What Happened in Wisconsin...

Last weekend I packed up the car and headed to William's Bay, Wisconsin for Under the Radar's Escape to the Lake Conference. Do you know about Under the Radar?  It's an online radio show/podcast featuring the "The best music you've never heard" from independent Christian artists. "Gourmet music" as host Dave Trout puts it. Most of the singer/songwriters I admire most have found a home on www.radarradio.net. Even I've gotten to land there lately! You should definitely check it out if you love high quality, non-mainstream Christian music.

Top to bottom, L-R: Jon Troast, Myself and Andy Gullahorn, Tim Coons

Nick Flora, Eric Peters, Andy Gullahorn

Group session, Christa Wells and Nicole Witt

Escape to the Lake was part Conference, part retreat, and part music festival. I loved that it was small enough to really get to know most of the folks there. I made some wonderful new friends at the meal table, around the late-night campfires, and in the small songwriter rounds. So many wonderful people and a great variety of excellent and creative performers and storytellers. I can't wait to return next year!

I was especially honored to get to share the stage at the opening concert with some amazing songwriters. Eric Peters, Nick Flora, Tim Coons, and I did a songwriter's round to kick the weekend off. Nick Flora graced the crowd with a forth of July cover of Miley Cyrus' "Party in the USA". All wept, of course.

Rich Mullins has been a big influence on me over the years and recently a movie has been made about his life (Ragamuffin Movie). Rich's brother Dave showed up to share with us about the project. He was a delight and I'm even more excited to see the film after his Q&A. Afterward, I sat and shared conversation and milkshakes with Dave in the late night. I was thankful for his lack of pretension and his kindness. It was a gift to sit with him (and it was my 33rd birthday!).

Overall the best part of the weekend was the focus on people. Every component kept its center in the reality of the life of relationship that Jesus purchased for us by his death. The time was filled with good connection to people - whether through food, music, conversation, nature, rest, beauty or milkshakes. A beautiful time. Thanks Under the Radar and friends!

How to make Elephant noises for Jesus

Nearly a year ago a friend of mine asked me if I'd help create a recording of kid's music. She runs an orphanage down in Jamaica called Robin's Nest Children's Home. I'd never made a children's album. It sounded really fun.

So I called up my friend Andrew Best who is a fantastic kid's songwriter and we got to work. We got to travel to Jamaica last October to meet the kids and the staff. They taught us some songs and we came back and wrote some more. One of my favorites is about elephants trying to climb trees. You may not be aware of it, but they find this task particularly difficult. Real stubby fingers - afraid of heights and so on.

Tonight my brother Sam (a potter and sculptor) and I were recounting the day's activities. In the aforementioned elephant song,  Andrew and I had done some ridiculous muppetty scat vocal soloing and elephant trumpeting. Sam described singing the Dukes of Hazard theme song with an adult Down's Syndrome friend earlier in his day.

I realized that mine and Andrew's elephant noises and Sam's crooning of the Dukes of Hazard theme had been real ways of participating in Jesus' Kingdom life with our God-invested gifts. Isn't that wild? It's incredible to me the variety, joy, and beauty available in the life and kingdom that Jesus has opened to us. Just like I know of no other God more beautiful than Jesus, I also know of no other God whose rule brings such joy and fun.

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More about Robin's Nest Children's Home: www.robinsnestchildrenshome.org

More about Andrew Best: www.andrewbestmusic.com

More about my brother Sam's art: www.etsy.com/shop/samclarkart

Go and Teach Now: Pt. 2 "Missionaries are Complete Weirdos"

It took me a long time to begin to actually care whether other people heard the Gospel.  Of course, I knew I was supposed to care, but honestly I didn't see that desire begin to come true till my mid-twenties.

As I look back now,  I can see where it began. Last time I told you about how my youth minister Richard showed me that anyone can follow Jesus (not just 'professionals') and challenged me to read the Bible and pray daily.  Well, after being our youth minister for a little while, he left. This great new role model moved away! Far away! In fact, he moved all the way to Germany. He became a missionary.

