seemed to deeply connect with the song . What was even stranger , within a couple of weeks we started getting reports of the song being sung in places like South Africa . Because our church was the mother church for the Vineyard movement in the UK and Europe , guests from around the world would pass through our services while visiting London , and some of them were nicking charts off the stage and bringing the song back with them to their home churches .
A few months later , in early 1998 , in a jampacked auditorium at Elliot High School in Putney , SW London , while recording this song for the first time at a worship evening I heard God ’ s still small voice whisper to me something like , “ This is why I brought you over the Atlantic Ocean – to write this song ”. What happened next has surprised and encouraged me , and here we are 25 years later and the song , like you mentioned , is still in use in many churches … which is remarkable .
[ WM ] Over the years this song was used in several different countries , cultures , and languages . Can you share a story or two about those places that you heard of ?
[ Brian ] There are so many stories . Here ’ s a couple . There was a Swiss musicologist who took a trip to Iran . He traveled to a small mountain village and upon arrival , asked some of the residents to play him a piece of music so he could get a sense of what type of music they enjoyed making . They pull out some instruments and played their version of “ Come Now is the Time to Worship ” singing along in Farsi which was their mother tongue . Upon returning to Switzerland , the musicologist met my uncle , my dad ’ s brother Helmut Doerksen , who was teaching at the Bienenberg Bible School just outside of Basil , and he told him the story of how his nephew ’ s song showed up in a remote mountain village in one of the most ‘ closed ’ countries in the world .
Then there was the trip I took with my father to Paraguay about 20 years ago . I wanted to take my Dad back to where he was born and raised to get to know him a bit better . Harry Doerksen was born and raised among the
German speaking Mennonites in Paraguay . They got there because , when fleeing the Russian Revolution in the early 1900 ’ s , some of them weren ’ t allowed into Canada or the U . S . but were welcomed to settle the ‘ green hell ’ of Paraguay which is several hundred miles northwest of Asuncion , the capital city .
This region is a desert with sandy soil and thorny brambles . The Mennonites were able to create farms here and transformed this barren inhospitable place into a habitable and fruitful region . My Dad and I arrived in Filadelfia , the Mennonite village in the Chaco region where my Dad was raised . That Sunday morning , we attended the German church service . Over a thousand Mennonite believers entered the church silently . ( It ’ s an amazing experience to sit with that many people in silence .) When it was time to start , someone walked to the front and started the first song without an instrument ; and the whole congregation began to sing in unaccompanied 4-part harmony one of the old German hymns that brought them comfort through so much suffering and change . I was so moved . And at the same
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