St. Luke Lutheran Church has had a worship team for many years. Legend has it that the band was formed by Mark and Holly Eastman, Holly’s sister Heidi Jantz and Steve Iverson. Over the years personnel came and went, with a constantly changing stream of instrumentalists and singers.

The first significant step down the path they now trod was made in August 2003. A Music retreat was held at Camp Lutherhaven south of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. About half of the Worship Team band attended. Scott Diettert, Steve Iverson, Dale Fitch and Tom Whalen were all in the same cabin, Little Otter. Steve was the leader of the retreat and was looking for some songs to sing at morning and evening prayers. When he couldn’t find anything in the hymnal, Tom suggested that they just write their own.

Fueled by Scott’s Long Island ice teas, they ended up writing four pieces that weekend. Later that month, one of the songs, “Ascribe to the Lord (Psalm 29)” was played for the congregation. With the attendance down due to summer vacations, there wasn’t much response to the music. The idea of playing original pieces was shelved for a while.

Then on Pentecost 2004, the band played Tom’s “Come Holy Spirit.” It was well received by the congregation and they were encouraged to continue presenting original material. Over the next 18 months, 12 additional pieces would be presented, several on multiple occasions. Some were adapted for congregational song, some had arrangements that continued to evolve. The creative muse and the Holy Spirit were hard at work.

In November 2004, we were given a life changing shock as we almost lost our drummer Peggy Larson to a life threatening situation that required emergency surgery. We were given a second shock during July 2005 when Peggy's job of eight years ended and she needed to move from Spokane to South Dakota. The final blow occurred a week later when our good friend Chris Tollackson was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and was given only months to live. Those three events started everyone talking about extending the band’s ministry and doing things we've always wanted to do.

In August 2005, there was another music retreat at Lutherhaven and we spent a great deal of time discussing our future. How many more times in life were we going to be playing with a group of musicians that meshed together so well? How many more times in life were we going to be given the combination of creative talents that were present in the band? One of the ideas that was tossed around was a CD project using our original material. Another was the idea of taking our ministry beyond playing once a month for St. Luke.

Ideas were tossed around that fall, and over Christmas break 2005, Tom compiled a demo CD of 18 songs for the band to consider. Rehearsals started in January with a goal of recording over Washington’s Birthday weekend. Unfortunately Peggy was snowed in with a blizzard in South Dakota that weekend, and a second attempt was planned for the first weekend in April.

On April 6th, we received news that Peggy was once again stuck in South Dakota, this time due to golf ball sized hail in Minnepolis. Undeterred, the band decided to press on with the initial recording with the hope of overdubbing Peggy's parts in May. She finally arrived on May 13 and over the next week recorded her parts, corrected numerous rhythmic errors, and added some fresh artistic insight to the creative process.

Recording was completed six months to the day we began, Oct 7th. Post-production work was completed on Oct 21st. Our CD was officially released on Dec 7, 2006. Thanks for keeping us and our ministry in your prayers.