In the century that the Elim Pentecostal Church has existed, it burst from its humble beginnings in Ireland to now reach more than 600 churches in the United Kingdom and nearly 9,000 worldwide. 

Founded in 1915 under the leadership of evangelist George Jeffreys, Elim has maintained its mission over the years as a movement dedicated to pioneer evangelism, church planting and Holy Spirit ministry.

As the movement celebrates a century of ministry, its worship leaders (Elim Sound) have come together to mark the milestone with a special album--Elim 100--that brings together the church’s past, present and future.

Elim worship leader (and solo artist in his own right) Ian Yates talks about what’s happening in the movement, as well as the big dreams for the future, and the soundtrack that fuels all of it.

The Elim movement just turned a century old, and the Elim 100 record celebrates that. What would you say the state of things are spiritually in the UK these days? What are you seeing in the Church?

I’m excited about what’s happening in the U.K. We’d obviously love to see more people coming to faith and see more thriving churches but I believe God is always moving, He is raising up new leaders and life changing initiatives throughout the U.K. 

This year I feel like there is a new expectancy. At our national conference you could feel that, and we were also part of a conference with Bethel’s Bill Johnson, and again you could feel the expectancy. 

I’m really expectant for what God is doing and is going to do in my city. I’m also excited to see churches coming together, all denominations and movements working together, encouraging one another and championing one another. I think we’ll see this more and more.
 
How is this particular project different from the Ian Yates solo stuff, and how does it complement what you already do?

The Elim Sound projects are very focused on writing congregational songs for the church. Our heart has always been to write songs for the movement from the movement, whereas my solo stuff is musically different and maybe tries to push some boundaries. My last two projects have been intentional on identity: What is the Gospel? Who God has made us to be? I really want my songs to go outside the church walls. 

There is definitely crossover as it’s all worship focused. It’s a huge blessing and privilege to release my music in both settings. 

Is the Elim movement like Vineyard in the sense that worship leaders from throughout the churches get together to write the songs the individual church bodies will sing? Like, Elim Sound is essentially the hymnal of the movement?

Yes, it’s similar. A number of industry people compared the collaboration to how Vineyard have released albums. Our hope is that we can create a sound within our movement and gather the songwriters to hear what God wants to say to us.

Our heritage is amazing. Elim used to have 78 vinyls with preaching on one side and songs on the other. These would be taken to countries like Africa and played to thousands. It was a revolutionary resource at the time, like the MP3 of the day. 

Elim also created the Redemption Hymnal, which contained 800 hymns which resourced thousands of churches. Elim publishing was also bought by what is now Thankyou Music. We feel so blessed to be apart of the musical journey of our movement.

What are some of the themes that emerged in the writing of this record? Did you want to focus more on what God has done in 100 years, or on what God is doing today? 

We wanted to be intentional with this album, that it would celebrate our past and our future.
For some of the songs the picture we had was of thanking God for the last 100 years, for His faithfulness, for the amazing things we’ve seen. We want to honor yesterday, while dreaming great dreams and expectantly looking forward to the future--believing our best days are to come. We want to see a move of God in our nation and we are anticipating great things.

The theme of “Lay It At Your Feet” is consecration. We had a consecration service at the beginning of the year and was this song was used for that occasion. I think this song is also for every day, to say that we lay our lives down.

“God Every Moment” is a powerful reminder that God is in every moment of our journey. In the darkest times, the moments when we don’t know what’s going on, we are full of questions. Our history is made up of defining moments, some amazing and some tough. But God has been there in every one.
 
What’s the songwriting process like in Elim Sound? How many songwriters are there? Do you retreat together?

Usually we try to start a song with two or three of us; sometimes that can then be brought wider.
For our first album it was the four of us in the Core Team who wrote all the songs. For the second album we opened it up a little further and then for this project we opened it up more. We had a number of writing days which we loved. We would love to see this grow. Only a certain number of songs can make the final album but we had around 40 songs from around 15 writers. 
We also want to see young writers grow and develop. The song “Higher” started off with one of our young leaders, Tim Williams, and he sang it on the album, too. 

How long have you been part of the Elim movement? How has it affected your life and impacted you as an artist? 

I’ve been in an Elim Church most of my life. My parents became Christians when I was 3 in an Elim Church in Birmingham, U.K. We moved to Liverpool when I was 7 and was involved in a Elim Church straight away.

As a teenager, the national conferences where a place I really encountered God and knew that He really loved me. Those times changed my life. 

I’m always inspired by our history and how the movement started with George Jeffreys and the Elim Evangelistic Band in 1905. It’s pretty cool that our movement started off with music. I’m really inspired that George Jeffreys was a pioneer and was passionate about the gospel. At the time he was revolutionary and a lot of the church didn’t want anything to do with him, as he was known as radical. 

Which of the new songs are really resonating in the congregations?

The four main songs at the moment seem to be “The Best Is Yet To Come,” which has become an anthem for the movement this year. “No Longer I” is really resonating with many. “Lay It At Your Feet” has been a beautiful response song and the upbeat “I Will Give Thanks” is a real simple, fun praise song. We’ve also been loving seeing the response to “Power In The Blood.” 

What inspires you most about what’s happening in Elim, as well as the local church in general? 

Elim has planted a number of churches this year, which is really exciting and inspiring. The plan is to plant 100 churches in our centenary year. We are seeing some amazing things with our youth and young people. We have 100 youth gatherings this year and looking forward to seeing the fruit from that. We also had some new leaders in some of the movement’s departments. There are some really quality guys; this is really inspiring.
 
What’s next for Elim Sound? 

We want to see our worship leaders and teams grow in the prophetic and musical excellence. We run a School Of Worship and we have some developments for that. We have a few summer conferences coming up, which we love being a part of too.

We’re excited for the future. We have some great plans lined up. We have been a Core Team for five years and are looking at the next five years and taking that forward. We’ve recently had some strong prophetic words about our future, which is super exciting.