Interview: Find Out Why FEARLESS BND Describes Their Music as "Joseph's Coat of Many Colors"

FEARLESS BND, the sound of worship at Fearless LA, is launching a 'loaves and fishes' approach to creating new music for the church. The sole purpose is to equip and empower pastors and worship leaders with songs, media, video, graphics, sermon/song notes, tutorials and more. One innovative, congregationally ready media package at a time, every first Friday of the month.

"Instead of releasing an entire album all at once," says Sean Loche, associate pastor at Fearless LA, "this approach gives us the ability to stay current and evolve as the music evolves, and it allows us to get material into churches/hands more quickly. Our goal is to release each single on the first Friday of every month, along with lyric videos, loops, promotional material and high-level graphics, sermons, notes-everything we use in our church-with the hope of making it easier for local pastors and worship leaders." 

Hallels:  Thank you for doing this interview with us.  Formerly you were known as Worth Dying For, but now you call yourselves Fearless Bnd, why did you change your name?

We're two years into a church plant that's called Fearless LA. Through the process of planting a church, God branded our hearts with this new mission to be Fearless. We've always believed that our ministry should be a movement, and the music is a part of that movement. Really, it's our soundtrack. As God began to birth this new mission to love a city so radically that fear had to leave, we began to battle with the words "Worth Dying For" and how that fit into the picture. When we named Worth Dying For, it was this radical name, but it was negative. God really spoke to us that from here on out we're supposed to name things radical and positive. There was this new rally around this name "Fearless." People gathered around it. They seemed to just fall right into it. They seemed to be freed by it. We just felt like our music should be the soundtrack of our movement. So, why wouldn't it be the same name? It's just a rebranding of the same thing God is doing, but it's a new birthing of what God is doing in our ministry. 

Hallels:  You are a church team meeting in a night club for worship.  Why a night club?

Why not? 

Hallels:  What do you have to say to people who think that the holy and the profane shouldn't mix, such as a church should not have anything to do with a night club? 

I think they should read their Bible. Jesus was often criticized for hanging out and eating with notorious sinners and tax collectors. I think "holy" simply means to be set apart by God, so this place on this day is becoming set apart by God. It's set apart, this nightclub, by God, as a place for people to encounter Him on Sundays. I think, what greater place for the holy to show up than a place that's unholy? What greater place for light to appear than in darkness? It burns brighter in the darkest places. Jesus, when the woman who was caught in the act of adultery, and the Pharisees were ready to stone her...before he talked to them, he first wrote in the dirt. We don't know what he wrote.

The Bible doesn't say what he drew, but I feel like why he wrote was to show the woman that his holy hands were not too good to carve out a new path in the dirt, to do something new with dirt. I think Jesus would be found in these types of places. He'd be found in the places where the broken are, where the hurting are.The very hill that Jesus died on was the Hill of Golgotha, which meant "Place of the Skull." It was a place for murderers. The cross was the electric chair of their day. It was a torture chamber, and here is the holy Son of God meeting an unholy environment and now changing it because He was there. If you were Jewish, you wouldn't go near or inside graves, but the Son of God did, and the open tomb is now one of our symbols for power and purity. Why not a nightclub become a place where people are meeting Jesus? 

Hallels:  I have read that you have a very unique way of releasing new music, something you call the "loaves and fishes" approach.   Can you tell us more about this?

When I say the "loaves and fishes" approach, to me it's a picture of when Jesus took the small boy's lunch when the people were hungry and had nothing to eat. He took a small boy's lunch and he blessed it, and then he gave it to the disciples to be apart of the miracle. We're taking the young, the creative, and pulling the gifts that they already have in their house, out of them and multiplying it. Then, we want to share it with pastors all over the world so they will be able to share it with their "flocks," in a sense, or their people, or their churches, their youth groups, so that they could be a part of the miracle that's happening through the loaves and fishes.The picture of that music is that instead of making a whole CD, and hopefully a youth groups figures it out that has all volunteer students, and the pastor's working two jobs, our hope is that a pastor would be able to take these resources and use them for the Kingdom. We're giving away the Photoshop files so they can take our logo out and put their graphic in for the single. Our hope is that each single would become a springboard for their month of ministry, or two months, or a year of ministry.

The first single that's called "Brighter," they could literally just rally their students around this thought of "This year is brighter. We're going to be fearless in the fight." They can preach around it, we're going to write sermons, give away notes, and give away background lyric videos they can play in their youth group. We just want to bring up the level of excellence across the board and give youth pastors the freedom to use this like it's their own, to be apart of the miracle. Now they can use their time to do what we're called to do, to go win souls. But yet still, when the souls come in, they can have this level of excellence that students will see how big their God is. We want to release a single a month so that they have the power to rally around that one single, learn the guitar to it, the instructional videos, guitar, drums, bass. We're releasing the loops for free. We're going to keep getting better at it as we do it. We're going to keep learning how we can better empower youth ministries and churches to play this music in their home town and catapult their city into revival. 

Hallels:  How would you describe your style of music?  

I guess our style of music would be like Joseph's coat of many colors. It's one coat, but the colors are woven together. I guess by saying that, I'm joking, but the reality is, what we like to do is pull out the music that's inside of our team and inside of our church. Our music is so all over the board because we want everyone to be apart of it. Our whole team writes, our whole team pours in. We might have one guy who's fully into Hip Hop, and another person who's fully into EDM, another person that loves Rock n Roll, another person that loves Pop, another person that loves Folk. Together, we want to pull the gift of God out of each of these people and then weave it into a strand to broadcast to the world. Really, if you try to put us in a box, it probably wouldn't fit. To describe our music, I guess you could describe it not like a style, but more like a feeling. We believe when you hear our music, you're going to feel a sense of freedom, of new life, because that's what's happening in our church. The new life that's being birthed, the people that are getting saved, are pulling out of us this essence of new life whether we like Folk, Hip Hop, Rap. You might hear EDM on one song and you might hear Funk on another, but together, the sound that they're making is like the soundtrack of a movie. If you watch a movie, you hear all different styles, all different sounds, but the movie is broadcasting a certain feeling through the music, and that's what we're doing. 

Hallels:  Let's talk of your new single "Brighter."  What is the song about?

One of my favorite lines in the song is, "fearless in the fight." I really feel like the song is an anthem and a rally for those that have chosen to live their life by the Spirit. When we live life by the Spirit, life is brighter, Heaven is our home, this earth is just temporary. I love the words "fearless in the fight" because we are in a fight. We are in a war daily. We live in a fallen world, a jacked place, but that doesn't mean we have to be fearful. We could look at the glass as half full instead of half empty. We could see that no matter what comes against us, thank God that God is for us. Because of that, we're going to be fearless in the fight because we have His perfect love that has cast out all fear. This song is really about that this is your year, this is your year to shine, this is your year to burn brighter for God, and as the fight gets heavier, the light gets brighter in us. As the outside caves in, the inside burns through. \

Hallels:  For our readers who would like to check out your new songs and to learn more you, where can they go?

fearlessbnd.com or check out our church at fearlessla.com.  

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