Ten Questions with Reuben Morgan
By Gary Walker

Ten Questions with Reuben Morgan
He started attending youth service at Hillsong Church back 1995, but today he’s one of the most prolific worship songwriters in Australia. Songs4Worship.com found out what makes his heart for worship tick.

Reuben Morgan has written numerous songs, including “Lord I Give You My Heart,” “My Redeemer Lives” and “Hosanna.” Reuben is an integral leader of the Hillsong church worship team, leading worship on a weekly basis at Hillsong church in Australia. We got the chance to talk with Reuben recently about his new distribution deal with Rocketown Records, touring, and the things he’s most passionate about.

S4W.com: What led into your decision to sign a solo record deal, given the team-oriented nature of the ministry you have at Hillsong?

RM: Every decision that’s been made in the process leading up to has been in submission to the elders in our church and Pastor Brian Houston. We’ve really talked it through and thrashed it out as to what’s the best way to go and keep developing. What needs to be made clear about the solo record deal is that I still haven’t actually signed as an artist—we’ve signed as a company, so it’s essentially a distribution deal. It’s different from an artist’s contract. For me, Hillsong Church is the most important thing I do. I’m a pastor on staff at Hillsong Church and a big part of my commitment is to home. All the travel we do and our worship events and the albums come out of that foundation. The great thing about Rocketown is that it’s a whole different bunch of people and they’re a group of people like Michael W. Smith and that crew that are really excited specifically about the first project we’re releasing and a couple of other projects we’ve talked about. They’re really excited and they really believe in it. I’ve been looking for what you’d always look for with someone to distribute your product: someone that’s pumped about what you’re doing. I really love Michael W. Smith and it just worked. We all really just felt that was the right thing to do.

S4W.com: Now that you’ve been touring for a week or two, how are you finding the whole solo artist spotlight thing? Does it feel differently than the typical thing you do with Hillsong? Are you comfortable being the center of attention?

RM: It doesn’t feel different at all, to be honest. This is our first trip in the U.S. as a crew, but we’ve been about for the last eight months in Canada last year and then did an Aussie tour in New Zealand. We went all over Asia—we were in Singapore, Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, and Japan. It’s leading worship, so it’s not really much different. I’m a musician and I love the band feel of things, you know. Of course, I’m the only singer, which is pretty different from what we do with Hillsong, and there are three other guys in the band, so we’re like a traveling four-piece. The point is I can’t afford to be taking on any glory, so I have to be sure that the motive isn’t turning in on me. I mean, the reason all this started wasn’t because of songs or anything like that. It was because Jesus came and met me, so if the song isn’t that simple, then it’s probably not the way it should be. It’s a constant challenge for worship leaders, because people are applauding, but they’re not applauding us.

S4W.com: How did you become involved at Hillsong?

RM: I did my high school years in a city called Melbourne, in Australia. I lived with my parents, who were Christians—they’re now missionaries. After high school, I moved to Sydney to study jazz at the Institute of Music there. In 1995, I needed a church home and went to Hillsong Church and got involved in the youth group there playing on Friday nights and started playing on the weekends. That atmosphere of worship was like nothing I’d ever been in before. I mean, I’ve been writing since I was about seven or eight—I’ve always been interested in making up my own stuff—but it wasn’t until then that I started thinking, “I really want to do this.” So I started giving worship songs a go and the church just started singing them. I was shocked and decided to keep going to see if I could do it again. Then they pushed me out front and said, “You can write songs, why don’t you try leading worship?” That was ten years ago.

S4W.com: In your experience, what makes a song really connect with people? What do you think are the essential components to make a song a lasting one?

RM: For myself as a writer, I think not trying too hard is important—keeping it real. I think the more real I get, the more true something tends to be to me, and it seems people connect with it. I’m really into the craft of songwriting, and I’m really into working at it. I’m into making it a great song and all that, but even then it can still be missing something simple. Then again, you never know—God just breathes on stuff.

S4W.com: Let’s talk about the new album. What’s the message you’re trying to communicate through it? What did you set out to accomplish?

RM: The specific purpose we have is to help people worship. I’m a big believer in the church, and so I’m really going to put my time into things that are about the church. It’s about helping them grow and making them stronger. And so this album is a worship album, and it’s designed to help people connect with God and be a tool for worship—to help build the church and help build Christians.

S4W.com: Talk about the single, “My Redeemer Lives,” and how that lyric came about.

RM: That’s a real “up” song, and when I wrote it our church was going through a wave of renewal and a real spirit of praise. So I had gotten this new sense of what God meant when he called us to sing a song of joy. The atmosphere of the church was charged and it was a real time of momentum. I remember being in my room on a Friday night and thinking I wanted to bring a song that would help people confess the truth about what is most solid about what we believe. So I was just jumping up and down in my room and that sort of became the song.

S4W.com: What’s the most profound lesson you’ve learned about worship since you started serving at Hillsong?

RM: We do so many services and when you tour you do so many songs over and over again. What I’ve come to learn is that worship becomes really stale out there and emotions become really religious. Even the most expressive of expressions become really religious unless it’s got a really deep well that it’s coming out of. And the more you do it the deeper the well has to go. And I’ve found that I need to feed and grow in revelation because worship grows out of revelation—to worship, experience God and then respond. I need to get my focus on God and theology to keep fueling that and then comes true praise. The thought that theology leads to doxology, I believe, is at the core of worship—first you know, then you respond. Even the smallest glimpse of light from heaven creates the response.

S4W.com: If you could go back in time knowing all you know now, what would you change, if anything?

RM: I’ve made a billion mistakes. But you learn from so many of them and they’re carved out of things you do or don’t do well, so I feel like I’m on course. So in that way I’m happy and I don’t really have regrets. It’s pretty awesome to look back and know that whatever’s happened has been turned around by God. And I’ve been really blessed with amazing people around me—people like Darlene and Pastor Brian.

S4W.com: Tell me about the Sunchild Home in Africa and how you got involved in that.

RM: We were doing worship in Johannesburg at a church, and they took my wife to see an orphanage they had downtown. The look I saw in her eyes when she came back told me I had to have a look at it. The really cool thing about it was how personal it was. They didn’t have heaps of kids, but maybe twelve to fifteen of them and they were treated like kings and queens. And they’ve got a really good adoption program that has a lot of support from the church. They have programs where the church can get involved and adopt kids for a weekend. We wanted to be a part of it so we decided to open another one and call it the Sunchild Home. We partnered with the church and started another one and we’re doing the same thing there. What we’re doing is creating t-shirts that people can take away and all the proceeds go to the Sunchild Home. Different sponsors have come in and said they wanted to give large sums of money.

S4W.com: In the grand scheme of what you do as a worship leader, how do you see this kind of outreach? We all talk about a worship lifestyle, and this seems to be smack in the middle of what that’s all about.

RM: I don’t want to just keep sending money to something and sitting in my hotel room and in my home. I don’t want to just go from the church to the hotel to the airplane and never touch anybody and not get my hands dirty. Our ministry is really into supporting a lot of different causes, but if I start getting my hands dirty and start putting more than money into these things, it’s good for my soul. So I know I have to do this and we’re always looking for more initiatives and things like that. I mean, it’s the work I know my soul needs to be doing.