Last spring, members of Orange Lutheran’s Creative Worship team stepped beyond the familiar setting of leading campus Praise & Prayer to experience music-making from a whole new perspective.

During a visit to Concordia University Irvine’s professional recording studio in the Borland-Manske Center, these Lancers had the opportunity to record “Child of Love” by We The Kingdom and bring it to life through a music video, a project that gave the students a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to turn an idea into a finished musical production.

As OLu’s student-led worship team, the Creative Worship program provides students the chance to lead a weekly chapel service during the school’s Daily Gathering, as well as serve the local community through chapel services at partner elementary schools.

Each year, the curriculum-based class features an honors program that offers more advanced leadership opportunities. As part of that program, 11 students from last year’s honors cohort, including vocalists, keyboardists, guitar players and drummers, were welcomed to CUI’s campus by Director of Commercial Music, Steve Young.

OLu Worship Arts Director Karissa Raebel and assistant teacher Mason Wong are both CUI alumni and former students of Young. Their relationship with the professor of music, along with OLu’s longstanding connection with the university, helped make the visit to the world-class recording studio possible.

“We still have a great relationship with our professors there, and so they were gracious enough to extend the studio for us to be able to bring our students down for the day and experience that environment,” said Raebel.

Senior Lancer and vocalist Rebecca Yu, a fourth-year member of Creative Worship and second-year program co-president, was excited for the opportunity to explore the production side of music.

“I was really intrigued because it's very different from being in Praise and Prayer and rehearsing for a live performance,” said Yu.

“Being in a studio and being with my friends, it was just so great to learn how many different components go into something like this.”

The students were able to rehearse ahead of the visit and received some guidance in their preparations from Colombian singer-songwriter and CUI alumna Majo Insuasti.

Once at CUI, Yu and her fellow students stepped into a state-of-the-art facility designed by renowned architect and acoustician John Storyk, founding partner of WSDG in New York City. Storyk’s work has created some of the world’s most acclaimed recording studios for artists such as Jimi Hendrix, Adele and Alicia Keys.

Unlike a live worship setting where the students perform together, the session followed a professional recording format, with the musicians and vocalists recording their parts separately, working from individual sound booths to create the finished track.

“It's a completely different experience,” said Raebel. “It's very technical in the studio, and you have to have a completely different mindset going in there. It's much less of a live performance, where you read the room and you react to that. This is much more technical in that you want to create as close to a perfect product as you can, because you want it to be preserved for years to come.”

A longtime favorite among the OLu community, “Child of Love” was a natural choice for the Creative Worship team to bring into the studio. CUI’s full-time recording engineer coordinated the production on site, while Wong handled the audio post-production and OLu Creative Content Manager Adam Hemingway completed the video production.

For Yu, the experience was a reminder of the lasting value of classic worship songs and the importance of striving for excellence as a worship leader.

“I think it taught me that technicality is not a bad thing,” said Yu. “Doing the most you can do to achieve a level of perfection is a form of worship, as long as your goal is to do the best to your ability, while giving all of the glory to God.”

In addition to the recording session, Young, whose background is in the music business, took time to share insights with the students about pursuing music as a college major and the opportunities available through a career in the music industry. His conversations with the students reflected his original vision for the six-year-old studio as a “bridge builder” between students and the professional music world.

“Any time we can expose students to that process, I think it starts to open up the world of possibility for them,” said Young. “Some of them may never do music beyond high school, and others might consider music as a profession when they wouldn’t have before.”

The CUI visit also gave the students the opportunity to record a second song, “Firm Foundation,” which was selected as OLu’s theme song for the 2026-27 academic year. The finished music video will be released later this fall.

Raebel was impressed with how well the students adapted to the new environment, and after receiving a return invitation from Young for next year, she is grateful for OLu’s partnership with CUI and the opportunity to give students a firsthand look at some of the ways they can use their gifts to lead and serve through worship.

“I think it's just so rare to have these kinds of experiences offered in high school,” said Raebel. “Many students don't get this until they're in college, or even beyond, and so my goal is to always prepare them for that next step…I'm just so thankful to Concordia for making this possible for us.”