About The Worship Journals

The worship Journals is my personal blog. I’m Conrad, and I grew up in India, well, I spent my first 27 years there. In Madras (now known as Chennai). Now, I live in Atlanta with my wife and two children.

I remember hanging with my bandmates, of a death metal band, writing very offensive lyrics making very gnarly music. On the way home on my bicycle, after practice, I would sing random songs to Jesus. And for some reason be moved to tears and I could not understand why. All I knew was that it “felt better” than creating the offensive metal songs.

Fast forward a few years, my cousin mentioned there was a “cult church” and that we should check it out as it would go well with our death metal branding. So, we visited this church and sure enough, they did things us Roman Catholics did not do in church. They raised their hands, spoke words that they heard Jesus give them, laid hands and prayed for people.

Turned out, the “cult church” was just, possibly the first, Vineyard church in India. We went back for a few events and I met with the “pastor” and the next thing I know is I have a job at Vineyard Music. It’s where I met Jesus. I was able to understand why I sang worship songs when I had no reason to.

Within a year, most of my death metal band mates accepted Jesus and were part of the worship team. It never ceases to be one of the funniest story to that early Vineyard church in Madras.

Since then I’ve been almost exclusively playing guitar for worship teams. Traded power chords for D/F# kind of chords.

I have strong opinions on church and worship, strong does not mean church bashing. I don’t believe there is a perfect church or perfect worship team.

What I do believe is that every Christian must question the mundane. We must question what is generally not given second thought, we must question and hold up traditions against a desire to strip everything that’s a distraction.

In Christian circles we talk about the sleeping giant. There is no giant. It’s just a lot of Christians who are asleep. It’s my desire to not be a clanging cymbal.

So if you’ve ever read any part of this blog that feels critical, do let me know. It’s not my intent. It’s my raw, and “undiplomatic thoughts”. It’s more of me thinking out loud and trying to painfully strip away things that I think are not important.

One of my favourite football coaches (the real football) Johan Cruyff was radical in his approach. His team consisted of shorter players and the press would ask him what’s his approach to defending corners. He simply said he just wouldn’t give the other team corners. The easiest solutions are the simplest ones – but also painful.

I’d ask that if you find anything jarring, examine it. Toss it around and chew on it. If it there’s something to takeaway, glad to influence you. If not, no worries. After all, it’s a random stranger’s thoughts.

When I’m not working on this blog (which is the majority of my time), I work on various AI tools, speech synthesis, and digital marketing.