years into that whole journey I just had a really powerful moment with God realizing the plans that He had for me were much greater than the plans I had for myself , and the only way to see them was to surrender myself and my heart and get on board with His plans for my life .
That was the moment I realized I needed Jesus in my life . At that moment I quit music , I quit everything else in my life that I felt was distracting me from pursuing a life with Jesus . About a year later I got asked to come on staff at a youth ministry . At that time , I had never considered or thought about working at a church . This was twenty-six years ago , and at that point I didn ’ t know any other person who was on staff at a church as a creative in Australia . That role just did not exist . So , when I came on it was very much that we were pioneering things . From that moment , I realized that God had called me to ministry and was just trying to figure out what that would look like because we didn ’ t necessarily have great examples of that . The only other church that I knew of who had people on staff for music was Hillsong Church . Most other worship pastors in Australia at that time were volunteers , and I didn ’ t know one person who was involved from the youth ministry .
That really was my open door to ministry , and from there it was really just figuring out what God wanted to do through our local student gatherings . I had been pursuing a future in music , and when I came into this youth ministry I realized there weren ’ t a lot of songs that seemed to fit that teenage and youth genre and market that they were looking for . A lot of the songs they would sing in the youth ministry were the same as what they ’ d sing in the main church , which maybe was cool if you were used to that kind of thing , but there were kids coming in from local high schools and places around the community with no concept of church music at all . I realized quite quickly that we needed to write songs that the teenagers in our community could connect with , because they were not connecting with what was happening . So , we kind of went on this wild journey of starting to write what made sense for us . That really was my kick start into the whole world of worship music .
[ WM ] You are definitely multi-faceted in your approach to ministry ! I know that you serve both in a co-leading pastoral role along with your wife , Alex , as well as leading in worship . Has being a worship leader made you a better pastor , or have the disciplines of being a pastor made you a better worship leader ?
[ Henry ] I don ’ t think either of those things are mutually exclusive . I would say they both have an impact on each other . Part of our journey , I don ’ t know if you know the history of our church here in Nashville , but when we moved