SIDE BY SIDE
A Life Played Out by Providence Allan Sholes An interview with College Church Member John Innes. Seated at the keyboard of a piano or organ, the distinguished-looking silver-haired gentleman appears to play effortlessly. If he seems familiar, he has performed on countless occasions for churches, concerts, Moody Founder’s Week and Billy Graham Crusades worldwide before millions of people.
John and Janet Innes
His musical achievements hardly seemed likely in his early years though, that is apart from some divine interventions. As a young boy growing up in an industrial town in the north of England, he never dreamed he would someday go on to a music ministry of playing piano at evangelistic events all over the globe. He was a doctor’s kid living in Bradford, Yorkshire. Perhaps, like many of his peers, he would eventually work in the textile industry centered there. As a boy, he happened to take piano lessons, but had no aspirations of what he would one day become: composer, arranger, conductor, studio musician, minister of music, record producer, recording artist and concert artist of great accomplishment. Certainly, ministry was not on his radar. “My father was a physician and had his office in the house with a waiting room for patients. He had office hours in the morning and evenings, and our house schedule revolved around that,” as he tells it. Those were the days when doctors still visited people in their homes as well. But then a boyhood friendship became God’s instrument to help change the course of his life forever. John Innes was a boy of nine or ten when “fortunately for me,” he says, he made friends with a boy the same age who lived on
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his street. It turned out that the boy’s father was the pastor of a church in town. That pastor’s kid invited the doctor’s kid to go with him to Sunday school. John’s parents were not churchgoers. Religion just wasn’t a part of his household. He had never been to a church. He resisted the invitation at first, but after a while John agreed to go with his friend to Sunday School. He says that’s where he first heard the gospel, “because it was a wonderful, Bible-believing church. “It also happened that that was the first opportunity I had to play piano in church, around age 10 or 11.” His Sunday school was putting on a program for the kids. Because he had already been taking piano lessons, the leaders asked John to play the piano for the program. He says he had not received Christ at that point. That led to his becoming a regular accompanist for the church throughout his teens. Listening to John tell his story gives the impression of one being led not by any human career plan but instead by God’s providence, from one connection and opportunity to another—and another. “My days in Bradford were very meaningful, mostly because of the church I got involved with. So those were very formative early years that really set me on a different course than might have been the case if that had not happened.” When John was 16 an evangelist came to speak at his church for the main service, which took place on Sunday nights in the 1950s. John was playing piano for the service that night. The evangelist gave a gospel invitation. John realized he had never committed his life to Christ and never received him as Savior despite hearing about it during those early years at the church and
