My Australian Christian Songs


Click the Album title for more information.
  
All Songs 1971-2020    
1980 All Together Now 1985 Reconnect Us  
1984 All Together Again 1986 The Songs of Outback Christmas  
1991 All Together Everybody 1994 The Word Became a Song  
1996 All Together OK 1998 God Version 1.0  
2001 All Together Whatever 1999 Let's Sing it Again  
2007 All Together For Good 2010 Heroes  
2014 All Together All Right 2010 How the world was won  
  2011 Hand in hand  

 

Let's Sing it Again
20 of Robin's best community songs

Songlist
All Lyrics
 
Reaching out Lyrics  
Jesus please watch over us Lyrics  
Here we are Lyrics  
Father welcomes Lyrics
How shall I call you? Lyrics  
God Version 1.0 Lyrics  
Spirit of God Lyrics  
There'll be peace Lyrics  
Walkin down the road Lyrics  
Sorrowing song Lyrics  
Feed us now Lyrics  
You are the prisoner Lyrics  
Comfort comfort Lyrics  
Then I will praise you Lyrics  
Love one another Lyrics  
May we be one Lyrics  
Because we bear your name Lyrics  
For you, deep stillness Lyrics  
Pentecost prayer Lyrics  
A Christmas blessing (May the feet) Lyrics  

  
When I wrote my first song in 1965, I had no grand vision of writing truckloads of songs that would transform an eagerly waiting public. No idea even of writing songs for the church to sing.

I was going to be a pastor. Hugo Stiller, the pastor who confirmed me, asked me to consider entering the public ministry of the church. I liked the idea, and throughout my secondary school years I pursued a course of study (including Greek, Latin and German) that was the first stage in preparing for the ministry.

But God sent me a messenger, an angel, to steer me in a closely related but slightly different direction. Dorothy was Hugo's daughter, and we fell in love in our final year of secondary school.

She did not want to be a pastor's wife. What was I to do? Marry Dorothy or become a pastor?

I began a teacher-training course at university, and we married in the last month of the 60s.

By that time I had begun writing songs to be used in worship services. This became more focused in 1971 when Dorothy and I were invited to be part of a band playing for worship services. The band was called Kindekrist (the name was Dorothy's idea — not bad for a non-German speaker) and we needed more songs than were available in the charts or in the newly emerging stream of (mostly American) Christian songbooks.

So, one by one, I produced songs, and that's how it's been for the past thirty years. Actually, I should say that 'we' produced songs. While I write words and make up tunes, Dorothy has been the chief editor and often the one with the voice to make the songs work. This is especially true for the community songs that make up this collection.

Though I still have no grand plans to produce a body of work to hand on to future generations, I hope one or two might be used well into the new millennium. I know these songs have enabled some people to hear God's song. I hope that one or more of them enable you to hear God's voice singing to you.

  • Thanks always to Dorothy. Thanks also to our children, Kristin, Jon and Thom, who not only helped inspire many of these songs but, alongside Dorothy, have been my best supporters. They can be strongly critical and terrifically complimentary, and in the process they help songs to happen.
  • Thanks to every person who was a member of Kindekrist over the last twenty eight years, who played these songs well and helped spread them around. Special thanks to Doug Petherick and Andrew Pill, who were with the band almost as long as Dorothy and me.
  • Thanks to the band of angels — Thom Mann, Darren Schache, Tom Belcher, Brett Stafford, Tim Irrgang, Kathie Renner — for helping to make a good recording of these songs.-
  • Thanks to ministers too numerous to mention whose feedback has encouraged me greatly. Your view that songs help to teach and preach, as well as inspire and comfort has helped me retain this ancient but currently unfashionable view of hymns.
  • Thanks to Monica Christian for helping me with the piano arrangements.

Robin Mann
June 1999

ALWS 5/10/23

To say I've been inactive on my website is a serious understatement! I've written nothing here since early 2021. 

So, does this mean the world has stopped for us, that nothing is happening?
A major event for us in 2022 was moving house in October. We had been in Modbury Heights since July 1993.Now we're back in Klemzig.

In May we travelled to the Mentawai Islands in Indonesia, seeing work supported by Australian Lutheran World Service. Dorothy and I are Ambassadors for the ALWS programme, Lives You Touch. We are encouraging people to leave money in their will for the work of ALWS. We committed to leave a third of our will many years ago and hope many others can touch lives in this way.
Since then we have visited Box Hill & Loxton with Jonathan & Julie Krause as part of the Asante presentations, promoting the cause of ALWS. Still to come this year are Asante events in Toowoomba & Rochedale (Nov 26 & 27) and Perth (Dec 10)

Looking forward to seeing many people on these occasions.