Connersvine: Breakin' Down the Myths
10-30-2007
by Kevan Breitinger

My conversation with Hunter Smith and Chris Wilson of Connersvine involved first of all my public repentance for misguided stereotyping, even though they suffered it graciously.

CMCentral (Kevan Breitinger): There are lots of surprises on the new album. You probably hear this all the time but I didn’t know football players could play like that (laughing). But you must get that a lot.

Hunter: (Laughing) We do have other things going on.

I know, you must get so sick of that, I’m sorry.

No, it’s no big deal.

It actually revealed to me some of my own misconceptions and prejudices, so it was good for me.

Well, good, I’m glad.

Can I ask you a little bit about your backstory? Chris, I know you grew up in the church. Did you also, Hunter?

I did.

Ok, and you guys met playing worship in a small group?

Chris: It kinda started out in a young adult bible study out of a college group that a few guys got together. Actually Hunter was a part of the very beginning of that, and it eventually grew into a weekly group of about 250-300 college students. We met pretty early on in that group’s time and started leading worship together there for a number of years. It was just out of a local church on the south side of Indianapolis. There were some on-campus ministries going on, but not a whole lot at that time, 7, 8 years ago, and not a lot of ministries coming out of local churches.

I read also that you two have a very different mix of personalities, or maybe that’s more of the stereotyping that gets forced upon you. Is that true?

Yes, we do. It’s kind of a neat thing, because Chris grew up not a sports fan, wasn’t really into football at all, or anything like that. He was very into music. I grew up really into both, and but sports were one of those things that came very naturally. Music did as well, but there was more promotion of the sports at that time in my life. I grew up playing ball. I grew up out in the country, Chris grew up out in the suburbs, and we’re two different people completely in our musical tastes. But God has fused us together musically, and we feel like He has created something special.

I could see how you would complement each other. What’s the toughest part of this combination?

I don’t know, it’s funny because we do have so many differences. But I think the differences lie more in the interests that we have, that we spend time doing. But personality-wise, Hunter’s one of my best friends, and the humor is there, things like that. The time-consuming differences are not a negative thing at all, but more of a hurdle, being new at this music thing, doing this professionally. Obviously, Hunter’s other job is pretty time-consuming in and of itself (laughing). That’s one thing that we’re just learning to navigate, how to manage that in the best way that we can.

Hunter, what time of opportunities for sharing do you have in your ‘other career,’ playing football? I imagine it’s a pretty different world, isn’t it?

Yes, it is. You get lots of opportunities to speak into people’s lives, and the NFL has an image of partial lawlessness at times. But it really is just a bunch of young men who are searching for their purpose in life, and as someone who has found his purpose in God, it is a privilege to share that with them and to help other men on the team along in their lives and in their walks with God.

Now community-wise, the opportunities are exploding. I have lots of opportunities to get up and speak to local churches, to go and play our music. It’s a very dynamic situation we have, having a platform as a professional football player and having the gifting of playing music as well. Maybe people will go to something because  I’m a football player, but they’ll leave hopefully inspired by the message and the music.

What’s cool about it is that God has given you those opportunities and opened those doors, but then your music shows a lot of diversity. You cover a lot of different genres and styles that would also appeal to a large audience. Do you have a favorite style that you prefer?

It’s kind of funny, because like you said earlier, we started off being worship leaders, and a good portion of the album is straightforward corporate worship stuff that we do lead with on Sunday mornings in church. But then half of the album is stuff that we would never attempt to lead with in a corporate worship setting on a Sunday morning. God just gave us songs, and we’ve tried to be faithful with those songs. A lot of times He’ll drop a song in our laps and we go, ‘ok, obviously this is more of a story He wants us to tell, or a message He’s working through us at the time.’ That’s kind of where that eclectic nature comes through on the album.

I’m sure working with Ben Shive and Pete Kipley helped too.

It did, we had a lot of fun working with those guys and great input from both of them. They were wonderful for the artistry and the direction of the album.

Yeah, that comes across. Let me ask you one more question about something I read: you have a burden to teach others how to connect with God through worship. Tell me a little bit about that.

We don’t believe that God is far off, that He’s a systematic being somewhere. We believe that He is alive, that He is, and has relational desires. He wants to know us. So our real desire is to help people know God.

Through our music we’d like people to hear God’s voice, and also be able to speak back to God and have that two way relationship.  We believe worship should be at the core of everything we do. That’s what we really want people to understand: that God is out there and He is real and alive. We can communicate with Him and have a real relationship with Him, not one that’s based on a system or a religion.

I think that message is very timely because even in the church there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about worship. I see in churches all over people clapping after each song, almost as if it’s a performance.

Right, absolutely.

I think you’re right on time with this message, and I’m thankful that the Lord has raised you up with it.

Thank you so much.

I really appreciate your time, guys.

It was good to talk with you, take care.