Art & Jesus

In our second week of looking into devotion, glory, and art, we chat with Jonathan Ogden – lead singer of Rivers & Robots. Jonathan tells us about the purpose of the music of Rivers & Robots and also the work they do at Set Sail. Set Sail is an organization that “aim[s] to make God known through creative worship – be it music, design, video or any kind of art.” Along with last week’s episode, we ask him how he works through “receiving praise” for his work. He gives some great insight into this.

Episode Links

Jonathan Ogden’s solo music can be found here.

The creative ministry Jonathan was talking about is called Set Sail.

Make sure to listen to Rivers & Robots (personally, my favourite song is Shepherd of My Soul).

Here are their latest albums, both of which are great.

Read It

*Below is an edited transcription of the audio.

Well it’s great to be chatting with Jonathan Ogden today. He’s part of the indie worship band Rivers & Robots from the UK. I’d imagine he does many other things as well, but anyways, it’s great to have you on the show today Jonathan.

Thanks man, good to be here.

Before we get into the purpose of Rivers & Robots, some other personal stuff, and some art and faith topics, let me just ask, for all of us who are not quite familiar with who you are personally, who are and what do you do? Personally, and also your music life?

Yeah, so I’m Jonathan. I’m from Manchester in the UK. I’m basically a creative guy all around. I’ve been involved in graphic design and web design, a little bit of film making, and now music.

I’ve grown up in church, my dad was one of the elders at the church. I’ve always just grown up with that background. I used to work as a graphic designer at a company called the Message Trust, a Christian organization. So I was doing that for about 5 years, basically just pursuing – well, I basically wanted to work at Pixar or, like, just do graphic design as a freelance job. And then I started this band as kind of a side project. It was my evenings and weekends. It eventually grew into being one of my main projects. Graphic design is now my side project.

That’s awesome. And, obviously, some of us have heard about Set Sail. What exactly is that?

Yeah so Set Sail is an organization we set up a couple of years ago, and the vision of it is basically to make God known through creative worship. It’s all about making art that’s about Jesus and who He is, whether that’s through music or video or any kind of creative expression that we can do that tells people about who God is. And then we also want to encourage and equip other artists to do the same thing, whether it’s through providing really practical resources like how to make a track, or design stuff, or just more inspirational stuff – inspiring creative people to use what they’ve got basically, and use it to make God known.

Yeah, that’s awesome. Well, as you say that, if the purpose of Set Sail is to make God known through creative things, obviously you didn’t just get there, because, by nature we’re all depraved and we don’t really want to make God known.

So how did you come to know who God is to a point where you actually want to give your life to making Him known?

Yeah, as I said,