What was it that inspired you to write this, your first book?

It was a few years ago when I first sat down with the inspiration and began typing late one night till 3am. It’s hard to remember but it really just fell out of the sky one morning as I was sitting on our deck; “I want you to write a book about salvation.” There you go. Around the time I was thinking about how Catholics seemed to avoid that word as if it were ‘taboo’, but I really liked it! - and how I wanted to do something to change that thinking. I thought ‘This is stupid, someone’s got to do something about this’. Then those words just fell out of the sky and I knew I was going to write a book, using my own life as the backdrop. So off I charged.

Why the name ‘Walk With You?’

It happens to be the title of a song I wrote for the album ‘Lifted’ by emmanuelworship. As the reader finds out, I did a bit of exploring through different churches to really discover my Christian faith for myself. The whole ‘need to be saved’ thing really confronted and challenged me. What I wanted to say in this book was, rather than ‘chuck the baby out with the bathwater’ and avoid the concept altogether, to find out what the word really means. What I discovered was that faith couldn’t be pinned down to just an overnight experience like a ‘one-night-stand’ or something. It was more like a daily walk, a journey, with highs and lows along the way. That’s the way I experienced God in my own life, so that’s what I wanted to pass on to others. But not to discredit the importance of the big dramatic encounters either.

Who is the book for?

I wrote in the dedication; ‘For all the young people growing up in Australia and wondering – like me – if there’s something more’. That’s it in a nutshell, pretty much. I guess I always look back to myself growing up as a country boy, rocking roofs, shooting roo’s, camping and having parties with my mates. I figure ‘That’s who I want to reach. That’s who I want to go back to – to all the other me’s out there who don’t know any different, who maybe think that God’s either a big killjoy in the sky or just not even real, not ‘experience-able’. What I found out was ‘You gotta be kidding me; this stuff they taught us in primary school – it’s for real!’ I experienced Jesus myself in a real way, in this world, today. It’s not a story. You can too.

You talk about your vision for the Catholic Church in the last chapters. Where did you get it?

I guess I grew up in a country town where Mass was pretty much the organ and songs were the same ones we’d always sung. When the nuns got us playing guitar in 3rd class things were looking up! I thought; ‘Man I am going to get a drum kit in here if it kills me’. I’m a muso, music is in my brain 24/7, so I have a bit to say about the Church’s need to catch up with the times. Catholicism used to lead the way in the Creative Arts in past centuries, but not today. We have a great deal to learn from other churches, it’s time to be humble.

You share a lot about your experiences of the Holy Spirit in the book. What’s that about?

They’re part of my journey, my story, the way God ‘got my attention’ so to speak. When you see something supernatural happen like a friend get healed, or experience something spiritually powerful yourself, you don’t forget it in a hurry. I think young people today are looking for something that actually ‘does what it says’. They hear that Jesus walked on water and fed 5,000 people with 2 fish, but they don’t see or experience anything like that happening today. So they wonder if it’s all a bit of a scam, stories that have made up and added in over time. Until they experience it themselves. Then things get interesting! They did for me.