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Eyeliner? Spinning drum kits? Gargantuan inflatable domes? Bell bottoms and disco balls? Shoveling elephant dung in traveling circuses? To an extent, all of the above has defined the newsboys throughout their acclaimed musical trajectory. A couple of years ago, however, their musical vision shifted drastically-mostly due to the band's changing priorities, but partly, says frontman Peter Furler, due to pressure from record label execs who are, in his words, sometimes "greedy." At any rate, the "new" newsboys had discovered worship, not just the type that sells records, but that changes lives. Much of that passion-reflected in their latest album, devotion (Sparrow)-stems from Furler's spiritual awakening, one that has motivated him to reassess his priorities and realize that rock 'n' roll is but ephemeral, and that kingdom-building is the only thing that truly lasts.

Peter Furler (center) leads the newsboys into a new chapter of their career.

Before we talk about your new album, devotion, let's backtrack to Adoration, an album that was critically panned but was your fastest selling record ever. How do you think that came to be?

Peter Furler That's tough to answer, because I don't know the critics, and I have higher priorities than reading about my music. Should I read about myself or about other great men? I don't know what the reviews said, but … the reason we recorded Adoration is because there's this sort of "worship movement."

I began to get convicted about music. God would say to me, "Tonight you're in this arena. How will you lead my people to worship?" And I thought, That's not my job. I'm an entertainer. But all the talk of music you see in the Bible is not, "I play rock 'n' roll and I like it," but "Holy, holy, holy!" And so I thought, What's stopping me from doing this? Certainly not God; he wanted me to do this. I think it's hard to get critics to understand that.

I don't think critics disliked it because it was a bad album per se, but because they knew what the newsboys were capable of. Adoration, in many ways, didn't measure up to previous newsboys output.

Furler And they may be right. I guess I just don't want to make the mistake of regurgitating what we've done before. Right now I'm working on some songs that are more in the Take Me to Your Leader vein, and it's because I feel like that now. When you sit down to write a song or a story, you gotta let it tell itself. Like when I wrote "He Reigns," I didn't want it to be about the chords or the production. I wanted people to forget about us as the newsboys. I just wanted them to worship God with it. I think one critic called it "the worst song we'd ever written," but I don't regret having written it.

Be honest: Was Adoration really the newsboys' idea, or the label's?

Furler I'll be honest. At first it was, "Oh, why don't the newsboys do a worship record?" I had to really battle with that. I knew why they [Sparrow Records] wanted it. But then it came to a point where I was like, "Who would not be wanting me to do this?" That's when I had that epiphany. I could listen to the critics of the worship movement, or I could dig into the Word and see how Paul sang hymns while in jail. I just had to admit that I had to stop trying to be hip and relevant, like most of Christian music is. When all is said and done, as the book of Revelation says, all that's left is "Holy, holy, holy." Rock and roll will not be there.

But there was some pressure [from the label]. In fact, there were some big fights, I'll put it to you that way. I didn't want to do this just to sell records. But what else would stop me from doing this? So I wrote "It is You," and I started to see the effect of it, not commercially, but on people's lives. And that's when I started thinking, "Man, I need to explore a little bit more." So in many ways, Adoration felt like our first record. I didn't want to call it Adoration: The Worship Album, just Adoration. Period. It was clear what it was about. Without naming any names, it was the same thing with devotion. They wanted to call it, devotion: The Worship Record. That took a big fight.

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