs shape imagination. They shape how we see God, how we see suffering, and how we interpret our lives.
“Words create worlds.”
With this, he’s cautious about turning Christian art into an obligation.
“You can do good detached from unity with God.”
Calling, for Brian, isn’t about producing something impressive. It’s about becoming someone aligned.
“It’s not so much about what you do, but it is about who you are.”
Spiritual formation, the slow shaping of the inner life, has become central.
“It’s not a principle that you learn and then apply and then repeat… It’s asking, where are you today, Lord? Where is your will today?”
Not formula, performance, pressure, but presence and communion.
When asked what he would say to a young creative and visionary, someone feeling a call on their life, Brian says:
“Listen to God, find people you trust, and make what you want to make.”
Not someday, not once it’s perfect, and not once it’s safe. Start now. Because calling evolves and grows. It is not about peaking early or achieving success as fast as possible.
“You got another 50 years to go.” Life is long. Formation is slow. Obedience is daily. What will your calling and art look like down the line?
At Let Known, we tell stories of people stewarding what God has given them. Sometimes that stewardship looks like skateboarding in South Sudan. Sometimes it looks like composing a soundtrack that carries hope across continents.
Brian’s story matters because it reminds us that saying yes to God doesn’t always look safe.
Sometimes it looks like trusting through scarcity.
Sometimes it looks like unlearning your assumptions.
Sometimes it looks like sitting in a storm and believing Jesus is still in the boat.
And sometimes it looks like this:
Make what you want.
Find someone you trust.
Listen to God today.
And let beauty point beyond itself.
