Kensington Temple: The London church that is the largest in Britain

Saturday 1st February 1997

London's KENSINGTON TEMPLE is the largest church in Britain. Their two live worship albums for Kingsway have both been good sellers. The head of the Worship Department at KT, Richard Lewis, spoke to George Luke.



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Richard: Are there any other projects in the pipeline?
George: "At the moment, I'm just setting up a book of the album, which I basically want to be able to use as a resource for the satellite churches. A lot of them are wanting to use songs that had been written here, so I'm probably going to be setting up an in-house resource which we'll hopefully launch sometime in November, which will provide, on a six-monthly basis, books and teaching tapes and resources to help some of our satellite churches, because a lot of them are in the first stages and haven't built their music teams up, or they've got one guy with a guitar or something, and they need some sort of input.

"Obviously, there's a limit to what I can do. I spend an awful lot of my time just trying to keep the music here running -that is my main calling - but we also have an aggressive church planting policy. One of the main purposes of our Saturday music school is to get people trained up. I recommend that all our worship leaders learn the guitar, simply because it's an easy instrument to pick up. On five chords you've got about 30 songs, at least. That's part of our strategy. As a department, our main strategy is to train so that other people can reach out. KT is like a great big ministry centre and it trains people up and sends them out. It says, 'If you want to do this or that, go out and do it and we'll cover you.' Quite often, my main thrust is that. Although I would say that our gospel choir is beginning to get a lot of visiting engagements offered to it,(and that is a great way of reaching out through music.

"Music is an evangelistic tool and probably a very untapped one. I'm personally frustrated that a lot of the time I spend ministering to Christians in my job (much as that's a privilege). I very rarely get an opportunity to go out and be on the front line with music, but I would see that as a key thing to be building towards - certainly the odd occasion when I've had the chance to enjoy street evangelism when a band was needed. Occasionally, I get invited to other parts of the country and that's always fine if people have brought unsaved friends or relatives.

"We've got a youth event which started up this year and that's a wonderful event for evangelism. It's one of my few outlets where I get the chance to wheel out some of my more funky music and just go for it. Basically, what we do is just take all the chairs away in the main church and get some lights, smoke machines and explosion machines and multi media, graphics and all that sort of stuff. This is the youth department, really; they put this stuff together, but whatever help I can give, I try to give and I had the pleasure of doing one of their first events, which is the bi-monthly event (The Temple). It's a bit like Interface really; just in its embryonic stage. One of my burdens is to reach young people with more relevant music. And whereas the evangelistic department tend to take care of the carnival, and obviously, we all give what help we can, they just generally book in bands. We also book in bands for The Temple, but I feel that whatever help I can give in that area is very good.

"Quite often, there is quite a lot of cross-fertilisation between departments and I think if there weren't any there'd be a problem. You'd end up with this territorialism which is contrary to the Holy Spirit. The whole idea is that we're always going round to serve each other and help each other. But I'm very excited about that whole youth side and I think, from watching nationwide how it's growing, with so many ministries reaching out to young people through the medium of music, I think it's a very powerful thing to do, if the kids can hear the gospel. Certainly, they hear it at The Temple - we punch them hard with the gospel. It's right in your face - not diluted at all, and I think there's such a need in today's society for undiluted gospel preaching. Heaven, Hell, what's in the Bible - the full works, basically. The songs I would choose for one of those meetings would be punchier than what I would choose for a Sunday morning, where we'd probably go for a few hymns, or something a bit more traditional and get wilder as the day goes on."

Richard: With current media developments such as Premier Radio and the Christian Channel, do you see your job expanding in the near future?
George: "Most definitely. We've already been on Sky; we had a couple of programmes running on Sky for the last year. There are two programmes: one's called Power For Living, the other's called Wake Up Europe. They're on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Basically, I feel that the church has got to wake up to media and in our programmes we would quite often broadcast recordings of the services. Power For Living was a char show which Colin hosted; it was very, very good and we'd get visiting artists in. That was run by our technical department, but obviously we helped. But it's such a huge animal; you've got to be careful that it doesn't eat you up. I guard my time with my wife and my family like the plague; I have my sacrosanct days every week, where they know they've got me and I know that I'm with them. I think that's so important, that we can model family life and at the same time try to break out. But going back to media, it is the challenge of the end of this decade - and the beginning of the new millennium - the church has go to get itself onto the airwaves basically.

"If you watch most TV - and I don't even have a TV now, because I'm so bored with what's on it, it's a waste of time - we see the junk that's being fed into people's minds and everyone watches it, but the Church isn't on TV. We need Jesus on television; the gospel preached no-holds-barred; straight there. Unfortunately, what we've got at the moment is a lot of American stuff - which people have mixed reactions to in this country. But they've got their act together. Americans have taken the bull by the horns and they've got a tremendous presence on television there. And I think we need to follow suit, in our own style. Have well produced, good quality programmes - as good as anything the world has to offer -and put Christian artists on there to perform.

"My view is that the Church should be the patron of the arts and we're very privileged here; amongst our solo artists we've got people like David and Carrie Grant; a lady called Gina West; Terry Simon and other people who are already signed performing artists in the world in their own right. One of my great pleasures is when I get somebody in one of my teams who has got an amazing voice, and I've got one or two people lying around who've got the most incredible singing voices. And I feel if there's anything I can do to help them in my own limited way get on to the big time, ie, get out there in the world singing Christian stuff, or at lease stuff that's going to lead people to God in some way - and they don't necessarily have to be 'religious' songs -I'll do it. At one point down the centuries - during the time of Bach - 90 per cent of the music in the world was being written by the Church. At the moment, it's probably three. I don't know, but it's rather pathetic.

"It's certainly growing in America, but I have a vision that through our School Of Creative Ministry, we'll encourage and promote young artists; give them some foundation in the performing arts. The SCM is like a foundation course from a Christian perspective. It has tremendous discipline in it and great teachers. Peter Hutchinson is heading it up; he's the Principal and he does a great job. It teaches acting, dancing and singing and other aspects of performing arts, and it was pioneered three or four years ago." CR

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.
About George Luke
George Luke is a London-based journo who's been writing for Cross Rhythms since CR16 (when we called him George Duke).


 
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Reader Comments

Posted by SEGUN in NIGERIA @ 00:12 on Sep 21 2012

Hi folks at KT, I've been after a certain album for almost 14 years, OUR GOD IS GOOD done by "worshipping Churches" Kessington temple England.
Was given me as a young christian by a christian mum but it got lost, ever since it pops up in my mind and today, from the blues I just thought to go online. If anyone reads this and knows how to link me back with that album, I'll be forever grateful, actually I don't mind paying, yeah, it's that important to me. Pls. contact me at the email address. amomg the songs on that album is: "peace like a river, love like a mountain, the wind of your spirit, is flowing everywhere, joy like a fountain, healing spring of life, come holy spirit, let you fire, come.." etc etc.
I'll be waiting for an answer, this way or te other. Thanks a lot.


Reply by Rae Rae in London @ 13:13 on Apr 23 2019

The album is now on Spotify!! :)

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