CT: How are you feeling right now in terms of your personal relationship with God?

AK: Pretty rich. This season I am just getting back into kids getting into school, travelling and just trying to shepherd my family better. It’s just a rich feeling right now, thanks for asking.


CT: How did you get into leading worship?

AK: It was by accident. I grew up playing music and playing the piano and I was working at California at this camp one time when the worship leader left halfway through. He had to leave and there wa no one else who could do it and they said ‘well, you are up’.

That night I performed in front of a couple hundred students, leading the worship, which was probably one of the worst things I had to do in my life at the time but God was doing something and I felt this need to study and learn about it and walk down this road for a while.

Twelve years later, I’m still going and learning and trying to help other people walk down that road.


CT: The album, “Not Guilty Anymore”, why did you give it this title?

AK: I wrote this record “Not Guilty Anymore” a few years ago and realised a couple of years ago what I thought was my life mantra, coming out of legalism, fundamentalism and a lot of condemnation, growing up in that sort of rigid church environment of the past.

I felt like this album, especially the title track “Not Guilty Anymore”, could be the songs that represent the first 28 years of my life. A couple of years have past and Kingsway have rediscovered it. They wanted people to hear it so they decided to give it another go which was fun.

It’s odd for me to have these new songs and I am super excited about it. They think there is still some life left on these and we’re still playing it as we travel around and in my church.


CT: What goes in your mind when you write a song?

AK: It could be different things. I sometimes can think about a hymn I grew up singing or a line from a hymn from 25 years ago. Sometimes it could be a poem that I read from Isaac Watts. It’s always so different. I am just trying to take what’s happening in my life and write that down. That is what I see in the songs.

Especially lately I am seeing David writing not just theoretical or theological propositions and poetry but actually writing about his life experience and praise to God. He writes ‘even though my mother and father have forsaken me’ and I thought ‘that’s weird’, David was forsaken by his mother and father?

So I start to study his life and you see actually, yeah, he was neglected as a kid, all his brothers, he was anointed as king and it doesn’t even occur to Jesse that David could be among the selected.

I really never thought about that before, how David grew up feeling very neglected and I see it in my own family, having my four little boys, the middle child and how the younger ones fight for attention and the baby has all the immediate needs.

David writes ‘hear me when I call, answer me, pay attention to my cry, give ear to me’, and I don’t see that anywhere else. He is not just writing pretty words, this is his real experience. So I guess when I am writing, yes it can be about what’s pretty or nice to say, but I also want to write about what I am really experiencing and process my relationship with the Lord.


CT: What was your deepest moment with God?

AK: Great question. Back in California, all I knew was cultural Christianity that was rigid and fundamental with no freedom of expression. I didn’t know what was worship was, it was the three songs you sing before the sermon.

Now when I worship, I am in rapture in the presence of God and seeing all these people who didn’t grow up like me, who grew up in different traditions and perspectives and none of it really matters, all that matters is that we adore the Lord, crying out to him and blessing him. There is so much freedom in that moment.

There was a whole summer where we would get together from seven to eight every morning just to worship and that summer really changed me forever and has set me on a different course in understanding the freedom the cross has for us, the light the Father has for us, like in the Psalms, he delivers me because he has delight in me.

Before I never understood that growing up, to glorify God and enjoy him forever. All I heard before that summer was to glorify and never understood enjoying him. Not that I understand it all now, but I’m now beginning to understand the two together on a daily level.


CT: What does it mean to worship?

AK: Worship is to humbly express to God how great he is and how small we are in comparison. In the bible, all I can see is going to the floor, kneeling, lying down, face down, bowing, kissing the hand of the master. I see reverence; I see humility and all that is involved in worship. And a lot of us are pretty good at praise which is upward and outward and expressive and vibrant and in the Bible it says shouting, raising hands and dancing, clapping. I think worship in a lot of ways is the opposite to that. It’s usually inward. It’s not dancing, it’s kneeling; it’s not shouting, it’s silence. That’s worship in my eyes.


CT: Are you going to release a new album?


AK: Yes. This one has just been released and we are going to be back in the studios this fall doing the next record.


CT: What does the future hold for Aaron Keyes?

AK: I don’t know exactly but I know what I want to see, and feel what God is leading towards. I am having fun writing songs and having fun leading worship. That’s what I am passionate about these days, worship leaders and training up guys who can go out take what I am doing and do it better than what I am doing and further it for the sake of Jesus and put their own fingerprints and personalities on it. I’m excited about travelling with the band but what I am most excited about is seeing this next generation come up, trained not only to lead songs but to really knowing God better and understanding their identities as sons and daughters of God and in effect changing the whole game.