Currently packing them in on his mammoth 21-town UK tour, praise and worship leader, singer and composer NOEL RICHARDS spoke to Tony Cummings.

"I think there needs to be a close relationship between singers/musicians and those with a prophetic ministry. Any songs I have written that contain a prophetic element have come out of the fact that we've been very privileged to be exposed to those who have a prophetic voice to the nation, like Roger Forster and my close friend Gerald Coates. We've been working together for 15 or more years and with other people of that nature. So I just sit under their ministry, talking to them, gain an understanding of what God is saying now and then trying to condense all that into a song that lasts for four or five minutes. For me it's the question of the songwriter sitting at the feet of the prophetic ministry and asking what is God saying right now, trying to weave those things into a song."

What about this spontaneous prophetic utterances, do you sing out things which you feel the Lord has brought to you?

"Yep, I sometimes do that. I don't go to every worship meeting with the thought on my mind, 'I'm going to sing out prophetically', although God is constantly speaking and one of the things I'm learning yet again is to tune in and listen. I lead people in song and maybe someone will come and give a Scripture reading and that will spark something off in me or somebody else will sing out something and I will get stirred up. Now my wife Trish, what she does is, she keeps a notebook and she constantly writes lines down that she feels God is giving her, brings it to meetings, and often she will flick through the pages of that notebook in the meeting, then she'll come to the microphone and begin to sing out to a riff that the musicians are playing. A lot of these things she maybe keeps and never sings again, other times she will maybe use the same phrases (albeit a different melody) several times a year because it's something God wants to say over and over again. So there are different ways of exercising a prophetic gift in music."

How do you respond to people who are really alienated by the charismatic movement and its music?

"Well, I don't get letters saying, 'We think that what you are doing is terrible.' It seems like broadly across the evangelical Church there is an openness to the move of the Spirit. In the broad mass of evangelical Christians, there's been an embracing of the charismatic style of worship. Now they may say, 'We don't all speak in tongues, we don't all dance, we don't all fall over at meetings, we don't all laugh and cry.' I think if we're all looking at manifestations purely as a sign of being charismatic we may be missing the point. I'm a firm believer in that what makes a charismatic is when God shows up in a most powerful way and that can happen singing the great hymns from Wesley. It's just not simply new songs, but it's when people come together and worship and God turns up. If you call that charismatic that's fine, or if you call that people being exuberant that's okay. But I feel exuberance and celebration has to be a part of life even in the midst of sadness. I went through an experience last year, our whole church went through an experience of grief when we lost one of our young men. I was on the 'Warrior' tour at the time and I remember telling my son who was travelling with me, that this guy his own age had gone to be with the Lord. My son didn't know how to handle the grief and I didn't know how to handle him. I was broken. There were 400 people turning up to a praise concert and in the midst of my personal sadness - because when you're part of a body of Christians you weep for those that weep and rejoice for those that rejoice - I had a look at the words I was singing, 'Death will not triumph, though we may die, he is risen, Jesus is alive, who can mend hearts that are broken.' And I realised that in the midst of sadness it is God that turns our mourning into dancing."

So do you think that the name 'happy clappy' is a purely derisory one?

"I think it is derisory, yes, because most of us ARE thinking through why we dance and celebrate. Most of the world tonight is dancing and celebrating and they've got no reason to dance and celebrate. The Church has got EVERY reason to dance and celebrate because the King of kings has changed our lives. And there are times when we will weep and there are times when we will be on our knees; there'll be times when we cry with the cry of God. I feel God wants us to be well rounded evangelicals not just 'happy clappys' of the liberal caricatures."

But the charismatic movement has shown weakness in some areas. For instance, its slowness in developing a Christian social conscience.

"I guess that must be true. But we're learning. I think we're all developing with our walk with God and our understanding. So I think it's a question of exercising kindness and grace to one another. I certainly don't force my preference for worship on people when I've been asked to lead worship, because I feel what I want to see is people released, to know they've encountered God and if you try and push people down a particular road - 'let's get you all dancing, let's get you all clapping' -nine times that's right, but you want people to have an encounter with God at the end of the day and not just to make my point as worship leader, so when I go to certain situations it is a challenge because they come from a different perspective to me, but we need each other and we can learn from one another, but do it with kindness."

What do you feel about alternative worship?

"It depends what you call alternative, because there are so many different ways of expressing our worship to God.
I suppose what we call the hymn/prayer/Bible reading sandwich would be alternative to people in my church! So wherever you're coming from there's always going to be an alternative, so I think the phrase is a little bit of a misnomer."

Let's just say rave/house/techno-orientated music for worshipping.

"That kind of music leaves me stone cold from a musical point of view. But there are clearly many young people who can worship God in that particular style, that's the music they've grown up with, that's the music they enjoy, and so I don't have a problem with people worshipping with that style of music. You can lose God in it sure, but then you can lose God in the classics, in the hymns, in the newer songs we've been singing. So as to write off the whole thing because we don't understand the musical style is a very silly thing to do."

Is there another set of songs beginning to emerge for a new album?

"There are slowly. I do 101 other things besides writing songs. I look after the worship team in the church at home and there's an awful lot of administration that goes with what I do, just setting up these concerts, and I'm trying to redress all of that at the moment and trying to make more time to write. But when I start writing, a song can come very quickly. My wife and I just wrote a song a couple of months ago. It's called 'You Are My Passion' and it just rolled off the pen. I got a tune at a meeting, I put it on to a tape machine, I came home and said this is what I've got as a tune. Trish then reads the words I've got, I will then listen to the words. God moved in my life, I broke down in tears and started laughing, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I believe it was God touching me. I said, 'Let's write it,' and we did it within half an hour. Often when songs come they come quickly, so we're looking at an album to be released in the Autumn of '96, that's what we're looking for and I'm gathering ideas for that right now. For me I feel it may be a song or an album which will help us to rediscover the truths of God's love for us and his passion for us."