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Friday, May 16, 2003
A Spirited Beat : David Johnson Interviewer : Dawn Fung Dave Johnson An interview with the worship pastor of Vineyard Singapore and founder of Spirit Wind. Dave's been through a lot. Like having his front tooth injured on a piece of chicken. Nevertheless, years of toughness tumbles out of our conversation like a languid rhythm. Literally I shouted to [God] in the car, 'Why did you give music to me? It's a curse to me!' Dawn : Dave, how did you get started on your craft? Dave : At fifteen my father bought me a set of drums. At sixteen, I was playing commercially. I started out in the summer before the eighth grade. I took a band programme which lasted six weeks. After that I auditioned for the high school band and was put in the first chair drummer position. My exposure was built on playing in bands in high school, in college, in private big bands such as the Society of the Elks (a large fraternal body) and three years in the air force marching band. During that time I was playing weekends in rock bands. From there I got married, quit playing in rock bands and started playing in church. And for the next 27 years I stopped the drums and played almost exclusively guitar and singing. Dawn : Why not do drums and singing? Dave : Before I was playing in church, I was always the lead singer at the drums in every band that I was playing in. Well I went through a time of spiritual training under very conservative teaching. I believed that at that time that God wanted me to stop playing drums altogether. So I laid my drum set down for over seventeen years. And it was only five years ago that I started playing drums again. dawn : That’s hard testing for an artist. How did you grow in that? Dave : It got me to Singapore. When I got out of professional drumming, I had to learn a vocation. I was twenty-four. And so I went into carpentry. Over the next twenty-five years I always worked in some kind of carpentry in the US. Building houses, building commercial buildings- I was in the mining industry for ten years- made me realized that I had a very low aptitude for carpentry. The irony was that I did it full time. I was a bad carpenter. I remembered coming home and crying out to God because I felt that the one thing that I had gift and talent in, God had taken that away from me. Literally I shouted to Him in the car, "Why did you give music to me? It's a curse to me!" Out of the blue an audible voice came back and simply said, "My grace is sufficient for you." And I lived on that word for years, especially when I had particularly bad days working. My friends were still in the music industry, playing music various places that I had worked, still making money and having a good time while I pounded a nail somewhere as a real crummy carpenter trying to make a living.  Dave and Sheila Yet in the midst of that my wife and I raised two kids. And we were always involved in every aspect of the church - Sunday school, teaching, worship leading. We would build a building and I would be the signatory treasurer. Another downside to this was that I could barely add - handling the books of the church building during the construction was horrible. But from that I went on to pioneer three more churches, as an unpaid staff. After the last church in Montana, I went to California to be part of a non-paid staff of a fellowship training school. From there I was hired full-time to be a worship pastor of a service church, of probably about a thousand. I oversaw three bands, three small groups and four services on Sunday. Singapore became my next port of call after that. Dawn : How did that change the way you dealt with your craft? Dave : God re-envisioned me and I had set goals. Proverbs says that a man who is skilled in his craft will stand before kings. My goal musically is to improve and play well enough to play before kings. I started to practice at home on drums again even before I had a drum set. I waited for several months until there was a drum set cheap enough for me to trade in my guitar and amp straight across for it. I'm fifty-three years old and I've been playing drums for only about five years. Currently I play better and more creatively than I ever was than as a young hard rock drummer. Obeying God's call to come to Singapore, I found more favour with international musicians here than I ever did in the States. I've played in larger crowds in Singapore than any other time in my life. As an invitation I can play with the best players in Singapore any time I want. You know, so it's all a God thing. Now I believe that whether I was correct or not in laying down my sticks, it is more important that you have a heart of obedience because God always blesses obedience. One of His promises is that we seek first the kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. And all these things in my life had been given more in Singapore than any other time in my life. And it's not stopping, it just continues. God's given it all back to me, and more. I think that period gave me confidence in God, unlike any other kind of situation. I have so much confidence that the Lord is going to look after me where He has commissioned me to go. Dawn : Funny that, because it goes against the logic of continuous training. There are many artists who would not be able to digest having to forgo practicing at their craft for so long. Dave : You don't ever have to stop growing, you don't ever have to stop learning, and you don't ever have to stop improving. The Christian life is not the destination; the journey is the destination. God takes everything one step at a time, and in season according to His purposes and His timing. God is the great artist. And He has put creativeness in us because we're His kids. And because of that, I believe that if you seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, then the very things that he's put in you- the dreams and the hopes, those things will come. And they will come. The Bible says the blessings of the Lord makes a man rich, and he adds no sorrow to it. If you want true riches with no sorrow, seek first the kingdom. I went to a guitar workshop in Montana and met this great guitar player. I would have called him a virtuoso in time. And one of the things he said was, "One, you're never too old and two, you don't ever have to stop learning. You just have to practice." I learnt from that. For example, even while that I am