Jim is known mostly for two things: bass player with Barren Cross, and worship leader with Sanctuary International. So what's the difference between the two roles?

 The main thing that I do in my life is Praise and Worship. Yes, I do play in Barren Cross, and yes I am a musician with the band, but Barren Cross is more of an evangelical tool to reach the lost for Jesus Christ and also to encourage the body as well. Jim La Verde the worship leader is somebody that brings and is a conduit of bringing the presence of the Lord to the people on the edge. Big difference! One is for the body specifically. The other one is for outreach and gathering people to the cross to become a Christian.

How difficult is it to lead worship without being a rock star?

Well, first of all, the minute you become a rock star when you're doing worship is the minute the anointing of god goes away. I firmly believe that, and when you're leading worship, you have to forget about who you are and focus only on bringing glory to the Lord. The minute it becomes a personal agenda thing I really believe you lose the presence of the Lord with all of that.

How has the Meltdown conference, and ministry as a whole, changed since you were first here?

Well, first of all, I think that that scripture that says, “I am confident of this very thing, that he who has begun a good work will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus”, and word “perfect” means an ongoing process of getting better. And I'm sure the first Meltdown is nothing like the twentieth Meltdown, wouldn't you say? We gather education while we do this, we gather wisdom, and we hear from the Lord, and from what I know, this will be the last Meltdown as we know it, and now it's time to go out and start serving the non-Christian community, the non-believers.

Do you have a favourite Meltdown memory?

Favourite memory? I'll be honest with you, these last couple of years the praise parties have been fantastic. It's just been an incredible thing just to be able to stand in front of these people who want to worship, who want to be in the presence of the Lord, and bring them to that place. Last year we saw numerous kids give their hearts to the Lord, and this year they were back with hearts that are now on fire for the Lord.

With that in mind, what would you say Meltdown, as a ministry and as a conference, has contributed to the UK hard music scene?

I think that it's contributed a lot, but I think that it's yet to be seen, because there's been a lot of people that have come to the Lord through this music conference, and a lot of times you plant a seed and it takes a long time for it to grow, but you never know what seed is an oak tree that is gonna grow up and begin shading other parts of the earth.

This is probably a first for Meltdown, having two bass players here. What's going on there?

I think that the world has finally woken up to a good reality that the bass players are the centre of the band and should be considered the stars. 100%, without a doubt.

In 1988, Doug Van Pelt (HM/Heaven's Metal) said that after Stryper, the four biggest Christian bands were Bloodgood, Barren Cross, Whitecross and Leviticus. Was that a fair assessment?

Yeah, I think so. Barren Cross was in the studio while Stryper was touring their first record, and we followed after them pretty hard. And Bloodgood, I mean, honestly, their first record came out at about the same exact time as our first record. As a matter of fact, Michael (Bloodgood) and I were laughing about this today, that we took the photographs for our first album covers on the same day by the same studio, by the same photographer, same make-up people, everything. I guess it was the two-for-one deal.

Who do you think are in those positions now? Is there anyone, or is it still you guys?

I don't think it's us, because we really aren't going full steam ahead. It's hard to say, for me, who are the frontrunners in Christian heavy music because there are so many bands out there right now.

With so many young bands coming up, do you think there's still a need for Barren Cross? Should you guys just retire and let the youngsters have their moment?

Oh, there's always going to be a need for Barren Cross, of course. (a voice is caught in the background. Jim laughs) Somebody just screamed “get out!”. Yeah, I think that there's always going to be a need, and I think for a lot of people, it probably brings back some good memories to hear some of the older songs, but I really do think that there's not many fathers that are out there fathering and mentoring. You know, I spent most of this weekend here mentoring and fathering and listening, counselling, giving advice to young musicians that wanna know.

Is there ever a temptation to look at a band like Stryper and say, “Why didn't we get those breaks?” How do you cope with seeing other bands getting the breaks you don't, or seeing other bands struggling where you are getting them?

Well, first of all, let me just say I am so thankful for Stryper. I have always been thankful for their ministry, and so has Mike (Bloodgood, again) , we talked about this the other day, because you know what? Honestly, when Stryper does good, we all do good. I mean when you really think about it, it's because of them, they paved the way for us. We paved the way for the rest of them. And honestly, Stryper's a great band, they deserve to be in the place that they are. If we would've stayed together another couple, three years or four years, if we would have still been going at it, we may have been in exactly the same place they are now, but the Lord said, “This is where I want you to go,” and this is how far we went.

