We’re starting a church.

When Becca and I were moving back from Korea, five years ago, God told me that we would be missionaries to the United States.  That we would live like missionaries, like an Abraham on the earth.  If that seems vague and difficult to understand, you know how we felt, but we had some idea that one day that would translate into starting/planting churches.

There’s a lot that goes along with this, but this is a very important next step for Becca and I in God growing us into the people He wants us to be.  We have a heart to go out and make new disciples, gather them into being the family of God, and train them to be disciple makers themselves.  We’ve never had to be more dependent upon God than we are right now, which is a good thing.

This church will be in the Duluth area, so not far from where we are now, and we are still in the stage of laying a foundation of prayer to spread the good news of the kingdom of God.  And it is good news.  God ruling and reigning in the hearts of men is the best news around.  We know from experience, especially with the group of people we’ve called a spiritual family for the last ten to fifteen years, both here and in Korea, helping to mold and teach us and love us to this point.

If this excites you and you’d like to know more, message me or email me.  If you’d like to commit to pray for us, let me know, get me a good email address and you’ll get the updates so you can stand and go to war with us in prayer.  And believe me, starting a church is picking a fight with the spiritual enemy.  And he’s a pretty serious dude.  Good thing I already know the winner.

Otherwise, just know that to all our friends, we love you and I continue to count myself the richest man I know to have the church and friends and family that I do.  Beyond what I could possibly deserve or imagine.

As a last note, Becca has been, and continues to be, the best partner in life and ministry a man could ever ask or hope for.  Thank you, my love, for going to war with me.

Peace.

Went to a funeral service this evening for Bill Sutton.  A couple of you might have known him, but it was on my heart to share something I felt inspired me from his life.

Bill wore polyester suits and some funky shoes that were probably cool circa 1976.  He probably thought my ramblings on organic church pretty weird, and I would bet money he voted Republican every time.  Maybe his theology or doctrine wasn’t always dead on.

But there’s a lot of stuff that’s just external and doesn’t matter near as much as we think it does sometimes.  Some things matter more.

Bill was your friend and would love you no matter what.  And you knew it when he grabbed you in a big bear hug.  Bill would cry during most hymns and raise his hand to praise God.  He was the dude you heard a loud and hearty “amen” from every now and then.

He loved and cherished the same wonderful woman for a really long time.

Bill radiated about himself a deep knowledge and understanding that he was extravagantly loved by God … and that he was completely unworthy of that love.  You saw it when he prayed most of all.  He pleaded with God out of brokenness.

I remember that Bill would often be at the “altar” after the sermon … usually the only one there.  He took EVERY sermon that seriously.

If I could have that myself and give it away, that is the greatest treasure I could hope for.  You may not have ever met Bill, but I hope God gives you that heart.  That is a truth you cannot teach.

Peace.

A couple years later her husband passed away, but she has a boyfriend now.  Ed.  Becca and I and the kids were gallivanting through Florida and stopped to have dinner with Florence and her boyfriend, Ed.

Ed was born in 1922, which makes him 88 years old if you’re not that good at math.  Not only is he really sweet, but he drives a 1930 Model A Ford.  And he let Micah and I ride in the car from Mrs. Bagosy’s house to dinner and back.

Ed bought a Model A Ford in 1930.  For twenty bucks.  He just recently bought his second one.  He bought it in St. Petersburg, Florida and had it towed down to him in Port Charlotte.  It wasn’t running at the time, so Ed fixed the engine.  His current Model A has all original parts with the exception of the locks he put on the door and new seats.  The car has around 64,000 original miles.  There were no seat belts and Micah was on top of the world.

Ed told me how his daughter got onto him for driving this old car so much.  Something could happen, she says, the car could break down.  “I’ll just fix it,” he tells her.  I kinda believe him.

Nothing very spiritual about the story, but I love meeting older people and hearing their stories.  He told me as they talked about their good health and activities, “We’re elderly but not old.”  I hope to be able to say the same someday.

Peace.

Moments with Micah

All About Elisha

Hello Little Hosanna!

Becca’s Blurbs

Just a warning: my kids are VERY cute.

Peace.

I vividly remember being one of the few I knew who adopted “house” or “organic” church ideas back in the day, way before it became more popular and buzz worthy.  I remember being more anti-tradition and people getting all upset at me for questioning the status quo.  Funny how some of the same have seen what I’ve seen and become even more dogmatic than I was then.

In regards to Christmas, it is true that most of our traditions around Christmas are non-Christian in origin.  The tree, the presents, and even the date itself are borrowed from pre-Christian Roman sun worship (equinox and all that).

