Harmony in Faith: An Interview with Zach and Maggie about Music and Life
August 16, 2024
Host: Dr. Isaac Crockett
Guests: Zach and Maggie White
Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 8/16/24. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.
Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.
Isaac Crockett: Welcome to the program. The Bible talks to us a lot about having the joy of the Lord throughout Old and New Testament passages. We are also commanded to have a thankful spirit. Even the Bible tells us that the will of God for us is to redeem the time in these evil days by speaking to one another in Psalms and hymns and to really make melodies in our heart to the Lord. Well, today we want to explore some of what that can look like in our lives. We want to see the importance of having music in our lives as Christians, even having a biblical worldview. What does that mean when it comes to singing and making melodies in our hearts? With that, I just want to again thank you for joining us on this program on Pastor Isaac Crockett. And my guests today are a husband and wife team, Zach and Maggie, and they are here with us. We’re talking about harmony and faith. It’s an interview with Zach and Maggie about music and life in general. So Maggie and Zach, thank you all so much for being on this program today.
Speaker 2: Oh, thanks for having us. Thank you. It’s so good to be here.
Isaac Crockett: Well, I think I’ll just start, Maggie with you. You guys are a husband and wife team and it’s kind of a neat idea that you have two musicians married to each other and I can only imagine some of the amazing and artistic things that happen and maybe some of the crazy and wacky things that could happen that way too. But I’m just curious, how did you and Zach meet and what is it like having two musicians in one family living under the same roof, making music together and having musical careers?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we both met at Belmont University here in Nashville, Tennessee. We were both in the bluegrass ensemble and met there in 2010. Yeah, 2010 and got married a couple years after that. For a long time we actually didn’t play. We played together in bands a lot, and so it was always under the direction of other people. And then people would assume after the shows, oh, I bet you play music all the time at home, which was not true. We would play in separate rooms, have our own practice time for different things, which it was cool because we didn’t have a relationship built on what we do kind of thing. But then at some point we decided, oh, we should start practicing some songs together. And so we started playing. We would do a weekly Instagram video of just one minute’s worth of a song, started building arrangements, and that kind of led to doing shows together over time. And we just did our first full length album last year and working on another one for next year.
Isaac Crockett: That is great. And I can say I’ve listened to some of your music on your YouTube channel. I’ve downloaded some from iTunes. I still like to go on and buy albums and songs on iTunes and to it in the car with our family. But Zach, could you maybe tell us a little bit about the music that the two of you do because your website incorporates your names, the two of you, and some of what’s going on there, maybe your website and just in general where we can go to hear your music and to kind of get to know who Zach and Maggie are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we deliberated from weeks and weeks on the name and then decided to stick with what our parents gave us. So we’re kind of just known as Zach and Maggie. So our website is zach and maggie.com. Real easy. We had to wait for a wedding to happen before that URL was available of course, but if you look up Zach and Maggie Music, you’ll find that stuff. But it’s a real fun show, so most folks might have seen us. Our most notable work outside of this specific show is with Keith and Kristen Getty. We got plugged in with them pretty early on, right about the time we got engaged. Maggie started playing with them. So, and we weren’t pursuing careers in the Christian music scene per se. We loved folk music and bluegrass music, but we were solid believers ourselves. And when that job came about, it was kind of amazing.
Speaker 2: But over the years we’ve loved the work we get to do in hymns with Keith and Kristen, but we also had this other side to our music that was really fun and playful. I like to write songs that have kind of very vivid, playful characters, but then also songs that really touch to the meaningful parts of life. I’ve always said that a conversation with a friend though, no matter how serious it is, you still have jokes that go back and forth and I kind of wanted to have a show that had that same feel to it that you can laugh but then get really meaningful at the same time and you don’t have to apologize for either one. And that’s kind of been one of the guiding lights to this show as we go along. So we have songs about the title track is the Elephant in the Room, and it’s a telling the actual of a fictional version of the elephant going to a party, knocking over a drink and kind of feeling embarrassed.
