How did the group start?
I was in the staff ministry certification program at Martin Luther College, and I came to St. Marcus, [Milwaukee], to do my internship. At that time, St. Marcus was just about to start a new worship service, and they wanted to have it led by a band—something a little different. They happened to have a few musicians that were already together in a band from college, but they needed a singer and a piano player.

So I was an intern, and [the pastors at St. Marcus] said, “You need to help with this service and help find musicians.” So I told them I knew a piano player. I also said, “I don’t really know anybody else to sing, but I used to sing a little bit and my dad used to have a band.” [Pastor] said, “Really?” and I said, “Well, yeah. I could try it. If you don’t like it, we don’t have to keep going.”

So that’s really how it all started. It was just a few guys that got together to lead this alternative service on Sunday evenings. The service was supposed to be geared toward people in the school that we were reaching out to, which included a lot of African American families. We really didn’t know how to connect with them through music so we started doing some of our own hymns that we knew well and just tried to do them with a little different flavor, a different feel. People started talking and it just kind of snowballed from there. We really didn’t reach a lot of the families we hoped, but many young people started coming who were college age, just out of college, and younger families. They started telling their friends.

For the first few months there were 20 of us [at the Sunday night service] with our friends and our families, and that was it. Then all of a sudden it just kind of ballooned, and at the end of the year we were at about 100. Now five years later we have between 150 and 200 at worship on a Sunday evening. I believe about 70 percent of those people are 18-26 years old. It’s just kind of interesting.