Do church leaders have to behave differently to other members of the church? Is that fair?

I think that church leaders should be honest and transparent. I think that the young people of the world, the generation that have come, they're tired of the plastic Christianity, and I've heard this, because I work with young guys and young girls all the time, and they say, “We're tired of people not being real.” Does a pastor need to have a high expectation of himself? Yes, he does. Of course he does. Is a pastor sinless? No he's not! When he sins, should he confess them? Yes he should. Does it mean he has to confess every sin before his congregation? No, he shouldn't. Should he do it before a couple of friends that hold him accountable? Yes, he should. So that's a bit of a loaded question, you know? So, yeah, I would say that somebody that is in leadership has a higher responsibility, but the Bible says if you desire to be a teacher, you'd better know that you're gonna be held under a higher accountability than somebody else.

As a worship leader, are you in a similar position?

Yes, absolutely. You know, you have to set standards for yourself. You know, a guy like Billy Graham, he doesn't even stay in his room by himself, because he wants to make sure that he knows, and that everybody else knows that he is under accountability and that there's no room for somebody to point the finger.

Is there a Barren Cross recording due out in the near future?

Yeah, believe or not, we are currently working on a new project, and it's taken a long time to get this under way. As a matter of fact, even last night, Ray (Parris, BC's guitarist) was sending me tracks over e-mail ! He e-mailed me guitar parts! And I took the e-mail and I put it in my garage band file, and I'm trying to make a drum part for it, so yes, technology is a beautiful thing, but yes, we're working on it, we're gonna try and record in December, three songs, to see how it goes. And yes, we do have another singer, ‘cos I know that was your next question… beat you to the punch… I'll just be honest and transparent, we had a theological disagreement with Mike Lee, and I'm not going to go into it, I'm not going to say exactly what happened, but it was a theological difference that made us say, “We need to part ways, because you believe something, and we believe something else,” and because of that, we asked him to step away from what he was doing with us, and he did. And we've found another singer, we'll see how it goes, but as for right now, it looks pretty good.

Barren Cross has written overtly Christian lyrics, with specific mention of Jesus, some more subtly Christian-themed lyrics, and others which seem to have no Christian tones at all. Is that a conscious decision? What makes a good Christian lyric, and is there a right or wrong way to do it?

I think that “ life ” is a good Christian lyric. We had decided early on that we wanted to tackle issues, coming from a Christ-centred perspective. When you go to a church, yes, there are guys that are struggling with sexual immorality, you've got guys who are struggling with pornography, you've got guys who are struggling with addiction. You know? I've got a guy right now that stole from me, that works for me, who said he was a Christian. So how do we deal with those things? And that's part of being honest. You know? What happens? Do we become a Christian and we just pretend like things don't happen to us? It's BS, man. Oops… See? Right there's a perfect example of somebody… you know, it's wrong to think that people, once they become a Christian, that they don't deal with that.

Barren Cross has addressed these issues, as well as alcoholism (State of Control), abortion (Killers of the Unborn), cults (Cultic Regimes), suicide (In the Eyes of the Fire), etc…is there a danger of bands feeling obliged to address issues or risk looking like they don't care?

No, because I don't think every band is called to do the same thing. We felt a very specific calling to do this. And, you know, salvation… yes, it is probably the centrepiece of becoming a Christian, but there's also other things besides salvation, that's why we wanted to do that, just to write about the whole of life.

Have you ever heard a song and thought, “I wish I'd written that?”

I wish I wrote the song “ I Exalt Thee ”, and I know the guy who did, believe it or not, that's a real honour. You know, there's tons of… I wish I wrote that song “ Everlasting God ” (Jim sings a couple of lines from it) . I wish I wrote that song! But, I did not write it. Somebody else wrote it. Thank god.

The flip side of the question is, have you ever heard one of your songs and wondered, “What was I thinking when I wrote that?”

Of course not! All of my songs are great!

A lot of Christian bands in the 80s released poorly-produced albums. Why do you think that was? Was it naivety on the part of the bands?

Yeah, I think that there was… matter of fact, we had a band meeting when Sanctuary South Bay first started, and we had a hundred bands that showed up. We were just one of many, Barren Cross, but in that group was Vengeance, I think maybe some of the guys from Guardian, and a few others. But, yeah, some of them put out some real garbage, but they were trying, they were just trying their hand at it. But they didn't last very long, they realised that this really isn't what we were supposed to do, so the good ones kind of rose to the top, and the other ones kind of fell out, you know?

Did the “Christian” labels take advantage of them?

