Austin and Lindsey Adamec are a Jacksonville, Florida-based husband and wife team who share a passion for gathering people of all walks of life and creating a safe space for intimate worship.
In early 2017, Austin and Lindsey opened up their home for monthly gatherings, inviting people from across their community to come and break bread and worship together. These gatherings have been a life source for many people across the greater Jacksonville area, growing beyond expectations and bringing with it, a stronger sense of community and belonging, a greater passion for the presence of God, and the true definition of church and community.
I caught up with Austin and Lindsey to talk about community worship, creating music as a couple, and the heart behind their album, Sound of the House.
Since you're a husband-and-wife duo, would each of you share a fun fact or a personality quirk about each other? Also, tell us more about how you work together creatively?
Austin: We're kind of hippies. I like growing out my hair and Lindsey has a tie-dye shirt company that's kicking butt right now.
Lindsey: He has dad jokes for days. I'm having a hard time figuring out what isn't quirky about us. As far as how we work together creatively—especially in a songwriting situation—I lead with my feelings.
What does it make me feel like when I read scripture and what's my experience with the Lord? Austin is more theological and scripturally based. He's really involved on the production side of things. I love to produce vocals and help people sing different parts.
When it comes to writing, sometimes I'll lead with melody and he'll lead with a concept or vice versa. We definitely feed off each other and depend on each other a lot. I force him to get more into his feelings and he forces me to get more into the Word.
We come from completely different aspects when we sit in a writing room with someone. We fell in love with getting to be in the presence of Jesus and writing together before we even fell in love with each other. That's been a really cool part of doing ministry together now for almost 13 years—experiences in God's presence and in a writing room. We believe in discipleship and community. And, we write from real-life experiences and what God is teaching us.
You mentioned your love for house worship and your new album is called Sound of the House. Could you share more about what inspired the album title?
Lindsey: We were pastors at a church in town and I would tell Austin that I miss those moments when I was in high school. We would sit by my parent's pool after church because we wanted more of His presence. I'd try to play guitar and my fingers would bleed. We just wanted to worship and go deeper. Then, God convicted my heart: "If you can't find it, start it. Open your front door and give Me your, 'Yes.'"
We just started opening our front door to house hangouts. We've always been the house where our friends hung out around the kitchen table talking about Jesus, sitting on a couch laughing until we cried. We all just hang out and go through life together.
Then, I had a thought: why aren't we picking up a guitar or sitting at the piano worshipping together, allowing the Holy Spirit to move? Around the same time, Austin's parents were leading a Bible study at their house. And, we felt compelled to join the two groups together. Since we combined groups at my in-laws' house, the Lord has just started blowing our minds.
A lot of what we do is about hosting. It's about people coming over and eating together, talking about Jesus, and getting to know one another. At the end of the day, people want a community where they can feel like they're safe and they belong. We lead with scripture or thought and allow people to sit and pray about that. And, from there, we enter God's presence with singing and start to worship.
Austin: We called the album Sound of the House because we knew there was a sound emerging from everyday people and we wanted to capture that. We basically emceed our entire house with the focus to be on everybody's song to the Lord and not have professional singers. We wanted to almost take a back seat as the bandleaders in the grand scheme of things.
Originally, we thought about "Songs of the House," as a title. But, it's bigger than songs. It's everybody bringing their stories to the Lord; it's their lives. Even if you watch some of the live videos of our songs on YouTube, we wanted to capture the moments before or after songs with everybody laughing with each other and having a good time. The idea is to give people a chance to encounter the Lord in a community together.
Lindsey:We wanted to capture that sound because we knew it would unlock the same encouragement and confidence in others to do community to encounter the Lord in their own home. That's our role in all of this. It's not to be the next up-and-coming Christian artist or duo that's so awesome; it's to empower the listener to do community to encounter the Lord at home.
You don't even have to be in a creative community. You don't have to be a worship leader. It's about giving God your 'yes,' from the front door of your home to the front door of your church. It's saying, "Every opportunity I have to be a person marked by God's presence and allow other people to experience You, God, use me as a vessel." I want to empower people that you have enough. Whatever you have, the Lord will fill it.
Sometimes, you can get stuck in comparing yourself to other people. But, those people didn't become who they are by copying what someone else was doing. They were fully obedient to what God was doing. Just be obedient to what God is doing in your community.
The songs have such a raw, intimate, and organic feel, and also a community of voices worshipping together. It's really refreshing. What was the writing and recording process like for Sound of the House?
Lindsey: A big part of the sound for us is capturing the rawness of the room. When we were listening back to the live captures, we didn't want to touch the vocals much. We didn't want to overcorrect anything. We wanted it to be the raw sounds of everyday people pursuing something more.
Austin:We'd get far along with some songs and then bring them into our co-writes with our label, Integrity Music, our writing friends, and, then, with other people. Some of the spontaneous moments were choruses that came from those house worship nights. With "As For Me and My House," that bridge was crafted with songwriter Rhyan Shirley, as well as our worship pastor-songwriter friend in Nashville, Travis Ryan. We were talking about what God was doing and about Psalm 15 where it says, "Don't let us lift up our souls to an idol." And, we started singing, "This is a house where idols fall, this is a house where dead men walk."
So, the songs came from all kinds of places. It just started welling up within us and became fun. We weren't even thinking about a project. We were just enjoying life together and the testimonies just started pouring out of us.
What's your favorite song on the album and why?
Austin: There's a video story [from "Can't Deny"] about Matt and Kelsey Cassman on our YouTube page. Matt had a mental breakdown and left his family, so Kelsey started praying. And, she got a powerful word over her life that God was going to restore this relationship that seemed broken, and the man that said it to her didn't even know her at all.
So, she keeps believing for three months and, all of a sudden, her husband Matt shows up at one of our house gatherings. He says he had this encounter with the Lord when he felt a warm hand on his back. He fell to his knees and said, "I can't deny it anymore. I can't deny God's presence anymore."
I couldn't stop thinking about that line, so Lindsey and I started crafting these thoughts about how God pushes through the lies of the enemy that tell us we don't have a shot at reconciliation or restoration. God wants to wreck those preconceptions with a new perspective of how crazy His love really is and how much He cares for us.
What's next for you and how can we be praying for you?
Austin:Sound of the House, Volume 2 is coming soon. We're finishing up and writing for it and planning what that's going to look like. Our family has a motorcycle dealership, so we've been meeting for worship nights socially distanced on the second floor of a Harley shop. We're seeing even more people wanting to come to that.
As we start to come out of the COVID-19 pandemic, we're praying about what our gatherings will look like: having people register, and having different worship leader friends from around the city and from other churches lead from different houses. There are just so many different outlets that we're praying that God would open the door and give us revelation as we come through this COVID-19 season.
NRT contributor Jasmin Patterson is a lifelong fan of Christian music who is passionate about helping others connect with Christ. She lives in Kansas City where she serves in college ministry and runs a blog to help seekers and believers discover and live biblical Christianity.
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