I know that I can not rely

On anything

Less than faith

As long as my heart is beating

This is all I’m dreaming of

To live completely in You

 - Where You Lead Me

     One of founding guitarist Mike Scheuchzer’s best days was when he told his boss at Blockbuster Video that he’s quitting to tour with a worship band he joined.

     For many who think that MercyMe’s success was an overnight venture with their scorching hit, I Can Only Imagine, a good look at the history of the band reveals a 6 year journey of independent releases and hundreds of summer camp appearances.  Then Imagine broke loose.  Looking back, Mike knows that the memories of trials, tribulations, hardships and struggles were all from God, who opened the doors for the band from the very beginning.  

     “We always thought we were a praise and worship band and we didn’t really have a place outside the church,” Mike tells Apostles That Rock.  “We thought we’d always be this camp band, and then God gave us bigger audiences and opportunities that kept coming up.  We kept getting busier and kept seeing His fingerprints all over what we were doing.

     Then Imagine hit mainstream radio and it literally caught us off guard.  We were confused by it at first because we thought we don’t fit in mainstream radio and didn’t understand why that would happen but you know in anything that God’s laid before us we just try to be faithful with it, it seemed like it was a new audience and a new opportunity to share the message we feel that He’s given us to share.

      We were living together for a long time as a band before we achieved national success.  We had a beat up old bus, a 1975 Silver Eagle.  We bought it from a Southern Gospel group called The Weatherfords.  They were in the process of converting it and they had taken all the seats out of it.  They put fiber flooring down and fiber walls on the sides.  We were doing about 75 dates a year, thinking we’d have time to convert it, and the year that we bought it we literally did 200 dates that year which meant 300 days on the road, and so we were nowhere near prepared to work on it.

     We had bought some mattresses from a friend of ours who had a mattress company.  The double door that swung open, it had not a stitch of air conditioning or heat on it, had the little windows that popped open at the top, that was all the airflow we could get.  We would literally drive down the road with that door open to get some airflow in the summertime. 

     And in the winter we’d travel with a propane heater like this big propane tank that we had bungee cords up in the front to help open the door.  We should be dead basically, we should not be alive right now; we should be dead or up in flames on the side of the road somewhere.

Surrounded by Your glory,

What will my heart feel

Will I dance for You Jesus

Or in awe of You be still

Will I stand in Your presence

Or to my knees will I fall

Will I sing hallelujah,

Will I be able to speak at all

- I Can Only Imagine

     We weren’t an overnight success but I think we had a growth pattern going so beyond that we knew that it didn’t come from us.  We recorded Imagine on a 1999 independent record that did well for an independent record but as for it doing what it did, you know that wasn’t us, it had nothing to do with us or it would have happened in 1999 when we first recorded it.  Our intentions of making it happen it would have happened a long time ago.  It was obvious when God wanted it to happen. 

     We literally were a camp worship band a year or two before we were being played on mainstream radio between J-Lo and LL Cool J’s duet and Christina Agulera’s Beautiful song you know.  It wasn’t us; it had nothing to do with us.” 

     And as God’s timing is always perfect, the results of that song paved the way for Our Lord to do work in many others through that tune.

     “I know one girl in particular who had given up on faith,” Mike says.  “She just gave up on Christ completely and everything to do with faith and she was driving down the road one day and the song came on the mainstream pop station that she was listening to and it just completely hit her and caught her off guard.  In her email she said she was just weeping on the side of the road.  The email actually came from the radio station because she had emailed them, she was a graphic designer and she had offered them free web design, she wanted to upgrade their website and do everything they could because they played a song that changed her life.    

     A good friend of ours is a pastor in Oklahoma City and they got a phone call from a woman who pulled over on the side of the road and looked up at the sign in front of her and it was an advertisement for a church, so she called the number to the church and said, I don’t know what’s going on but I just heard this song, and all hell’s breaking loose, and they sent out a pastor to go meet with her.  She ended up getting saved and being involved in the church.  We hear several stories like that, stories of secular DJ’s in particular who have changed their act after hearing the song.”