(CP) In an industry notorious for its fleeting fame and rapid changes, few bands have withstood the test of time quite just like the Newsboys — and keyboardist Jeff Frankenstein believes the Christian music band’s longevity is because of their commitment to biblical truth.
“I believe our longevity is a testament to our hearts and where we’re as people, because it is very unusual in any genre that a band would stay together for over 30 years,” Frankenstein told The Christian Post.
“I believe that one among the cool things about Christian music, versus pop music, is that everyone knows deep down that music affects people and has a purpose and God gave us that gift. In a pop music situation where every thing’s about you and your profession, you possibly can see why those things flame out so quickly, because they’re just based around either people’s egos or simply selfishness. In this example, all of us have a typical purpose where we all know that music can really change people, because we have seen it occur.”
Frankenstein has been with the band from its inception 31 years ago, together with drummer Duncan Phillips and guitarist Jody Davis. DC Talk’s Michael Tait joined as lead singer over 15 years ago, and more recently, Adam Agee, formerly of Audio Adrenaline and Stellar Kart, joined the group.
“We’re one among those bands that’s in a rare situation where we’ve a black lead singer after which we’re white guys, and we’ve people from Australia and folks that work in our office from other countries. We’re a really sort of multicultural band,” Frankenstein said.
Known for hits like “We Believe,” “God’s Not Dead” and “Shine,” the Newsboys has earned 4 Grammy nominations, two American Music Award nods and multiple Gospel Music Association Dove awards. Last month, they released their latest album, Worldwide Revival Part I, with part II coming in October.
Rooted in biblical principles and steeped in prayer, Frankenstein said the album is each a mirrored image of the band’s enduring faith and a response to the anxieties of today.
“We really desired to take our time with this one,” he says, recalling the two-year journey that led to its completion. “There have been so persistently throughout our careers where we felt the pressure of deadlines — all the time attempting to get to the following thing. But this time, we wanted each song to essentially speak out and have a poignant message.”
“When you travel as much as we do, you get a unique view of culture and other people,” he added. “We stare into the faces of hundreds of individuals almost every night, and also you get the sense that individuals don’t all the time feel just like the world is headed in an awesome direction … every thing is grabbing for our attention, but is it really an awesome thing for us as an entire, as people, as Christians? That’s the query we kept coming back to.”
It was this query that ultimately shaped the album’s thematic core. “The album is a prayer,” Frankenstein said. “It’s a prayer to God to start out something on this world. People are hungry. They’re desperate for truth. They’re crying out for something — they do not know what it’s, but they feel it. And I believe attempting to put that feeling into music is sort of what this album is about.”
The Newsboys’ latest single from the album, “In God We Trust,” is featured in the latest “God’s Not Dead” film, hitting theaters Sept. 12. The latest installment of the series — originally inspired by the Newsboys’ 2011 song — stars Dean Cain and David A.R. White and centers on contemporary issues related to freedom of speech, religious liberties and the role of religion in public life.
According to Frankenstein, the song is a reminder of religion’s enduring strength, especially in a world crammed with uncertainty. The song includes the lyrics “Some will trust in chariots of war/ Some imagine in nothing anymore/ ‘Cause kingdoms rise and kingdoms fall/ But there’s One who stands above all of them.”
“Our music is a mirrored image of our own spiritual journeys,” says Frankenstein. “Songs like ‘In God We Trust’ speak about how, as Christians, we see the world otherwise. We imagine within the forces of excellent and evil, and that God is our only hope.”
The artist reflected on the trend of CCM artists from the ’90s and early 2000s deconstructing their faith, from Hillsong’s Marty Sampson and DC Talk’s Kevin Max to Hawk Nelson’s Jon Steingard. Worship artist David Crowder previously opened as much as CP about his own transient “deconstructive moment” after having a negative “institutional experience” with the Church.
As the son of a pastor, Frankenstein said he’s seen each the positive and negative points of the Christian faith up close. He attributed a few of these departures to negative experiences inside the Church.
“My heart personally breaks because I know the way deep and meaningful my faith is to me,” he said. “I can not imagine a world during which I might wish to turn away from that. I’m not speaking directly about friends like John [Steingard] and Kevin [Max], but about anyone who decides to depart the religion.”
“I believe numerous it has to do with really bad experiences,” he said. “I’ve been within the Christian music industry for 30 years, and to simply say that every thing’s just squeaky clean and delightful and wonderful — we live in a reasonably broken world. Humans are going to be humans, and sometimes that is an unpleasant thing to see. People get hurt, bad things occur, and we have seen it in church leadership.”
Stressing that deconstruction “is not just a problem in Christian music,” Frankenstein said he tries to approach the problem with compassion slightly than judgment. “For me, there isn’t any judgment. I wish to hear what they should say and see how I can improve as a Christian,” he said. “It’s a gut check for myself, not a judgment against individuals who’ve made decisions for themselves.”
Frankenstein credited his enduring faith to the positive examples set by his parents and other role models. “I used to be fortunate to not see hypocrisy within the people I looked as much as,” he noted. “When Christians do see hypocrisy, they react otherwise. For me, it is a challenge to evaluate my very own walk with God and to make sure I’m living out what I feel.”
Looking ahead, Frankenstein said he’s excited to proceed sharing the Gospel with audiences, encouraging them to face firm in the religion despite changing cultural tides.
For the band, maintaining the balance between scriptural soundness and broad appeal has all the time come easy, he said, adding: “We’ve all the time just been ourselves. We don’t fret about being too Christian or not Christian enough. We just do what comes from the guts.”
“Once you record the songs, they are not really ours anymore — they’re our fans’,” he says. “It’s incredible what number of stories we hear from individuals who say our music has been a soundtrack to their lives. That’s what makes all of it value it.”
