One of the world's most influential teachers on the theology and practice of praise and worship as well as a worship leader/vocalist on several successful worship albums is TOM INGLIS. Tom spoke at length about his life and vision to Tony Cummings.

When asked to summarise what exactly these principles of a lifestyle of worship are, Tom becomes even more enthused. "Thanksgiving is the foundation that we still teach today. If you study the Bible, thanksgiving is what the churches did. The Church still doesn't understand the principles of thanksgiving, praise and worship as separate subjects. We put it into a melting pot and whatever comes out is fine. But if you study the Word you see very clearly that thanksgiving is always related to salvation or a type of salvation and what God wants as to do at a. fundamental level is to appreciate God for the fact that he's actually saved us. So I started developing that in people. The first week is to say to people, you know, here's the practical thing that we go and thank God. Get up in the morning and the first thing you do is develop a thankful spirit. Thank God that you're saved, don't give God Scriptures, don't read the Bible to God, don't pray in tongues, or whatever, but just for five minutes, just start to speak to God and tell him personally from you how thankful you really are that you're saved. In other words, get the focus on the fact that we're saved. And I think that's still a fundamental thing that the Church has still got to get hold of today. We can get so entranced in so many areas and miss the fundamental thing that God has actually saved us.
"Another key principle of course is praise. Praise is based on knowledge and the principles that I've seen, that are written in this new material that I've just done is that if we take away the knowledge of God's Word and the continuing knowledge that we receive from reading the Word we cannot get people to praise God. Why have we been struggling to get people to praise? 'Cause there's no knowledge. So it's like flogging a dead horse. So the principle is you HAVE to read the Word so that there's a catalyst. It's like there's God and there's man and God says, 'Look. Although you've got saved there's got to be something that makes us react.' What makes us react is God's Word. Without the Word man cannot be drawn to God and God cannot be drawn to man even though we're saved. The Old Testament says, 'I will praise you when I have read thy righteous judgements.' And, 'I will praise his Word.' It's full of it in the Psalms. In other words, when those guys read the Word there was a spark inside them, a reaction, which was praise.

"Worship is the third fundamental area we look at in our course. Worship is intimacy with God. Worship is based on a movement towards God. Moving into the presence of God instead of us waiting for God to move on us. It's our move as it were. And so worship is moving with the intention of intimacy and so that's a kind of highest level that there is. There is much more that needs to be grasped by believers - for instance, the relationship between worship and warfare. In many churches there's been a whole lot of warfare stuff but there's been no foundation in worship. So we get tired of fighting the Devil. The Devil gets elevated and Jesus gets nowhere. This error was something sweeping into Scandinavia and Europe just a couple of years ago and I started preaching strongly against that. Now I have sung warfare songs (Tom has even recorded an album of them) and I passionately believe in the need for spiritual warfare. But the base has got to be worship. We're not a kingdom of warriors. The kingdom is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. Now we're supposed to enjoy peace most of the time. So there are seasons of warfare. And in those seasons we must know how to fight. But if we're fighting the Devil all the time we've got our seasons mixed up! There are other principles - for instance, deliverance, the subject of why we're delivered. What is the revelation of deliverance? To worship him and to serve him and to enjoy him. Sometimes our concentration has been on being delivered instead of being the deliverers. Then there's healing, the relationship between worship and healing, the two of them are really inseparable. The Church has got to start extending its faith in this area.

"Let me just try and put it to you this way. If praise and worship as a subject, is a river, then we have only got our toes in it, at the moment prophetically that's where the Church is, I believe. And God wants us to dive into the river and swim. But we do not understand the subject, I don't think, and that's just my humble opinion. We think we do, there's the greatest problem. There are many vital subjects in the Psalmody International courses. For instance, bringing in the glory of God, the manifestation of God's glory."