More problematic to me than any of it is the whole myth of Santa Claus.  Let’s look at what some people tell children about Santa as if it is actually true.  He is an immortal man, can do supernatural things, is omniscient, and rewards those who are good based on his omniscient knowledge.  Not only that, but how we’ve taken the gift giving superfatman and connected him to a capitalistic consumer driven season.  He sits on a throne.  In malls and department stores.  And people line their kids up just to tell him what they want for Christmas.

None of this is true, and yet we tell kids that it is.  Multimillion dollar movies are made almost every year based on this myth.  We have a secular media that rarely acknowledges the truth and the foundation for what Christmas is supposed to be about, and yet they highly value and contribute to a myth.

So my kids don’t know that much about Santa.  We don’t make a big deal out of it, but my children know that friends and relatives give them gifts, not some imaginary person.  And we try to be sensitive to those children who believe in Santa Claus by telling Micah that he probably shouldn’t tell them … but for me it is halfhearted because I’m rebel enough to not care if some kids get upset when you tell them the truth.

I remember a wise woman, one of my mothers in the faith.  Her name is Rose Palmer, and she was an older woman from Jamaica, about five feet tall, but I was totally humbled by her on a regular basis.  I remember many of the things she said to me, usually in some sort of loving and stern rebuke, but I will always remember this one thing she said to me when I was a teenager.

She talked about how she never told her children fairy tales.  She told them stories from the Bible.  And those stories are amazing enough, but they are true.

While Micah loves all types of entertainment, he is also in awe of stories about David and Goliath or Daniel in the lion’s den, or the three young men in a fiery furnace.  And he loves to watch movies about Jesus, to hear stories about what He did, who He healed and that He died and rose again.

And I make sure to continually point out to Micah that cartoon characters and superheroes are not real.  Micah told me one time how strong the Hulk was.  I said, “You’re stronger.”  He looked confused.  I explained.  “You’re stronger because you are real.  The Hulk is imaginary and can’t pick anything up.  He can’t do anything.  You are stronger than the Hulk and Superman and all the other superheroes put together because they are pretend and you are real.”  He understood.

Then Micah said, “But God is the strongest of all.”  Why?  “Because He is real.”

I don’t boycott Christmas.  If I boycotted Christmas because of its non-Christian origins and traditions, then I’d also have to skip Thanksgiving, the 4th of July, Memorial Day, Valentines Day, and a host of others.  Non-Christian origins or traditions mean nothing to me; they have no power in and of themselves, only what we in our ignorance believe about them or give power to.

And honestly, I think that a time to meditate on the birth of Christ is fine and completely healthy, no matter when you do it.  All four gospels have some version of His birth for a reason, and the testimony of how the Word became flesh is obviously essential.

While I don’t boycott the holiday, I do think it is important to focus on what is the truth and the message of the whole deal, and whether our secular society wants to value it or not, it is all about Jesus and Him alone, and by extension, the people in whom He dwells.  By necessity, that means that other things that are completely unnecessary distractions and substitutions, like Santa, have to get way less focus or are ignored completely.  It is opportunity cost, to use an economic term.  In other words, all that time I could spend getting my kids to believe in Santa, I could use to teach them about something real and much deeper.

And I won’t have to admit it was all a myth at some point in the future.

Those are my thoughts, for what they are worth.  I hope that we all use the time our culture gives us not to save an economy or uphold empty traditions but to invest our time to the things that have eternal weight.

Give to those in need.  Feed the hungry.  Clothe the naked.  Spend time with those you love.  Try to be the gift instead of getting them.  The world needs that a whole lot more than another dumb movie about Santa Claus.

Peace.

While I realized this was difficult, I can say even now that I had only an inkling of an idea of how difficult it could be.  Not impossible, surely, but one of the more difficult things I could try to accomplish in this life.

And the humbling part has been the realization that while my songwriting has been top notch for local bands and the local scene, I seriously needed to work more on the craft of songwriting, especially as I began to explore a new genre and style for me: contemporary and modern country.

Now, those of you who have known me for a long time, you know that the last thing I would have ever found myself writing or enjoying was country.  But country music has changed over the last ten to fifteen years, and I’ve enjoyed it more and more as it has changed.  It is no longer the country of Randy Travis, Merle Haggard, Dolly Parton, Hank Jr., and George Jones.  A more modern rock and pop sound has dominated modern country in recent years, just with a more country flavor.

While I’ve heard other people grimace at such a change to their traditional country … I’ve begun to really enjoy the music.

So I joined a little organization called TAXI and have been submitting songs to them, getting rejected, and working on aspects of my songwriting.  Every year in November TAXI has what they call the Road Rally in LA.  i didn’t go last year, but I really felt like I needed to go this year, even to the point of leaving my month old daughter and missing a dear friend’s wedding.

I could take a guest, so my good friend Josh went with me.  I also have some family in the LA area, so I got to visit with them while drinking from the music business firehose.

