Petra founder and guitarist Bob Hartman and longtime lead singer John Schlitt are looking back at more than five decades of Christian rock while looking ahead to a new movie and the band’s first studio album in 20 years.
“I don’t want to limit God on anything,” Schlitt said near the end of the CCM Magazine interview, which was published Aug. 13. The conversation covered BEYOND BELIEF, a coming-of-age movie built around Petra’s music, and HOPE, the group’s new 10-song album.
BEYOND BELIEF’s official website describes the story as a journey set in the 1980s about Andy, a teenage rocker who dreams of making it big while struggling with the loss of his father. The movie follows Andy as he wrestles with ambition, faith, and the possibility that God’s plan for his life may be bigger than his own.
“There’s never been a movie about Christianity with young people in the ’80s,” Hartman recalled when explaining the original pitch for the project. BEYOND BELIEF is not a Petra biography or a traditional musical, but the band’s songs, merchandise, references and even a cameo by Schlitt and Hartman run through the story.
The cameo gave the veteran musicians a chance to revisit the church culture that once viewed Christian rock with suspicion. The band members joke about that history in the movie, but the real story behind the joke is serious: Petra had to persuade Christian audiences that electric guitars and a Christian message could share the same stage.
Hartman said anti-rock sentiment still came from church pulpits during Petra’s early years, while youth leaders often welcomed the band because they wanted contemporary music that could reach young people.
That resistance also shaped the band’s early distribution. Christian bookstores offered limited shelf space, and some retailers refused to carry Petra’s records altogether. “Only the bravest would put a Petra record in their store,” Hartman said, remembering a time when fans had to search for the music instead of finding it everywhere.
Decades later, those once-controversial songs have become family memories. Schlitt recalled a grandfather apologizing because he had not allowed his children to listen to Petra, then deciding to bring his grandchildren to the band’s music after discovering how much he enjoyed it.
“This is why we do what we do,” Schlitt said, describing the stories fans shared during Petra’s extended 50th anniversary celebration. He and Hartman said those conversations reminded them that God can use music across generations and that the band’s ministry is bigger than any one season of its career.
That same sense of purpose shaped HOPE, which CCM Magazine reported as Petra’s first full-length studio release in more than 20 years. The band said fan requests helped push them back into the studio, where they developed the record themselves over roughly a year while continuing to tour.
HOPE carries familiar Petra rock but also reaches into reggae and pop-punk textures, according to the interview and the album’s Apple Music listing. The title reflects the record’s central message, which Hartman stated plainly: “Our hope is in Jesus Christ.”
For Schlitt, the band’s calling remains larger than nostalgia. “It’s a rock ministry,” he said, pointing to younger Christian rock groups carrying that mission into their own generation.
Petra has no announced end date. As long as the opportunities remain and Schlitt’s voice holds, the band intends to keep using its music to point people toward Christ — one concert, one record and now one movie at a time.
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