Talking To Graham Kendrick
Mainly about contemporary Christian worship
and 'March for Jesus'
Graham Kendrick's songs and hymns are sung by millions of people around the world.
He is a co-founder of March for Jesus which went global in 1994 with around 10 million people taking part.
He is married with four children.
In this interview he talks to Noel Stanton, Senior Pastor of the Jesus Fellowship.
Noel: Graham, what are the landmarks in your life?
Graham: I remember when I was about five years old my mother reading us a bedtime story which included a simple explanation of the gospel and asking us if we wanted to invite Jesus to forgive our sins. I remember kneeling down by myself and praying. I felt an excitement deep inside that surprised me. During teenage years I began to examine if it was first hand or second hand.
Noel: You were a rebel?
Graham: It was the 60s and I tended towards the cynicism of the time. Certainly I was determined to discover more.
Noel: Did that lead to baptism in the Spirit?
Graham: I've never been a crisis person but I came out of one particularly drab Christian Union meeting at college thinking, "There must be more than this." So I set out to seek for more of God. I had met one or two people who seemed to have been profoundly affected by the Holy Spirit.
I tracked down a house group and knocked on the door, not knowing anybody there, and asked people to pray for me afterwards. It was later that night when I was cleaning my teeth ready to go to bed that I was filled with the Holy Spirit! That was a real watershed in my Christian experience.
Noel: When was this?
Graham: It was about 1971, when the charismatic renewal movement was in its early days and was quite controversial. Lots of people would warn you off and say it was of the devil! Tongues were as controversial then as the current manifestations of shaking and falling are now.
Noel: Will what's happening now take off in the same way?
Graham: It's a very different scene now. There's much more of a structure in place for the new wine to be poured into. There were very few spiritual fathers and mothers around then. There are a lot more people who can be spiritual fathers, provided they give time and attention to the new thing that's coming up. I think one of the biggest dangers is of a dislocation between the generations.
A lot of what happened in the 1970s charismatic movement was birthed out of rebellion and frustration which didn't create a good foundation. Often those seeds of rebellion manifest themselves in attitudes later on.
Noel: You were then in your early twenties?
Graham: That's right. I was about 21.
Noel: And when did music begin to play its part?
Graham: I had a bad start in music. Although I had an ear for music I found it hard to relate to the dots on the page and the music teacher gave me up as a hopeless case! A few years later I took an interest in the guitar and determined to teach myself how to play. It had become quite popular to use pop music to communicate the gospel. The church was trying to catch up with the exploding youth culture. Pretty soon with my brother and sister and one or two friends we formed a band and began to play at Christian coffee bars.
Noel: Then you met Clive Calver and linked up with Youth for Christ?
Graham: When I left college I went on the road with another musician called Simon. The most fruitful thing I did during that first year was working with a church in Shropshire for a week. Lots of the young people who were converted then stood the test of time. It said something to me about working with local churches and team work in ministry.
Clive Calver was just out of Bible college. He had a minivan with a disco and would play tracks and talk in between them. Clive and I had a similar vision. The result was a team of around twelve of us aged between 17 and 24, full time on the road, with no visible means of support!
Noel: Was there a band as such?
Graham: Two of us provided the music. A local church would set up school visits and most of the team would go into classrooms and talk about the Christian faith and I'd do lunchtime concerts and school assemblies. Over the weekends, we'd be with the local churches which is when I started writing worship songs. Up to that point they had been more performance-orientated.
Noel: And you stayed on with Clive?
Graham: Yes, Clive became National Director of British Youth for Christ and I joined on the music side.
One of the things we did was a tour called "Fighter": songs about calling God's people to be an army a theme you're very keen on! It was a culmination of something that God had been doing in me. I erred too much on the passive side and God needed to help me to be more of a breakthrough person.
This was at the end of 1978, and we did a mega tour of 55 different venues, which led into Spring Harvest.
Noel: As a Christian music festival?
Graham: There was a strong Christian music element to it at the beginning, but it was more a teaching and worship-focused event than a festival. At that time praise and worship was becoming quite prominent. The whole concept of celebration which now we just take for granted, was only just coming in.
Noel: The beginning of a worship revolution.
Graham: Yes, in the early 70s there were very few new songs. Things which are considered old hat now were dramatic new experiments in those days. Just singing in tongues was a powerful experience because you'd never heard it before.
Noel: Do you ever think to yourself: "How do I fit into the ministry of the New Testament? Apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, teacher?"
Graham: I've noticed that Worship Leader is not on the list! In many ways the role of worship leader is a response to the culture we live in. Whenever I teach about worship leading I always emphasise that there are many different models. It would be a shame if we got stuck in a new rut.
Worship leaders are likely to have a prophetic gifting together with a musical gifting which facilitates the flow of worship. You may have a list of songs that you've planned and prayed over but when it comes to it, you're listening to God and you're wanting to go on a journey into the presence of God.
Noel: Music and singing has always been central to revival.
Graham: Yes, whenever exciting things are happening in our relationship with God it overflows in music and praise!
Noel: But it must be linked with church life.
Graham: Absolutely. I enjoy being part of a local church now, but I remember twelve years of my life where I had a vision for being part of a local church and it just wouldn't work and I had to hold onto that vision. However frustrated we may become with the church, it is God's structure for getting His will done. I think it is absolutely vital that young and old have a commitment to God's pattern for the church and to be a part of it.
