interview with Darlene Zschech by Wayne Clarke

Darlene Zschech (repeat after me: "Dar-leen Check") is a prolific song-writer and a dynamic worship leader. She is married to Mark and they have two daughters named Amy Jane and Chloe Jazz.

Darlene is Music Pastor at Hills Christian Life Centre in Sydney, a church which features on most of her live albums. The latest in a string of albums featuring her songs and her church is "Touching Heaven, Changing Earth" from Hillsongs Australia, released in Britain by Alliance Music. According to Hillsongs the new album, "aspires to provide resources that help churches break into another dimension of worship".

Darlene is witty and full of fun and despite world-wide acclaim has retained a down-to-earth humility. She recently spoke to Wayne Clarke about her life and her music.

Tell me about your church

The church is fantastic! It's about thirteen years old, and just started as a bunch of hungry people, about forty of them and it's just grown from there. It's still the same, it's about seeing people won to Christ, and we love to worship!

How do you see yourself now? Primarily as a song-writer, a singer, a worship leader...?

Mother, house-cleaner?! I just do what I do. I haven't graduated to anything. I'm a pastor at our church, yes I write songs, I try to pastor the people who are under me. I'm really committed to seeing other writers coming through, I'm committed to seeing excellence in the church, I see my role in there as well. I've got other dreams and visions that have got nothing to do with music, they're still sitting there. I love producing music, and when we get into the subject of family, that's another thing all together, and that's my favourite thing of all.

With all you do: family, church, touring the world, do you still find time for the Lord? How do you make space for your relationship with him?

Oh well, I have to do that, I couldn't survive - that's what this is about. This isn't a Darlene thing, this is something that I really believe is God's design. If I don't have an on-going relationship with the Lord then I've got nothing to say. It just becomes another song.

Tell me about the song that took Britain by storm: "Shout to the Lord". How did you come to write that?

I think some songs are just meant to be written. I probably happened to be there at the time. It just came out of my own worship time with the Lord. Just having that cry, which I guess is why people love it, it just says: there's no-one like you, God, I just want to worship you. It's a very simple message, but it's the cry of most people's heart, it's very simple, it's just a relationship with God, and everything else pales into insignificance, you just want to see Jesus.

The song just came out of that time. I remember it very, very clearly. I remember playing it to Geoff Bullock our music pastor at the time. It took me twenty minutes to play it to him, because I kept apologising, "I'm sorry, change anything you want, I know it's probably stupid". I just kept doing that and finally I had him and Russell Fragar with their backs to me in the corner of the room, because I was so embarrassed to play it to them. But the moment we started singing it in church it just took off.

It's a personal song, an intimate song, and yet it speaks about the majesty of God, that God is the Lord of the whole earth, not just the Lord of me?