Speaker 2: Or we have a retelling of the space monkey going up to space, but that happened about the same time as a Cuba missile crisis. So I like to imagine the history being compressed a little bit so that way he’s watching the issues in Cuba go down. So it’s playful, but then we have songs about life and marriage. There’s one Maggie wrote that I love called Robin, that’s really a kind of focus on contentment by watching a robin outside your window go through its seasons and the beauty that comes from a contented life. And that was from a theological book actually, that kind of idea and inspiration, Michael Horton’s ordinary. So by looking at these stories of life both humorous and meaningful, we kind of hope that people can see the reflection of the Holy Spirit within us, but also just be able to enjoy the creation around us, what God’s given us.
Isaac Crockett: I love that. Just enjoying that God has created everything and that he has purpose. So many times we get caught up in just kind of surviving and playing our part little part here or there, but to see him in all of it, and as a pastor I see this sometimes people think, oh yeah, well there’s my church hat, then I wear my church hat and then I go and I do my work and to just see that all life is really about the kingdom of God and what he has done. Just even in talk to you guys briefly just to see your biblical worldview worked into all these things. We just have a few moments here before our first break, but Zach, how important is that that you have a biblical worldview, you have a foundation in Christ no matter what you do or where you’re going, that we can enjoy what he has given us all around us?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have this kind of image that I’ve been working on where so much of Christian music can be, as you say, a little monotone in its emotion. Music is a way to communicate emotions and to help draw emotions out. And the unfortunate side of reality in our society is that sometimes you have to sell your music. You have to make sure that it’s palpable. And the best way to sell something is to make it a pretty narrow perspective. Now, on the flip side, the Christian life, it’s looking at the world through the prism of the Holy Spirit and therefore our color of emotion should be the full spectrum of the rainbow. So I’m of the belief that all music made by Christians is Christian music and it’s not necessarily segmented to just stuff that can work on a Sunday morning. I think it’s super important. That’s why we love our work with Getty Music congregational hymns that help assist the kind of rich theology through song. But I also think it’s really important that we as Christians celebrate the beauty that God has given us in creation in whatever songs, whether that be a song about a monkey or something more meaningful or more poignant, I should say, that the Holy Spirit shines through everything we do. And yeah, that’s kind of the viewpoint I think I have there.
Isaac Crockett: Well, amen to that. And I’m excited about talking to you all more getting to know you and for those listening to get to know you, we want to come back and talk with Zach and Maggie more about some things going on at Getty Music. There’s a big conference coming right up in Nashville. We also want to talk about what Zach was just talking about, what it looks like being a Christian musician even when it’s outside of the church and it’s not necessarily Christian music, but music that the whole family can enjoy and just having fun and enjoying what God has given us, the life that God has given us as we sing and make melodies in our hearts to the Lord. We’ll be right back. I’m stand in the gap today. Well, welcome back to our Friday Stand in the Gap Today program. I’m Isaac Crockett and I’m talking with Zach and Maggie from Zach and maggie.com.
Isaac Crockett: And didn’t know Zach was mentioning before that had to wait for a wedding to happen because that website, because I wondered about that, how many Zach and Maggie’s there are out there. But their website, if you want to look at it while you’re listening to this program, it’s Zach, ZACH, and Maggie, Maggie, M-A-G-G-I e.com. And there’s a lot of really cool stuff on there, a lot of fun stuff on there. But we are talking about something that’s very important, something that the Bible emphasizes a lot. And Zach actually I think alluded to this idea that music ties into our emotions. God created us as emotional and musical beings. And so I want to talk about some of that. Maggie, you had mentioned the Getty Music and that you all work with that. Could you maybe tell us when, maybe even how you got started doing music with Keith and Kristen Getty and the whole Getty Music group there, and maybe talk too about some of the locations. I don’t know if you have some favorite ones or some neat locations that you’ve been with that you would like to share with those of us today?
