Bio

Martyn Layzell started playing the guitar at the age of 14 and began leading worship in his youth group which was run by Mike Pilavachi. Matt Redman was also one of the worship leaders in this group at that time. Martyn continued leading worship through University for the Christian Union at Birmingham Uni and at South Birmingham Vineyard, after being involved in the first year of planting Soul Survivor Watford (a missionary congregation reaching out to young people in Watford) in his gap year. Later on he was employed as one of the assistant pastors and worship leaders at Soul Survivor Watford.

Following this Martyn was asked to be involved in the conferences and travelled with Mike Pilavachi and others to various countries speaking and leading worship at the Soul Survivor and Worship Together events around the world. Martyn has also contributed to the Soul Survivor live recordings that have come out of the summer events that take place in the UK with songs such as ‘Sovereign Lord’ and ‘Praise You’. It was during this time that he wrote and recorded ‘Lost in Wonder’, the debut album from Martyn which made a real impact on the church. It's title song climbed the CCL charts both in the UK and in North America and the album won the Christian Booksellers Convention (CBC) Album Of The Year Award in 2004.

Two years ago in June 2004 Martyn was offered a position as the Worship Pastor at St Aldates, Oxford, a large student church in the city centre. Martyn and his wife Emily moved to Oxford in June 2004 and they now live in a small town just outside Oxford called Kidlington with their three boys Jack, Harry and Jesse. From St Aldates they run regular worship training events called “Fuel for the Fire” and seek to equip and send out lead worshippers from this place to many nations.

Keeping his focus on congregational worship Martyn launched a new collection of worship songs with his latest release ‘Turn My Face’. The songs have a central focus of the cross on them and include ‘Join The Song’, ‘I Turn My Face Again’ and ‘I Stand In Awe’. These songs will inspire the church in worship for years to come. Produced by Mike Busbee who also produced Martyn's debut album, Lost In Wonder, this promises to be a great resource of new worship songs for the church.