Delirious

Take one overly-hot early summer’s evening, add in a particularly small school hall and mix it all up with 150 worshippers and you’ve got yourself something special. It just so happens that these are the raw ingredients of this writer’s first memory of the five guys that would go on to form Delirious. It’s a particularly good recollection too: it was 1994 and Celine Dion ruled the charts, the hall was half empty, the sense of God was magnetic. Songs switched while worshipers swerved between euphoria and astonishment. The silences were ecstatic and the noise was sublime. As for the band, there’s not much I remember. It was too dark on stage.

My first experience of Martin Smith, Jon Thatcher, Stu Garrard, Stew Smith and Tim Jupp set the tone for all that followed. As Delirious has grown their role of worship leaders has changed, taking in all manner of variations, but at the heart, there’s really very little that’s different from back then. Close your eyes while their music plays, open up and you’ll hear the sound of a bunch of worshippers enjoying a journey. Whether it’s in front of six-figure crowds or at the same school hall that still plays host to their local church, Delirious exist with one aim in mind: to get people connecting with God, no matter how wide the gulf or intimate the obsession.