Faith of My Father - A Conversation With Steffany Gretzinger

stephanie it is such an honor to have you with us thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to spend time with us uh you know firstly i just wanted to say a big thank you on behalf of the ccli churches and songwriters just for your obedience to god in his calling for your life and i truly believe because of that obedience your impact is going to have a ripple effect beyond anything any of us can even imagine so once again thank you for taking the time thanks friends ccl is so special you all have stewarded songs and churches and made them available for it's just it's so special what you all do and we have been thankful for you a long time so it was an easy yes to talk to you thanks for asking yeah awesome well your new album faith of my father is it's very different than your previous albums and that you are singing some of the greatest worship classics of all time can you talk a little bit about why you felt called to record this album absolutely i would i would love to so and i'm i'm a pastor's kid to give you a little background um my parents were uh also both in music ministry when i was born they were traveling and ministering and um my mom was is a is a singer-songwriter and dad's been a pastor in ministry they've been together for you know my whole life doing those things before i was born and um so my father passed in may of 2020 we go be with the lord um he fought cancer for a few years and we knew that the lord could heal him on this side but we knew that it was time for him to go home and um and so when he passed i in in the grief of missing him so terribly because he was he was a beautiful saintly man i mean any anyone who knew him would tell you that and uh i just i begin to i mean i've always listened to these older songs that like i grew up that they're really not that old but i mean i grew up with them i've never stopped listening to them even in all the new things that i've been a part of they're still a really rich part of our family and um i started to feel like oh this is this is really all i'm wanting to listen to is these songs when when you know that i grew up on in church that we sang in dad's office when he was in a deliverance session we'd sing them over people we'd worship all we watched people go free we'd sit around the piano in our house and sing these songs so they're deeply rooted in me and we decided i just i felt like i wanted to offer the lord an an offering of worship in the middle of the grief um but also to honor my dad the legacy of my father that he left to us and and the mothers and fathers that have gone before us and um so i really it felt really special to uh go back through i mean i think we had three decades of songs picked out because there are so many i mean i could make five of these albums um but these are the ones that i kept coming back to for this particular project um over and over and when jason ingram who made the album with me he's a dear friend asked what i was always in my heart and i said i think all the songs that i sang growing up as a little girl and a teenager so he he got behind it he was so excited there were songs they were all songs that meant a lot to him too and so um that's why we decided to do it yeah that's amazing and i'm gonna go a little bit up off script here but the orchestrations are just so beautiful i mean the the words of the songs themselves are so beautiful and meaningful but when you couple them with just the the beautiful orchestrations it's almost like i'm like okay why are my eyes welling up they're yeah well you know these songs most of them are from straight scripture yeah and i don't know how many people in you know in our generation and or in a younger generation actually would listen would listen to them and know that so to me the value of them the value of getting these back into young hearts and even like an older generation that they're still marking us and that we have we returning to writing songs that are from the word of god right so yeah amazing um well on to the next question uh you know with everything going on in the world today going back to those evergreen classic worship songs almost feels like a warm blanket they're comforting and familiar is that how you hoped people would receive this album yes i've hoped they would be comforting to those who have forgotten that like the simplicity of worship before worship became part of an industry right um which which we're not uh i have no i i'm not angry at that it's it's the it was before it became such a big thing returning to the reason why returning to where the songs you know are meant to come from what they're meant to do these songs like you said have stood the test of time they've lasted decades and they're still at the top being sung in churches because they're anointed they're alive because they have scripture in them so the people who grew up with these songs that i've kind of forgotten i want them to remember i mean most of the people that have heard them will get tearful and and they can take me right back to the last the first time they remember singing the song i mean it's amazing how that happened so um comforting for some and disturbing for others that's my hope that we would remember his when we need his word like we've never needed it before we need to know his word and we have to be songwriters and worshipers that know his words so that he's coming out and it's not just us singing our feelings all the time and those are important too the lord loves to hear those but when we gather in that corporate place we want to be singing