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FamilyChristian.com: Why do a hymns album?

Andy: Hymns have always been a part of our lives. We grew up going to church. Our parents are all Christian men and women. As we began to dive into the history of these songs, it brought back a lot of memories for us, and a lot of the great theology we were taught. This was a way for us to resurrect the past and lay claim to the future musically.

FamilyChristian.com: Tell me about some of the history you discovered in these songs?

Mark: Reading the individual stories of the hymns was the catalyst that got us really excited [about this project]. One of the stories that I really love is the story of "The Love of God." As a writer, I looked at the third stanza of that and was blown away. The third stanza comes from an old Jewish poem called "Hadamut." It was written back in the 600s AD. This song made its way into hymnology back in the early 1900s. A Nazarene pastor took that third stanza and put two stanzas with it, the first and second stanza and made a song out of it.

FamilyChristian.com: You don't do the real popular hymns, like "Amazing Grace."

Kirk: The ones that we think of as older hymns, "Amazing Grace," "I'll Fly Away"...those are all hymns written in the last seventy-five, eighty years. I think the newest song that we did was "Great is Thy Faithfulness." I grew up singing, "There is a Fountain." I thought that was written in the last hundred fifty years or so, but it's not. That song was written in the 1750s.

FamilyChristian.com: What are you guys really passionate about?

Andy: The bottom line is that we want to see people drawn to the Lord. Whether they're Christians or non-Christians, what we've done from the very beginning is that we've been very careful to sing songs we believe in, that we know line up with Scripture, that edify people and lets them know that God does love them. We've been doing altar calls since the very beginning. That's what we learned to do in Truth when we were in that group. That really primed us and seeded us to be able to do what we do now. That's been our passion since day one, to see people drawn to the Lord. We see a lot of people saved. We see a lot of people renewing their commitments. That's what keeps us going. For us if we just got up there and sang every night, took a bow and walked off the stage, what would we accomplish? Maybe people would leave that night or go with a friend and pray a prayer of commitment, but it's great for us to help people take that extra step and to be able to see it. It encourages us to be able to see people responding to what we said and what we sang and the Spirit of God meeting us there and moving us.

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FamilyChristian.com: What is God teaching you now?

Mark: We were talking about it a little earlier today. We've been doing this now for ten years and I think it's been a process of education. When I look back, I think God has taught me personally, patience. I think we're learning to rely on Him. I think also that we're learning that our own abilities can accomplish things, but those things are pretty empty when they're without God. Our hope and our desire is that it will always be centered and focused around God, and not on our ability to accomplish that.

Marty: God's teaching me personally, [something] that is hard learned and takes time to soak in and that is balance. First and foremost with my walk with the Lord, because without that, there's no catalyst from which to birth any kind of ministry at all.

Jen Abbas, a writer in Grand Rapids, Mich., originally conducted this interview for Family Christian Stores' All Access music catalog.

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