On 17th May thousands of Christians young and old took part in Global March For Jesus' Operation A to Z and prayer walked around their neighbourhoods. It was the latest in a long line of initiatives linked to Britain's praise and worship maestro GRAHAM KENDRICK. Ian Boughton met the worship.

Yes, but what did it achieve? "To me, it seemed to achieve several things. It took the walls off the Church, and remember that the Church was born on the streets, on the day of Pentecost; Jesus' ministry was work on the streets. It was an event, which demanded an explanation, whereas a church hidden behind a wall isn't answering any questions. It isn't answering questions because nobody's asking them. By the time one side gets out of bed on a Sunday morning, the other side's gone home...."

A vision is a fine thing; and Graham Kendrick is a musician who sees his target. But can he sympathise with the job of the average Christian musician, the hundreds of them in little bands up and down the country, who make their self-financed tapes, get a review in Cross Rhythms, and then ask themselves... what next?

Where do they go then, Graham? "Hmmm... 'Without vision, the people perish'!"

Isn't that a bit cruel? "No," protests Graham - he says it to show that you don't get a clear road map to follow in Christian music, and you may end up on a different road entirely.

"These moments of doubt about what to do next, expose the limitations of our human vision - we have to come to the end of our vision before we get on our knees and find God's vision. You don't start with the big picture, you start with your ambitions, and then God knocks you about a bit and puts it into shape.

"So there's a difference between saying 'God, please bless my band', and 'God, please show me what to do'. The latter one is the one that sustains any Christian."

Still sounds a fraction hard on the ones who haven't made it yet. "Oh, does it sound like I'm saying 'don't give up the day job'? No, I have the conviction, and it's not an original one, that God has destined everybody for fruitfulness. The job you get to do may not be a high-profile one, but those with the jobs in obscurity will be famous in Heaven.

"It's interesting how many people who were my own contemporaries started off in bands until God took them elsewhere - one of the guys who started Spring Harvest started off in a rock band, but God had other purposes for him further down the road."

Does someone of Kendrick's fame have a responsibility to bring on the new generation of musicians? "Yes, and I try to do it on a personal level, as well as within my own church. It's very important for people to have a mentor." Did he have one? "I had encouragement, but no mentor; because what we were doing was without much precedent. The culture that spawned rock was the culture that spawned Christian rock... and it was new. But I would have loved to have had a mentor on Christian songwriting."

If that is important, can it be developed? Should there be a general encouragement, development, and training, even education, for those hundreds of would-be Christian musicians and songwriters who want to be out there playing it, but need guidance? "At last, there's a music course at the London Bible College. It aims to develop not only musical abilities, but to tie them in with a basic theological course."

Graham himself has taken part in seminars on Christian music writing. If he can talk songwriting to order, can he write his own material to order? "No, I can't - but what I can do is to assess what I've got. In reviewing the sketch of a song, I can see how it's going to come out and whether people will find it easy to sing with; this is why I often look for an opportunity to road test a new worship song, and my home church is very patient with me in letting me try the new ones out to find if they're singable... and they're very understanding if, the next time I sing it, it may be completely changed because of that road test!"

Is this a perceptible difference between the established worship leader singers and the new bands trying to find their way, where the established ones know why they're writing a song, whereas the newcomers write by inspiration, not by strategy? Or is that a cold and clinical way of looking at Christian songwriting? "No it's not," retorts Graham, by now giving all the appearance of thoroughly enjoying an intellectual dissection of his music; "It's a perfectly reasonable understanding of the job that music has to do". If someone is kind enough to tell him that 'Shine, Jesus, Shine' was an exceptionally well constructed song (just try and find someone who wouldn't love to have written it!), he'll reply that it wasn't entirely an accident - it was an understanding of what the song was supposed to do, and the emotions it was to inspire, that brought about the dynamics of those distinctive chord changes.

(That song works equally well if you play it either in the style of Buddy Holly, or as jazz funk, says his interviewer; Graham looks intrigued and confesses that he's never tried it!)

If Christian music can be written with an understanding of the job it has to do, then why isn't the music widely commercially accepted? Just as pop songs are written to popular taste, specifically to make the charts, can CCM be strategically written as listening music for a wider audience? Even one of the new breed of creative young Christian musicians told a Cross Rhythms interviewer recently that he only had a couple of contemporary Christian music CDs in his collection, because the standard of the music to listen to wasn't as high as secular recorded music.