Leader of Integrity
At Dublin's Core
By David Kithcart
The 700 Club
CBN.com –
Integrity Worship leader Eoghan Haeslip of Dublin, Ireland, brings a deep
abiding faith in Christ to his music. But Eoghan's josurney to Jesus was
marked with detours as he rebelled against his Christian upbringing.
"You're always fighting in your mind the story of the stereotypical pastor's
kid," says Eoghan. "I even had some encounters with the Lord as
a young teenager at some camps, but for some reason, I just got in with the
wrong crowd at school and was then very easily led."
When Eoghan left his home in County Mayo, Ireland, to attend college, his
parents were concerned about him being on his own in Dublin.
Says Eoghan, "I came to live in Dublin the year that Willie and Ruth
planted the church. I think my parents, in one final act of desperation, said,
'Can Eoghan live with you guys?' For a long time I was living two very separate
lives where I was living with Willie and Ruth, acting a certain way around
them so I would be honoring to my parents -- or I guess I was dishonoring
them -- and then I would be a completely different person when I was at college
around my friends."
Meanwhile, Willie and Ruth Stewart invited Eoghan to play drums with the
church's worship band.
 "I
wasn't a Christian at all, not at all," he admits. "I would stay
for the worship time, play, and then go and smoke cigarettes on the front
step of the church until the rest of the service was over."
The congregation was patient with Eoghan, despite his behavior. Eoghan started
to see a big difference between his college friends and his Christian friends.
"The people I was investing my energy and time into through all of this
stuff that I was doing that I really ought not to be doing and some of it
very illegal, those friends, they weren't there for me. They weren't a support
to me. I realized that there was something different about the young adult
Christians at church and the kind of friendships they were able to give me,"
he says.
As impressed as he was by their acceptance, Eoghan was still not swayed to
give his heart to Christ. But then a new evangelism program from Great Britain
was introduced to Ireland.
"We were one of the first churches, I think "the" first church
in the country, to run an Alpha course," Eoghan explains. "I did
half of the first one because I was still fighting it, and I did all of the
second one. And it was through asking the questions on the Alpha course, 'Why
did Jesus die? Who is Jesus?' that I really committed my life to the Lord
in a personal way for the first time. Willie and one of the other pastors
on staff began to mentor me. That was my step from darkness into light."
Core Church realized the great potential Eoghan had as a worship leader.
They sent Eoghan abroad to study worship music in Canada.
"It was right in the middle of all the Toronto stuff, so there was an
awful lot of very powerful times that we had in that church together,"
he says.
Eoghan returned to minister as worship leader at Core Church in Dublin. He
has also recorded several worship albums.
"I've a sense at the moment that the Lord is looking for people to be
more specific again about the church, about writing songs that are congregational,"
he adds.
The hymns of Charles Wesley have influenced Eoghan's writing.
 Says
Eoghan, "I was reading this article where Charles Wesley actually was
describing why he wrote 'O for a thousand tongues to sing.' And it was because
the Moravian pastor that he was working with had prayed at the end of a sermon
of his, 'Lord, if I had a thousand tongues, I would praise You with all of
them.'
"Where I'm at is probably a little bit more raw sounding, a little bit
more contemporary," Eoghan continues, "but all of the content of
what they had, 'O for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer's praise,'
why would you not want to sing that? 'When I survey the wondrous Cross,' 'Amazing
Grace' -- I mean, why not?
"We need to cherish the Cross more, seeing how it's central to all we
do, that Jesus opened a way to the Father, this whole sense of worship that
reflects this new covenant, new covenant worship."
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