The Pursuit of Holiness
By Andree Farias
Originaly posted on Christiranitytoday.com on 04/02/07

He's one of the founding fathers of what we call "modern worship," but don't tell Brian Doerksen that. He prefers to keep a low profile, which isn't always easy after writing worship standards like "Refiner's Fire" and "Come Now Is the Time to Worship," as well as mentoring and producing at least 25 worship albums. But celebrity doesn't faze him. In fact, his fourth solo album, Holy God (Integrity), is a case study of God's holiness and humanity's nothingness—something he believes much of modern worship is uncomfortable addressing. His own frailty came into sharper focus when he learned that two of his sons had fragile X syndrome, a hereditary mental disorder. In this wide-ranging conversation, Doerksen talks about—among other things—how he and his wife processed their sons' plight, and how they were able to realize God's faithfulness even in the midst of unfulfilled parental expectations.

You have 25 albums to your credit as a worship leader or producer, and thousands sing your songs every week. So why do so few people know your name?

Brian Doerksen: When I first felt called to do this over twenty years ago, I wanted to perform music on big stages. But God quickly called me to be all about worship, which is really "Notice God, don't notice me." I feel incredibly comfortable in my own way trying to live out the whole John the Baptist thing ("He must become greater, I must become less") especially when I look at what it means to be a worship leader—an artist who creates a "window" for people to look through and see someone greater.

That explains why you'd rather lead at your local church than getting your name out there or going on a high-profile tour.

Doerksen: It is connected. To me, if I'm going to write worship music, inspiring others and putting songs in the mouths of the local church, if I'm not anchored in the local church and finding my primary identity there, it's going to feel false.

I hear people say, "My goal is to write a song that the whole world will sing." I kinda look at them sideways and ask, "Why don't you try and write a song you want to sing in your prayers to God? Or a song that your local church wants to sing, where you're serving, where you're known and loved." Let God worry about the rest of the world.

American worshippers are enamored with celebrity, hence the popularity of artist-based CDs and "special event" albums. Why is that?

Doerksen: I think that's related to American culture. More than anywhere else in the world, there's a fascination with stars, with the platform. So I'm not at all surprised that, even in worship music, the artists who tour more and the ones who have more visibility are accepted more in that context. I do quite a bit of work in Europe, and it's not quite that way there, or in Canada [where I live]. It's more organic—[people] are more concerned with the song and what it wants to say rather than who created it.

Is radio airplay ever a factor in your music-making process?

Doerksen: When I'm writing or arranging or whatever stage I'm in, I don't have radio or Christian bookstore sales as my goal. I feel God has given me a trust and a calling to call people to worship in a way that's biblical, that's intimate. Everything else is a bonus, but not the focus of what I do.

Your songs are sung all over the world. Does that have the potential of making you lose that focus and feeding your ego?

Doerksen: Absolutely. I'm a human being with the same struggles towards selfishness and the desire to be noticed. But at the very heart of worship you have to lay that down and say, "God, I want you to be the one who's noticed." That's why when you're in the local church, when you're grounded with your wife, kids, and such, you're not special for the music you make, but because of who you are and for the things that are away from the stage.

So you'd rather stay home with your family than play a gig.

Doerksen: It's always an incredible struggle when I get an invitation to go somewhere and do a worship concert. Part of me goes, "Yeah!" But then I look over my shoulder and remember my wife and my six kids, a couple of them handicapped. Ninety-eight percent of the time, I have to turn down the invitation. So my music is [probably] less known because of that. But I believe when I stand before God at the end of my life, I'm hoping and praying for the "well done." God's reasons for the "well done" and people's reasons are very different.

Your music has always had a strong sense of liturgy—a sense of awe and reverence. Why the classicist approach?

Doerksen: I'm a lover of the biblical foundations of worship. Growing up in the church, I learned from my parents to have a deep respect for God and a reverence for the Bible as a foundation. God is awesome and holy, but at the same time he's trying to reach us to have this incredibly intimate relationship. I've watched some people in their desire to make this relationship so casual and intimate, they leave behind reverence. And there are others that try to live in a world that is all about respect and reverence, that they've lost intimacy. So much of our walk with God is a paradox or tension between the transcendence and the immanence of God, and [his relationship to his people].

That's a great segue into your new album, Holy God. You've always held God's holiness in high esteem. Why make an album focused exclusively on that?

