Noel Richards
Noel Richards is one of the most well known worship leaders in Britain at the moment. He tours extensively around the UK and to other countries and has led worship at events such as Spring Harvest and March for Jesus. In 1997 he co-ordinated the event at Wembley Stadium called Champion of the World and he is based at Pioneer People, in Surrey. Noel works closely with Gerald Coates, director of the Pioneer Trust and has done so since 1983. He is married to Tricia and they have two children, Amy and Sam, and Barney the Jack Russell.
Noel Richards is perhaps the most famous worship leader (apart from Graham Kendrick) in the country. He is also well known for the songs he has written - which include By Your Side, and more recently, Champion.
He has released four albums - By Your Side, Thunder in the Skies, Warrior, and most recently, Dangerous People.
He is a regular worship leader at such events as Spring Harvest and was one of the main organisers of and the main star in Champion of the World, which, if you haven't already seen my feature about that was a concert held on June 14th 1996 in Wembley Arena. A follow up will held this time - the big one, in WEMBLEY STADIUM.
The way he started was by leading worship in his local church when he was younger. He then met people from Youth For Christ and various evangelists, who encouraged him to work with Youth For Christ. That led him to be in a church in Plymouth, where one day Gerald visited. Eventually Noel moved to Cobham to be in Gerald's church. He then began to travel with Gerald, when Gerald was speaking at churches and conferences, and eventually Noel began to have invitations to lead worship at various churches and events. And that's how it started.
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The Noel Richards Interview This was an interview which I aked Noel to do for me for a GCSE Media Studies in April this year, and he obliged. Thanks Noel!!!! You can get to his homepage by clicking on the link below, but you should read this first!!!!
So, here goes!!!
When did you first have an interest in leading worship, and how did you go about getting yourself known?
I started leading worship more by accident than design! The youth church I joined in 1976 needed someone to lead worship. All they had was myself and a few other guitar players. We got the job!
I first started singing in my home church, encouraged by my pastor. He gave me opportunities in the church meetings. He also introduced me to other preachers who invited me to work with them. That widened my experience to other geographic areas and led to other invites.
Was it difficult getting a contract with Kingsway, and how did you go about it?
It was not difficult to get a contract with Kingsway. One of their directors was in our church and when one of the worship songs I had written was recorded, Thankyou Music became my publisher. That was in 1983
Have there been any people who have been influential in your life and worship?
Many of my friends at Pioneer People Cobham (formerly Cobham Christian Fellowship) We go back twenty years together! Others such as Gerald Coates, Graham Kendrick, Chris Bowater, Les Moir, to name a few.
When did you beome a Christian, and how did it change your life at the time?
I became a committed Christian aged 15 in 1970. I had always been a part of a church as my family are Christians. From that moment I began to use music to communicate my faith
What did it feel like when your vision of 70,000 Christians praising Jesus Christ came to fruition?
Ask me after June 28th!! I am so excited that the event is happening. I have been carrying the vision for 10 years
and following on . . . what was it like when you played at WembleyArena, knowing that a year later, you would be playing next year at the stadium?
The Arena was an awesome event. I felt it was a great preparation for 1997 and a tremendous encouragement to go for it
Are you ever nervous before playing a gig?
Not nervous but apprehensive that I will miss out on what God wants to do with the event
Have there been times in your life when you are trying to write a song and cannot express yourself?
Lots of times. Songwriting gets harder, not easier
What sources do you have for inspiration in your song writing?
The prophetic ministries that I spend time with. They help me to hear what God is saying and doing now. All I do, is seek to put that into a song that the church can sing and thus embody the heart of what God is doing
Have you recently had doubts about the success of concerts and whetheryou are making an impact, If so, how do you counter them?
Yes, I do sometimes wonder if we are scratching where people are itching. I want people to go away from my concerts having had an encounter with God in some way.
I myself have been brought up in a Christian family, and so it is natural for me to have a Christian outlook. What advice do you have when you are trying to talk to people about God and Jesus?
Use everyday language. Communicate in a way that they can relate to. Don't hide behind religious cliches
So, how difficult was it organising the Champion of the World concert?
It was a major project and took a lot of my time during 1996. The actual production was done by a professional producer (who is a Christian) who took care of all the practical aspects
How did you chose the bands/singers to be involved?
I chose to work with my friends and those who have a vision to see the nation touched by the Gospel
After Champion of the World, do you have any plans?
Take a holiday!! But I'll be back in the Autumn with some concerts and other events. There are ideas of staging further stadium events but nothing is definite
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Interview with Noel Richards
Christchurch Southport
30th January 2000
Paul: I’m in Southport, Christchurch with Noel Richards and he’s here to chat with us about his life and his music.
