The Message worship leader ANDY SMITH spoke to Tony Cummings about the key part worship plays in radical evangelism.

Andy Smith

The seven-song mini-albums released under Survivor Records' Emerge banner have been effective launch pads for several musicians/songwriters seeking to establish a presence on the national scene. Johnny Parks, Vicki Beeching and Onehundredhours have all gone on to bigger and better things after Emerge releases. Now Manchester-based Andy Smith has an Emerge CD 'Breathe' out in the shops and this impressive collection of acoustic pop worship compositions will surely elevate this amiable musicianary to the next level, particularly as Andy has already established himself with the worship event Breathe, and as a team member of that famed source of passionate youth evangelism The Message. I visited Andy at Genetic, The Tribe Academy where Andy helps train the next generation of young worshippers and asked him to fill me in with some detail about his life. He responded, "Originally, I am from a little town called Burntwood in the Midlands. And I spent a few years down in Watford. My mum and dad took me to church every week. They are really great guys, taught me loads in terms of my character and all that kind of stuff, my values. They are just legends really, my mum and dad! They brought me up and I've been going to church all my life."

It was in his time at school that Andy developed a passion for music. "I had a mate called Danny and he was a phenomenal musician but he kind of just drove me along to stuff, so I started to pick up a little bit of guitar and a little bit of drums, just little bits and bobs of everything really. It just went from there really. I started playing in church a little bit but when I went to Bible College, I started playing in the worship there and I just got alongside some of the bands that were going on at the time as well. We did a bit of a pub circuit with a few of my mates. We did some stuff which was quite kind of jazzy but a little bit poppy as well. It was kind of acoustic guitar, bass and vocalist, quite small. That was quite fun. I was also in a Sounds Of Blackness cover band in Brixton for a couple of years which was really funny, 'cos I didn't really know what I was doing! Apart from that, I just really got involved with anything that was happening to do with worship. Sometimes I would play drums, sometimes I would play bass or guitar or keys a little bit."

In 2001 Andy moved to Manchester to work with the Eden Project, the groundbreaking initiative which sought to plant Christians into Manchester's most problematic housing estates. Moving into Eden housing on a decidedly tough estate was far from easy. "There were between 10 and 15 of us who moved in around the same time. We just piled into available housing and at one point there were about five lads living in one house, in this little Eden Project, just trying to get to know some of the young people who spent most of their time trying to take the mick. We had loads of mad stuff happen like my mate Simon had his car written off because they ripped the car doors back and let off fireworks in his car. We had dog poo rubbed on the front door, weeing into the letterbox, my carpets set on fire and just loads of stuff and a few times a bit more serious, with weapons and things like that. Yeah, it was quite an interesting kind of culture shift coming from Watford and then moving up here.

"When I came to Manchester there was a real shift where God gave me a real vision in regards to worship. I began to see that so much of what happens is about spiritual battle, the situations we find young people in is about the fact that we are kind of waging this war in the heavenlies. God really spoke to us just about how worship has got such an important role in that as we glorify Jesus, as we lift him up, we see his throne established. Even to the grassroots, things of, you know, seeing young people struggling with drug issues, self-harm issues, like whatever it is, part of the picture of seeing their lives turned around is about the way we worship."

Andy began to lead worship at some of the inter-church prayer events that The Mission was organising across the city. He commented, "I was being amazed at how worship seemed to play such an important role in the evangelism that we were doing. One time we found it very difficult in our home church to just meet because we had a lot of kids that would just come and kick off. We used to have 16 year old kids coming in wearing balaclavas and they would run into the church with bb guns and shoot people in the bum while they were trying to take communion and stuff like that. It was quite disruptive and quite difficult really to worship God. We kind of scuttled away into a little building round the corner from the church, just to worship and to pray for the area, not wanting to have to police that kind of meeting. But after a year we kind of thought we should really be doing this in our own church, so we went back into our own church.

"As we were setting up for it some kids came along and said, 'Hey we want to come in,' and all this sort of stuff. It was amazing how we were able to say, 'Hey look, if you want to come in here tonight it's just about telling God that we love him. You would not want us to necessarily stand over your shoulder while you are telling your girlfriend that you love her and kind of poking you and laughing at you and stuff. We'd love you to come in, but if you are going to come in, that's what it's all about.' They were saying, 'Yes, safe call,' and I was thinking, 'Oh no, they are all going to come back with bricks and brick the windows and all that stuff.' But it was amazing how literally after about two, two and a half years of really struggling every Sunday, every service, to even get through the service without someone kicking off. . . At one time they brought a big metal oil drum and threw it at the vicar and stuff like that. It was mad stuff. Literally, from that day as we worshipped God and said, 'God, this is your place, we want you to be worshipped here and we want you to get the glory from this place'; literally since that day we've had no trouble at all with any of the guys. We used to be really scared even if just one young person came because we didn't know what they were going to do; but now, even on a Sunday evening almost, the majority of the church are young people who come in and just sit in with us and spend time worshipping God with us. It's amazing, yeah!"

Some of the songs on Andy's 'Breathe' CD emanate from this crucial period in Andy's life. One of them is "Salvation Song". Andy explained, "There is a commissioning that comes for us to sing out over the community and kind of moves into this time when we are able to sing. Some of the lyrics are 'The lost come and by God they are redeemed/Together we'll sing that we love you oh King Jesus/Forever you are the lover of my soul/And as your presence comes around us/Your glory has been revealed.' It's that kind of stuff, believing that as we worship and speak out this stuff over the community, we will actually see these prophetic words coming into life."