An interview with the hymn writer and worship leader Stuart Townend on his visit to Liverpool in October 2008.

Words and picture:  © Wayne Clarke

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Do you feel a pressure to keep on writing the songs and hymns. Is it becoming like a production line?

I don’t think of it in those terms and hopefully it’s not becoming in any way mechanical. I think what drives me to write is the fact that I think it’s so important that what we sing is based on the truth of the Gospel, and the truth of the Bible.

There are lots of things still to write about and I come across different themes. Particularly if you hear a great preacher and you think, “wouldn’t it be great to capture what he said in a hymn or a song?” So that inspires me and motivates me to try to work on that.

I love the idea of being able to write something that will help people to retain the truth of the gospel in their minds, and songs are a great way of doing that, because you remember a song in a way that you don’t remember a sermon.

I’m very inspired and motivated to capture some truths like that and for people to be able to think through them as they sing them week by week in the local church.


You talk about “capturing truths”. A lot of contemporary worship music is subjective: “I feel good today”, but your work is so much more objective and setting out Christian truth. Is that what you’re trying to do with it?

Yeah, I definitely set out to do that. I love the subjective songs and I wouldn’t want to put them down. I think it’s important that we do have songs that really give a voice to how we feel and how we respond to the love of God and who God is, and I think it’s wonderful what has happened over the last twenty, thirty years, in terms of the songs that allow us to give voice to our emotions, because emotion is a part of us, we should respond emotionally as well as intellectually to who God is.

But I sometimes do think that we perhaps went a little too far the other way and we became so subjective that actually we need some truth, because when we’re worshipping God it needs to begin with who he is rather that beginning with how we feel. I think it’s important to declare truth, to meditate on who God is and then our response comes as a result of that.

What originally moved me to think more along those lines was I was trying o find songs that would help us celebrate who God is, and I was finding that there were relatively few songs that were about God that had been written recently, and quite often you were going back to hymns that were written a hundred, two hundred years ago, which are great to use, but I was thinking, “why are we not writing  songs that describe who God is now – his multi-faceted character, describing his love or even describing Christ and what he has done and describing his life and death and resurrection.

That actually we needed narrative songs and we needed songs that describe his attributes. In a sense I feel I am trying to re-balance things, one do the people trying to help bring more of a balance to the things we sing, a balance of subjective and objective.


And the style of your music, it’s more like traditional hymns than a lot of contemporary worship. Again, is that that to restore the balance?

Yes, when you look at mainstream music, the secular music scene outside of the Christian world, there are trends and it’s the latest sound that people go for, and that tends to dominate the pop charts.

But when you’re thinking  about churches worshipping together, people coming together of different ages, different backgrounds, it’s important that you give a voice that is accessible to the whole congregation.

To use a more folk or Celtic feel does to some extent appeal across the ages and so is a useful tool that enables a lot of people to be able to worship together, and there’s a sense of  being quire timeless, it’s not the latest trend that will be out of touch in five years’ time.

There‘s a longevity about it. So I think it’s a good medium to use, musically, to be able to communicate truth, And it’s all very melody-led as well, it’s not rhythm-led, which means you can do it with large bands and you can do it with a guitar and piano, so it’s accessible to lots of different churches with their different ages and also their different resources.

You’ve written a lot with Keith Getty, and working with Keith underlines some of those things you’ve said about melody-driven songs with a Celtic feel. Has that enhanced your song writing?

Oh yes, I’ve really enjoyed working with Keith, we’ve developed a really good working relationship together. And he’s the melodies man. He’s from Northern Ireland, he has that Irish background, and also a classical background, so he really knows what he’s doing in terms of writing melodies that really stick and that are really memorable.

He is a great asset, he’s a fantastic contributor to the worship scene and the songs that are available today, and it’s great working together because I suppose I’m more of a words person, so I like get to grips with the words. But the melodies that he writes are so strong, so enduring and so easy to pick up that it’s been great working together and it seems that we kind of click together, we complement one another.