Did they take advantage? Probably. There's good and there's bad with everything.

Why didn't Barren Cross suffer with the same problem?

Well, because first of all… and I'm not speaking about myself, I'm speaking about the other three guys in the band, some of the finest musicians around. And I don't say that lightly, I think that Mike Lee is probably the most talented singer in Christian music, period. There is not a finer vocalist around. That's why it's going to be so hard to replace him. You know? You just can't replace somebody that's a ten! And Ray, our guitar player, a severely underrated guitar player. People used to say, “Oh, you know, your guitar player's not that great.” Ray is a fantastic player, good songwriter, good guy, he's on it, he's the reason why when we went on the road we didn't come back in debt! Steve (Whitaker) is a fantastic drummer, wrote probably three of the best Barren Cross songs out there, “ Out of Time ”, “ Your Will ” and “ Here I Am ”. By the way, “ Here I Am ” went to Number One on the charts on Christian Rock Radio. Our drummer, Steve… usually drummers don't do much that's very good. They've been picking on drummers all this weekend.

Have you ever stood on stage and closed your eyes, and imagined you're standing next to Bruce Dickinson?

Well that's pretty much what I used to do, every time we played. Because, you know, Mike Lee can sound like Bruce Dickinson, and, I mean, we've done “ Die With Your Boots On ” before, and if you closed your eyes, you couldn't tell the difference. No way.

Well, Barren Cross were sold to me as a Christian Iron Maiden.

And you know something? The thing about Iron Maiden is they're jumping cultures, they're jumping generations. All the young kids love Iron Maiden, they're still selling out arenas in minutes!

How important is family to your ministry?

100%, the most important thing you can do. You don't put your family first in everything that you do, you're sunk! If you're not sunk now, you'll be sunk later.

Like Meltdown, when Sanctuary started, it was controversial for a long-haired metalhead to be a Christian and go to church. In the twenty first century, is it more, or less, acceptable to be a Christian who's into hard music?

Oh, it's easier now. The church has become a lot more accepting of what we're doing. The irony of it all is that the guys who got saved at our shows are now pastors of very large churches! So when you start getting that going for you, you know, when the leaders are supportive of what you're doing, it becomes a lot easier for everybody else.

How would you describe a typical day at Sanctuary?

Well, a typical day at Sanctuary now is a lot different than it was when we had our church. Back when we had our church, it was just like a church, except that we had metalheads coming around. Now we don't have a church. We travel, we do conferences and music festivals, just like this one, and I'm usually leading worship for two, three services, sometimes four services on a week, and I love it. I wouldn't change it for anything. And we're getting to know lots of people in the European nations. I travel with Pastor Bob about four times a year, it's three to four times a year, but Bob travels a lot more than I do, ‘cos he's pastoring all those people, and sometimes he's doing thirty festivals, or twenty festivals a year, or something like that.

How essential is he to Sanctuary? Could Sanctuary exist without Pastor Bob?

It could. But he is the pastor, he's the leader, he's the guy that makes things run. But I think that if something happened to Bob, that it'd probably continue. It'd be a little bit different, because when the leader changes, so does everything else.

What's the practical, day-to-day meaning of “living by faith”?

Living by faith? Believing God, that he's gonna do what he says. You don't believe that God's gonna do it, you're not living by faith.

How do you deal with the impression that God sometimes doesn't provide?

I don't know how you deal with it, but I'll tell you right now: there's no that he doesn't provide for you, because he does provide for you. He does. There is no “He doesn't provide for me”. I don't ever want to hear that, because you know god always provides a way for his people. The only reason I can say that is because he's provided for me. So many months, at the end of the month, I go, “Lord, there's too much month for the amount of money that I have right now,” and then at the last minute, a big job'll come through or a cheque'll come in the mail that I've been waiting for a month, or something happens. I hope I didn't sound too angry in that…

If there was one thing that you really wanted people to know, and one chance to say it, what would it be?

If there's one thing that I want to tell somebody? It depends on if it's a believer or a non-believer. If it's a believer, it would just be live by faith, believe the Lord. If it's a non-believer, it's hey, you don't want to spend eternity without the Saviour!

What's the best advice anyone's ever given you?

Well, I would say it's be wise in your choices. Wisdom. Always pray for wisdom. Wisdom never lets you down. Ever. I mean, when you apply wisdom to every situation, you can't go wrong.

Jim La Verde, thank you very much.

Alright! That's it. See, we stormed through that…

RWM 8.11.09 (Raph Merriman)