Noel: Does the church need to identify more with today's youth?
Graham: Perhaps one advantage larger churches like Ichthus have is that we can have not only 'all age celebrations' which are middle of the road in style but also youth churches which are very experimental with video and lights and multi-media techniques to express worship.
Noel: We use that for our 'all-age' worship! Is there any music style you feel is too extreme?
Graham: Whatever style you're using you still have to apply the same tests. One is the balance of having both emotion and experience and also content. There's a time to worship God with all your physical energy like David did and you're probably not going to need a great deal of content when you're doing that. There are times when you need lots of content. What is getting more popular is to sit in silence and meditate on a scripture, or Taizé chants, or to take one scripture or truth and sing a meditation.
Noel: You're saying there's a swing towards quieter worship?
Graham: There's a diversity at the moment. Diversity fits the world we live in now. You explore one style of worship and meet the needs of one group and suddenly find that they're only a sub-group and all the others are into something very different. It's very hard to do one thing that pleases everybody and isn't bland.
Noel: So you use all kinds of music?
Graham: I tend to see music as a neutral medium. When a person uses a type of music, the spirit of that person is expressed. You could put two heavy metal bands side by side one who are a bunch of Satanists and one who love God and they could play the same lyrics but a different spirit would be expressed.
You also have to consider the associations that people have with certain kinds of music. The Early Church Fathers banned the flute! The flute is such an innocuous instrument, but the flute was so heavily associated with Bacchanalian orgies that the new converts couldn't listen to it without all the reminders of their old life coming in.
Noel: Is there any style that you personally dislike?
Graham: I'm not into jungle in a big way and I'm not a great fan of country music but I'm pretty broad in my tastes.
Noel: How many albums have you published now?
Graham: It's somewhere between 25 and 30.
Noel: Of those songs, which would you see as the most anointed?
Graham: I don't think an anointing is necessarily permanently attached to a song. The first two or three times I used the song "For this purpose" at Ichthus it was nothing special. Then one meeting we sang it and an anointing came down. From that moment on it seemed to have more anointing. There are times when an anointing could come upon a song on just an occasion. But in general it does seem that some songs are more anointed than others.
Out of this new batch, I suppose a toss up between "Knowing You" which is based on Phillipians 3:7-11 and "Is anyone thirsty?" "Is Anyone Thirsty?" is raucous, interactive, a chance for everyone to express their hunger for God. I think "Knowing You" will go on for a long time, but "Is Anyone Thirsty?" may be a phase.
Noel: You expect a few classics?
Graham: I always hope for some, but you can never manufacture them!
Noel: They're not all "Shine, Jesus, Shine"!
Graham: There are other songs I wrote at the same time which I thought would do better than "Shine Jesus Shine" but no one's even heard of them now it's always a surprise what surfaces and what doesn't.
Noel: Was March for Jesus largely your vision?
Graham: In a musical sense, yes, but it took a group of friends to make it become anything.
Noel: How did March for Jesus start?
Graham: Bit by bit God began to speak to me of this new worship movement and the dangers of it become self-serving and locked away in the four walls of the church. As I pondered on this, the idea of taking praise on the streets rose to the surface and bubbled away for quite some while.
One evening Ichthus did an informal praise march along with YWAM in Soho. We did it very badly, I felt, but I knew God was in it. During that march I struggled to find songs which worked on the streets. I went home and began to write a Praise March songs like "We believe" and "Jesus put this song into our hearts" and recorded it. To my amazement all of a sudden praise marches began springing up. The next phase was that Roger Forster of Ichthus and Gerald Coates of Pioneer and Lynn Green of YWAM got together a praise march in the City of London, when 15,000 people turned up instead of the expected 3,000.
Noel: On a wet day, I seem to remember!
Graham: Torrential rain. It was a one-off, but Gerald and Roger really felt God impressed on their hearts that they should do it again. So about a year later, came another march that attracted 55,000 in Westminster. It went Europe-wide and then it first went global in 1994.
Noel: Are we breaking through to the nation?
Graham: There are a few more people getting saved but nowhere near the spiritual awakening which many people have longed for. But I do believe that God is preparing us.
Noel: There's a sense of expectation around.
Graham: Yes, but to be honest, we have wonderful dreams of great revival but that's going to be quite a challenge to cope with. Part of what God is doing is preparing us to live in His presence revival is arrival. It's God coming in a greater intensity than we've known before. Our lives need to be sorted out. I can't help thinking of poor Ananias and Sapphira in the New Testament God was so close at that time sin was absolutely awful and God dealt with it severely. I think that's a warning to us that if we are going to live in that intense presence of God, we have to learn to live consistently in holiness. Sometimes we complain about God seeming far away perhaps that's His mercy because if He came too close, we'd be in serious trouble!
Noel: Do you have a vision for a harvest of souls in the UK in these years?
Graham: Yes. When I started out in full time Christian work, what sustained me was a vision for revival with very large numbers of people being converted. We are a lot closer to it now but we have to keep on reaching out for the very best that God wants to give. I want to be part of it!
For further details of Graham Kendrick's music and ministry,
please visit the offical Graham Kendrick website or contact:
'Talking To..'
Graham Kendrick's songs and hymns are sung by millions of people around the world.
He is a co-founder of March for Jesus which went global in 1994 with around 10 million people taking part.
He is married with four children.
