Column: Andy Flannagan...How it All Started

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?


At the end of the festival, I sit praying on damp grass in prayer with 10,000 others. The word “risk” is still stopping all other constructive thought like an M25 shunt. A lady, whose quilted Scottish accent I will never forget, draws all our prayers to a close with these words – “Lord God, may we be a people who take risks for you”. A bell clangs so loudly in my head that I presume everyone else is hearing the headlines too. Risk?

I think I’ll take it.

I felt God sealing something in me. I knew he was saying, “Chill. You’ll be back to this. No rush.” I wasn’t sure when the seal would be opened, but I knew it would.

So I put my head down and worked really hard at the medical stuff for two years, there wasn’t much space for anything else in my life but I loved it. I had the privilege of working with some fantastic staff in Craigavon hospital. But a few months before the end of my time there I was beginning to feel the nudge of God, I realised that the time might be approaching where I would step off the conveyer belt. Something in me told me that I just needed to take a step of faith and not apply for any of the next jobs that my peers were applying for. As you can imagine, this caused a certain level of consternation with friends, family, colleagues and the medical hierarchy.

For a couple of months when people asked me ‘so what are you doing next then’ I didn’t actually have an answer, it was the ultimate limbo land. Some folks were already saying ‘I told you so’, but I can honestly say I’ve never had period in my life where I’ve been more peaceful and less worried about the future. A friend of mine then spotted an advert for a job running Youth For Christ’s band, TVB and handed it to saying ‘you could do that’. I procrastinated. I remember having booked a week away in a cottage to read and pray, it had a beautiful view looking out over the Irish sea, but the Wednesday of that week was the closing date for the job application. You also had to record a demo and I couldn’t face making the effort so the deadline slipped by. The very next day another friend arrived up to the cottage with the same advert and I said ‘you don’t know how unhelpful that is, the closing date was yesterday’.

During the next week, the funding for another job that had been suggested to me fell through, so the state of limbo continued. A week or so later while in the hospital one day, I had this gut urge to go down to the doctors room and ring Youth For Christ. I asked them if they’d ever appointed anybody for the job, unbelievably they told me they’d extended the closing date and it was ‘tomorrow’. I hurriedly recorded a demo and filled out their forms and got them in the post. That was the end of May, but we now have to rewind to the end of February. We were organising our holiday rotas for the next six months. At that point I knew I was going to be involved in a conference called the Young adult gathering organised by Christian MP’s in London in June. The conference ran from Thurs to Sun so I knew I needed the Thurs and Fri off work. So I asked William who was organising our rota to book me out for Thursday and Friday. Surprisingly he said to me ‘I think you should take the Wednesday off also as you won’t be able to use that holiday anywhere else’. William wasn’t the most forceful of chaps, so the strength of his statement took me back somewhat and I said ’ ok’. That night I nooked a flight for the Tuesday evening, intending to spend the Wednesday sight-seeing before the conference on the Thursday.

Now fast forward to June and I’m sitting in the cardiology ward when a phone call is paged through to me from YFC. I’ll never forget what Judy said, “Andrew I know this is probably impossible with your schedule in the hospital but the only time we could interview you would be next week” and I said ‘that’s unbelievable Judy, next week’s the only week in 1997 I was intending to be in England’. She said ‘great! But there’s a slight problem... the only day we could see you next week is Wednesday!'

Needless to say, we both had a sense of where things were going after that.

As if that wasn’t enough, I then went to check out YFC on the net at lunch time when I searched only one document came up. It was a YFC strategy document and at the top of it was the famous verse from Isaiah ‘This is the way, walk ye in it’. I took some notes to try and impress and my interview. On returning to the ward after lunch, one of the nurses who was a Christian took me aside and said “Andrew I was praying for you at lunchtime and I really felt the Lord gave me a verse for you...” - I think you can guess what it was.

Needless to say, within a week I’d been offered the job and within two months I moved to England. All Youth For Christ staff raise half of their salary from friends, family and churches giving regular contributions. The last confirming factor was that this money, and more, came in, in a space of a few weeks.

So I ran TVB for three years, seeing hundreds of young people come to Christ and seeing my teams mature spiritually and musically. After this time, YFC asked me to stay on to work on further musical projects and to carry on performing and writing and someone randomly sent me a postcard that they felt was significant for me. It said “Do not alight from a moving bus”. I didn’t.



Andy Flannagan
Christian Today Columnist





Andy Flannagan is Youth For Christ's (YFC) National Songwriter/Worship Leader. Songs from his two albums "Advertising the Invisible" and "Son" have been critically acclaimed by reviewers, and have been featured at various events and outlets such as Spring Harvest, New Wine, Greenbelt, Soul Survivor, and BBC radio and television.