Exclusive Graham Kendrick  Interview

April 2003

Earlier in April, word-on-the-web spoke with Graham Kendrick, arguably the most famous name in contemporary Christian worship, both as a songwriter and performer. Graham has just released his first album in two years, called Do Something Beautiful. We spoke to him about this but first asked him about the influence of the Bible on his life and music.


Matt Redman has said about you, ‘Every song I’ve ever seen of Graham’s seems to be crammed full of poetic, divine, biblical truth.’ Presumably the Bible is a big influence on your work and also your life.

I would like it to be total. I think that the Christian faith is a matter of revelation and not opinion. The sum total of the revelation of God is in Christ, and the Bible from cover to cover points us to Christ. So if worship songs are about our relationship with God then they have to be biblical in their content. That’s not to say that every song has got to be line by line from scripture, but everything has got to measure against what the Bible has revealed about God.

There is poetic license and that’s quite appropriate, but when we are seeking to say what is true about God we must remember that Christianity is based on God’s own revelation of himself. We’re not just pooling our ideas, we’re looking at that revelation and trying to interpret it correctly. We humbly submit ourselves - we need humility when we approach the Bible.

Many years ago – in fact, it was 1987 - somebody gave me a One Year Bible. I found it to be a tremendous help because up to that point my Bible reading was a bit random. It’s a big book, and unless you have some sort of pattern you get completely random or go for your favourite passages. For me, the One Year Bible has given a shape to my Bible reading. At the start of every day - with the odd exception, because of my travelling - I read a chunk of Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs.

In your latest work, do you have any new insights or is there a new emphasis in your writing?

One word which would sum it up is incarnational. There are several songs on the new album which celebrate certain truths to do with the incarnation - Jesus - but there’s also an emphasis on the church being incarnation, being Christ’s hands and feet in the earth today. ‘Do Something Beautiful’ is one example of the hands-on approach of expressing Christ in the world through his body, the church.

How do you feel about classics you’ve written such as ‘Shine Jesus Shine’? Are you happy that people are still singing them after many years, even though you’ve written new songs since then?

Wherever there is genuine worship happening - in other words, people are expressing worship in prayer and their relationship with God through a song - that is the important thing. If any song becomes so familiar that it no longer means anything to a group or singer, that would be a good time to give it a rest. It’s back to the worshippers as opposed to the worship song itself. It’s all to do with who they are and the circumstances in which they’re singing. There’s no doubt that songs can be sung to death, and it tends to happen, but then often they’ll come back again given a few years’ break.

You’ve had a long career and said so many things through your work. Is there anything left to say?

The answer to that is: eternity is too short! This is because we’re dealing with God and essentially praise and worship is an outpouring of gratitude for what God has done for us in Christ. There will never be an end to that. If you look at those amazing glimpses of heaven in the Book of Revelation, there’s a lamb at the centre of the throne with the marks of slaughter - heaven’s focus of worship is always going to be the wonder of God’s love in Christ. I think the subject matter is going to provoke worship for eternity. The question then becomes whether an individual songwriter runs out of their own creative juices and decides to give it a break. Time will tell!

Are you appearing anywhere this year that word-on-the-web readers can see you?

Following Spring Harvest I’ll be at the Roots Conference, organised by the Salvation Army, in Southport from 2nd-5th May. Then on 29th May I begin my tour, called Do Something Beautiful. For information on that, look at my website: www.grahamkendrick.com If anyone is interested in being trained up in praise and worship, I will be involved in training from 20th-21st June, at the Ichthus Worship Conference in Denmark Hill, London. For details, look up ichthus.org.uk

Is there anything else you would like to say?

When I look at a lot of praise and worship that’s coming out today, there’s a lot of focus on the personal and individual experience of worship. That’s good, but I also believe that there are vast areas of subject matter in the Christian faith which we don’t think much about. We really need to broaden the scope of our songs. You won’t find much if you want a new song for a baptism, or a song which has a very clearly trinitarian doctrinal shape to it. It’s the same if you’re looking for a lament, songs about the poor and needy or about the future of the world. There’s loads of scope for writers as opposed to just saying, ‘I love you, Lord’.

Graham Kendrick, thank you very much!