Now this may not seem like a big deal, but Richard was the very first missionary I had ever known in real life. I had only heard about these weird people who are so fanatical that they'd trapse around the globe to tell people about what Jesus had done for them. I could not relate at all to those bizarre people called missionaries. Total weirdos.

One night before he left, Richard asked us what it meant to be a missionary. An awkward group of awkward teenagers held their characteristically awkward silence. He went on to explain that all Christians are missionaries. We are called to enter into the work of God in the world. We have a mission from Jesus and everything we do is involved.

One of the best ways my youth minister did youth ministry was to leave and be a missionary. We were his support team on the ground back home so we kept in touch and were a part of the work. I had a real friend who wasn't a complete religious freak but whom I deeply admired... he was pretty normal... and he was a missionary? Yes. I learned those two years he was away that missionaries are real people, living a real life as workers with Jesus.

Even today that reality continues to make its way into my heart. 

To be continued...

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This blog series is a reflection on how a longterm friend's life of discipleship before God has shaped my life. I hope you'll visit  www.goandteachnow.com and see what Richard is up to these days as he lives and teaches in Honduras.

Why are people valuable?

In 2008 I flew to East Asia to visit a friend working there. One of the most fascinating things to see through the little airplane window on that long flight was when the sunrise revealed a vast snow-plain in the high north. As I looked down and saw no dwellings, no footprints or roads, just wide white frozen land I had the feeling of seeing some place that no one had ever seen before. It was uninhabited. Untouched and unknown. I imagine there's some undiscovered species of snow mouse hiding out completely alien to any human in history.

Snow plains in the Arctic Circle

In Perelandra, C.S. Lewis writes:

"[Unpeopled creation] waits not until created people have seen it or hands handled it to be in itself a strength and splendor of [God]"

There are places in this created universe no one may ever see other than God himself. He knows very well the undiscovered species in the High Northern Ice that no human being may ever meet. And it glorifies him no less for being unknown to us. Jesus is alive and 'holding all things together'. It is a glory far beyond our comprehension that our Creator is present to, knowing, and glorified by even a rock on a lifeless planet a million light years away. He delights in that rock.

What strikes me this morning is how much more then is it true that we who bear his likeness, for whom he took on flesh and died, are valued by him. Not for our usefulness. Not for our achievements or whatever. But because he created us. There is a deep sense of uselessness in me that is haunting. A constant ringing in my ears of the offense my unholy heart is to God. You don't need me to describe it because you have it too and you know all about it, don't you?

I know of no other religion that places such a high intrinsic value on persons or gives an adequate reason for human value as Christianity. People are intentionally crafted by a personal loving God who invested his own personhood into them. When we rebelled, he put on our likeness and purchased us out of the death we had earned. There is no other God more beautiful than Jesus.

Go and Teach Now: Pt. 1 "Me and Jesus in Jr. High"

     Nearly twenty years ago now, I was a teenager in a little town in Mississippi. I had become a Christian at a Summer camp called Camp Soaring Hawk in Purdy, Missouri around 9 or 10 years old but I grew very little between Summers. No one back home had been connected to my camp experience.

     When I was in Jr. High our church got its first full-time youth minister. His name was Richard. I remember sitting on a couch with him in the youth room early on and he said to me, "Who is Jesus to you, Matthew?" I said something like what you would expect, "He's my best friend. My personal savior." As time went on, I watched Richard closely.  He seemed to know something. He was a different kind of Christian. I knew it was his 'job to be a Christian' but that's what puzzled me. I knew it wasn't just his job. He really knew Jesus. Jesus was real to him. The Bible was real and true to him. I'd never seen anyone take this stuff so seriously and I was drawn to his faithfulness and we became friends.

     One Wednesday night at Bible study, Richard stopped the discussion and got very serious. "Guys, I went to a school and got a master's degree in Bible teaching," he started, " but I want you to understand that's not where what I'm teaching you is coming from."  He explained that you don't have to go to a special college to know Jesus or be a professional to follow him. Each one of us could know him. He challenged us, "I'm teaching you what I'm teaching you, not because I'm a seminary grad but because I get up and read the Bible everyday and pray. Will you decide to do that too from now on?"