Registration for the Road Rally started on Thursday night, so we found a cheap flight out to Burbank.  We left my house at 4:30 am and got there at around 11am Cali time.  My uncle Dave came to pick us up and then we did a little drive through tour of Hollywood and downtown LA, which was incredible.  We ate lunch at Phillippe’s, a very popular place in downtown LA that serves French dip sandwiches.  They had ten lines going at lunch, each about twenty people deep.  We each had lamb French dip sandwiches.  Very good.

Then Uncle Dave dropped us off at the hotel and we checked in and got in line for registration.  After registration, I talked with my cousin Rick (one of Uncle Dave’s sons) and he took us to a local Mexican restaurant which was also good.  I hadn’t talked to Rick in a while and it was good to catch up with him.

We got back to the hotel exhausted.  Josh went to sleep and I checked out the open mic in the main ballroom for about an hour before coming back up to crash myself.

The Road Rally is basically a conference with all these seminars with things about the music business.  Everything from songwriting to marketing to publishing and recording.  I mainly focused on the songwriting part of it.

Friday morning started with a great intro by Jeffrey Steele, a highly successful songwriter in Nashville.  He has written songs like “What Hurts the Most”, “These Days”, “International Harvester”, and “Brand New Girlfriend.”  All great songs, and he had a lot of great advice and a great story and even had an amazing performance at the end of his session.  He was definitely a highlight.

Some overall thoughts on the weekend.  If you’ve never been around a host of people who make music and wanna be creative, it is a very cool vibe.  The energy was amazing.  Just being around a lot of people who are passionate about the things you’re passionate about was very encouraging.  There was a lot of meeting new people and networking, and even late night jam sessions … that I didn’t participate as much in, but Josh did!

You also have to be very patient to do what I’m trying to do, and be very good not only at writing but REwriting.  One presenter, very successful in the songwriting business, had his first song on an album after rewriting it SEVEN times.  What if he had given up?  Even then, it took years to see the money from that song.

Jeffery Steele talked about when he was hired to write a song for a boy band in the 90′s.  The band was Westlife, and the song he wrote for them was “What Hurts the Most”, which is, in my opinion, an amazing song.  But Westlife passed.  Seven years later, a country/rock band, Rascal Flatts, recorded it and had a huge hit.  SEVEN YEARS later.

Most songwriters don’t “make it” as songwriters because they’re just not patient enough.  They give up.  One songwriter on a panel talked about moving to Nashville in 1980 and not getting his first song on an album until 1995.  That’s fifteen years.

So while I’m hopefully closer than fifteen years away since I’ve been writing songs for a long time already, what if it takes years to be that good, that connected, and get that one opportunity?  Years of rejection is daunting for any artist, but will the ultimate goal be worth it?  To me, yes.  Others will make excuses.

I am a good songwriter.  Maybe a great one.  But I am not yet a consistently astounding songwriter.  That takes more learning and growing as a musician and writer and just writing lots of songs and continually getting better.

Did I learn a lot last weekend?  I did learn some, but most of it was either learning things I already know to a deeper level or just new bits and pieces here and there.  The biggest impact for me was realizing, especially after hearing professional songwriters talk and share, that I am on the right track to being that good.  And if I’m patient, I’ll get there.

Getting to see my family was also very cool.  I had never just gone to visit Uncle Dave and Aunt Sonnie, and getting to see my cousins Rick and Tracy was great.  Tracy is also a musician and songwriter and she’s been getting into trying to write professionally as well.

On Sunday night, while Josh crashed again, I went with my Uncle Dave and Aunt Sonnie to this great pasta place in Santa Monica.  I got the garlic chicken thing, but there was this atomic pasta on the menu that looked interesting.  Aunt Sonnie got it, and when I tried it, I was completely amazed at how good it was.  I should have gone for it!

So in conclusion, I have things to work on with my songwriting, skills to practice, more things to expose myself to.  In the meantime, I need to find a job that can help me support my family, as any aspiring musician or songwriter has done.

For those of you who have been so supportive and encouraging, thank you so much.

Peace.

Here is the link.  Look at the Beliefs and Practices page.  Lemme know what you think.

Peace.

“She walked slowly, as if every step was a struggle.  She hung her head in some statement of shame only glancing upward when she wanted to make sure no one was staring at her.  And if they were?  Oh, she couldn’t believe she had the gall to look up, to let their eyes meet hers, to be seen.  That was the greatest sin of all.  To know she had been seen.  She was invisible.  She had to be, or else someone would notice her.  Someone would look inside, through the windows of her soul, and see the thing inside her that scared her the most.  Nothing.  They would see a blank stare, worthless talents, and a host of insecurities.  Added together made it nothing.  Nothing but fears and emptiness, longing and loneliness.  How could she let them know; how could she let them see?  How could she ever make up for the fact that she was born with the curse of being less of a person?  How could she ever be loved; there was nothing to love.  How could anyone need her; there was nothing to need.  How could they ever want something that was so undesirable?  She made her way on down the hallway and out the door, never seen, never noticed.  And the Church let her go.”

