Music that grows out of community.
Music and worship have been with us from the beginning. Not as a programme – but as an expression of our shared life with God.
Music is part of our story.
Music and worship have accompanied Friends of Jesus from the very beginning. Even as our church was being born, we saw people touched by God in the middle of worshipping together and meeting him in a very personal way.
This experience has stayed with us ever since: in our services and small gatherings, on the streets of our home town Altenkirchen, in other cities and in Jerusalem too.
We believe that musical worship can help us to turn our eyes to God and to meet him. That is why music is not simply an item on the service programme for us. It is an expression of our shared life with God.
From touring to the local church.
As young teenagers some of us were already travelling together as a band and were invited to lead the music at youth events in Germany and abroad. Later our own songs and albums followed, and music became a way of serving people beyond our own church as well.
Today music production is not our focus. What matters much more to us is what happens in the middle of the church: worshipping together, coming to rest before God, being realigned, refreshed and built up.
And yet to this day we find that our music can also serve other people. That is why we keep writing our own songs, from time to time produce songs and music videos, and also make music outside our church.
A sound of our own.
For us it is not about copying a particular worship style or the current musical mainstream as well as possible.
We believe that a church may discover its own musical expression. It grows out of the people who belong to it – through their different personalities, gifts, stories and musical backgrounds.
Many individual voices become one shared sound.
That is why we also want to encourage other churches not to ask first what worship sounds like elsewhere, but to discover and develop their own expression.
Music does not have to sound like something else in order to honour God.
Some songs and moments from our story.
Der Aaronitische Segen (The Aaronic Blessing) Jerusalem All videos on YouTube → Our songs and albums.
Friends of Jesus
Lena Brückner-Ahrend
For us, worship does not belong on a stage. It belongs in the middle of church life.