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While many music groups are hitting the stage on Saturday nights, Phillips, Craig & Dean are hitting the sack. Randy Phillips and Dan Dean need to be fresh on Sunday mornings to preach sermons to the congregations they pastor, while Shawn Craig, a music minister, is needed to lead worship at his church. Since their 1991 debut, they've blended their callings as pastors and musicians-all while churning out 18 No. 1 singles and selling almost 2 million albums. And lately, they've been busier than ever: Craig has worked on a Masters of Divinity degree, Phillips has hosted a television program and discovered new songwriting talent, and Dean has helped nurse his wife, Becky, back to health after a near-fatal car accident fractured her neck and back. PCD has also also recorded their tenth studio project, Let the Worshippers Arise, produced by Nathan Nockels (Watermark, Point of Grace, downhere, Charlie Hall), the third installment in the group's worship trilogy, after Let My Words Be Few and Let Your Glory Fall. We recently spoke with two-thirds of the group to catch up on things.

Shawn Craig (left), Dan Dean, and RandyPhillips—still recording and still pastoring.

How do you manage to work as full time pastors, write and record music and go on tour?

Randy Phillips It is definitely complicated juggling all of those plates. The main plate is our families. I have a 16-year-old and a 2-year-old. It's very important to me that my family comes first, then church, then Phillips, Craig & Dean. It has to stay in that order or things get out of balance.

How often do you tour?

Phillips We're out at least every other week.

How do your music ministry and your jobs as pastors enhance each other?

Phillips Being a pastor affects what we do on the road so much. We come from a different perspective than someone who just does concerts full time. We view the concert audience like our own congregation. People come who are struggling with marriages, whose children are away from God or addicted, who have bipolar disorder, who are under severe financial strain. For that two-hour window, we see ourselves as ministers who can bring people into the presence of God through music and help them put their burdens aside.

I believe that when people walk out of our concert, they view their lives differently than when they walked in. That can only come through being a pastor.

Why did you decide to use so much original or lesser-known cover material on your new album as opposed to just singing your favorite worship songs?

Phillips The formula that has worked for us has been to do songs that people recognize coupled with some original songs. On Let My Words Be Few, our first worship album, there were so many familiar worship songs we loved, so we coupled those with some original songs. On the next one, Let Your Glory Fall, the worship songs were possibly not as well known, but people were singing them in the church. With this album, the worship songs are definitely not as well known.

The unique thing about us as three pastors, in the 14 years we've been in Christian music, we've been able to warm up to an audience who may have thought that praise-and-worship choruses were a little too cutting edge. We've been able to make some of these songs a little more mainstream to the churches that may not have been singing these kinds of songs before. We've been a bridge from our audience to the churches themselves.

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