Interviews & Media Articles

Source: Relevant Magazine
Author: Darren Philip
Date: Jan-Feb 2006

MARTIN SMITH IS BUILDING AN ARMY. GET ON BOARD.

IT'S HARD TO BELIEVE, but around the time a band called Oasis was making sonic ripples in England with songs like "Live Forever," another band named Delirious? was singing about a different kind of eternity. "I Could Sing of Your Love Forever" was, and still is, a ditty so intimate and emotionally exposed that it's a wonder people even sang it in public at all. But even before the song-packaged up in the Cutting Edge double album-had officially hit American shores, hordes of otherwise respectable churchgoers were admitting to feeling like dancing. It was foolishness, they knew.

Ten years on, frontman Martin Smith has a knack for writing words and melodies that end up on the lips of a million people. His band, the one with a question mark at the end of its name, is releasing their eighth album, The Mission Bell, and for Smith, there's no question about it. "The new record will open great doors," he says. "I think it's going to be a landmark record."

WHAT SHOULD WE KNOW ABOUT THE MISSION BELL?
It's called The Mission Bell because we thought that the theme of our last record, World Service, was great, and the theme of this record is definitely missions. We believe as a band we're on a mission. We're excited about what's going on, about what God's doing in the earth. I think this record lyrically is trying to point everybody that way and trying to get them excited and look outward.

ON "ALL THIS TIME," YOU SING, SO HOW CAN I SERVE GOD AND WEALTH?/I CAN CAPTIVATE AN ARMY, BUT I CAN'T CONTROL MYSELF. CAN YOU TELL US WHAT YOU MEAN?
[Laughs] I think we're just trying to provoke thinking, really. I would say most of the song is autobiographical, but not all of it. We're just pushing lyrics out there that are saying, "Look, real life is real life, and sometimes we come across situations that test us." You just don't want to ever let God down. But we live in a world where some of those pressures are quite intense. [That lyric] is a hint to the kind of feeling of me getting up on stage and going, "Come on, let's go, everybody! We're the army; let's go and take the world by storm." The paradox is that in my own humanness and in the humanness of the band, from day to day, we struggle with things in that process, some small and some big. It's just life.

YOU MAKE VERY SPECIFIC REFERENCES TO EVENTS AND SITUATIONS IN THE WORLD ON ANOTHER TRACK, "OUR GOD REIGNS," WITH THE LYRICS, 100 MILLION FACES, STARING AT THE SKY/WONDERING IF THIS HIV WILL EVER PASS US BY.
It just came out of a conversation with a friend of ours, Matt Redman, talking initially about abortion. Are we going to look back years and years from now and say that this was on a level with the Holocaust, you know, that we've done these terrible things to all these unborn babies? It was more a conversation, so the song's not of judgment. It's just saying, "Well, hang on, we have a church here. What are we doing about all this? Have we lost the rope?" And then paradoxically, the tension of God saying, "I'm the ruler of heaven and earth." And yet as people, we've somehow let the rope go on some of these issues, for one reason or another. It's a good time to talk about it. Probably that song reflects a lot of people's private conversations all around the world, in terms of, "I'm a believer in God. What difference am I making in this world that's so screwed up?" I want to follow but what does it mean/To live in this world and keep everything clean? [from "Now Is the Time"]. I think they're genuine questions that we're all asking ourselves. Yes, we love God and that He's the King of Kings, but is our Christianity effective? They're powerful questions, aren't they?

TELL US ABOUT WHAT YOU DO WITH HOPEHIV, THE ORGANIZATION DEDICATED TO PROVIDING FOR THE NEEDS OF AIDS-ORPHANED CHILDREN IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA.
We linked up with HopeHIV about five years ago, and we are especially involved with an orphanage in South Africa called Zodwa's House, through an English guy, Phil Wall. We're actually going to Durban to throw a party for kids there. Of course, we don't have all the time in the world to be running an orphanage; there are plenty of people out there who are better at that than us. But in our own small way, we try and serve these things.

YOU GUYS MUST BE REALLY BUSY. YOU EVEN RECORDED A LIVE ALBUM WITH HILLSONG CHURCH AND UNITED DOWN IN AUSTRALIA.
It's one thing to keep on banging your own drum, but I think we're at a stage in life where it's more about seeing what God is blessing, and trying to get behind what that is and serve it.

WHAT'S SOMETHING THIS GENERATION OF BELIEVERS-SHOULD KNOW?
I want to say to them, and also to myself with equal strength, that now is the time for us to shine. Now is the time for us to be confident in what we believe in, to actually believe in what we believe in. Because if we did believe in it, it really could radically change not only the world, but our schools, our colleges, churches, the malls that we're walking through. Now is the time to really evaluate what it means to believe in God and to drop our net and follow. I think it's a great time.

With thanks to Relevant Magazine