In the second half of the Whole Notes interview with Steven Curtis Chapman, the Dove and Grammy Award winning artist talks about what he’s learned about God’s character, his adoption work in China, his sons’ new musical venture and what young songwriters have caught his attention:

Chad Bonham: Over the past couple of years, which one of God’s characteristics has come alive the most to you?

Steven Curtis Chapman: Well, man that’s such a great profound question but yet so easy to answer in one word because it is faithfulness. It is the faithfulness of God that I can say I have truly come face to face with what we’ve walked through and while I don’t understand so much about God’s ways and His ways have become much more mysterious to me, I think I’m more clueless in many ways but I’m more certain and confident of God’s faithfulness. I mean, I wouldn’t be having this conversation with you right now if God had not been faithful and was not faithful to us to never leave us, never forsake us and to keep His word, to do what He has promised to do, to meet us, to comfort us, to carry us. So yeah, that’s it—the faithfulness of God.

Bonham: What’s the latest news on your work in China and what you do on behalf of adoption advocacy?

Chapman: Wow. Great, amazing things are continuing with Show Hope and the work specifically in China. We’ve had some surgical teams go there this summer—the first ever team of neurosurgeons—to do life saving surgeries on some of the children that God has brought our way. We are beyond Maria’s Big House of Hope in China and that work there. We continue to be able to help families in their adoption journey with children from all over the world. We’re almost at 3,000 families that we’ve been able to help with financial grants to help them complete their adoptions. That represents children coming home from over 46 or 47 different countries into Christian families. We’ve been a little part of that miracle happening by cheering them on and encouraging them. So it’s just amazing and it continues to grow. Of course the need continues to grow. There are an estimated 140 million orphans in the world. The need’s not going away anytime immediately. So opportunities are continuing to present themselves for us to be a part of the miracle of God’s heart for orphans and really the movement that we see going on all over the world of God’s people responding to His heartbeat for orphans.

Bonham: How exciting is it for you to see your sons going through the early stages of their music careers?

Chapman: Oh absolutely. Caleb and Will both have formed a band called Caleb. They’ve been touring with me for about the last five years playing in my band. I’m so proud of them. So excited to get to have worked with them for the last five years. But now they are moving out on their own and kind of out of from dad’s wing, which is very exciting but very sad for me because I’m going to miss them like crazy. They’re great musicians. I’m just bummed that I’m losing such great band members, but especially the fact that they’re my sons. Caleb’s writing some great music. They’re getting some real interest from record labels and meeting with different people and getting to do some concerts and open for some really cool bands and getting some great opportunities. People can check them out. Their music’s on iTunes. They have a Facebook page and all of that stuff. You’ve got to check it out. I’m really excited. And that’s part of the whole recreation that we feel is going on in our lives and in our family. Really, this new season we’re in, we felt like 2011 was a lot of new that was going to start to happen. Little did we know that our oldest daughter was going to come home and announce that she’s pregnant with our first grand baby. She and her husband Tanner came home from Ireland where they’re students at Easter and announced that they’re going to have a little girl and we’re so excited to be the youngest grandparents on record ever. Okay, I’m not sure about that part, but we’re very excited about it. It’s just cool with our boys doing so great and launching out on their own and Emily and Tanner launching out into being parents and that new season of life. All of that is part of what we see God doing in this spirit of recreation that we’re celebrating right now.

Bonham: Are you excited to see a surge of great young singer/songwriters and is there one in particular that has grabbed your attention?

Chapman: I’ve always, from the very beginning of my musical days, fallen in love with singer/songwriters. There’s just something about what you can do with a song—the stories you can tell and how you can move somebody. I love songs that move you and tell a story and the great craftsmanship of great songwriters. A couple of those guys I’ve discovered myself the last year or so are going to be on tour with me this fall actually. Josh Wilson is a great singer/songwriter and a great guitar player too, which I love as a player myself, and Andrew Peterson who I met through something called “Behold the Lamb,” a Christmas musical that he has written and performed each year at Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium. He puts on a performance of that with a cast of many other performers. It’s just brilliant and powerful. Those are a couple guys I’m excited about being on tour with. In fact, our tour is called “Stories and Songs” Tour. It’s going to be oriented towards telling stories and sharing songs in a very intimate way, a pretty organic way. The band is going to be sitting out there for everybody to see. We’ll be switching around and backing each other up in just a community of songwriter dudes hanging out together.

Check out part one of the Whole Notes interview with Steven Curtis Chapman by clicking HERE.

Stay up on the latest Chapman news by visiting his official website HERE.

And get to know his sons’ band Caleb by visiting their Facebook page HERE.