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Ten Shekel Shirt Has Much To Say
The debut album from this Connecticut based band is something more than your ordinary praise and worship album. Lead singer and songwriter Lamont Hiebert recently spoke with FamilyChristian.com about the band and their mission.

Combining worship, outreach and artistry with a modern rock sound, Ten Shekel Shirt desires to bring listeners into the presence of God. Lamont Hiebert, Tommy Lee and Austin Morrison came together through the mission organization YWAM (Youth With A Mission) and now minister as part of an ongoing YWAM student outreach in New Haven, Connecticut, home of Yale University. Their debut album, Much, blurs the line between performance and praise by transforming thinking-man's rock into conversations with God.

FamilyChristian.com: Let's start with the thing people are probably wondering about. Where does the name Ten Shekel Shirt come from?

Lamont Hiebert: The reason I usually give is we needed another number band. Third Day, Sixpence None the Richer, Seven Day Jesus, Nine Inch Nails. There was no Ten. We needed to complete the number (laughs).

The name Ten Shekel Shirt is taken from a classic sermon by Paris Reidhead. This tape has been through a lot of missionary circles and what he does is basically challenge your worldview. If you have a self-centered worldview [he challenges you] to have a God-centered worldview. In ministry, [we have to ask ourselves:] do we minister because it makes us happy or do we minister because God has some purpose for this world? Do things revolve around us or do things revolve around God?

The sermon is taken from Judges 17. There's a Levite priest who is called and set apart to serve God. He decides he'd rather go wandering and ends up coming across this guy named Micah [who] has these household gods. Micah offers him a job for ten shekels and a shirt to look after these gods. Basically he sold out his ministry, so to speak, for ten shekels and a shirt because he lived for the happiness of man rather than the glorification of God. Naming the band Ten Shekels and a Shirt was a little long so we shortened it to Ten Shekel Shirt. It reminds us to keep God at the center of what we do.

FamilyChristian.com: What is your background? Were you raised in the church?

Lamont: I grew up in British Columbia, Canada in a Mennonite church. It was a fairly conservative Mennonite background and church. I didn't walk with the Lord for a number of years and then in my late teens [I] gave my heart to the Lord.

[I] really felt a call of purpose and destiny as a young child. I was the only one that didn't play music in my family. I was more of a sportshead but I remember being a pretty young kid and saying to God, "God, if you ever want me to play music for You, I'd do it." I didn't even play any instruments or anything so it was kind of a funny little prayer.

FamilyChristian.com: How did you, Tommy and Austin come together?

Lamont: We worked with [Youth With A Mission] missionary training schools in Tyler, Texas. We were just a group of friends that happened to minister together. I was a worship leader down at the YWAM campus for years in Tyler and decided to move up to New Haven, Connecticut with a bunch of friends. There were about 25 of us in all and Tommy and Austin came with us. We're this little community of music and art and missions-minded people. We're basically full-time missionaries.

FamilyChristian.com: What led you to become a worship leader?

Lamont: I actually didn't even start playing guitar until eight years ago. I would go on these missions outreaches and nobody could lead worship so I decided to do it myself (laughs). I got a guitar with no ambition really [other than] to get in God's presence. Hopefully really nothing's changed. My desire is still to get in God's presence with God's people.

We feature a lot of new artists in our stores, catalogs and on our website. What makes Ten Shekel Shirt unique among these new artists?

I think our lives are unique. I hope that we're more than just people who play music. I was discipled by people like Keith Green, Rich Mullins, Kevin Prosch, Brian Doerksen and then later on, of course, influenced a bit by Matt Redman and Martin Smith. I would like to think that our music flows from a life of service to God. If somebody wants [to hear] a heart to reach people coupled with a heart to worship God, I think it'd be a good CD to listen to.

If [people] come to one of my gigs I'd love for them to forget that I was there. After a gig one time, somebody walked up to me and said "I forgot you were there." At first I was insulted and then I realized they paid me the highest compliment a worship leader could get.

FamilyChristian.com: What is Ten Shekel Shirt's mission?

Much by Ten Shekel Shirt

Lamont: The mission statement at the ministry we have in New Haven is "creating gathering places for post-modern seekers." My personal mission statement is very similar to that. It's "creating a meeting place for God and man to commune." The first lines of the song "Meet With Me" reflect what I desire out of a time when I play music and that is, "I'm here to meet with You, come and meet with me."

I've never aspired to be a rock star [or] even a signed artist. Basically I've aspired to be someone who makes God smile through worship and [who] ministers to lost people. I happen to do music as a result of those two things. I am a worship leader first, although I wish I could go into any club in the country and rock the house. I can't yet. What's weird is I signed with this worship label, I'm a worship artist [and] Sony Epic loves the disc. They're going to distribute it to Best Buy, Circuit City, Wal-Mart. They're getting me some club gigs in New England. I got to play in front of all the New York Sony executives and all the Boston Sony executives. It was great. The vice president of Sony stood up and [said], "This is the closest thing to church many of us have had in a long time." It was pretty cool.

My goal as a band is to be able to play in any setting and lead people into a meeting place with God. Because we don't have a lot of club experience we can't do that yet. I'm hoping [that] a year from now, if we have a conversation, I'll be able to say I can go in any setting. One of the reasons I think it works with my songs is that even though they're worship songs, I wrote them purposely so that a lost person could walk into a church service or a spiritual gathering and sing along if the songs were up on an overhead. In other words, they would be words they were familiar with-almost conversational. I consider [a good song] to be one you could almost talk.

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