December 2015

lot of stuff that you don’t want
to be in. It could be abandonment
or rejection, or when you’re
just angry. It creates an exit to
escape that place. I think of it
like an escalator. It’s like you’re
moving up to a place when
you worship. And it’s like other
things can’t follow behind you.
They don’t have a pass. So this
other junk doesn’t have permission
to go up in the presence of
God where you’re going.
You moved to LA three years
ago and you’re celebrating the
2nd anniversary of the church.
What led you to the transition
of now creating and releasing
the music for people?
We know that God is a God of
excellence and power. So with
all our music and everything we
do, we want to have both excellence
and power. Sometimes
you see churches that do things
with power but no excellence.
And sometimes it’s vice versa.
You have a lot of excellence but
no power. What He’s done in
our lives shows that He is powerful.
And instead of just being
relevant we want to be excellent-
-doing the best with what we
have in our hands.
Whatever you have in your hand,
do it to the best and God will
grow that and multiply it. That’s
what started us in our music.
When we started, we said “Let’s
be excellent in our music. Let’s
get out what’s in our hearts.”
When you get a greeting card,
you don’t love to read the manufacturer’s
words. If anything,
you probably don’t even read
them sometimes. But there’s
something about reading a card
where someone writes all their
own words. You want to see
every word as powerful. It’s
so powerful when you write from
that place.
So in wanting to be powerful
and excellent with this music,
we thought let’s not release it
in the normal, typical fashion in
which you release the whole CD.
A lot of times when you get a
CD, it’s sometimes overwhelming.
You’ve got all the songs on
there but sometimes you end up
gravitating to just one or two. So
we thought maybe it would have
more of an impact if we didn’t
release it all at once. We just
decided to try it out. We didn’t
know the outcome.
We wanted to continually put out
content. So what we’re doing is
every single month we release
one single, but with that single
we also release a message, a
sermon you could preach or
teach with, sermon notes, video
tutorials for each instrument used
in the song so anybody could
take that song for their ministry.
We give you chord charts, materials,
and sometimes we even
have t-shirts you can order.
We want to empower other
churches, other leaders. We
know that everybody, every
church, may not necessarily
have a lot. We want this to
be like a firestarter. We want a
movement to be started all over
through our music. We want
people to be inspired. Maybe it
will stir up something, shake up
something. We’re going to do
this for 12 months.
Wow, I’ve not heard of that
type of process for releasing
music. It sounds kind of
groundbreaking, in a sense,
even though I know you said
that you’re not sure how it’s
going to turn out.
So the first release was in
September, that was Brighter.
And the October release was
Jump Around, and November
is We Lift You Higher. Tell
me a little bit about the music
itself.
Every single song that we
release kind of has a different
style. I think that’s the beauty of
our band. Some people would
argue that we don’t know who
we are as a band, but I would
say that this is who we are. We
have kind of an eclectic sound.
We have different writers in our
ministry. We don’t like to put
a box around people. It’s all
beautiful music to us. There’s
urban, there’s rap, there’s hip
hop, there’s ballad, there’s pop.
The November song, We Lift
You Higher, has a little bit of folk
in it. So we just love that. You’ll
never get bored listening to our
CD. Every person can probably
find a song that they will end up
liking and enjoying.
Jump Around is one that at our
church causes an eruption of
praise and people get so excited.
People are praising and letting
go. It’s almost like you’re waving
at everyone saying “Come on,
get up! Let’s celebrate God.
Let’s praise Him. He’s done too
much for us to just stand here.
For us to just sit here and be
silent. Let’s get up. Let’s start
thanking Him and praising Him
for who He is and who He is
going to be in our lives.” And I
believe that when the song talks
about not being quiet and not
being silent, people might tend
to think it’s talking about being