Peace.

I’ll let Becca talk about her own grandmother, who for all she endured in the name of what was right, quietly, will receive great reward in heaven.

But I’d like to take some time to talk about Jo DeWitt for a moment.

She lived in West Virginia most of her adult life, although she was born in Maryland.  She was the oldest of nine kids, and Jo’s mother died in childbirth along with the ninth.  Jo was left as a youngster to care for all her siblings.  Then at a young age she agreed to marry Harry DeWitt, my grandfather and raised five children, of which I am the firstborn son of her youngest child.

As a kid, we lived far away in a distant, flat, hot land called Alabama.  Every Christmas we would make the long drive up to a different, mysterious land of mountains and snow called West Virginia.  In those days we had a thing called “the radio” and we listened to such songs as “Country Roads”, singing them at the top of our lungs as the old Dodge Aspen traversed windy mountain roads to get to where my grandparents, all four of them, lived at the time.  It was the 70′s.  For those of you who weren’t there … it was awesome.

Jo DeWitt’s house was where we usually stayed, and for the first decade or so of my life, that was where I had Christmas morning, presents waiting for me under the tree.  Christmas evening would be a grand party where the whole DeWitt clan would congregate in Jo’s house, eat fudge and sugar cookies, get rug burns from the shag carpeting in the basement, and receive presents.  It was as idyllic as you can imagine.  Norman Rockwell himself would have yelled “halt!” just to try and capture the moment on a canvass.

When I was younger, we called Jo DeWitt “Mom.”  When I asked about this strange behavior as a child, I was told that Jo didn’t feel she was old enough (or looked old enough, for that matter) to be anything resembling a grandmother.  I think she had great-grandkids before someone could wrestle her wiry frame to the ground and force her to take the “Grandmother” moniker.  It was probably my cousin Jo Marie.

Which leads me to one of the most important aspects of Grandmother.  Jo DeWitt was always quite the lady.  She never looked frumpy or wrinkled.  She held court from her recliner throne in full regalia of fashion and exquisiteness.  And she liked her house to be as impeccable as she looked.  She was always beautiful.

One summer my parents went to Ireland without me and left me and my brother and sister with Grandmother for two weeks or so.  It was supposed to be only one week with Grandmother, but my Grandpa got sick and so the other set of grandparents couldn’t take us for the other week.  My Aunt Twila did help out, but we were mostly there with Grandmother.

Our misbehaviour was off the charts, if you could ask Grandmother about it.  As the years went on, how bad we were took on mythical proportions, legendary status, up there in Grandmother’s mind with Pearl Harbor and the assassination of JFK.  I don’t doubt it.  It was the only time I heard her cuss.  But as I get older, I start to blame it more on the sugar rush from all those little pink candies she had stashed all around the house … and that she probably needed a cigarette.

Well, the years passed and families got bigger and grandparents got older, and we didn’t have the Christmas dinner together anymore.  It is the natural way of things, but last week, sixteen of the eighteen grandchildren got together there in that old house with new carpeting and pigged out and told funny stories.  It was the kind of healthy noise and laughter that house hadn’t had in a while.

More recently, somehow Grandmother and I got to talking about death and heaven.  I told her, “Heaven is a noisy place, you know.” 

To which Grandmother answered, “Oh, I hope not.”  She kinda liked the peace and quiet.

My sister, Gina, and I tried to assure her she would like the noise, but we weren’t able to convince her.

As she grew closer to death, and as we all knew it was soon, names were placed on items in the house that we might want.  Bicentennial plaques and naked baby paintings were claimed.

But my Grandmother had 60+ decendents (grandkids, great-grandkids, and great-great grandkids), of whom she was fond of saying, “Not a bad one in the bunch.”  And I cannot disagree, honestly, when I looked out at most of them there at her funeral.

If I could put my name on something, it would be that.  Next to an eternity with Christ, what better reward than to get to the end of your days, see those that have emanated from your body and say, “Not a bad one in the bunch.”  I can’t think of one.

Good thing about that is … there’s room on the bottom of that one for everyone.

She will be missed.  She has been missed, but praise God she’s in a much better place.

Peace.

I asked him how you played the game.  He explained that you get in the car, drive a long time, get to Rose Creek Village, have lots of fun, get back in the car and drive home.  Then you do that all over again. 

I asked him, “Did your friends play with you?”  He said they did.  I asked which ones.  “Jake and Charlie played with me.”

Peace.