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. I started playing with them in 2012. Was it 12? Yeah, yeah, that’s right. Thousand 12. I was finishing up at Belmont and I’d actually met them a couple of years prior, but they had a fiddle player that was expecting her second child and they needed somebody to fill in. And so somebody had brought my name up again just through mutual music friends. And so I went and auditioned and got the part and I thought it was just for one Christmas and then the other fiddle player came back and they kept us both. So we got me, me and Deborah playing fiddle and been with them since then. And Zach joined, what was it, a year, about a year and a half later, a year and a half later. So both of us have at least 10 years for playing with them. So that’s been fantastic.
Speaker 2: Some of the favorite venues, there’s a range. They’ve taken us to some amazing places. We’ve done Carnegie several times for Christmas, and of course they’ve done the arena here in town and then the one in Belfast as well. So one of the interesting ones was the parliament in London. We played their prayer breakfast and there’s also this really cool room underneath there, like a small tiny little chapel that I forget how old, and we’ve played in that room as well, which is just you just feel like you’re stepping back in time, which is really cool. So they’ve taken us to a lot of really cool places. It’s been fantastic. They’re going to be going to Korea in about a month, so we’ll get to go on that. And we’ve never been there before. They’ve taken us to Singapore and of course to Ireland a few times. So yeah, it’s been fantastic to travel and see so many different places and do it with such amazing people.
Isaac Crockett: What a neat opportunity. And actually on your website you have a list of places where you all will be at, and a lot of them are with the Gettys or Matt Papa and Matt Boswell, which Matt Papa was on here this spring when they released their third album of the Matts, Matt Boswell and Matt Papa. But those of you listening, if you’re interested in seeing this in person, you could go to the website again, Zach and maggie.com and see some of those things, mention Carnegie Hall, and that’s a neat opportunity that the Gettys have been doing now for what, maybe a decade or something, maybe more than that, but wow, neat things. Zach, maybe you could tell us about this. Speaking of the Getty Music of the Sing Conference, this is something I’ve watched it online, my wife and I and some of our kids are planning on being there in person. Several actually of our partners, some of which you hear on a regular basis on our radio program are planning on being at that conference as well. But it’s going to be in Nashville and maybe you could just talk to us about somebody who’s able to go there, maybe online, be a part of it online or even go in person, especially if they’re involved in a leadership way at their church, why that might be important and just some of the good things that are going on at that conference.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it’s really an amazing time. I mean, this is I think the eighth year that they’ve had the conference. Maggie’s County for me because I’m bad with numbers. Yeah, eight here. That’s what you got when you have musicians on your show. But no, it’s really grown into a pretty unique space for especially church leaders to come. The conversation around music in the church is always an interesting one. It sometimes gets couched into just preferences, but it really carries more importance than just that as you talked about, God created us to be emotional beings and you talk to pastors or even psychologists, and it’s understandable that we see the world through our emotions. Yes, there are objective truths out there, but the way that we feel those is also vastly important. And music and especially hymns is such an incredible design of gods to allow us to blend the theology and the art and in a way that we can palpably feel and see and understand this combination of the objective truths of God and the emotion and how we relate to that.
Speaker 2: So the celebration at the Sing conference is always about congregational singing. There can be a lot of different trends and fads that happened in church music, but throughout history, time and time again, it’s been shown over and over that singing people create strong believers. And I mean, one of the greatest commandments by number, the amount of times that the Bible commands us to sing is I think one of the most frequent commands in the scripture. So the conference as a whole is kind of key, like to say it’s this mix between a music festival and the pastor’s conference. We have a lot of wonderful performances, a lot of musicians. You mentioned the Matt Boswell and Papa both. They’ll do stuff there. We have, I know this year coming, Shane and Shane are doing a big release at the conference. Andrew Peterson, one of our favorite guys, they’re doing a celebration of the whole baam of God.
