Encountering God Through Music
A Chat with Shane & Shane
Shane Everett and Shane Barnard have been writing, creating, and singing some of the most impactful and beloved worship songs for the better part of 20 years. The pair have performed as Shane & Shane since their college days, and they haven’t looked back.
They’ve expanded their music career to train other musicians and pastors through The Worship Initiative. The fantastic artists in The Worship Initiative include Davy Flowers, Aaron Williams, John Marc Kohl, and Bethany Barnard.
Shane & Shane had a chat with Jennie on the Made for this podcast; this is the edited interview:
How did this all start for you two?
Shane Everett (SE): I got saved in a bar in Killeen, Texas, after playing in a band. That place looked different than when they turned on the lights to clean it up at night. The Lord used that image to expose my heart. I didn't have language like that at the time, but I went to a church the next morning. The Holy Spirit revealed the truth of the gospel to me in that moment. That was the beginning of a journey that we're still on, and He's kept us for almost 25 years now, which is insane. I’m so grateful!
Shane Barnard (SB): I was also a new believer when we met. I didn't grow up in a Christian home. My dad was kind of a John Wayne character, and my mom was this slightly rebellious Catholic lady from Ohio. We lived in 30 different places and went to 12 different schools. A lot of those places were in the middle of nowhere, so I came to Christ out of the blue.
I got saved in Lubbock, Texas when I was playing football with my buddy Zach. God shut the lights off, the stars came out, and there was a Psalm 8 kind of moment. I didn't have the words, but it was enough to cause me to sneak out to a local youth group where I heard the gospel. I thought it was the easiest sell in the world that I could know God and be forgiven. All that was news to me.
My dad had an old guitar prop that I stole, and I started to play these worship songs with only four chords. Even in college, I would play those four chords and 20 worship songs in living rooms and dorm rooms every Saturday night.
Our apartment was always full of people, who eventually talked me into playing a concert. Both of us were business majors, so we had no business doing anything artsy. I agreed to play this concert, and I borrowed a guitar that plugged in from Shane.
Your faith and all your songs got me through my 20s.
How did you get to a point where you’re discipling people through music?
SB: It’s super easy to boast in Jesus Christ.
SE: It was crazy because we didn't have a grid for Christian music. And so, we decided to sing the Psalms.
SB: God, from that moment, was really taking me on a path of discipleship.
He disciplined me so well in my 20s. It was harsh, but it was very loving and good.
And so, lots of those songs, I was just flopping around and clinging to God's word. I had never read the Bible when I played that concert. I started to read the scriptures that day because when I became a believer, I didn't. I loved Jesus; I wanted to spend my life on Him. But I was just flopping. So, God really did provide a way for me to get into the Bible through singing. And it completely changed my life and who I thought God was.
A lot of your songs have been just scripture. Talk about that conviction. That had to feel a bit like a risk.
SB: There was no plan when we started writing and recording our songs. So, we had fewer concerns about the risk we were taking. We would just go in and record songs in a couple of weeks. We were feeling our way through and just clinging to Him.
SE: We didn’t realize our music had a wide audience outside Texas until we got asked to play at Bethel College in the Twin Cities for the first time. Bethel College has a room called the Great Hall, which has 2500 seats. We thought it was a big space for us because we sold our music on a site for independent bands.
We were so shocked to find that the room was sold out and people knew all the songs. People came up and asked us to sign burned CDs of our songs. That was when it changed a bit. We went from doing youth camps and just driving around to playing in bigger stages and in different places. Then it quickly accelerated to where we were on the road for 250 days a year.
We never thought about it, and I think we got unhealthy because there was no thought.
We just said “yes “to everything. So, we decided to put some rails around this. We started planning days off and getting our own equipment. We focused on a lot of practicalities, but we never really had a specific mission. It always felt like we were reacting more than we were planning.
You are still in the music business doing incredible things. Over 20 years in the music industry is no joke. Has there ever been times where it just didn't make sense anymore, where you wondered if this was still right for you?
SE: Yeah. There has been lots of fighting. I think we've gotten better at fighting, by the grace of God. There were some moments where things come to a head, and you feel like you can't do this anymore. I feel like we've doubled down so many times, and it's just really been the Holy Spirit that has sustained in every way.
Do you feel like there's something about it being the both of you that has made this unique?
SB: For sure. I get to have a brother through it all, and there’s a constant reminder that you're not a big deal. The fact that God used this guy to remind me that He's God and I'm just a tiny goofball doing God's work has been really worth it. And it's been great to see our roles develop over the years. Seeing Shane really shine in his gifts over the last few years has been cool.
You've taken a gift that God's given you, that could have just been used for your life, and you're looking behind you to mentor young worship musicians. How rewarding has that been?
SE: We started The Worship Initiative, an online training tool for worship pastors and musicians to hone their craft and really take the songs they're singing and wrap them in the Word of God. We do devotionals and a bunch of other training content around songs that are informed by the Word of God because we love singing the Word of God.
The Worship Initiative is a training tool.
We realized that we need to stop complaining about the songs that are being written and be more proactive.
We’re really trying to pour into like-minded people and to give people the opportunity to hear and sing truth in a transformative way. That's why we found people who are missionally aligned on the label.
We want to pour into them, help them, and teach them how to create, produce, go on the road, and to serve. We want to teach them how to do what we've done. And so, we don't want them to feel dependent upon us. We want them to be able to make their own way, which is a bit different. We want them to be involved in every aspect of what they do.
You’ve released a song called ‘You've Already Won’ and it's incredible. It's my kind of song too because I appreciate a lot of the slow stuff that you are producing. Talk about this song and where it came from.
SB: There was a week that was just really tough last year. It was on the coattails of the war in Ukraine. My wife's little brother found out he had really severe cancer, and there was a handful of other things in our community. Then a buddy of mine, Brian, sent me a version of that chorus in a voice memo.
The line that got me was “I don't know what you're doing. But I know what you've done.”
That line sent me into the stairwell to just wrap my head around why it's okay to be in the weight of this moment because of all that He has done for me on the cross. And then it kind of morphed into not only do I know what He's done, but I know how this thing ends. And so, that's the back half of the song, talking about the story of God when He came to save us from our sin on the cross. You've already won this battle that we're in, even though we still exist in it.
The future for anyone who puts their faith in Jesus, who receives the free gift of God's love in Christ, is really bright. Maybe not your circumstance in the next 30 minutes or the next three weeks, but your forever is really bright. Let's just remind each other of that, corporately. It's been so powerful. From the moment that it happened, we started singing it everywhere we go, and it's easy to sing. And just celebrating all that He's done and what He's coming to do, how the story ends, has been such a blessing. We're so pumped about it.
You can listen to the song here.
Do you think you'll do this forever?
SE: We're just taking it one day at a time. As long as the Lord calls us to do this, then we'll do it. I think there's always that part of me that just wants to be in the woods, raise deer, and live on a tractor. But the Lord has numbered our days, so we want to declare the glory of God on the earth.
We don't want to live out of preference. We want to live out of obedience to the Lord.
Life with people is hard because people are broken. When you're dealing with people at any capacity, there's always a need to isolate. I think you need that solitude at times to get refueled and press into the Lord before you can reengage. If you don't do that, it really gets hard to be with people. The Lord has called us to be with people. And so, we'll continue to be the hands and feet of Christ.
SB: That's always been our passion. From when I was a new believer of the good news of Jesus. Singing has never been a passion. I just want as many people to know about Jesus as we can tell. And so, music’s the fastest way to get there in the best way.
