This is the Part Two of GospelFlava.com's exclusive interview with members participating in Commissioned's reunion October 26, 2001 live recording and concert (see Part One).


So now that the Commissioned Reunion recording has come and gone, we all can get to praying that the tour will happen, if only to enable all of the poor souls that missed it, to partake.

But in the meantime the guys will get back to doing what they've been doing for sometime now, and that's continuing to minister as individuals on diverse levels.

"I've gone back to complete Bible school and was licensed and ordained in 2000. Though I've been preaching since 1990, I always felt like it was the cart before the horse. So I finally went back to school and did my time! I graduated magna cum laude from Word of Faith Bible Training Center. It’s been one the best things I've done outside of being in Commissioned. I wish I had done it earlier," says Karl Reid.

For Reid, the only member who claims to have never missed a Commissioned beat, continuity is king.

"I've been there for everything. I've been on every Commissioned album, been to every rehearsal and every trip. I'm the only person that can boast that he's been here since the beginning! Even Mitchell has missed several times because of his couple of car accidents", recalls Reid mischeviously.

God has proven to be as faithful to Reid as he has been to the ministry.

"I’ve never had a day job since I've been in Commissioned. And God has supplied every need. I've only done two things, and that has been being a minister in Commissioned, and being a minister as a speaker. I worked a job for a minute in shipping and receiving at Kmart, but I left that job and two weeks later we did our first Commissioned concert ever."

Marvin Sapp has also kept busy with speaking engagements.

"I've been averaging two-hundred plus dates a year for my spoken word ministry. As far as musically, I'm set to release my latest project I Believe which is due out in first quarter next year [on Word Entertainment]."

But surely there will be some juggling to do once the Reunion project drops. Of course everyone is hoping for a tour.

"We'll see. It would be great, but at this point everyone is just happy to be together again,” says Sapp.

Reid concurs, "February will be the Twenty Year Anniversary of Commissioned. I believe it's God's timing that we're doing what we're doing now and that we'll be able to have this album released at this time."

Musically, the group goes on, both collectively and individually. Of course Fred Hammond has been busy snatching up territory, making his mark for praise and worship in the marketplace. Others have been working on solo projects, and not surprisingly, pretty much staying in the same vein.

Mitchell Jones elaborates, "I've been working on my praise and worship album. This experience with Commissioned continues to be rewarding, but I have not been able to really express what's in my heart as Mitchell Jones."

And what's in there is a heart of praise.

"Praise and worship is such a different statement. The [solo] project is titled Beyond the Veil and that's exactly where God wants us. God said that a time would come when we would draw nigh to Him with our lips and honor Him with our mouths, but

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our heart would be far from Him. Now He is saying 'I enjoy when you say those things and honor me, but I want more.' He is saying He wants us to come closer. You know you can give God praise and your heart never be in it. That's why we speak of giving a sacrifice of praise even when you don't feel like it. But when it comes to worship it deals with the heart —a heart in position and turned toward God. God is calling me to call people more into worship."

No question that the move continues to be more and more in this praise and worship direction, but how did we come to this place? Surely the saints of old knew Him, but why didn't their music focus so much on praise and worship?

Jones answers, "I think it's where you are in your experience with God. My old songs 'No More Loneliness' and 'Hold Me' were songs about where I was spiritually at the time. Where I'm at now is more a position of rest, where the work is finished. So a lot of my songs are pointing people to rest in the knowledge that you don't have to work to be healed or to be prosperous, because God has already prospered us and given us all things pertaining to life and godliness. By His stripes we WERE healed —not gonna be healed. He told us to call those things as though they WERE —so it's finished!”

“It's really about your experience. It's about your heart diligently seeking God. God gives grace to the humble. The more you seek His face, the more you study His word, and the more you praise Him —you will desire Him. When you have that one desire that David spoke of, God is going to give you more revelation."

Keith Staten could not help but agree.

"I grew up in church all my life. We sang good songs and fired it up, but I don't know why the understanding of true worship as we now know it wasn't there. But I've been seeing it evolve. Certain churches or cultures may have had it —I don't know. I think we in the Black church were just concentrating on celebrating Him and getting our dance on. And there's nothing wrong with that. We continue to grow."

That growth has taken Staten smack in the middle of his calling.

"Up until now, I've been traveling strong off of Worship In the House and Glory In the House. My thing for the last five years —though it's something that's always been in me, but God just had to reveal it more and more —is that I love to worship. I'm not really content in a concert unless before it's all over people are forgetting about me on the stage and all the focus is on God."

That has definitely been a certain development, understanding what that's all about.

"With Commissioned there are so many testimonies from people. We have always had anointed lyrics, though it wasn't praise and worship as we now know it. There were always moments in concerts where the Holy Spirit would just move in, we just didn't have a clear understanding of what praise and worship was.”

“But as I broke off solo, I started adding sections of just praise and worship to my concerts and it would take over the whole concert! So a friend commented once that the whole P&W thing WAS who I am. My whole spirit is worship, and he said 'Keith, man you don't need to put worship in there [in your concerts]. That needs to be IT!' And he didn’t have to convince me. That's what was in my spirit and the lights just came on when he said it."

So after journeying through the Integrity "In the House" series, Staten is looking forward to his upcoming solo project on his own Abba Communications label.

"Right now I'm involved in working on my new project, a live recording that I'm doing January 11, 2002 in Columbus, Ohio at Columbus Christian Center. It's still praise and worship, but it will have a different spin. It's all original material and I'm excited that I'll be working again with Israel Houghton and New Breed (see album review). There will be everything from big sets with live strings and brass to really intimate songs where it's just me and an acoustic guitar. One of the things we are learning is that praise and worship is not really a sound.”

“In fact, in certain circles or certain crowds I don't even identify what it's called, I just let them hear it and decide what they want to call it. Praise and worship music is just vertical music —lyrics directly to God. Instead of talking to each other about God, you're talking to God. It's not really a sound, it can be as funky or classical as you want it. That's what I'm excited about with this new project —that it's not something people can put a finger on and say it's this or that."

Jones sums up what the men of Commissioned do best, as he talks about his personal order from God.

"So now He has called me to exhort men and women to love God with all their heart and soul and to express it wherever they go. When you rise up, when you lie down, when you talk to your children, let it be an statement of how you feel about Him. It's a call to worship Him."