Speaker 2: It’s the 25th year that they’ve been doing that fantastic Christmas program. They’re going to do a of that at this conference. So it gets to be like Christmas in September, gets you in the mood early. And then there’s wonderful speakers, pastors, Alistair Beggs coming. He’s one of my absolute favorites. I think John Piper will be there this year. So you just get this beautiful combination of people coming together to celebrate singing the truths that are in the scripture. It’s one of the few conferences I’ve seen that really has a wide swath of denomination yet without a lot of argument on stage because there’s one thing we can all agree on, which is we should sing good music that sings praise to God and teaches the Bible. So it’s just a fantastic time. There’s a lot of fun. You bump into a lot of folks this year. It’s at the Opryland Hotel, which is, we’ve done it at the Bridgestone arena sometimes. We’ve done it at the hotel. I personally love the hotel because it means I get to run into people and you find these like-minded folks, folks that are working hard in their churches to encourage the music and the art and the theology and trying to elevate that level across the board. And you develop friends across the country and really get a palpable sense of the global church. People come from all over the world, let alone the country.
Isaac Crockett: Well, with that, Zach, a little bit of time that we have left here. Could you mention also the Getty Hymnal project that’s being worked on? It’s about to be released, I think, hopefully next year. You mentioned the importance of singing and congregational singing. Could you maybe tell us a little bit about what’s going on there to produce this hymnal?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it’s a really neat project. They’ve been working on it for about five years. We’re coming down to the Wire. It’s more than just kind of the hymnal we know sitting in the back of the pew. It does take a lot of influence from that in that it, it’s pulling together the history of the church. Keith said they’re thinking it’s going to be about two thirds old songs, one third newer. So it’s not just a way to sell new music. They’re also going to have, it’s very liturgy focused and different types of liturgies, liturgies for the family, liturgies for life from childhood to growing up. And then you of course you have church liturgy and working through a calendar year, so that way you have this kind of tangible book to work through as we cycle through every year of life. There’s also these wonderful accompanying prayers and poems for various stages of life like that.
Speaker 2: So they’re hoping that it can become this reference book next to the Bible that allows you to kind of dive into the emotional side of our relationship there. The Bible itself, there’s a reason the Psalms are in there that we don’t have just history and theology without emotion because the Psalms are such a great example of how God wants us to take all the emotions we have and lift them to God, point them towards him. So this book is kind of that accompaniment. It’s good for churches, it’s good for families. It’s trying to be a really good overview of not only our personal relationship with Christ but the church’s relationship with Christ over the centuries.
Isaac Crockett: We could spend just a whole program talking about that hymnal. Those of you who listened to the program regularly, you know that even though I didn’t grow up really in a musical family, it meant a lot to me. My grandfather actually got saved in the Dutch underground in Holland during the World War II because 10 men who were being killed execution style in front of the whole Village square, they joined hands in Sing a Mighty Fortress is our God. As they were being shot to death and their voices were silenced, the body, they may kill God’s word, ab bite us still, and the crowd sang it out. My grandfather who was kind of searching and he knew the truth, but he was struggling, that song is what led him to Christ. In my own family, we would have times of liturgy, family devotions that we would sing the hymns sometimes out of hymnal, we would sing it.
Isaac Crockett: We would do that oftentimes with men in the church who were dying. The men would gather around their bed to women with the women and sing these songs as they passed. And I remember in the hospital doing that with my father and the songs we sang weren’t the most powerful popular radio songs. They were the songs we’d sung in the hymnal that we knew by heart that we could sing the simple melodies. It makes a big difference and so much we could say about that, but we’re going to take another break here from some of our partners and when we come back, I want to continue talking about music, but I want to talk with Zach and Maggie about enjoying other music outside of the church and why music matters to Christians and why if you have a biblical worldview, having the joy of the Lord and all that we do, even in the music that we listen to and the music we make, why it matters.
Isaac Crockett: So we’ll be right back after this brief timeout. Please don’t go away. We’ll be here on Stand In the Gap today. Welcome to Stand In the Gap Today. If you’re just joining us on this Friday edition of Stand In the Gap today, I’m Pastor Isaac Crockett and I’ve been talking with Zach and Maggie about the music they make, and so far we’ve looked at the exciting things that they’ve been able to do with Getty Music, our friends at Getty Music, actually some of our friends there are the ones that help connect them with us for this program. And we talked about the Sing conference. It’s coming right up the first week in September. I think it’s the third through the fifth, and there are going to be pastors, hundreds, thousands of pastors there, Lord willing in person as well as I think hundreds of thousands you could say online watching this all happening at the Opera Land Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee.