songs that are straight from the heart of god right songs that minister to him songs that will lift us out of those those soulish stormy places and and rise above it because it's his word and it's living right so i'm hoping that it'll be both comforting and that it'll it'll create a little controversy in a good way for us as as worshipers and songwriters to return to some things does that make sense makes absolute sense and yeah i think comforting but to stir up some of those things within us i love how you answered that so um amazing thank you um okay so the first release off the album as the deer it actually has spent 25 years in the ccli top 100 and was the first single released from this project why is this why was that song important to you and what is it about the song that continues to speak to so many churches over the years do you think oh i love it so much you know i didn't even know that it was it's been in the top 100 that's amazing yeah hearing that i think um you know it's the first song that came to mind it's actually the first song it's the first one we demoed uh jason and i it's the first song that um you know we we thought oh this this has to be the first one we released too because of the way it came to us and um i just i have prayed i think personally i've been praying for the last number of years that the lord would teach me the language of his longing that i would be in tuned with that longing that my desire would be for him above all things and that and that psalm 42 i mean like it's so beautiful and um for us that's a cry we have in our house like that we say to the lord you know uh and ironically we had a guest come to our house a friend we never even met them before it was like a stranger that came to our house and he said i don't know i can't explain to you i just i've i've seen since i walked in i've just heard psalm 42 crying out from the walls this is before we didn't tell them we were working on any of that and and so for us it was just confirmed over and over again i just i'm wanting the lord like i'm building him this altar i'm wanting him to know that that i long for his presence that i long to know him more than any other and to love him and worship so that psalm is full of things i mean it's beautiful uh and it marked me i remember singing it as a little girl i remember singing it in in youth group and i remember asking the lord to teach us what it really means to really mean what we're saying you know because it has so much depth right ah so that's that's why we picked that when it was the first one that welled up if that makes sense that makes sense that's amazing um another familiar song give thanks was written in yeah it was written in 1978 and it's resonated with churches for decades um and it remains again in our our top songs list which just means churches are singing it around the world um what about the song has impacted you oh my goodness so i would have to say with this song the story for me would be uh that my parents who were in music ministry and in church ministry um since before i were i was born when don moen when beautiful don mullen came out with give thanks to album now i know he wasn't the writer but he kind of presented it to the church and um so my parents uh were so impacted by this album and they you know had shared with me that they would they would lay in bed at night when that came out because they had they hadn't heard anything like it before and they'd been you know worshiping in church for years and years they were musicians and then and they just did so many other things but they would lay in bed and and cry listening to it just lay in bed and just cry tears like there was something there was something different on it for them there was some sort of like um we so we grew up in the church of the nazarene which i love which i love very much and um it was just not something that they had heard before and it marked our family so we started listening to that whole album but we sang give thanks so often we just you just sing it out in the car we listen to it in the car we listen to it at home we'd sing it out in services i mean all the time i i it may be one that i've heard we sang more than others you know because um of how it impacted our whole entire family and really led us into um just a deeper life life of worship a new expression so really special really special to our family um and melissa helser sings it with me on this album i i think because she's got to be maybe one of my dearest friends and also one of the most thankful people i've ever met i mean you can hear if you spend enough time with her you'll hear her quietly under her breath walking through a room and just saying thank you lord thank you and so and then when i asked her about this song she said it was kind of like it was a total setup because she said i think i have more memories with this song than any others so we just felt like the lord really led led us to that yeah that's amazing so so rich and um yes yeah i love that um the last song i want to talk about is i love you lord also written in 1978 by lori klein um just another song that has resonated with the church for decades can you give us a little insight on why that song is important to you and how that's impacted you yes i believe if i'm not mistaken that we put it first on the album in the list of songs because there is a there is a simple childlike love i think the lord is so often he's just longing for our affection he's he's longing to hear the ones he loves sing to him and there's something so childlike simple and beautiful about singing that song to the lord i have