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Brenton Brown

You may not know him by name, but you certainly know the songs of South African-born Brenton Brown, a worship leader responsible for writing such modern anthems as "Hallelujah (Your Love Is Amazing)," "Lord Reign in Me" and "All Who Are Thirsty." A once Vineyard collaborator and behind-the-scenes songwriter, Brown worked surreptitiously for years before going public and heeding the call to become a worship leader. Last May, he released his solo debut Everlasting God (Sparrow), the pinnacle of a long run as a pastor and minister, but also the calm after the storm of a life-altering disease that changed him and his wife forever. In this conversation, Brown discusses his initial unwillingness to lead the saints in song, his bout with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and how worship—it turned out—was the one thing that was killing him.

You've been something of a behind-the-scenes pioneer in the modern worship movement. Why did it take you so long to go solo?

Brenton Brown: Well, I was kind of a reluctant worship leader. I was actually reluctant to do the Vineyard compilations, but I felt the Lord say, "You should do it." In the meantime, worship leading was only one of the things I was doing. I was [also] pastoring and studying. So it kinda fit nicely to once or twice a year to be able to [dive] into a worship project. It wasn't my main deal.

But then my wife and I got sick about three years ago. I stopped studying, and I couldn't pastor anymore. With those things gone, I decided, Music is one thing I can do; let's explore it and see how far we can go with it. That's why we decided to do [the album].

Was your reluctance to lead worship sort of a Jeremiah complex—of not wanting to do something God had asked you to do?

Brown: No. I was like, "I don't know if I'm that kind of Christian." But generally, there was nobody else with a guitar. That's what happened. I was like, "Okay, we want to worship the Lord and no one else is going to play it, so I might as well play it."

Even after songs like "Lord Reign in Me" or "Hallelujah (Your Love Is Amazing)" exploded in popularity, you still didn't want to do this?

Brown: Don't get me wrong. I love it, and I feel very privileged to do it. I love playing with a band. I love being in the Lord's presence. But I was still kinda reticent to be out there being known as a worship leader.

Why?

Brown: Because it's a big responsibility.

You didn't want to be held accountable for it?

Brown: Yeah, probably. Paul says those with responsibility are held to higher standards. There's a weight of responsibility that you take home when you go into leadership, and I was always reluctant to do that. I still feel like that.

Now you are an official worship leader. There's no way back.

Brown: It's too late! We didn't think those Vineyard albums would be received as widely as they were. When they were, it was over. Actually, I had this weird dream where [worship leader and former Vineyard producer] Brian Doerksen called me up and said, "We'd love to use 'Lord Reign in Me' on this album." And then later he called me up and said, "We'd like you to lead it if you could." And I said, "Um, can I get back to you on that?" In this dream, I'm in my study and there's this tornado coming, outside my window. And I'm doing my best to keep it out of the house, but eventually it gets in.

The tornado in the dream felt like God. And when the tornado goes in the house it was actually pretty cool 'cause everything obviously spun around. That's what that leading opportunity felt like. It was a tornado I couldn't control or resist. It was God's thing.

Signing worship leaders to a record deal seems to be a trend. Would it be okay with you if your job consisted of just leading worship, not being a recording artist?

Brown: I wouldn't be frustrated. I went through this though process, basically: Do we have to have worship leaders doing albums, and does it help? What's the point? And I guess, at a certain point, I realized that these albums don't just happen. Matt Redman's catalogue of songs or Paul Baloche's catalogue of songs don't just happen.

At a certain point, you can make a decision. You can either wait for the songs to come or you can treat these albums almost like a Sunday morning service, as a pastor, where I'm preaching to the church on Sunday. I need to prepare, I need to find bread for the brothers. I need to get the Word of God for them. Once you set up that structure, we're going to try to record an album once every three years or something. That focus, that target, that deadline—whatever you want to call it—collates everything, coheres everything. You get more intentional about your songs. And that's not a bad thing, is it?

Do you think this intentionality in writing "hit" songs, songs that the church embraces, robs worship of its genuineness?