Isaac Crockett: And there will be, myself and my wife and kids are going to be there. We’re going to be in the expo hall, but there will be many of our partners that you hear from our radio or TV ministries are going to be there with us as well, and people that we’ve interviewed will be a part of that. We’re just talking about the hymnal project that Getty Music is working on. I’ve had the joy of being a part of a pastoral group, kind of a think tank with that, and sometimes when I see the other pastors on the Zoom calls when we’re there with Keith Getty, I can pick out people that I’ve interviewed on this radio program who love the Lord, who have a biblical worldview and who love good songs. And so exciting to see this partnering, this partnership with Getty Music and with so many godly theologically sound people.
Isaac Crockett: And hopefully your church is looking for hymnal or just you as a family want a good book to help you with family devotions and singing. This will be a neat resource coming out next year. Well, before I go back to asking Zach and Maggie some more questions, I just want to mention some of our own stand in the Gap media options out there. If you have a smartphone and you haven’t downloaded our app, I would encourage you to download our app, the Stand In the Gap app. You can listen, you could go back and listen over the years to the different programs we’ve done with Keith Getty or with other folks from Getty Music. I know just a few weeks ago I was asked by a grandmother, she had a question about her granddaughter who is kind of non-binary and going through some struggles and issues even though she grew up in a good church and a good family, and I was able to point her to some things, some of the interviews with Renton Rathbun on about biblical worldview and a biblical approach to these things, or with some of our friends who formerly for years, decades of their lives lived in a homosexual lifestyle and God has taken them out of that.
Isaac Crockett: I was able to take some of that information, share those with her because of the app. I could take it from the app and then share that with her. There’s transcripts, there’s video, there’s clips. All sorts of things are Stand in the Gap tv. Maybe you want to listen to some of the things we’ve talked with George Barna or Ken Ham or Alex McFarlane about Biblical worldview, or maybe you remember a program and you just want to look it up by name or theme. Lots of options there on our Stand in the Gap app and on our stand in the gap media.org website. Well, we want to go back to talking about music because the Bible talks about rejoicing, about being thankful, but it talks about music a lot. And so I want to thank you again, Zach and Maggie for taking the time to be on our program.
Isaac Crockett: You have a lot going on. You’re getting ready for this huge conference, sing conference with the Getty Music. So thanks for being on this program with us. I mean, again, it was through connections we have at Getty Music that they connected us, and I looked up your website and I started seeing your YouTube channel and things, and it was just really fun music. I think maybe I was expecting that you guys would just be kind of a Midwest or American version of the Getty Music singing some of the hymns and Irish melodies, and I get on there and it was unique, fun kind of American folk style, but I don’t know even, how do you guys describe your style of music that you guys make?
Speaker 2: I mean, we just kind of keep it with the general term folk, but most people would agree that there’s something different about it. We haven’t found the word yet to describe it, so we just say it’s folk music.
Isaac Crockett: Okay, well, so I guess I don’t feel too bad then when you say it like that. No, those of you listening, you really need to go to their website, Zach and maggie.com, Z-A-C-H-A-N-D-M-A-G-G-I e.com or their YouTube channel. Just look up Zach and Maggie on YouTube. Zach music though is a huge part of your lives as musicians, but for all of us, but beyond just playing music for church or things like that, what is your philosophy of music that helps you see that God has given you talents, education in that, but then to bring that together, whether it’s writing hymns or new fun songs making music, what kind of philosophy is it that helps you kind of wrap your brain around these things and what you do and what God has called you to do?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it’s such a powerful element that God has given us that music is, I mean, the idea that he made the world not just practical but beautiful, I think is very telling that we should celebrate the beauty. Sometimes I feel like in some cultures that might be very theologically minded, we can kind of stunt beauty. I’m speaking of one that I grew up in specifically, but we can stunt beauty for the sake of more concrete objective things. But God made the world beautiful. He gave us poetry, he gave us art, he gave us all these things. And music is massively powerful in a way of, some people like to look at it as a communication style, almost its own language in a way of communicating with emotion. And therefore, in the same way that words can be beautiful and instructive, be praising to God, they can be explicit about the gospel.
