the Bethel Music Collective . In light of your geographic distance from Bethel ’ s Northern California ’ s location , how did your individual involvements come about with Bethel Music ?
[ Jonathan ] I can jump in here . It was actually seven years ago that Brian and Jenn , who lead Bethel Music , reached out to us . They had just gotten Bethel Music to the place where they wanted to serve other artists as a label would . When Bethel Music started it was just that . It was their church band writing songs . And then they began to grow it as a music label and they reached out and said , " We ' d love to serve you guys , have you guys been a part of some albums ? But most of all , we believe in you guys and we want the world to hear your songs . We feel like the church needs to hear what you and Melissa are doing ."
It was a very relational connection . And then as we got into building friendship with them , we realized we had a lot of shared values . A lot of shared values for the prophetic and worship , and value for writing songs that would challenge the church and inspire the church . So even though we ' re 3000 miles apart , I think the shared values have kept our hearts very close and connected to one another . And also , just the connection of co-writing together , it ' s opened up a lot of doors where we ' ve written with people over these last seven years we wouldn ' t have written with if we didn ' t join with Bethel .
[ WM ] Yeah . Good , good . And Cory ?
[ Cory ] Beautiful . We were living in Colorado Springs and Johnny and Melissa had just joined the label probably I don ' t know , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 months before we did . And I remember seeing like their little social media post or whatever for Bethel Music and my wife grew up going to Johnny and Melissa ' s spot out in North Carolina .
When she was like 14 , 15 and 16 years old . And I remember when we saw that post , Anna was like , " Did you see this band , they ' re joining up with Bethel Music ?" She was like , " Wouldn ' t it be incredible if one day we got to as well ? And like we were all back together ?" And I was like , " Ah , that ' d be amazing ." I didn ' t quite have the same relationship with Johnny and Melissa as my wife did , but I was like , " Oh , that would , that would be really cool ."
And then literally maybe a month later we went out to Redding , CA , to mix a record for this ministry that we were at in Colorado Springs . And while we were there , Brian and Jenn and a couple of the team said , " Hey , would you mind leading a Sunday night service with us ?
We know you lead worship . We ' ve heard of you . Would you just jump up there and usher in the presence of God with us ?" And I was like , “ I ' d rather not ”. I ' d rather just experience along with you guys . And they said , " No , please come on man ." So , I ended up jumping up , and I led worship . It didn ' t feel like insanely special to me . I felt the Lord and it was cool , but afterward they were like , " Man , that was so beautiful . We would love it if you stuck around , we want to talk to you about joining the label and the community ." And I was just like , " Are you kidding me ? This is crazy ." Right after we talked about how cool it would be ! So , it was a