Honouring the Man Who Inspired Friday Classic Hymns
Today I want to honour my friend who inspired my Friday Classic Hymns series, which has made my YouTube channel grow about 200%. Thanks Bruce!
I've just come back from the funeral of my friend Bruce McKenzie. Most of you who watch my channel these days are here for the Friday Classic Hymns, those seem to have the biggest views. As I sat at this funeral, it dawned on me that it was kind of Bruce's idea, in a roundabout way, that I start Friday Classic Hymns. So I wanted to tell you the story.
The Story Behind Friday Classic Hymns
It was about 2018, and I was working at a Methodist Church here in South Africa. I started to do these little audio daily devotions, which is still kind of the main thing that I do online, and they started to spread around. This was before everybody was doing them, which happened in COVID. All sorts of people started to get these little daily audio messages I was sending out, and one was Bruce.
I got a message from this number I didn't know. He told me who he was and he wanted to come and see me. So he came to the church and we had a great conversation. He told me his whole story and how God had saved him from really a Godless way of life and had given him His grace. It was great to hear, and he told me he was sharing these messages everywhere all around.
Then during the COVID lockdowns, I started a thing called Encounter. I think many of you have seen it here on my channel. It's a time of praise and worship and prayer online—20 to 30 minutes. I sing four or five songs normally.
After I'd been doing it for, I suppose, about a year, I get this message from Bruce one day. It says, "You really need to do more hymns."
I said, "Bruce, I do hymns, but I'm a youngish guy, and I try to do old songs and new songs. I try to mix it up."
He was convinced that I wasn't doing enough hymns. He said, "Now, if you start doing hymns, you're going to get a lot more interest."
I said, "I don't think so, to be honest. I want to do stuff that's fresh, and I'll do a hymn quite often—I'll throw one in—but let me do the new stuff and even the stuff of the last sort of 30 years."
"No," he said. "Hymns are everything."
We ended up having this kind of heated discussion where I was saying I love hymns, but I'm not going to focus on hymns because the new songs have value. He was saying, "No, the old stuff is gold."
I was showing my wife this one day, this conversation, saying, "You know, Bruce is convinced that I need to do more hymns."
So Shereen said, "Well, why don't you do something separate to Encounter and do some hymns on that?"
I thought about it for a while, and I thought that's not a bad idea. Let me start something called Friday Classic Hymns.
So in October 2022, I released the first one. You know, they did just about as well as Encounter. I got a few hundred views per episode back then.
Bruce in the meantime was getting sicker and sicker. He would come to my church once in a while and we'd have a chat. He'd phone me once in a while and ask a question or just check in.
Then suddenly, in July of 2023, one of my Friday Classic Hymns videos suddenly went huge: Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus. I watched it go 500 views, 1,000, 1,500, 2,000, 4,000, 10,000. I thought, "Oh wow, 10,000 views." Then it was 20,000, 40,000, 50,000, 100,000 views. I thought, "What is going on? How did this happen?"
I still don't know. I guess it just ended up on the YouTube algorithm somehow. That's, I guess, where most of you found me—through maybe that video, Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus, or Jesus Loves Me, or Rock of Ages. Those were the three that kind of went big.
Suddenly, instead of a few hundred people watching my videos, I started to get a few thousand. Now my Friday Classics normally get four or 5,000 at this point, and Encounter gets between 1,000 and 2,000 views.
When I heard that Bruce had died quite suddenly—even though he was sick, it was unexpected—I thought I must go to his memorial service.
What Bruce's Challenge Meant
As I said, I was sitting there and I thought to myself: this was kind of Bruce's idea. If he hadn't taken me on about doing more hymns, I would probably still be sitting on 200 or 300 views per episode or per video.
You know, I never really got to tell Bruce that this had happened, because it was him who pushed me to do more hymns. So I thought I would just take a moment here on my channel to honour him and to say, "Well, thank you, Bruce, for standing up for what you believed in and for what you loved." It really ended up making a difference to me because now all of you are watching because of the Friday Classics.
Conclusion
You know what? If you have something to say to somebody, say it before it's too late. If somebody needs a word of thanks from you, don't leave it.
Of course, I will say thank you to Bruce when I see him one day. But you know what? We're not going to be thinking about Friday Classic Hymns when we meet again. We're going to be gathered around the throne singing new songs—songs that we've never heard here, but songs that are going to stir our souls as we lift the Lamb on high. It's going to be great.
So thank you, Bruce. Thank you for getting me back into the old hymns and actually making this channel reach so many people around the world.
Another Friday Classic is coming at you next week. If you have any that you'd like me to do, please put them down below in the comments. I've done all the hymns that I know because I didn't know very many, so now I'm having to learn hymns and go back and actually learn the melodies and everything. If you've got a hymn that you think would be nice to feature on the channel, please put it down below in the comments, or go back through my catalogue. I've done about 40 or 50 of them already, so chances are your favourites are already done.
Thank you for supporting this channel. If you'd like to subscribe to my YouTube channel, you can support the work through Patreon or PayPal.
Once again, I just want to honour Bruce for his part in it, even though he probably didn't know.
God bless you. See you for another Encounter on Sunday and another Friday Classic next week.