Speaker 2: They can be praising to God when they’re not explicit about the gospel or when they’re talking about any other story. I think music’s the same kind of thing. If you think of it as a communication, then it has so many ways to seep into the cracks of our lives and to find helpful and beneficial things entertainment. It’s part of the beautiful creation that God gave us. So we like to really explore some more of that. We as Christians are called to do good work. I love Psalm 33 that talks about play skillfully on the harp and the liar. I like to pick that one pretty literally and do it to the best of our abilities. And though our subject matter may not be what has traditionally in the 20th century been called Christian music, we are Christian and we’re making music. And I think of the excitement I get when I find out a musician I love or followed for a long time is a believer, even though the music they make is not on a Christian radio station or something.
Speaker 2: I find that exciting seeing this person is taking their talents and their hard work and the life that God’s led them to create beauty in the world and to bring joy to people. And then to know that they as a person are following the same creator, that they’re living a life that I’m excited to see, that they know the hope that lies in the gospel is something beautiful. So though we’re coming out of the Christian scene because most people are introduced to us through the Gettys, our music is kind of for everybody. So a lot of churches like to use it sometimes as a fall fest type of thing, or a Sunday night community event, but it’s about bringing joy, telling some interesting sides of life that we have sometimes that definitely, it’s very clear that we come from a biblical worldview. Sometimes it’s not as clear, but it’s about playing at the creative pool that God has given us to play in,
Isaac Crockett: And it’s so fun watching and listening to your music. Maggie, could you tell us, I think it was Zach was mentioning the song, the Elephant in the Room. I just can’t imagine the creativity on your guys’ part to come up with the melodies and harmonies of it and the instrumentation and then the video you made of it. There’s parts of it that are almost, I don’t know if there’s a word, but Dr. Zui a little bit, but then part of it telling a story and part of it just like, oh, we could feel that ourselves. And then you made a cookbook that goes along with, I mean, to think about outside the box, that’s just the beginning with you guys, but could you maybe tell us about some of the fun things like that, either that elephant in the room or other creative things that you guys have on your website?
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. The album ended up Becoming The Elephant in the Room ended up becoming the title of the album that we put out, and Zach had seen a song called The Elephant, and he didn’t listen to it or anything, but he had been thinking about writing a song with a colloquialism. And so he saw the elephant and didn’t check any further on that song and just thought I should write a song about the original elephant in the room. And so he wrote that and then they decided, he decided that we should do, sorry, I lost my train of thought Music video. Yeah, yeah. We were going to do a music video and he decided that it would be best if I sang it. So it was just kind of the comedy of a seven ton creature being personified in me. We had a lot of fun coming up with the best way to visualize this elephant.
Speaker 2: We ended up going with a puppet. So there’s some of your Dr. Seuss or Frank Oz, the Influence. And yeah, it comes from that element of I’m very extroverted. I love conversation, I love meetings. Maggie’s a little bit more introverted and getting to know her, I thought, oh, that’s an interesting perspective, the social pressure that happens in that kind of environment. So it’s me trying to empathize with somebody who’s more introverted and going through that example. But creativity is such a fun muscle if you let yourself exercise it very regularly, and that tends to be something we both really enjoy exercising. Yeah, the challenge of the video was we had actually originally had an idea of doing a cartoon, and it was extremely expensive to have somebody do a cartoon video for you in the old style of a Pink Panther or something like that.
