After making all the 7:05 p.m. start times for Minnesota Wild games this past season, Sara Renner knows how to be punctual. Now if she can only teach it to her bandmates, who struggled to finish a rehearsal on time last month.

"I have to wait till the spirit moves me," guitarist Nate Sabin quipped as Renner's band, the Elements, practiced inside the Apostolic Bible Church on St. Paul's East Side.

"Can the spirit move you in 15 seconds or less?" Renner deadpanned.

A veteran of the local Christian music scene, Renner, 36, stepped in front of a new crowd this past winter by singing the national anthem at Wild home games. Actually, she often sang two national anthems, since the Wild's frequent pairings with Calgary, Vancouver and Edmonton meant she also had to master Canada's best-known song (besides, perhaps, "Summer of '69").

"I've become the local go-to person for 'O Canada,'" Renner said. "It's a lot easier to sing than ours."

Renner loves the anthem gigs, but is clearly prouder to sing her original, faith-based music this month at the Taste of Minnesota and the hugely popular Sonshine Festival in Willmar, Minn. At Taste, she and the Elements will head up the new Heart of the City Christian Music Stage on Saturday night. "I've sung around beer drinkers plenty times before," Renner joked, referring to her Wild experience.

Margaret Andrews, Star Tribune
Sara Renner

"I don't think any of us have any intention of being too in-your-face about what we believe in," Renner said. "We feel strongly about what we believe in, but it's still like any other music."

As for Sonshine '08, Renner's group earned a July 19 slot on the main stage after winning a battle of the bands competition at Minneapolis' Christian music venue Club 3 Degrees -- although Renner admitted that "our kind of Christian music isn't really what's in right now." Their kind of music is an interesting hybrid of traditional gospel music, jazz and R&B, plus contemporary Christian pop.

"I'm not trying to be something I'm not," said Renner, who grew up in north Minneapolis and was exposed to black gospel music there. "I really love that music, though, and I always try to find a way to balance it in my music."

After three CDs and one DVD, Renner has begun working on a new album, one that she said will show the influence of two of her favorite artists of late, soulful pop/R&B songwriters India.Arie and Corinne Bailey Rae.

Except for the occasional wedding or party gig, though, singing before Wild games is about as secular as Renner's career will get. After being treated for melanoma in 2001 (she has a clean bill of health now), Renner said she rededicated herself to singing Christian music almost exclusively.

"Boy, that woke me up," she said. "We caught it real early on, so fortunately it didn't scare me so much as motivate me. I thought, 'I must be here for a purpose.'"

View the Taste of Minnesota event listing.
View the Sonshine Festival event listing.