On this controversial topic Tom has his own personal testimony. "In 1984 I had an experience. Now I've heard guys talk about Jesus walking into the room. Maybe it's because I'm Scottish but I'd always felt a little bit sceptical. I thought, 'Yeah, sure. What was he wearing? Was he wearing sandals?' All that stuff. I'm a very earthy person, very down-to-earth. I don't go for the fancy stuff. Yet I give testimony that one day in '84 I was sitting in my study working on the subject of holiness for the manual (holiness is another subject we do) and I tell you, I had an experience -God came into that room! I never saw anything or heard anything but in an instant, I KNEW I was not alone. I mean, I'm not talking about worship under the anointing. I'm not talking about that. The presence of God just engulfed that room and I started writing under the anointing of the Lord. This presence was there for about 40 minutes or so, and then the presence left. It was like a tangible presence, like someone walking out the door and you're on your own again. And at the end of this I had written a whole lot of stuff that I did not understand but it was prophetic. The Lord said to me, 'This is the Word that I gave you for the end time Church regarding worship. Your ministry will go forth in this Word.' I've still got that prophecy today; it was quite astounding.

"Some of the stuff it said we're beginning to actually see now, right here in Britain with the times of refreshing going on in the churches. God gave me that in 1984, about the move of the Spirit of God. In 1985 God stared opening up the nations for me. And it's been tough. England has been a very difficult place for us. But thank God. Through the gift of a wonderful team of helpers I believe we have got the right foundation. It's been built through relationships with people, not through finances, but through relationships. Now we're operating in 36 countries of the world. The teaching material's been translated in many different languages."

Why, I asked, was the course called Psalmody International? "It's maybe a little misleading name, but God gave me that name and I stuck to it. It's very important to stress that the Psalmody International courses are not a musician's course. In fact, we just did some statistics and I think it was 75 or 80 per cent of our people who have attended Psalmody worldwide are not musicians at all so I think that's got to be stressed. I think the Devil's tried to use that to keep people away from the course. You know, 'Oh, it's praise and worship. It must be for musicians.' So that's been a problem."

1985 was a particularly significant year for Tom. For not only did Psalmody International begin to catch the attention of the international Church he also found himself suddenly catapulted into the pop music world! "In 1985 I found myself in the South African hit parade! What happened was that the guy I worked with had worked with Cat Stevens, produced one of Cat Steven's albums. He came to South Africa - Chris Dimitrio - he's now back in England in fact. He's got a church in London. We used to get up in the mornings and pray. For about a year every morning we'd pray about 6 o'clock. Chris was working at Rhema and God gave us a word and the word was, 'I'm going to use you to get into the hit parade.'

"It seemed impossible, crazy. But God gave us a word and we started talking about that, Chris and I. We had a song recorded so we went to this major distributor and we were sitting there with these guys and we had a white copy of the song and we gave them this song. But before that happened Chris got a word from God and he started prophesying. Unbelievable! In front of these guys. He says, 'You guys have been in trouble for a long time and we are going to help you get out of that trouble.' Well, I mean, I could have died. I was a total unknown. And the guy says, 'Oh really? We have been in some trouble but let's listen to the song.' We played the song and he says, 'Yeah, we like it! We can do some things with it. We'll distribute it.' They started distributing the thing. We released it as a single and did one side 'Champions Of God' and the other side 'Champions Of Love' and the thing charted. It was incredible - it went in the South African charts at No 27 and stayed there! I've got the press reports. It was one of the longest songs; it broke all kinds of records. It was in the charts for nearly 30 weeks and it went to No 5. It went slowly so it got massive exposure. That was the first one and everybody said, 'That was a fluke. The Rhema church just put it there...' The next one charted as well. I got a No 12 with the second one. It was called 'What Have We Done To The Song'. The third one was called 'Destined To Win' and the fourth was called 'No Strangers In Heaven' which I wrote myself. We've got a station called Radio 5, equivalent to your Radio 1 and I got a No 3 on that. So it happened four times and I got a lot of television exposure through that. I think the reason it happened was that God gave me a voice to speak to people about worship and I got a lot of respect from some of the secular people and I think it was just something unique God did.