Song: Calling all Nations (From the album "Calling all Nations")
The song you just heard was “Calling all nations”. That’s from your new album, and we’ll come back to that in a minute, but while we’re still talking about music, can you tell us how you first got into song writing?
Noel: Yeah, well I started song writing when I was about eight or nine years old, it was my first song, and then I really didn’t do much until I was about fifteen but there’s always been an interest in music. I had my first guitar when I was eight or nine and my first decent guitar when I was eleven. So there’s always been a desire to do something with music and at the age of fifteen when I really became a committed Christian, that’s when I decided to use music as a vehicle to communicate my faith.
You often write songs with your wife, Tricia. Now, I was reading about you the other day and there’s an amazing story about how you and your wife met and how you got together. Could you tell us a bit about that?
Yeah, I first started to do full time evangelistic work in 1975, and I went down to the west country, to Plymouth, to do a schools mission in the city there. The first school I went to was my wife’s school and she was sent out by the RE teacher to meet me from the car park. When she saw mew walking across the car park with the guy I was working with, she said to her friend “See that guy? I’m gonna marry him!” Of course when she met me, she didn’t really like me, but our friendship developed over the next few years, and in 1978 we were married.
Could you name a few of the song that you and your wife have written together?
I suppose the best known one is “All heaven declares” and the we worked on “By Your side”, erm… I don’t know, I lose track really. It’s difficult when somebody says, “list the songs!”… “My lips shall praise You”, I think “Welcome King of kings”.
How important is God in the your relationship with your wife?
Well really, it’s er… you know… you take God out of the equation and what do you have left? I mean, He is the most important person in our lives and has made such a tremendous difference to both of us individually and obviously together in our marriage as well. So obviously we’re great friends, my wife and I, have been for almost twenty five years, but it’s having God at the centre of our lives which has taken on the journey that we’ve been on and I can’t imagine living without God in my life.
We’re going to hear a song now and this is the first one that you had published and it’s called “Lord and Father”.
Song: Lord and Father (From the album "Thunder in the Skies")
You have several recordings now, and normally they have a concept. The “Thunder in the skies” album, for example, has a strong theme running through many of the songs.
Well I got a lot of the ideas from reading the book of Revelation. I sat in bed one night and read the whole thing through beginning to end and a lot of ideas come out there in the songs “Come, Lord Jesus”and “Welcome King of kings” so there was a theme there. But on that album was the first song that I wrote with stadiums in mind. That was “Nothing shall separate us from the love of God”, so it marked, I suppose, a shift in gear from “By Your Side”, the previous album, to something now which was maybe a lot stronger in terms of the musical content.
You based a lot of your album “Dangerous People” on a sermon you heard by a preacher from South Africa.
That’s right. She talked about ‘God’s dangerous people’ and I thought that would be a great idea for a song. And then as I began to gather songs for the new album I thought, “hmmm, Dangerous People would be a good title” following on from “Thunder in the Skies”, “Warrior”, “Dangerous people”. It kind of fitted a theme.
You mentioned that your song “Nothing shall separate us” would be good to sing in a stadium. The whole album of “Warrior” was based around that idea.
Yeah. We really went public with the idea to take London’s Wembley Stadium for a big praise event. And so we gathered a whole bunch of songs on the “Warrior” album which were great for congregational use, but also some of them could make that transition into the stadium event, and particularly “Champion”. That was the theme tune for Wembley Stadium, that Jesus is the Champion and of course songs like “He has risen” and “We want to see Jesus lifted high” were great songs to use at Wembley in 1997.
What was it that gave you the idea that you’d like to do a praise event at Wembley?
Well the seed for that was sown in 1986 and I was watching on television a concert by Queen, which came from Wembley Stadium. And when they sang the song “We are the champions”, I had this great sense that it was all very empty and that there really is only one champion of the world, and it’s Jesus, and we need to see His name proclaimed in that place. And so that’s where that seed was planted and eleven years later, saw its fulfilment in the event itself.
You had a sort of ‘tester’ concert the year before at Wembley Arena.
We did that, and thought, “Let’s try the Arena as a stepping stone to the stadium” and we sold that out and could’ve sold another two thousand seats if there’d been room in the arena so it was a great indicator that we were on to something.
We’re going to hear the song Champion, which you mentioned before. Now this is all about how Jesus is the real champion of the world, and how we should worship Him, and not a pop star or film actor.
Song: Champion (From the album "Warrior")
A lot of people thought that you had built up to Wembley and then that was it. But I read recently that it has been described as the beginning of a journey and not the end. What did they mean by this?
