Bluetree: Worship From Ireland

Although Bluetree has been together for about five years, their song “God of This City” is likely to be more familiar than the band itself. But with their new CD release on March 3, people have the chance to hear more from this worship band. Aaron Boyd (lead vocals/guitar), Andy McCann (bass), Pete Kernoghan (deejay) and Johnny Hobson (drums), all hailing from Belfast, Ireland, feel that they are called to lead worship, “to be creating songs and music that help people,” Boyd says.

But what kind of a name is Bluetree? Boyd explains that when the group was deciding on a name, they were thinking about how Christians are to be salt and light, they are called to be different. “The simple concept of having a blue tree in a forest would stand out. A blue tree would be different; a blue tree would not be the run of the mill green tree, brown bark. … And if you’ve seen a blue tree, you’d look at it, it would be a bit different than the rest and you would take a bit more notice of that tree.”

 

When it comes to their music, Boyd and the band want to help people truly focus on the Lord and not on situations that seem hopeless. “I firmly believe that the Word of God has all the answers to everything that we walk through. … Jesus Christ has provided all the answers. … It’s not that you’re walking in denial, it’s about lifting up the truth of what the Word of God says over your life.”

An example of this is “Each Day,” a song Boyd wrote after one of his children was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. He says he could have written a lament “and told God all my woes and tribulation. … But … worship is when you begin to lift up what the Word of God says over your life. … Let’s begin to be people that really take that what the Bible says and apply it and dare to believe that it’s actually true. So that when God says, ‘I will provide for you,’ that you hold Him accountable to that. You do the natural and then begin to see God do the supernatural.”

The most important thing that any believer can do, Boyd says, is worship. “I believe that it begins to take your eyes off yourself; it can only push your focus in a certain direction. If you sing the right songs, and we sing songs that give glory upward then it takes our eyes off ourselves. … And so from that foundational level of worship in your life and everyday life that you build upon, that’s the thing you’re projected from. You’re projected from a foundation of worship rather than it’s the thing that we do, it’s the thing that we aspire to do.”

But Boyd says we are called to be more than just people who worship. “If we just worship, if we just do our worship conferences but we’re not propelled forward then I think we’re missing so much. … We’ve been called to be the hands and feet of Christ. And through what Jesus did on the cross we’ve been handed power and authority. We’ve got the Holy Spirit living inside of us; we have the same power that raised Christ from the dead living inside of us. And … God wants us to actually go out and do that and be the hands and feet of Christ.”