Hope—the feeling that events will turn out for the best—can be hard to sustain when you lose your livelihood, lose a relationship, or witness firsthand a natural disaster that takes more than 200,000 people and leaves another one million homeless. How could someone believe there might be grace from these moments or a purpose in such unraveling stories?

Mark Stuart, former lead singer of beloved Christian band Audio Adrenaline, had to start asking those questions a few years ago. At the height of his musical success, he began to lose his trademark gravelly rock voice as well as a ten-year marriage. Soon, life on the road with Audio A and the home life Mark had known were both over.

The situation may have seemed hopeless, but God’s best was yet to come, as Stuart and Audio A bandmate Will McGinniss began telling their stories on the road--a practice that evolved into the Know Hope Collective.

Bill Lurwick, the voice of NRT, spoke with Know Hope co-founder and bassist Will McGinniss about the origin of the band and the stories that fuel its mission and music.

So the Know Hope Collective project, Know Hope, has been delayed a few times over the last 18 months, hasn’t it?

Yeah. Well, it’s interesting. God’s timing is often never our timing and that’s I think a good thing. It’s a lesson in patience. It’s a lesson in Him watching out for us and protecting us That’s when it’s going to have the most effective chance to be great. So, for us it’s been a process. Since we came off the road with Audio Adrenaline, we’ve poured back into our home church. We were able to really lock arms with people there and say, “Yeah. We’re off the road now. We can commit time to you,” which is a great feeling to do.

Mark and I were meeting in a small group with our pastor, and he was really feeding us and pouring into us and watching over us as a brother in the Lord and as our pastor. He would hear us talk about these stories and things that happened on the road, and he encouraged us to share those stories with the Church. Slowly over time we really started to see how God could use this. He takes yahoos like us from the Midwest and He does cool stuff with them if they just say yes to Him. So, that’s really what Know Hope project is all about. It’s us being faithful to a calling that God has just recently put on our hearts. Most people would say Audio Adrenaline had to be the best years of our lives. But we really believe this could be one of the best seasons that we’ve ever experienced. So, we’re super excited.


You’ve got Julia Ross from Everlife, David Leonard used to be with Jackson Waters and NEEDTOBREATHE (and currently with Sons and Daughters), and also Jason Walker. Do all these folks go to your church there? How did you hook up with these guys for the project?

It’s funny, in Nashville the talent pool is insane. There are all these young musicians and they all are at our church. Our worship teams are like three or four teams deep. I think about my sisters in Michigan and Ohio, and they would just kill to have even one solid worship team. It’s just the difference in where you live and all of that, but God has definitely blessed Nashville churches. For us, it’s a church that is just trying to be all about the relationship side of things and about community, about doing life together. That’s exactly where Mark and I are at. We found ourselves being in a mentoring position with a lot of these young musicians and that’s another part of what makes Know Hope the collective. We wanted to make it a safe place where these young people could feel like they could make a worship record with a pure, instinctive motive. We just want to make great music with our friends that honors God and that might encourage the Church.

With all the musicians and vocalists, there are probably 20-something people who poured into this record. Mark and I were just able to kind of be the liaisons and head it up, and God’s favor was resting all over it. We feel like some of the songs are some of our best songs that we’ve ever been a part of, and I know that Mark feels that “Build Us Back” is his pinnacle writing song.

He wrote it from the experience of actually being there during the earthquake in Haiti. The message is that God not only can restore our lives, but He can restore Haiti as well. So, all these songs--even the songs that were rewrites from Audio Adrenaline: “Ocean Floor”, “Good Life” and “Hands and Feet”--are a part of our story, part of our testimony. Each of them are intentional and they have a place on the record because they mean so much to us.

Talk about the song “Attention.” It starts out with Mark’s vocals, and a lot of people know that Mark has had major vocal problems, but here we are and you guys are back and God is using that brokenness for his glory once again. Talk about that.

It’s interesting you mention that. He’s not on the record a lot. He’s such a trooper though. If anyone has the right to be a little bit jaded or angry or whatever at life, it’s Mark Stuart. But he always takes the high road. He’s such an encouragement to me and everyone around him. He could easily be throwing his hands up, his fists up at God, but what does he do? He hunkers down and he says God is faithful. He says God has him right where he needs to be. God is using him even in spite of his limitations vocally, and also some things that he’s gone through in life and that’s really what the process of this record is about.

So getting him on “Attention” was such a sweet moment. It was hard for him. His voice hasn’t really recovered as much as he may have hoped or wanted it to, but it was such a sweet moment on the record. It’s just beautiful. That might be one of the best vocals we’ve gotten out of Mark in three or four records, even in the last Audio records.

So, it’s such a vulnerable moment there on the record, and he tries to pull it off live. I try to encourage him with this. It’s in his brokenness, in his vulnerability and in his attempts to try to sing these few moments that add more and more power to the evening in my opinion, because he does it with such a great heart and it’s from such a great countenance.

So, that song was our first song that we started producing with the Collective. The lyrics kind of fell together and it just was one of those corporate worship songs that we sing in our church that felt really right for this record. God was taking us through a season of refocusing, grabbing our attention and saying, “Hey. I’ve got more for you to do. Don’t get down on yourselves. Don’t believe that Audio was the best years of your life. I’ve got even a bigger platform that I’m going to give you, so you can talk about these orphans down in Haiti and you can do these other great things.” That’s what he has in store for every Christian out there that would say yes to Him.


So, the Know Hope Collective album isn't just a collection of songs, is it? There are many additional features, right?

Originally we had every song set up with a story—very Dylan-esque. The record from start to finish was like a book, and it was very linear. That kind of evolved a little bit, and as it’s coming out now, it’s an enhanced disc. We went and recorded some of the stories on video.

So, some of the moments and some of the deep parts of the record are on video and kind of puts it in the context. And then, down the road, the website is even going to be more interactive. We want a place for people to upload your stories of seeing God’s redemptive in your life, how He’s carried you often through these tough things. That’s certainly what He’s done for Mark and I in the last few years.