Speaker 2: But once we priced that, we thought we need to take this a different direction. So we had a puppet puppets here on Etsy, make a puppet of the trunk, and then we just started creating this story. And then a friend of ours let us use their house to set the scene, and then we got a bunch of our friends to, it’s actually our worship pastor. Our pastor let us use his house for the scene of the elephant and got a bunch of our friends to play little parts in it. So it was a blast making that. And then we have a hobby of cooking, and so we started just to promote the album. We would start doing a cooking video to pair with each song. And so that’s kind of how that came about. We eventually had recipe for a book.
Speaker 3: We call it How to Cook the Elephant in the Room.
Isaac Crockett: So it is so much fun. Those of you listening, if you haven’t heard it, you will love hearing it, but watching the video on your website, the whole cookbook and everything is there. But on your YouTube channel that with many other songs, but again, showing people that we can be Christians with the biblical worldview and be serious about loving the Lord, but also just serious about having fun and enjoying the world that God has created for us. Well, it’s time for us to take another time out. We’ll be right back on Staying in the Gap today. Well, welcome back to the program. I’m Pastor Isaac Crockett, and I hope if you’ve been listening that you’ve had fun listening to this. And if you haven’t been able to catch the whole program, I would invite you to go to stand in the gap media.org or to our Stand in the Gap app and listen to the whole program.
Isaac Crockett: If you are listening to it on any of the podcast players, they carry us as well, but you can listen to it in a little bit of a fast forward. And so it doesn’t even take as long if you want to go back and re-listen to the program. But we’ve been talking with Zach and Maggie. They are musicians that are a married couple that love the Lord, and they do Christian music. They work with the Getty Music Group, but they also do their own fun music and kind of American folk music. And Maggie, if you could maybe give us your website again and then tell people how they can get ahold of your music. Maybe there are people listening and they say, you know what? I still listen to music the old Fashioned way on Compact Disc cd. Or maybe somebody has their streaming platform that they use to listen to music on. How can people get ahold of that music? And of course, they could also go to your website, but maybe you could give us some of that information as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Zach and maggie.com has the physical copies if you prefer listening to things on an actual cd. We’ve got those there as well as the cookbook. And so we are happy to ship things to you. We even have a candle and they’re all titled The Elephant in the Room. We like to say that you can hear taste and smell the elephant in the room. It does not smell like candy. I’m cur to Zach’s wishes, but if you take our word for it that it doesn’t smell bad, we’ll ship you a candle as well. Or you can come to one of our live shows and get one there. Take a whiff. So yeah, you can get it from the website if you prefer listening online or on Spotify, Amazon Music, apple Music, iTunes, all of the things, YouTube. So yeah, Zach and Nike.
Isaac Crockett: So if you’re wanting to find out more, obviously you can go to the website there, zach and maggie.com. But just go wherever you normally listen to music and look up Zach and Maggie and it’s amazing how much stuff you guys have and the videos if you’ve got maybe your children or grandchildren or somebody from your church or neighborhood at your watching their kids, some really fun music videos that are good for the kids and that are family friendly and that the adults will like as well. That’s one of the things about it. It’s not just kid music, it’s music for adults too. But it’s been good. Well, it’s been great having both of you on our Standing in the Gap Today program. Zach, as we’re wrapping things up here, I look back at my own life and my parents, neither one of them would consider themselves musical, but they introduced us to a lot of music and our church was really a focal point in our family.
Isaac Crockett: And music at the church was encouraged to be involved with it, not just at church, but at home in our own family devotions and personal devotions and things. And my dad loved hymns and my parents introduced us to many different styles of music and different styles even of Christian music. And just would love for you to encourage maybe a grandparent or a parent who’s listening or somebody who has some sort of influence on children maybe through Sunday school or what of what they can do, just the importance of good music, but how they can help the next generation, the younger generation, to develop good music as well as a love for hymns and congregational singing, but just having fun, enjoying the music that God has given us.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah, we live in a time that gives us such a variety of music. I think it’s important sometimes, heck, I’m in my thirties and the way we consume music changes so fast that encouraging I think younger folks to explore and find music. It can be a little discouraging sometimes when you listen to the most mainstream of avenues that were more traditional throughout generations of where to receive music. But there is amazing music being made in the pretty easy access parts of the world. You just have to go looking for it. So encouraging that the looking for something great and always something that has substance and meaning and showing excitement, music’s incredibly personal to kids, and if they can find something personal that’s edifying to their soul, that can be massively encouraging. And just because we don’t always know the route to take that’s growing up, equipping kids to be strong and flexible in a world that is broken within sin that have the Holy Spirit within them, I think that’s huge.
