After a three-year departure, Audio Adrenaline lead singer Mark Stuart and bassist Will McGinniss return with some of their favorite emerging voices of worship as the Know Hope Collective, a ground-breaking initiative that combines worship music with stories of hope and inspiration.

According to Stuart and McGinniss, the Know Hope Collective will be an ever-changing group of musicians from a variety of backgrounds who come together to create worship music and share their unique experiences and testimonies.

“The Know Hope Collective is driven from an emerging style of worship and a place of vulnerability,” explains Stuart. “We go on a journey together through the good, bad and ugly to the redemptive side.”

Stuart says the Know Hope Collective grew out their own cathartic experience of sharing life stories with friends and church members. “We’d meet at Will’s horse farm around a campfire and talk vulnerably with each other about our successes as well as hardships. It was a time of healing and redemption as we discovered the evidence of God’s hand in our lives like never before and the importance of telling one’s story.”

So the duo’s pastor urged them to take their story-telling on the road, creating an intimate and hope-filled night of music, testimony and worship with friends. And the Know Hope Collective was born.

The Know Hope Collective Tour launches today, June 3, as the group appears with the Newsboys in Kingston, Ontario. It continues through the year with dates across the country including stops in California, Washington, Texas, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, etc. (Additional information and an updated tour schedule is available at http://knowhopecollective.com/.)

The Collective’s first album, Know Hope, is slated to release this fall. It is an intimate pairing of songs and spoken word that plumbs the depths of McGinniss and Stuart’s chart-topping heyday and post-band revelations.

“This first project was birthed out of the failure I went through being a singer who lost his voice,” Stuart says. “But the next one might be on missional living, orphan care or clean water, whatever God is leading us to.”

For Know Hope, Stuart speaks far more than he sings now, and shares the microphone with Julia Ross (of popular Disney group Everlife), David Leonard (former Jackson Waters vocalist and current touring member of NEEDTOBREATHE), and 2010 BMI Christian Music Award-winning Songwriter of the Year Jason Walker. The group introduces new cuts, including “Attention” and “Jealous God,” and reworks some Audio A hits like “Ocean Floor,” “The Good Life,” and “Hands and Feet” into fresh meditative expressions of worship.

“All of the spoken portions also have background music, and one story itself is over 14 minutes long,” says McGinniss. “So, it’s a very unique, content-rich experience.”

“Music and testimony have always been an integral part of how the Church worships,” adds John Coleman, Integrity Music’s vice president/general manager. “So, we are excited to partner with Will and Mark to develop Know Hope, which we believe will change lives and help people connect to God in a new and fresh way.”

Matthew West spoke with our own Mike Powers recently about his new album project, “The Story of Your Life,” Operation Christmas Child and the center of God’s will for our lives.

You can order your album here!

Matthew West is a Contemporary Christian musician from Nashville, Tennessee. He has released four studio albums and is known for his number-one hits “More“, “You Are Everything” and “The Motions“. He was nominated for five Dove Awards in 2005, two of which were for his major label debut album Happy.

First starting out as an independent musician in the late 1990s, he released three independent albums before signing onto Universal South Records. With the release of his Dove Award-winning debut album Happy (2003) came the success of his first radio single “More” which stayed at number one on Christian AC charts for nine weeks and received two Dove Award nominations. His second record History (2005) was followed by a 2006 re-release of the originally independent album Sellout. West’s third studio album Something to Say (2008) was released in January of the following year and also enjoyed chart success with number one hits “You Are Everything” and “The Motions“.

In addition to his main solo career, West has worked as a songwriter for many Christian musicians and groups such as Point of Grace, Mandisa and Natalie Grant as well as mainstream country acts Rascal Flatts and Billy Ray Cyrus.

For more information about Matthew West click here.

Tenth Avenue North, a Christian band out of Florida, is offering their hit single “By Your Side” for free for signing up for their email alerts (you can opt out at any time).

By Your Side is an athenm of hope and encouragment during the trouble times our world is facing. It’s strong lyrics remind us that no matter what happens, God is by your side:

And I’ll be by your side
Wherever you fall
In the dead of night
Whenever you call
And please don’t fight
These hands that are holding you
My hands are holding you

Click here to sign up and download your free song.