never sung it in any room since i was a child where the presence of the lord did not fall never once why because it moves his heart because it's about him it's straight to him i think the first time i heard it was on a salty's a salty's sing-along tape when i was a kid because they do a version of it on there that's absolutely beautiful and i just grew up singing it with all my heart now my little girl's singing it with all her heart i sing it all the time it's just um when songs move the lord that way and they're written for him they last and they go on and on and on you know so uh it's just it's a it's a very it's a very personal intimate song to sing alone to the lord in your in the corner of your room it's also a very beautiful beautiful corporate anointing when we just get still and sing it to him so gently i mean so [Music] more than a specific story i just i have never sung it and not experienced the lord's presence falling it moves him so much it moves him so much so we we really wanted to sing it to him again and make sure that as many people know it as you know we can reach as many people with it as we can to still be singing it or to introduce it to a young generation that maybe wouldn't have heard it otherwise yeah wow i i love that and just like you said it being as simple as it is in a day and age where there's some songs that have dual choruses three verses a pre-chorus uh you know just being able to in a day and age where we're so distracted by so many things and being able to just simplify it and deduce all that down to one simple statement of i love you lord it was just so powerful and that simple prayer of you know let it be as sweet as saying i love you lord and i lift my my voice to worship you all my soul rejoice take joy my king and what you hear it's such a beautiful offering you know let it be a sweet sound in your ear that ministering to the lord when so many and hear me we we've all written them i think as writers but instead of writing songs that are ministering to us those songs that are to who to him they do a different thing and they bring us into alignment with the way we were born to be you know we were born when we were born for his presence so when we sing those things it brings everything else into alignment with our you know reason for living so it's as special as a special song yeah that's so great well you know i'm sure every song on this project has just such a meaningful story and especially how it's impacting you and like i said the story behind it but stephanie thank you so much for taking the time to be with us and i've got one last question um i know that your followers and audience on social media is just very happy for you to be back and they're looking forward to hearing more from you but is there anything exciting coming down the pipeline in terms of projects or anything that you want to share with the ccli family oh my goodness i you know i think uh this project you know we're stephen and i he's my husband are expecting our our second little one seven years after we had uh our first wonder grace and we found out about that you know we made this album a year after my dad passed we went to the church where they ministered in my home church for the last 20 years and we took everybody around the altars and we recorded it there in the sanctuary my home pastor blessed us to do it and right after we recorded this i should say right after we built this altar we found out we were gonna have another little one so i think um i don't have so much like crazy news or more projects you know more than anything uh these songs i think have pulled us into a beautiful communion and stillness that meditating on the word you know returning to first love over and over that's what these songs do and as a family we're just expecting a really um sweet season growing uh other than that i have no new news but it's really wonderful news so yes wow well congratulations when we know anything else yeah well congratulations on the the young one um and yeah again thank you so much for taking the time knowing you sometimes is is okay uh just you being able to spend time with family and um sometimes that's just the best thing that anyone could ever need so um but it was so great but [Music] stephanie those were just amazing answers and i just love hearing the heart and and and um yeah just your heart and what you have to say for each song because we i think a lot of the time everyone might be focused on the new hotness you know then you uh what is the how can i download um you know where can i download the multitrack so that i can play this and sync it up with fog machines and and light shows but the one thing that we know here is no churches are still hungry for these songs and still hungry um and there's still an appetite for these songs that just continue to resonate and impact so many and so yeah i just love that you took the time out of your life to to record these songs so oh it was an absolute honor i just i keep thinking to myself i hope that the mothers and fathers who you know wrote these songs or who and then those who introduced them because a lot of the writers didn't sing and introduce them it was it was other artists or worship leaders oh i just i hope that they know that we still need them and their investments oh my goodness it's being passed down to the generations you know

Channel: CCLI

Views: 1,305

Keywords: Worship, Worship Songs, CCLI, Worship Leader, Worship Leading, New Worship Songs, Praise and Worship, Christian Worship

Id: o7A3PrY4U6k

Length: 20min 43sec (1243 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 09 2022