Speaker 2: But it’s such a beautiful part of life. It helps us work through so many different feelings and emotions and perspectives and seasons of life. I’m a huge advocate for the hymns at our church to be rich and full of theology because you want hymns at your Sunday morning that carry you through life, that whenever struggle you bump up against that melody is what comes to mind when you’re there. But then there are so many other parts of life that are difficult and just hard to get through that we need these beautiful things. And thankfully, God gave us this language of music to communicate through.
Isaac Crockett: Well, it has been fun talking with you all and for me, fun just finding out about your music and this kind of new genre I didn’t even know existed, but any last words that you would like to maybe encourage somebody who’s listening about just an importance of enjoying music. And also, I love what you guys do is being Christian artist doing what you do that sometimes I think people can get kind of in this rut like, well, I’m a Christian when I’m at church, but then I have to go back to my secular life the rest of the week to earn a living. And this idea that all that we do is done to the glory of God whatsoever your hand finds to do it as unto the Lord. Any final words of encouragement about being a Christian all the time? In your case, it’s a Christian musician, even when it’s not hymns and things like that, but for all of us, kind of a needed reminder there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. No, whatever season and stage God puts you in, whatever work you have pointing it to His glory is it’s surprisingly difficult and practice, but perfectly rewarding every time you can attach it there. So getting bogged down in definitions and classifications can sometimes I find the actually a hindrance to focusing on wherever I’m at in life to pointing that towards God. So he’s put me with a guitar in hand, Maggie, with a fiddle in hand. And sometimes we’re at a church, sometimes we’re at not churches playing music, but if he can be the first and foremost thing, whatever we’re doing, it’s so edifying and rewarding and you can sense the Holy Spirit nearby
Isaac Crockett: On this program. So many times we talk about some kind of serious things because there are so many serious things going on. We know that we were born in a world that was dark because of sin, and we were born as children of darkness, but God calls us into the light and we are to walk as children of light. And so it is just kind of refreshing to see a young couple like yourselves, young couple depending. Some people would say you’re very young and some of the younger kids would maybe not think you’re as young, but you’ve really got a lot of experience under your belts and a lot of things you’ve done. But just to see that joy that you have. And so many times as Christians, when we have that attractive light and having the answers because of our biblical worldview, because we have Jesus Christ, because the Holy Spirit guides us, we have the word of God.
Isaac Crockett: The goal is that it draws people, not so much to us, but to our savior. And what an encouragement. And I’d like to encourage you listening to find things that are enjoyable around us. And again, they point us to our creator and his love for us and be able to point other people to that as well. So that winsome personality that we have where we’re not always down in the dumps and always complaining, but that we have this positive attitude because know that God is in control. We trust his providence and his sovereignty in our lives. It makes us able to be comfortable with ourselves, who God created us to be and to be at peace and to be patient even in difficult trials that we go through. So Zach and Maggie, just thank you so much for what you’re doing and for being on this program today.
Isaac Crockett: I’m going to close in prayer. Let’s pray. Father, I thank you for your word. I thank you for music and for gifts and for experiences that you give each and every one of us. And I pray today that you would bless the ministry of Getty Music and of Zach and Maggie and of everyone listening to us today, that you would give us the joy of the Lord and that we might sing praises unto your name and enjoy the life you’ve given us. It’s in Jesus name we pray. Amen. Well, again, thank you Zach and Maggie, and on behalf of everybody here at the Stand in the Gap media team from Tim, our behind the guys producer to all my co-hosts and many other people, thank you for listening to Stand in the Gap today. And please, until next time, I pray that you will stand in the gap for truth wherever you are.
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