In 1997 he was 32 and walking through a famous spot in
London called Wimbledon (see an old map of it here) when he had what someone might
say was a ‘Job moment’. Brian Doerksen probably was not really thinking about
worship in the way he’d considered it previously, because he was feeling low. And
yet, the words “Come, Now Is the Time to Worship” came over him despite the
emotional turmoil that consumed him, perhaps not unlike how the ancient character
Job arrived at a devotional moment following a season of profound loss (Job
1:20). The struggle was not confined to one area, but reached into both Brian’s
professional and family life. He and his wife had been trying to serve God, which
made the two-fisted blow the Doerksens had suffered seem especially difficult.
And so, Brian was out one morning to walk and empty himself mentally of his troubles,
at least temporarily, when….
…he started to hear the music, in his head or actually
in the space about him, for what he would soon write. ‘Come, now is the time to
worship’, Brian says he perceived in a very clear way. Conversely, Brian and his
wife (Joyce) and several friends had had a professional failure with a musical in
the months preceding the Doerksens move to England to take on a ministry in a
church, so Brian was still feeling wounded and broken from that experience. On
top of that, he and Joyce had just discovered that one of their children had a form
of mental retardation – a condition that would be diagnosed in a second of their
six children a few years hence, in 2000. So, was the morning on the street near
Wimbledon a much-needed oasis for Brian, or did it flow from the twin struggles
that the Doerksens experienced? ‘Yes’, someone might say. Both ways of looking
at this might be true, at a time when Brian admits he was barely clinging to
his faith. This besieged worship leader says he bounded home and immediately
sat at his piano to sort out the tune and ask himself why he was getting this message.
Doerksen says he realized in those moments that the Divine worship calling is
not something that clicks on and off, like a light switch. It’s on all the time,
and the light may be various colors and shades. He invites all creation to
worship constantly, because that is our very purpose as His creation. In good
and bad times, He is watching and waiting. Perhaps 1997-98 was when Brian
Doerksen knew more intimately what true worship (John 4:23) meant.
Brian’s season in London was about two years, a time
when ‘worship’ was a discovery he might not have thought he needed. After all,
he’d been the child of pretty faithful Mennonite parents who also encouraged
his Christian musical interest when he was a teenager. Brian’s experiences from
Central American countries to southeast Asia just after he graduated from high school,
and then later on leading worship in a church in Canada in the 1980s may have
suggested to him that he need not re-dig the worship well from which he apparently
had already been drinking. But, Brian indicates the cinders of failure were the
seeds of his worship rebirth, giving him and us a song about coming to Him anew.
From a time of apparent hardship came a new potency in Brian’s worship life.
God can make worship come from just about anywhere He wants.
See the
following link for the story of the song: https://www.staugustine.com/article/20150611/LIFESTYLE/306119979
Read about
the author here: https://web.archive.org/web/20061022232759/http://www.briandoerksen.com/about/biography.html
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