Pastor, worship leader, songwriter, and communicator Joseph Anthony brings a deeply personal testimony to his new 17-track live album, YES LORD. Featuring Tonya Baker, Jabari Johnson, Kendall McDowell, and his son Zachary Anthony, the project explores surrender, resilience, and God's faithfulness through songs shaped by both ministry and lived experience. Its current radio single, "Grateful," carries particular weight for an artist who was diagnosed with heart failure at 27 and continues to find gratitude in survival as well as triumph. In this interview, the founding pastor of Ignite Church in The Colony, Texas, discusses his unexpected journey from science to ministry, the four-hour worship gathering behind the recording, and how an album about surrender prepared him for a costly yes of his own.
Q: Joseph, for readers who may be discovering you for the first time, who are you as an artist, pastor, and worship leader?
My name is Joseph. Born on Christmas. I didn't really have much of a choice. Doing "the Lord's work" almost felt inevitable.
I'm a fourth-generation pastor, worship leader, songwriter, and communicator who has spent most of my life serving the local church. My life has been a song orchestrated by God. My goal is singular: I want every encounter with my ministry to leave people with a clearer picture of who God is.
Today, I serve as the founding pastor of Ignite Church in The Colony, Texas, while continuing to write, record, and lead worship anywhere God sends me.
What I didn't realize while recording YES LORD was that God was using my pen to create a soundtrack for my life...as testimony to what He has done and as a foretelling of what was to come. This is music born out of real life, real church, real questions, and a very real relationship with God.
Q: You have spent more than two decades serving in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. How has your journey from the pulpit to the worship platform and recording studio shaped the kind of music you create today?
I started preaching at 12 and became my church's primary worship leader at 14, so the pulpit and the worship platform have grown up together in me. The studio came later, but somewhere in between was another important part of my formation: I became a scientist.
I studied biology and epidemiology and honestly thought science was where I'd land. Looking back, though, I can see how all of these seemingly divergent spaces were forming me at the same time. Science taught me to ask questions, examine evidence, and resist easy answers. Pastoring taught me to sit with people when there are no easy answers. Worship taught me how to give those people language for what they believe while they wait.
That intersection has made me a more compassionate preacher and a more thoughtful songwriter. When you've sat with someone through grief or crisis on Friday, you're less likely to stand before them on Sunday with condemnation. You understand that sometimes the person lifting their hands is celebrating, and sometimes those lifted hands are all they have left.
I think you can hear that throughout YES LORD. Songs like "You Don't Fail," "Miracles," and "You Got Help" sound like prayers and testimonies because they are. They were born from ministering to real people, walking through real circumstances, and needing language for a faith that has to survive real life.
Ultimately, I wanted to write songs the church could sing. Songs approachable enough that people across cultures and generations could hear their own faith represented in the music. I wanted people to hear these songs and recognize something they've prayed, something they've survived, something they believe about God, or even something they're still trying to believe.
For me, the pastor, worship leader, songwriter, and recording artist aren't competing identities. They've learned how to serve people together.
Q: YES LORD is an ambitious 17-track live album. Why was it important to record these songs in a live worship setting, and what happened in the room that listeners may not fully hear on the recording?
YES LORD was much more than a recording session. At 12 noon on a Saturday in March, about 600 people gathered for what became a four-hour worship experience. And once we started, we never stopped to start a song over. Whatever happened became part of the experience.
The record opens with The Prophecy, a word I received about the impact of my music and the idea of recording it. There's an overture, reprises, and other moments that help tell the story because we wanted the listener to experience something of the journey, not just hear a collection of songs.
There was a chemistry in the room that I don't think we could have recreated in a studio. The presence of God was tangible...people were bowing, weeping, giving thanks, and simply honoring God.
Of course, we couldn't put four hours on an album. Some beautiful moments had to be left behind for the sake of the listener, but we were intentional about not editing the life out of it. We wanted to preserve as much of that day's presence, response, and spontaneity as we could.
It was a beautiful day. And I hope that what we released still carries the essence of what God was expressing to us in that room.
Q: The album's title represents saying yes to God before every question has been answered. Can you recall an "uncomfortable yes" in your own life that changed the direction of your ministry?
Absolutely. One of the biggest was walking away from the security of what I knew to step into church planting. To be honest, I never wanted to plant a church, and I didn't see myself as a church planter.
I carry a legacy of ministry and had served as an associate pastor for years, but I loved the place and the people God had given me the privilege of serving. I was genuinely content, and I could easily see myself doing that for the rest of my life.
Two Sundays after the YES LORD recording, I preached a message called "The Uncomfortable Yes." The irony is that while I was preparing that sermon, God had already begun stirring me toward what was next.
As I continued listening to the music and working through the post-recording process, God lit a fire in me that would eventually become Ignite Church.
Looking back, YES LORD became far more prophetic than I understood when we recorded it. I thought I was making a record about saying yes to God. I didn't realize God was preparing to ask me for another yes of my own. My yes wasn't merely uncomfortable; it was disruptive and costly, but I wouldn't take it back.
Q: "Grateful" celebrates God's faithfulness not only in triumph but also in survival. How did your serious health challenges shape this song, and what does gratitude mean to you after walking through that season?
I was diagnosed with idiopathic cardiomyopathy and heart failure at 27 years old. At the time, my heart function was around 10 percent. I had studied cardiovascular disease epidemiology in graduate school, so I understood enough of the science to know how serious the diagnosis was.
Fifteen years later, I'm still here. I'm a husband. I'm a father of three. I'm preaching, singing, planting a church, and continuing to believe God for the miracle He promised me.
So gratitude means something different to me now. I'm grateful for victories, but I'm also grateful for valleys. I'm grateful for the days when the miracle looked like improvement, and for the days when the miracle simply looked like survival.
I've learned that God is sovereign enough to bring you out of something, but He is also strong enough to sustain you while you're still walking through it.
That is the testimony behind "Grateful."
Q: Your son Zachary joins you on "Grateful (Reprise)." What did sharing that moment with him mean to you personally, and what do you sense God calling you to say yes to next?
My son was born with the gift of music. I could literally hear harmonic intervals when he cried, and as he's grown, he's always had remarkable pitch and a natural sensitivity to music. By the age of three, he could memorize orchestral soundtracks and sing along with them.
So when the vamp for "Grateful" came to me..."Grateful for all You've done, for my family and my home"...I thought about the words of Psalm 145: "One generation shall praise Your works to another."
And I realized there was no better way to give the next generation language for gratitude than to let my son have that moment. And he owned it!
So, when I hear Zachary on the reprise, I don't just hear my child singing on his father's record. I hear inheritance. I hear a legacy of gratitude that I have the privilege of passing to my son, my nieces and nephews, the children God has placed in my life, and generations I may never meet.
That's one of my deepest prayers for this music: that long after this moment has passed, these songs will still give people language to access the presence of God...language to remember what He has done and declare His faithfulness to the generation coming behind them.
As for what God is asking me to say yes to next, I think it's exactly that: legacy. Building something that outlives the moment...through my family, through Ignite Church, through the music, and through whatever doors God chooses to open next.
I'm learning that my yes isn't only about where God is taking me. It's also about what my yes makes possible for those coming behind me.
