The Music Exchange - Richard Simpkin interviews Graham Kendrick

RS: People know you principally as a songwriter, but ultimately you're a Christian first, so can you tell us how God drew you to himself?

GK: I had the advantage of Christian parents - my father was a Baptist pastor. When I was about six, my mother was reading me a bedtime story which included within it an explanation of the gospel in a way that a child could understand. When she finished the book, she asked me if I wanted to follow Jesus, and I remember going off to another corner of the room and praying. I remember being surprised that I felt as if something had exploded in my heart. I had no expectations - I was just praying, but I know something had happened that was significant. I believe that was the first conscious decision to say, 'Yes, I want my sins forgiven, I want to be a Christian.'

RS: Today you have such a public ministry. How do you keep your personal relationship with Jesus going?

GK: I make sure I keep a balance. I'm not one of these people who are on the road all the time by any means. There'll be seasons of intense travel, and then weeks when I'll be around at home, so that gives me a chance to engage with local church, friends and family. Probably the greatest challenge is in the down time - maintaining a close walk with God. That's not much different from any other Christian, in that the greatest challenge is to be a worshipper in the very mundane things. Some years ago, someone introduced me to the one-year Bible, and that's been a tremendous help to me. At the beginning of each day I'll read a daily section, and that becomes the basis of my daily devotion.

RS: What gave you the motivation to become a Christian songwriter?

GK: I think I just discovered that I could do it. When I was a teenager, it became popular to use pop music of the day to do evangelism. We copied those who were doing that and formed a band. We found it was essential to have original ma-terial because you couldn't use regular pop songs, so I had a go at writing songs, and almost immediately it became my passion. By the time I graduated from college I set out on a gap year just playing music. And then one gap year led to another gap year, and I'm still on a gap year now!

RS: What do you think are the strengths of the Christian song-writing scene in England at the moment?

GK: I think there are some very good songs being written which are going round the world. Matt Redman, Tim Hughes and Stuart Townend are writing songs that have a good combination of melody, lyric and arrangement. Matt writes very memorable tunes, and you always sense that his lyric is coming out of life and out of his engagement with God.

RS: ...and the weaknesses?

GK: There is a tendency to be a little other-worldly, and to retreat into a world of feeling love for God and loved by God in a kind of abstract, experiential way that doesn't always relate to real life and the real world. Having a warm experience of being loved by God is absolutely marvellous, and is definitely part of worship, but there is a danger of playing into the hands of individualism. In reality, we've got too many 'Me' and 'I' songs, and we need to sing more 'We' songs and more 'God' songs. We should vary the diet and not just sing what we like, or what happens to be the latest. Corporate worship can take us through a whole spectrum of Christian truth. For example, we need songs that help us to lament, to confess, songs that teach doctrine, songs of joy, songs of mourning.

RS: How are you seeking to address these gaps?

GK: One person can't hope to address everything, but an example is a song called 'How Long?' on my new album, Do something beautiful. This was written in solidarity with the persecuted church around the world. That's a colour in the spectrum of worship - the Scriptures teach us that we should remember those in prison, and in most Christian services that would never feature. So every now and then I have a go. I've attempted loads of themes, and just haven't come up with a decent enough song. That's the thing about writing a song - you cannot just say: 'I will now write a great song about such-and-such'.

RS: And how do you avoid writing individualistic songs?

GK: I think being Scripture-based is the greatest help. I think we also need to be conscious of the trends that there are in church, the way we practise our faith, and to ask, 'Why do we do this the way we do? Let's measure this up against the Word of God, and see how it stands the test.'

RS: You're on a tour of various cathedrals at the moment. What's the driving force behind this project?

GK: It's something we stumbled into. Several years ago I was involved in an event in the cathedral at Bury St. Edmunds. The evening took on the hybrid of concert and congregational worship, and something about it in the context of the cathedral worked very well, so we thought, let's do some more of this, and keep the same formula. We found that, because a cathedral is public space, perhaps a broader cross-section of people would come along than if you advertise something in an ordinary church building. People don't feel quite so intimidated. Somehow people like cathedrals, and they awaken something in them of a spiritual nature, so I feel that it's important to put together an evening that doesn't force people into too long a period when they're all engaged in singing their hearts out - there'll be a sprinkling of people who won't be at that place. But at the same time people have been tremendously responsive to what I've called the performance song - many of them are story-telling songs, and they take characters from the gospels, and people just love to listen, take it in and respond to it, and then when we do stand up and sing a song, you are responding out of what you've just been pondering on as you've listened. It's like singing the story, and then celebrating the story.

RS: Some people have referred to you as the Eric Clapton of Christian music. How do respond to that?

GK: If they mean as somebody who's become a bit of an institution and a sort of mentor to those who have gone after, then I'm pleased, particularly in terms of trying to be some sort of father figure to younger people who are doing similar kind of ministry.

RS: I think it might be the guitar thing.

GK: Well I think that might be over generous, but thank you very much anyway to whoever it was anyway!