Latifah Phillips has gone through the full spectrum of church experiences, even before touring the world as a member of hymn-playing band Page CXVI and other various projects. In a recent interview with NRT for her band's Good Friday to Easter project (buy here on iTunes), Phillips talks about her very unique history with the Church, and how it shapes the way she pursues music and ministry today. --Marcus Hathcock, Editor-in-Chief

I kind of have a little bit of a funny story. So I grew up in Texas, you know where everybody's a Christian to a degree, culturally. But my dad was from Yemen and so he was Muslim, and my mom used to be super involved with a New Age faith early on in their marriage. 

They had me about ten years into their marriage, and I am the second of two girls. My mom came to know the Lord through watching the 700 Club like at 3 a.m. one morning. So I guess God uses everything. I was baby, so we girls just kind of grew up going to church with Mom because that's what the girls do on Sunday. But it was definitely something we did not speak about at home, because it was a pretty tense subject, as you can imagine.

My parents had been married for ten years and there had been this huge shift in one of the belief systems of one of the partners. And so my mom, who was a very new believer, just kind of decided to pick a church really close to home so she could play piano. She's an amazing piano player. And so we ended up at this all-Chinese charismatic church about three miles from our house.

It was a blast! You show up at 9 a.m. and you worship forever, then there is a message, and then Bible classes, and then it's like a potluck lunch every Sunday. So you're kind of at church until 2 or 3; I mean, it is all day long. It was a really fun experience.

I remember the music specifically feeling really exciting, like they would give kids tambourines and shakers and you could run around and shake them and participate in worship, so it wasn't one of those places you had to be really quiet as a child. I think as a child it was really fun. I remember feeling like the music felt so alive.

I came to know the Lord at five years old at VBS, and asked Jesus to come in my heart. I remember I told my mom two days later and she cried. And I remember that being a moment of conversion for me in my heart. I could still go right back to that room, tell you the color on the walls, what I'd eaten that day, the whole thing.

Then, when I was 12 and my sister was older, my mom really wanted us to be involved in a youth group where we had more English speakers, I think. So we ended up going to an all-white, five-point-Calvinist Presbyterian church. It was literally like we could not get a more opposite side of the spectrum. 

And you know what was great about that church? I remember it was one of those churches where there was only an organ and a choir director and a choir. It was one of those churches where everyone sings in very quiet voices. You opened up the actual physical hymnal; there was not a projector, and the director would call out "Hymn 492" and you would flip there. 

I remember holding the hymnal and not really connecting with the music, but reading the words and thinking, "Oh my goodness. This is poetry. This is beautiful, what a wonderful way to describe who God is." 

Even then, I think it was really compelling to me, and so I think this was when the seed was planted, that I loved this content, but the format--or at least how the format was for me at the time--was really uninspiring. Who knew that 10 years, 15 years later I would spend a decade re-modernizing old hymns? 

I really loved my kind of bipolar church experience, because I think it made me have a lot of compassion and love for the whole Body, the Church, and how people worshiped God. 

I really appreciated how great the first church really connected their hearts and their spirits, engaging fully in worship to God. And I really enjoyed how the Presbyterian church was really engaging your mind with theology. And so you know there's obviously room to grow on both sides, but I think it really gave me a context for loving the people of God.