Brown: I think the church is more savvy than that. I think people get it. People feel it. You know what Paul said? Whatever the reason, however they're preaching, as long as the Word of God is preached, I'm happy. And I think the same goes for any kind of ministry. If God's being honored, if people are being served, then it's all good, however people get there. But at the end of the day, church is a pretty savvy thing. And the songs that connect people to God get ahead of the songs that don't. And these songs that all of us write may be around in one hundred years or they may be gone in twenty, and that's fine as long as God gets honored.

You were born in South Africa, went to college in England, and now reside in California. How does worship differ from place to place to place?

Brown: It differs from church to church, how people respond, how people express themselves to God. The biggest difference for me was moving from Cape Town to Oxford. South Africa people are far more expressive in everyday life, more vocal. They'll let you know exactly what they're thinking, if it's good or bad. In England people are slightly more reserved, and you wonder what they're thinking, whether it's good or is bad. So you see the pluses and the negatives of both sides.

Why did you move to the U.S.?

Brown: Mostly for our health, just for some sunshine and the change of pace of California. We were living in London, and London's pretty intense, like New York.

What was going on with your health?

Brown: It's called fibromyalgia, a form of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. What defines it are the symptoms, the most obvious ones [being] fatigue. You feel jet-lagged most of the time. There are other symptoms like nausea, muscle pain, muscle aches. There's no known cure. Basically it was just like waking up one day and finding out that I had someone else's body. Very strange. I wasn't thinking as clearly. And over the last three years we've basically had to relearn how to live life with our new bodies. It's been a challenge.

Chronic Fatigue is a little bit like having mono[nucleosis]. You feel very fatigued, very drained. And no matter how much you sleep, you're still going to feel tired. You can never shake off that tired feeling. I just kept going for six months. And then my pastor, the board of our church and the group of doctors that I was seeing all decided, "This is not working. You're not going to be able to force your way through this."

And you and your wife got sick simultaneously? How come?

Brown: Yeah, it's very strange. We use the same doctors. It's been a real help. We weren't married [yet] but we were going out. And it was just so helpful to have someone to say, "Am I going crazy, or are you feeling this stuff too?" The doctors very rarely gave a diagnosis because there's no biological marker. In the end, we went to one of the world's top doctors because we needed to know what was going on.

What did the doctor prescribe you?

Brown: Rest. So we rested pretty hard. I say "hard" because we're both pretty active. I was busy traveling and ministry and pastoring and teaching. And my wife is involved in finance. [All of that] was hard to stop. It took us about six months to phase out. The doctors said that whatever we were doing, certainly wasn't helping.

What was it like pastoring and ministering during that season?

Brown: Really hard. There were a lot of things that were difficult for my faith—the main one was being at church on a Sunday. We both love people. We both love church. But instead of coming away feeling better and uplifted after a morning of worship, invariably we'd feel worse because physically it was taxing on us. So that was really odd dynamic—the thing that was our nourishment was actually very difficult to do, it would make us feel bad. It was one of the hardest things.

So it was like worship was killing you.

Brown: Exactly. Worship is more than playing a guitar with a band. Because of our health, it was more about having peace and quiet with God—a place of nourishment and where we connected with him.

Did you ever question why God would allow this to happen to one of his workers?

Brown: Yeah. A part of me thought, You know, God, you called me here. You brought us here. I'm doing what I believe you've asked me to do. I'm not going to move until you heal me, because I'm on your mission. But I never got healed. In retrospect, I think it was one of those moments that God used to move me to the next stage.

You're living in California now. How are you and your wife feeling now?

Brown: The illness hasn't gotten better, but we're handling it much better. Because the weather is so pleasant out here, I don't tend to catch as many colds or get as many infections. That makes a huge difference for us. We live out in the mountains, just peace and quiet. When you look out the window everyday and it's sunny, you just feel better.

Click here to read our review of Brenton Brown's solo debut, Everlasting God. Listen to sound clips and buy his music by visiting Christianbook.com.

© Andree Farias, subject to licensing agreement with Christianity Today International. All rights reserved. Click for reprint information.

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