About David
I couldn't say my own name.
Not the story most people would expect from a man who has spent most of his life singing and teaching. This is where his story begins.
He was a stammerer.
A bad one. To get his own name out he had to hit his leg against the ground. It shaped more than his speech: it changed how he picked up language, which is why to this day he does not sing in the native dialects he loves hearing other people sing in.
Give me a keyboard, and I'll worship.
He is an introvert. He is quiet. When he tried to lead high praises, the room laughed more than it worshipped. By his own account he couldn't dance to save his life. He chose none of it, and God used all of it.
Today, people are listening from all over the world
He sang for seventeen years before he understood what he was doing.
He started in 1999, a pastor's kid in an a cappella group. It worked. Skill and talent carried them across Nigerian campuses and they became genuinely popular. God was using them. None of that was pretend.
But being gifted is not the same as understanding. Being used by God is not the same as understanding. He had the platform and the fruit, and still did not know what he was actually doing. In 2017 that began to change, when God reintroduced him to the architecture underneath the music.
What he has watched since is sobering. Talent gets many in, it takes more to win.
The burden.
He received a burden from the Lord that led him to hosting and speaking at multiple conferences across the country. The burden only got deeper, and the unrest in his spirit wider.
Sit down and write.
That was the command. It was never meant to be an event, it was meant to be documented.
After several months away from active ministry, what he sat down and wrote became a book and the course that has now benefited music ministers in over ten countries.
I don't teach theory.
I dare not talk about the things He hasn't taken me through.
David Nkennor
Where he is now.
David functions as an itinerant worship leader and a recording artiste. He spearheads the Worship Is W.I.D.E ministry, a non-denominational community of worshippers committed to the worship and works of Jesus, and he gives time to teaching about worship and the music ministry to worship leaders across Nigeria and the diaspora.
His passion for true worship, and his desire to see men encounter God through pure worship, has led to many concerts, worship meetings, trainings, books, retreats, and worship outreaches for prisoners, hospital patients and more.
His second book, Worshippers of the Last Day, argues that true worship is the only strategy for surviving the storms of the last days.
The short version
- Born
- 21 June. Nigerian. A pastor's kid.
- Studied
- Mathematics, University of Lagos. Trained as an educator.
- Began
- 1999, at about 19, in a six-man a cappella group called Baby's Heart.
- Founded
- Worship Is W.I.D.E, premiered 28 September 2008 in Lagos.
- Albums
- Worship Is W.I.D.E, volumes one and two. 2008 and 2015.
- Songs
- Without Restriction. Blessings and Honour. You Are Good. Oh My God.
- Books
- The Music Code of God. Worshippers of the Last Day.
- Teaching
- Worship School Lagos, The Worship Continuum, and UTMM.
- Family
- Married to Ugochi. Two children.