"Out of that Heartbeat came to South Africa; Ray and Nancy Goudie had heard about me and they were in Cape Town. They heard about the success I had had and me being a Scot, they came up to Jo'burg and they arrived at the Rhema offices one day. I'd never heard of them. They came in and said, 'We've heard that this has happened to you,' and I said, 'Yes.' They said, 'We want to do this in England,' and I said, 'Well, go do it if God said it but don't try it if God hasn't said it.' Ray asked, 'How did it happen?' I said how the local church got behind me but that wasn't enough. It had to happen out there because the sampling was across the nation and not just Johannesburg. So they went away with a concept saying, 'We're going to do it.' The rest is history from there."

Despite this phenomenal pop success Tom was never swayed by the glittering prizes of the pop industry. "My heart was never to be a pop star. Worship was my heart. But of course a lot of people were attracted to that and I did concerts when they asked me to because of the songs but I was always promoting the whole thing of worship. I think what we've got to do is, if we can utilise songs, talking in terms of musicality, take that from the world and introduce them into stuff that God has anointed for us in terms of praise and worship. That's fantastic, we must do that. But I don't think what we're trying to do is to contemporise praise and worship just because there is musicality in it. I don't think we should try and do that. Let's face it! Music is a gift to the saved as well as the unsaved and the unsaved have utilised it a lot more than we have and developed a lot more than we have and so we can get a lot from that.

"I think when we are talking about praise and worship it is definitely participatory and if you look at the Psalms it was based on response. There was a response from the people so they were drawing the people in. But the other side of the coin is that a lot of the songs will touch and draw people to God where they are not necessarily responding in terms of praise and worship."

Tom is certain that more and more the worldwide destiny of the church is to rediscover worship. "I know that Jesus will come back for worship in the Church. There is no doubt about that. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind about that and I think that one of the greatest signs before his imminent return will be that worship. One of the words that God gave me is that there's coming a time in the Church when the Church won't rest. Day and night they'll get together in shifts because they want to worship him. Sundays will not be THE day of worship but just another day of worship."

There have been several significant developments in Psalmody. In 1990 there opened a Psalmody Academy at the Rhema Church in Randburg, South Africa where musicians are trained on a full time three-month course. Then there is a Psalmody outreach team where groups of young people are sent out to work alongside local churches. Although at the moment confined to South Africa it is hoped to extend the ministry overseas. The most recent extension of Psalmody's activities is into the instruction of children. A series of 10 full colour booklets and a teachers/parents resource pack, which unpack lifestyle principals through the adventures and experiences of Mr and Mrs Judah and their seven Hebrew kids. "I'm putting a lot of energy into this project over the next year or two," enthuses Tom, "as I believe it's just going to revolutionise the children."

Tom has now resettled in America. In January of this year he relocated the head quarters of Psalmody International to San Diego, California. The Psalmody Academy in South Africa still continues though Tom now hopes to establish a similar academy in San Diego. Tom has recently completely revised and condensed the Psalmody course and it is now available in a 20-week rather than the original one-year package.

In Britain the Psalmody courses are continuing to thrive. There are currently 12 Psalmody schools running and on October 16th will commence a major course when over 100 students are expected to attend the weekly (Monday night) teach-ins at Psalmody's new UK headquarters at the Cardale Christian Centre in Blackheath, West Midlands. With all his achievement and challenges Tom is still sometimes frustrated by the negative image that the phrase 'praise and worship' conjures up in some Christians.

"They classify you into, 'He's a praise and worship leader/teacher - we put him over there, we've got the message.' The struggle has been unbelievable! They immediately classify you. As you say, they marginalize you. All that is going to change and we've got to be prepared for that change because when it comes, man, I'm telling you, we've got to be ready to feed the people. There will be such a thirst and a hunger for God! But they won't want the junk. The peripheral stuff will go by the wayside. One guy said to me, 'Tom, how long are you going to do this stuff?' I said, 'Man, there is no other choice for me. I will do this until the last breath. I'm on to something here brother, whether people see it or not, I'm on to something and I will not stop."