I get so many emails from young people asking about how to “get into” music ministry. My standard reply is “don’t try to”. If people ask you to keep singing and the opportunities start to pop up, then there’s a good chance that what you’re doing is pretty useful for the kingdom. Let it grow organically in God’s good time. In light of that, if you’re going to be reading columns from me, I thought it would be only fair that you guys get to know a bit of how things started for me, so here goes.....
I remember standing up during an appeal in a meeting on one of operation mobilisation’s ships in Belfast. That night I knew I was offering God the whole of my life in ‘full time service’. I was at school at the time and doing all the sciences for A-level and therefore medicine seemed like a natural step, it also seemed like a useful practical tool for serving God. That decision always came second to my decision to give God my whole life. Medicine was never going to be more than simply a tool. It’s not as if I felt at great calling to be a doctor. If you’d pressed me at that point, I’d have guessed that I’d have ended up in the middle of Africa somewhere serving in a mission hospital, as that was one of the only models of mission I’d been exposed to.
It was through working for Tear Fund on summer projects during my medical student days that my passion to ‘speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves’ was awoken. A lot of the things I was seeing and learning were making me really angry and my way of expressing that was through songs. People in my house seemed to like them and gradually I was invited to sing the songs at meetings and events. This kindled a spate of writing every subject from soap operas to terrorism and by half way through my fourth year as a student, myself and my friend Peter were singing two or three nights a week. This was becoming my passion and priority and medicine was being fitted in the gaps. Fast forward to Greenbelt 95 -
“Risk!” “That would be such a risk!” Those were the words pounding through my head all through the festival. For the first time in my 22 years I was contemplating the possibility that I might not always operate as a doctor. Heresies don’t come much bigger than that for a medical student.
The preceding summer had divulged some clues that this would be the case. I’d just spent six weeks working and learning in one of the most disgusting places on earth. All of the refuse created by Cairo’s 28 million people ends up in a small area populated by 28,000 people and a similar number of animals, called Mokattam. Right in the rotting midst of this sickly, sweet and overwhelming place was the hospital that became my temporary home. I was being exposed to the reality of people in desperate need, and growing in my soul was a passion to communicate about it, or anything else for that matter. It was a summer where the volume knob was always at “10”. Pain was deeper, joy was broader, and moments became experiences.
So it was hardly a conscious decision to write songs. They had always been my exhaust pipe, after the combustion engine of heart and head had fired. I’d also had many chances to spread this useful pollution to churches, events and bars. The songs seemed to challenge and bless, which was great, but surely it would always just be an entertaining sideline to having a “proper job”. Fast forward to the Greenbelt festival at the end of that summer, performing for Tear Fund.
I’d often wondered about the phrase “in the groove”. Something useful is miraculously produced because the smallest needle fits perfectly into a slightly larger space. That was just a concept to me until I actually felt it happen; pouring my heart out in song, seeing a crowd connect with both words and melody, and feeling the very breath of my creator down the back of my neck. I couldn’t run from the question – “Is this what I’m made for?”
That feeling was however rubbing up against a pretty harsh reality. The next two years of my life would consist of 90hr weeks; studying like I’d never studied before and being woken continually during the night by a bleeper that had no regard for my beauty sleep. Where on earth would music and communication fit into that lifestyle?
