When a band starts making waves, stories always emerge about how its members first met – at school, at university, at the pub, gigging around. 

Around the turn of the millennium there was just such a meeting, when Rob Smith and Nicky Chiswell, who had known each other for years, met Philip Percival, a music teacher and Dubbo native who had come to Sydney to study at Moore College. 

Each had been writing songs for their respective churches and there was a desire to get more music out there for other congregations to sing, but the wheels were moving very slowly. 

Says Percival: “I think I floated the idea that, if these things aren’t going to happen, why don’t we do something ourselves?”. They did, and the result in 2001 was Emu Music.

“At that time within evangelical circles there were not many ways that you could have songs published, let alone recorded at a high standard,” Percival says. “If you went to Youth Convention and Nicky Chiswell sang her new song, the only way of getting hold of it was for Nicky to write it on the back of an envelope! 

“We wanted to do something that brought some professionalism to it. It basically meant we had to establish both a record company and a publishing label to do those things – record the songs and then publish them in a form that people could use.” 

Rob Smith recalls that, when they started playing around with ideas for what to name their new venture, “it was the time when everything was ‘E’ this and ‘E’ that... we thought about e-music as in ‘evangelical music’, and out of that came the very Australian idea of Emu.”  

Smith doesn’t recall any song all three of them wrote together, because it wasn’t that kind of collaboration.

“When we started making Emu albums, we didn’t necessarily write together,” he says. “We were creating compilations – an album with some of my songs, some of Nicky’s and some of Philip’s, written on our own or with others.

“Certainly, all of us had songs emerging from us, and there was just an inherent joy in writing and making those, but we were also aware that churches needed good things to sing about a range of biblical truths and they weren’t always easy to find... We would always play the songs to each other and make suggestions, seeking to improve them and make better recordings so that people would hear them and think, ‘We can do that; we can use that’.

“Our goal was always to make edifying, usable resources.” 

He says that Emu used to set up writers’ retreats and invite people in to play and/or write songs together. Mark Peterson, Trevor Hodge, Michael Morrow and Simone Richardson were just some of those involved in a process that Smith describes as “refreshing, stimulating and encouraging”.

Music plus training 

Something else that began early on – and is still central to the work of Emu Music – is training. 

Percival says that within two years of Emu’s creation, he and the other founders recognised that church musicians needed support.

“We realised there was a need to help church musicians first of all to understand what the place of singing in church is, and also the practical skills of how to do it well,” he recalls. 

Smith describes the training as “critical”, saying, “Most of our churches had varying skill levels and instrument mixes... and needed not only songs they could reasonably play but also help to make things work, consider the theology of the lyrics and choose songs well, so we could all deliver them well and help God’s people to sing.” 

As a result of these needs the Twist (now Word In Song) Conference was created, and has run in Sydney ever since, been replicated all over Australia, in Asia and as far away as Germany.

Singer-songwriter Alanna Glover, who describes these early Twist conferences as formative for her as a young musician, now helps teach and run them as part of her role as Emu’s creative director.

“Being able to stand in front of young, under-resourced church musicians and teach them, give them tools to feel confident about their ministry and see the deep value in their ministry, that is absolutely my favourite thing to do,” she says. 

“And just watching their reaction – it’s a light-bulb moment a lot of the time in our conferences. They’ve been working away at this ministry week in, week out, but they’ve never had someone explain to them before why it’s important or have anyone give them tools to help with it.”

Come sing with Emu

Anyone who’s been part of Sydney Anglican churches in this millennium will know Emu songs. Need a reminder? Try these: Behold the Lamb of God, See Him Coming, Consider Christ, We Belong to the Day, Undivided, This Life I Live. And so many more.

If you’re already singing some of these songs in your head, Emu Music’s 25th anniversary concerts next month will provide an opportunity to sing them with hundreds of others, while giving thanks for what the organisation has achieved under God since 2001.

“The idea is, 25 years, 25 songs,” Alanna Glover says. “We’re wanting to tell the story of Emu’s ministry and impact, so the event is broken up into a few different eras the ministry has had and the people who’ve been involved in shaping those eras.

“There’ll be interviews with those people that we’ll be presenting in video form, we’ll play songs and tell the stories, following that journey through those eras, and then hopefully finish with a mash-up of classics!”

Emu’s 25th anniversary concerts will be held in the Scots Presbyterian Church, 44 Margaret Street, Sydney, on September 20. Learn more here.