here in Singapore I still don't really have a place to practice. My forte is double bass pedal technique on my drum set, but the lack of space has allowed me to work on my hand technique. And I can do that anywhere. dawn : Tell us more about the work you’re doing at the YMCA. Dave : I am fully employed at the YMCA Singapore (Orchard) and I am managing a project for the performing arts in the Christian Emphasis Department. My job is to promote performing arts here, and at some point, not only promote a venue for artists in the Y but to also gather a team and be able to go out and perform and promote the YMCA. It's called 'Spirit Wind' because we don't know where we are going each time because we don't know who's going to come. On Monday nights, on level 4, we have what we call an eclectic jam night, inviting musicians to come to sit and listen, to play, or both. This is for anybody, so everyone is invited. There was a guitar player one night who played really good funky guitar strumming that just demanded drumming that was as good. That's where I went with that. I was playing some stuff that I never played before. And when the guy was playing some real syncopated stuff, I responded with something which wasn't a rhythm. I mean it just kinda came to me. Beforehand I did some serious crying out to God before anyone else came into the room for Spirit Wind and I felt like God honoured that. Dawn : How might the local arts scene benefit from our Christian artists? Dave : Jesus told us to be salt and light. One of the reasons why the performing arts in the States got so dark was because Christians pulled out of the performing arts. There was a point when the American Church stopped playing publicly and only played within the Christian body. And it was like the fortress mindset. I had a drummer in California telling me that he only plays in church. What a shame to only glorify God in the four walls of a building. There are Christians going back into the scene to be salt and light to redeem those artistic expressions. There are quite a few Christians who play professionally in Singapore. I've met several and I've got to play with several. My heart is to take excellent, really fun music played by Christians to the streets of Singapore and be salt and light on the street. And to have people walk by where we play and to have them curious about why we are doing what we're doing. I hope to find a contemporary violinist- the violin is one of my favourite solo instruments. Dawn : How do you see the role of a worship pastor in Vineyard Singapore? Dave : When people come into our particular church group, I would look for ways where they could express themselves. I come from a performance based rather than a religious based format. I've been to churches where the worship leader couldn't sing but they have been doing it because he went to Bible school or something. I think that there shouldn't be a license to stink. You have to excellent at what you do, and really, the audience is God. I think in terms of performance because I'm performing for God, who is the centre of attention in worship. I think we have some freedom and some license, maybe especially Vineyard Singapore because both Stuart [the head pastor] and I come from professional music backgrounds. We came here to see what God is doing and we want to be a part of that. Whatever we see God doing, we want to embrace it. And try to encourage it. There are places for everyone and I believe in a pastor-run church. The pastor has a vision and whatever that is, the people come alongside the pastor and work at fulfilling the pastor's vision that God has given him. Just like there are like many different kinds of cars, there are different styles of music. It is important to find out where the person fits, instead of getting him or her to change his or her style of music to fit the church. The Vineyard distinctive is intimate love songs sung to the Lord. Now I think you can do that in excellence and I think you can do it with excitement and joy and creativity. Dawn : How would you see Vineyard Singapore encouraging or contributing to the local arts scene? Dave : I'd like to see some really good ethnic groups playing their sounds in the church. Even though there are some people who have told me Singapore doesn't have its own distinct ethnic music -- if you want to call it that-- but I recognize large ethnic groups who have music in them. I would love to be part of and see ethnic music in Vineyard Singapore. One time I listened to a songwriter who had a CD out. He came to play at a church plant where I drummed. He did some songs and there were excellent but they sounded like any big church from LA or like the Australian Hillsongs. Then he did a song where he sang half out it in Mandarin and he had used classical, ethnic Chinese instruments in it. I felt the anointing of God in that part of the music, and I felt nothing for the rest of the stuff that he did previously. Then he apologized for singing in Mandarin. I told him that the anointing was on his [ethnic] music and not somebody else's music. There seems to be a real pressure for people to sound like the ones in the West here. God has given me a burden for professional musicians in Singapore and I've met and prayed for several here on a regular basis. I continue to go the bars at least once a month to play or visit them and they let me pray for them. Dawn : Okay. Last words for our readers? Dave : Practice, because when you give that practice time to the Lord, it is an act of worship. He can take that and use it for His purposes. I don't have a real high tolerance for mediocre music towards God. The Church should have the finest musicians and the best music in the land. I had a woman ask me one time if I could teach her son to drum in the spirit. And I said, "Can he drum in the natural?" And she said, "No." Then I said, "Then he can't drum in the spirit." It is the natural first and then in the spirit, anyway in my experience. I'm not saying God can't make a drummer in a blink of an eye- He can do anything. I just haven't seen it. It's not the norm. God takes what we have, what we've given to Him and He blesses through it. All creativity is from God anyway, but I think God deserves excellence because He's God. -- Currently, David and Sheila Johnson have moved to other parts of the world to church plant. First published 160603. Revised and edited 310306
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