Amongst the songs glorifying sensuality and greed produced in Pristina, Kosovo, one music label is going against the flow: Shtёpia Records, whose logo references the parable of the houses built on rock and sand in Matthew 7:24-27.

“‘Shtёpia’ means ‘house’ in Albanian. We’re pointing both to the spiritual message and the fact that we record in our own home,” explains Aaron Smith, who co-founded Shtёpia Records in 2017 with his wife Pepa.

Aaron and Pepa lead OM’s team in Pristina and are full-time musicians who help birth music from within Kosovo’s small evangelical church scene — from workshops where local believers are encouraged to create worship songs in community, to the studio production process, to making that music freely available within churches so that adults and children can worship Jesus in their own language and culture. And through the reach of social media, the songs are spreading outside of Kosovo into the Albanian diaspora in Europe and beyond.

Aaron and Pepa envision working with churches around the country, seeing their needs and how they can help, walking alongside worship leaders and involving more people in workshops;

“We’re convinced that spiritual formation and discipleship happen in community, lived out in daily life,” says Aaron.

Music creates a bridge between people and is such an easy way to start a conversation, especially if it’s beautiful. Somehow, people receive a message more readily from a song than from speech. Music is a very wonderful tool God has given us, a way to connect with Him. In a Muslim-majority country like this, for some people, that may be a new idea. 
Pepa

We know God’s called us to this, although we don’t yet know the results of what we’re sowing — but it’s not just about what the music achieves, but the process of creating it in community, with all these different local Christians who have changed and grown through that process, and been strengthened in their own witness to others about the Lord.

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