Tony Cummings quizzed one of America's most popular Christian singers, MICHAEL W SMITH

Tony: How would you describe the experience of working on the 'CompassionArt' project?

Michael: Life-changing. It was a milestone in my career being involved in that record. Just having 11 artists/songwriters - Chris Tomlin was in the hospital with kidney stones but he also got involved in the project later - in Scotland and everyone dropping, hopefully, what little egos that we did have at the door. With all the writers of the songs [agreeing that] every penny should go to the poor. It was a beautiful picture of the body of Christ at work. That's what was really beautiful 'cos we didn't have anything to lose because it was all relinquished for something greater than ourselves. So every day we'd have a meltdown. I cried every day, there was a moment when I sort of lost it and I think everybody did. We walked away from Scotland going, 'I think we've just done something unprecedented.' Then found ourselves two months later right here in London at Abbey Road studios making the record.

Tony: For the majority of your career you've been successful in what I'll call non-worship music. It's been suggested that you recorded the first worship project merely for commercial reasons, namely that worship music had suddenly become the Christian music bestseller. How do you respond to such suggestions?

Michael: Well, I would disagree with them because I know it's not true. I struggled with making that first worship album because I really sensed that that was what the Lord wanted me to do but I backed out of it three times.

Tony: Why was that?

Michael: Because I was afraid of what people would think of me.

Tony: Because you thought they'd make that suggestion?

Michael: Yeah. I had a little argument with God. It was really strange. And then I woke up at 3 o'clock in the morning - I'm really careful about saying 'the Lord spoke to me' but I believe he told me 'for such a time as this.' Little did I know the 'Worship' album would be released on 9/11, the day of that horrible attack on America. I thought it would be the least successful record of my career because it was out of the box for me. 'What do you mean, you're doing a worship record?' But it ended up being the most successful record of my career.

Tony: When you're not touring, which local church do you attend?

Michael: I go to New River Fellowship in Franklin. It's a church that my wife helped found nine years ago and that I pastored for a couple of years. It's small, which is what we kind of like about it, maybe 350-400 people. One day I'll write a book about that. About what the hardest job in the world is.

Tony: Are you a member of the worship team there?

Michael: I lead worship there once a month. I'm still an elder; I'm still the sort of Poppa although I feel too young to be the Poppa. I'll always be sort of the father of the church but I'm not involved in day-to-day. The guy that I handed the church to is just awesome - I'm not trying to hold his hand and he's doing an amazing job.

Tony: With 'A New Hallelujah' you're now writing worship songs. How different is the songwriting experience to that of writing non-congregational worship material? Is it a different kind of thing?

Michael: It is. All my favourite worship songs that I've written were written out of a place of me not trying to write worship songs. When I wrote "On This Day" I didn't sit down to write a worship song. When I wrote "A New Hallelujah" I wrote that in my car, in my head. Now, lyrically we think it needs to fit but it just came out of nowhere and as I wrote I started weeping. Anytime I TRY to write a worship song I sort of fail. They just come out of a natural outpouring of who I am. You get in those places some day where you've just come back from Africa where they've got a huge AIDS epidemic and there are people dying every day and then you start writing stuff that pertains to that. Then you'll wake up one day and you're so overwhelmed by the grace of God that you write a song like "Deep In Love With You". It sort of all depends on where your head's at and what I believe God's stirring in my heart and hopefully that will come out with the pen and with my fingers on the piano.

Tony: Isn't it true, though, that in the same way that sometimes when we talk about worship we limit it to the singing of songs when in fact it should encompass every aspect of life? In other words couldn't a song like "Place In This World" or even "Secret Ambition" be included in a worship set?