Well, what happened was, some friends came to me the day before the event at the stadium and said “We’ve been praying about you and we sense that there’s other stadiums in Europe that you should be considering.” And they had a list of three stadiums on their letter, one of which was the Olympic stadium in Berlin in Germany. And when I read that I thought, “Yeah, I like the idea of going to Berlin and doing something.” And I began to, jokingly, share that with some of the friends at Wembley on the day and they said, “Yeah, we like the idea of Berlin.” And then a few days later I was reading a book given to me by a friend and read in that book a description of the Olympic Stadium in Berlin and the bell that was used to open the Olympic Games in 1936. And on the rim of that bell, which now stands alongside the stadium, are the words “I summon the youth of the world”. And when I read that, that gave me the vision, if you like, for the next part of the journey, to gather the youth of the world and the young at heart at Berlin’s Olympic Stadium for a massive concert of prayer and worship.
That’s why you named your latest album “Calling all Nations”?
Calling all nations. That’s what we’re doing, we’re going to the nations and saying “Hey! We want you to understand that worship is a key. Worshipping the King of kings and the Lords of lords is what we were created for. And so those that don’t know Jesus yet need to know this truth. And we’re saying “Yes, come to Berlin and gather with us and we’re gonna worship and see something broken over Europe.” And, you know, we’re looking at, at the moment doing it in the summer of 2001.
Are you planning anything for after Berlin or are you waiting until that’s closer?
Well, we’ll climb to the top of that mountain, and then see what other mountains are in view. There’s other stadiums we’ve got in mind, but we’ll concentrate on Berlin for now.
Song: What Jesus Would have Done (From the album "Shipwrecks and Islands" - Original version as sung by Mal Pope)
We heard a song earlier in the show called “What Jesus would have done”. Now that was the original version from the musical ”Shipwrecks and Islands”, but you sing this on your “Calling all Nations” album. Now a friend of mine mentioned to me the other day that your version of the song has a special place in his heart, and that it really speaks to him. Do many people come up to you and talk to you about this with your own songs?
Yeah, that often happens. I think when you write a song you’re giving something away, you’re giving something away to people and my songs hopefully help people to draw closer to God, to discover God’s love for themselves, to be encouraged. And so it always means something very special when people come along and say “Your song has changed my life.” That really is important and for songs to mark important occasions in peoples’ lives, that’s a great honour. So it’s a privilege to do what I do.
I have to admit that “You laid aside Your majesty” was played at the event where I became a Christian.
Ah, well there you go!
Are there any songs by other writers that have affected you in such a way, that have spoken to you?
Hmmm. I suppose there’re lots of songs. It’s very difficult when some one asks me a question straight out, “Is there a song that really, you know, captures your imagination?”. There’s a few that spring to mind. I love Graham Kendrick's “Thorns in the straw”, that’s a great song, talking about the birth of Jesus and what lay in store for Him. A very powerful, emotional song. I think also, when you look at some of the songs I’ve gathered together, the songs by other writers, and so they’re songs that have affected me. “Come, now is the time to worship”, as soon as I heard that I thought, “Wow! I’ve gotta learn this song, I’ve gotta sing this song for myself, and also to share it with others.” “Blessed be the name of the Lord” by Clinton Utterbach, you know, “the name of the Lord is a strong tower”. And these are songs that I have taken and recorded, I suppose, “We want to see Jesus lifted high” is one of my all time favourites, by Doug Horley. And so that’s what I try and do, is gather songs by other writers and share them with the church.
We’re going to play that record for you now then, “We want to see Jesus lifted high”.
Song: We Want to See Jesus Lifted High (From the album "Warrior")
I’m going to ask you a few questions about your song writing now. How do you write the songs? Do you pray and then write them or do you do the music first and add to it, or is each one different?
I sit down with my guitar and I just play my guitar and see what comes. Usually melody comes and I think, “What words would fit with that melody?” That’s quite simply how I write songs. Sometimes you get an idea when you’re driving along in the car or when you’re leading worship or when you’r listening to somebody preach. You write it down, and then maybe you draw on that idea when you get a melody line. But often I just sit down with my guitar, just play, and see what happens.
When you look at your collection of songs you notice that there’re a lot of personal ones and also a lot that could be sung by a congregation. Do you write those two type of songs differently from each other?
No, I always, basically, work on a song that helps me to worship. So if it helps me to worship, then maybe it’ll help other people to worship. So obviously I think “Now, has this got a strong melody line? A strong lyric line” but the priority really is, does it cause me to worship? If it works for me, then maybe it’ll work for people who are singing it.
We’re going to play a song now, and it’s entirely up to you what we play now. So it’s up to you, what would you like me to play?
Play me “Summer of ‘69” by Bryan Adams.
That’s one of my favourites too! Now before I play that, I’d just like to thank you very much for your time Noel.
Thank You.
Song: Summer of '69 by Bryan Adams
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