At one of our events in 2012 we hosted Nathan Tasker to lead worship music and do a concert. It was an incredible time. I ran across this interview with him recently that really says much about who he is and what he is about.
an excerpt…
Do hymns have a special significance for you?Yeah they do. I first started getting into hymns when I was in university; my best friend died in a car accident and I really struggled to deal with that – I had a lot of questions and a lot of doubt. [My friend sent me a hymn book and] encouraged me to read the lyrics … And I found a lot of help in those. And my first hymn album called Prone to Wander – which is a line from Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing – was years of having wrestled with some of these hymns and my friend’s death. Then, when my wife and I went through a tragic year in 2011, losing twin babies and her dad as well, I went back to the hymns once more. And The Bell Tower is really the outworking of that period of grief and sorrow. It’s probably more personal than any hymn album I’ve done because every hymn genuinely brought me great comfort.
The album takes its name from St. Philips in York Street, Sydney?That’s correct. One of my really good friends, Justin Moffatt, is the senior minister there. And we were visiting him about a year and a half ago and he invited us to go up the bell tower with him onto the roof. We were a long way up and we stared at these skyscrapers that surrounded us in that moment – and it made me think that church has stood there for well over a hundred years. And yet, every Sunday, and through the week, the truth continues to ring out, just like the bells of that tower.
And in many ways I think of the hymns in the same way: you can read a hymn that was written 400 years ago and it still has the same truth even in our modern age. So that’s how The Bell Tower name came about. And it’s kind of cool that we get to do one of the major concerts actually in St Phillips on Saturday night. We’re really excited about that, it’ll be a full circle … That building sounds amazing when people are singing, so it should be a really awesome night.
Read the rest of the interview.
Leave a Reply