The man overseeing worship at the Toronto Airport Vineyard is JEREMY SINNOTT. He was interviewed by Tony Cummings.

Jeremy Sinnott

Jeremy Sinnott has been a senior associate pastor at the Toronto Airport Vineyard and worship leader since 1987. While his wife Connie oversees the children's worship, Jeremy is in charge of the worship ministry at the Vineyard. With renewal meetings held six days a week Jeremy cannot lead worship himself every night but he has overseen an ever-growing number of visiting worship leaders and bands to share out the worship duties. In Britain Jeremy is best known for his 'Winds Of Worship 3' album for the Vineyard Music Group while in Canada the Airport Vineyard have just released a new CD 'Catch The Fire Again' recorded at the conference of the same name last October where Jeremy led worship along with David Ruis. I interviewed Jeremy in his office, a snowball's throw from the main Airport Vineyard building.

Can you begin by telling us a bit about yourself?
"I was born in Cape Town, South Africa. My parents came over to Canada when I was four years of age. I'm 46. I grew up in Toronto, went to university in Toronto and taught in Toronto. I was a principal in some schools for 18 years. Finally I had a sense that God was calling me out of education to work in some way with the church. I'd become a Christian in my early 20s. We formed a little group, Hakanu, and began to sing and play churches. We made several recordings. But it wasn't until about eight years ago that intimacy in worship just gripped my heart. Having once tasted that I felt I couldn't go back to singing about God. I needed that intimacy."

So how did you meet up with John Arnott?
"He had started a church in Stratford. It was the first Vineyard in Ontario. Now he had grown up in Toronto and he really wanted to see something happen in Toronto. He'd heard I had a PA. He phoned me and asked whether he could use the PA for nothing for a meeting he was holding. I thought that was an interesting call and said he could as long as I came along and worked it. I didn't want anybody else messing with my PA! So I sat at the back and did the sound and looked real busy on the controls when they were praying for people! I was determined no one was going to pray for me! But pretty soon Connie and I went to a small group of John's. It was wonderful. The very first meeting we had worship then a time of sharing and teaching and whatever and then we prayed for each other. And John, the pastor, said, 'I'd like you to pray for me first, I'm struggling in this particular area and this particular area, can you pray for me?' We were blown away. I'd never known a pastor who would ever admit weakness ever, let alone ask people to pray. So he won our hearts. There was openness, a transparency. I remember driving home that night saying to Connie, 'You know, our lives are so jam packed with things, we are in this singing group, we lead Bible studies at our house, three young children, our lives are full, do we really want to join this small group?' And both of us said yes!"

Did you immediately start leading worship when you joined the new church?
"Well, I'd kind of kept it a secret from John that I played any instruments for a number of months. So we came and I just enjoyed the music. It was wonderful to sit at other peoples' feet and just take it in. I'd get the teaching videos... It was life. It was not just the cerebral teaching that for 25 years had been part of my walk. This stuff that John was teaching had life to it. So we jumped in with both feet. So that meant resigning from the principalship of the school and jumping into worship leading for the Airport Vineyard. I loved the teaching job but I felt that what God was calling us into was no contest."

It must have seemed a risk financially.
"I was scared to death. I was making a fabulous sum of money and coming here I would make a third. We had just bought our first house, we thought if we're going to do it we'd better do it now while the bank can see what we're making and we can get the credit etc, etc. But you know when we took the job at the church I didn't notice the difference financially! It's continued like that for eight years. After eight years I'm now up to little more than half I made back then and it's been wonderful to be free and see that finances are not an issue!"

Where did you get your worship songs from?
"Well, Vineyard was, what, 15 years old at that point when we joined so they had eight or so CDs out. We knew all the songs and had the books and the chords so right from the start it was all there. I was songwriting too but personally I found that the quality of music that was coming out of other Vineyard churches was far better! So mostly we did their songs, today we still use largely Vineyard material, alongside some Hosanna and Maranatha. Twenty years ago I could have counted on one hand songs in the contemporary Christian music scene that I felt were worth singing. Now EVERYBODY'S recording WONDERFUL songs. So there's a wealth of material to encourage and bless. So much so that today I can barely keep up with listening."

A lot of people aren't particularly comfortable with the term "Toronto blessing".
"Neither are we. The term Toronto Blessing was a media deal. We were so surprised when we heard that. Look, it's never been the Toronto blessing, this is the Father's blessing and it's worldwide. We've been bewildered and amazed that people should somehow think we've cornered the market or something. We call it the Father's blessing."

What do you remember about the early days of this move of God?
"I still remember the first couple of days Randy Clark was here. There were horrible snowstorms and it was 20th January. Our church went crazy. Now my background is Grace Seminary and the Vineyard was about as far on the edge as I could handle. It was exciting but it was still relatively safe. When the renewal hit I was personally right out of my comfort zone. Still willing, still interested, still excited but right out of my comfort zone. There were people giggling and laughing, not just one or two, there'd be 10 or 20 in a church that would hold 300 people. The noise was tremendous. You couldn't preach, you couldn't do anything, so we just began to stop and say, 'God, what do you want to do?' We were absolutely helpless in a situation that out of control. John's saying, 'I love it...I'm scared to death of it, I love it...I'm scared to death of it.' John had always said, 'I want a church that's a little bit scary to be in.' As the' renewal continued we learned to become comfortable with the manifestations. We tried various things. We'd ask how much do you control, how much do you let go - someone is manifesting and disturbing, how far do you go before you remove them? We probably veered towards letting too much go; we'd be the first to admit that. It is probably out of a fear of quenching the Spirit. But we do recognise that there's a responsibility to remove things that are not of the Lord. So every week two or three people are not only removed from the congregation, they're asked to leave the building. We have security people that we have to pay to do this. So we're not letting everything go. When I look back and remember those early days, it all appeared so unorthodox, un-churchlike, un-Grace Seminary-like. Most of the time I sat with my mouth hanging out on the floor. But I saw people getting healed. I saw lives changed. Now in the early days it was a little tougher because it is one thing to come and say, 'God really touched me yesterday.' But we're in a very privileged place to see people two years from when God touched them and we can see clearly how much they truly have been changed."

Were all the manifestations there from the beginning?
"All except the roaring, roaring was three or four months in."

In view of the powerful, powerful work that God is doing at the Airport Vineyard, how come Toronto isn't ablaze with the gospel? The average man in the street still seems oblivious to what is happening.
"I think at the moment what God is doing is reviving his church so that the church really falls in love with him. We are so cerebral, so many of us have head knowledge of who the Lord is or what he is about but as far as our heart knowledge, our compassion, we hardly have any. The renewal is changing this. When this happens that's a much better environment for revival to happen, when the cities to be impacted all over the world. Let's be honest. A year or two ago we weren't ready for revival. There had to be a softening and a breaking of our hearts. Now today in the church we need to be preparing our hearts for revival, we need to be very much aware of how sinful we are. I think God is bringing quite a measure of judgment, particularly over the last few years, over a number of Christian leaders, revealing hidden sins, etc. Now surely that has to happen before revival can occur. We pray for an increase in healings, in raising people from the dead, in sovereign evangelism where it's a God-breathed thing, power evangelism. But surely the church has first got to be in a much better place of righteousness and holiness. And that comes out of devotion to the righteous and holy one."