Doerksen: Two reasons. The positive reason is, when I went to withdraw and seek God at the beginning of last year to learn what he wanted me to do, I had such a powerful encounter with him and his holiness. The more I meditated, the more it became the only thing I wanted to sing about. From all the days and weeks of doing that, I knew that that's what I would have a story in—a public project with integrity where people would get a look at the private moments in my life.

The negative reason would be simply my deep concern about some of what is going on in the modern worship explosion—the shallowness, the man-centeredness, the banality. I wanted to do something that was about God and his core attributes. A song like "Holy God" is a God song, not a song about our feelings towards God. It's not our response to God. So this was my way of saying, "Think on these things."

As one of the "forefathers" of modern worship, it's interesting you're not happy with the direction of the movement.

Doerksen: I guess I don't see myself as central to the creation of the genre. But because it's become so popular, a lot of people can connect with the form yet not fully understand the heart of modern worship. Some of these bands were more CCM-performance oriented, but all of a sudden sold more records because they released worship albums. So without understanding the heart and theology behind it, I'm actually not surprised that there are some things going on that cause many of us to [question it].

Of course, when the hymns explosion happened a few hundred years ago in England, there were critics saying they were too man-centered or to emotional. But today you smile and note that many hymns are full of truth. To critique something is one thing, but to do something better is extremely difficult.

So if I'm providing any critique on the modern worship movement, I feel like I then have to do something, and Holy God is my response to that. I know I didn't totally get there, but hopefully I got there partway. How can you fully express the mystery of God in song, or even in an album? Everything is just a little glimpse or window that you're seeing. One day we will step through that window and be immersed in the holiness of God. Then these things will be distant memories and we'll say, "We barely touched it."

You mentioned earlier that you have two handicapped kids. Tell me about that. [At this point, there's an unintelligible sound from where Doerksen is.]

Doerksen: Do you hear that in the background?

Yes. What is it?

Doerksen: That's Ben and he's hanging out with me. [Turns to his son] Hey, Ben … I'm telling someone about you.

We have Ben, who's 15, and Isaiah, who's 7. They suffer from fragile X syndrome. It's a global birth instability that affects communication and abstract things. For example, they can't speak in full sentences—only a phrase here or there that they learn. Isaiah really only says, "No, nooooooo," plus a couple of other phrases he's starting to come up with. They fall within the autistic spectrum. They have some therapies funded under autism. They really struggle with crowds, with loud noises. You can't really expose Isaiah to any large gathering—he can have a complete meltdown.

Is fragile X syndrome hereditary?

Doerksen: Yeah. My wife was a carrier of it not being aware of it. Her brother had it, but they didn't know what it was.

What is life like for you and your wife?

Doerksen: It's been a huge challenge and an incredible blessing. Both of my sons are teaching me much about life and the heart of God. They slow me down, which is why I try to travel less. I want my wife to enjoy and survive this journey. We get some help, like one person who helps us take care of the kids, which allows my wife and I to go on dates. We make sure every week late afternoon we say goodbye to the kids, out the door, and have a quiet dinner somewhere or take a walk—make sure we keep investing in our marriage, because over 80 percent of marriages with special-needs kids ends in divorce.

How did the reality of the illness hit you and your wife?

Doerksen: You start by going through grief over certain expectations of the future. As a man, you dream of having a son to raise—to teach, to share with, to become friends with in adulthood. And some of those expectations come crashing down and get radically changed. Then you start dealing with your own heart, repenting over how we fail to love people unconditionally. And then, as you grieve, you feel guilty that you're even grieving, that you should be beyond that.

It's an incredible, emotional loss that you go through spiritually in a marriage as parents. And you pray through it, talk through it with God and each other, and you come to this wrestling of the soul. There's a song on my You Shine album, "Your Faithfulness," that goes through this list of things I don't know. But the one thing I do know is the faithfulness of God.

How did knowing that affect your ability to minister?

Doerksen: I think going through that, being marked with weakness and things that didn't turn out the way you hoped breaks your heart. But when you then go to minister to people—in person or at an event, through conversation or song—it's a wonderful thing because you process through it and connect with others who have also known heartbreak.

I think there's a lot of [triteness] coming from people on platforms in modern Christianity, where [people say], "Hey, if you just turn to God you can have a victorious life and everything will go exactly the way you want it to!" Part of my testimony is that a lot of things haven't gone the way I wanted them to. But God is faithful, and the account that I see in Scripture is God constantly shows his glory through jars of clay—through broken and weak things.

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