     I didn't feel a big feeling. I didn't experience a powerful change. It wasn't a big deal. In fact, that's why I started reading the Bible and praying everyday - because it just didn't seem that difficult. I just started doing it. "Sure, why not?" I said to myself.

To be continued... 
   

Chesterton, Songwriting, and the Wonder of Common Things

Today's Headline from "The Daily Exception"

Once I commented to a mentor of mine that I wish I could see through the lenses that G.K. Chesterton had acquired, to which he replied, "No, you see what gave him clarity was that Christ had removed his lenses so he could see more truly." One clarifying truth that I thought was hilarious (Isn't Chesterton always showing us the cheer of truth?) was his comment on journalism not representing reality: 

"It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions. We announce on flaring posters that a man has fallen off a scaffolding. We do not announce on flaring posters that a man has not fallen off a scaffolding...Hence the complete picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual." 

The News is in the business of reporting exceptions to the rule, abnormals, unusual things. Too much news will certainly depress you. So who will speak up for the things too common to report? the constant beauties of normalcy that we stomp past?

Songwriting and poetry are what I travel in, but the arts in general are in a business opposite to journalism. Da Vinci painted a mere smile in the Mona Lisa. Frost noticed a fork in the road. Herbert reported on household chores and sunlight through windows. Do you see? Poetry is in the business of noticing the normal and celebrating how exceptional it really is. Jesus is The Poet. Who else could transfigure plain bread, wine and a dinner table till their commonness shone through with the piercing blaze of eternal glory?

In closing, here's a poem I wrote along these lines:

Breaking into a Walk

Gave the car a break and chose a long walk home
Along the busy road-race, the exhausting speedway.

I was a moving stop-light with my bright red shirt.
It's the one with the cross at the center of the letters "SOS"

I walked on the side of the road without sidewalks.
That's where the flowering trees grow their inviting blooms

That hang like waterfall foam, white and baptismal.
You can't wade into their scent from a far

Or hurried pace. This subtle fragrant kingdom is
Only found when the six cylinders wont shoot straight

And you find yourself unarmed- hands freed from the wheel of time,
With pendulum feet down the grassway like a child on a swing.

That's where the clean wind spills over the chalice edge-
Meadow air communicating through a tear in the curtain.

Becoming more Human

      I'm reading through a Leon Morris book called "The Atonement: its meaning and significance". It has been fascinating and encouraging to study what Jesus' death on the cross means more deeply. I'm also having fun with a little experiment: I'm recording my first audio book. I decided to read Morris' book aloud. Then I thought, "Why not record it?".  Pretty fun! 

One of my favorite angry, kill-joys.

     This morning I've been thinking about my perspective on God's punishment of sin. Many times I've thought of God like an angry giant who wants to stomp on all the little peons who aggravate him. And we've all heard him described as a 'cosmic kill-joy' - unable to have any fun himself and certainly unable to stand anyone else having any fun. 

     But what if there's another perspective? What if there's something much bigger at stake than God's anger or sullenness? I'm beginning to ask, "Does sin make me more or less alive? Does it increase my humanity or diminish my humanness?" If I were to walk into my brother's pottery studio right now and smash his pottery, what would that do to me? It would communicate to him that I consider the effort of his gifts and craft to be without value. I would be stomping on his joy. And me, it would make me less of a brother, less of a friend. I would lose some of my humanity in the process. 

     God punishes sin. In a very real way when we sin we punish ourselves. Ultimately God receives our punishment himself. God created a beautiful thing: humanity. Sin makes us less human - causes decay in the deeply beautiful image he invested in us at Creation. The surprise is that we are the angry giants who stomp on others and crush dignity. We  are the killers of our own joy. Jesus is the great defender of dignity, beauty, joy, and our only hope for becoming truly human. 

PS.  Psalm 96 is an example of the joy and relief that the whole Creation is to experience. Surprising to me is that the Psalmist tells us the source of all the rejoicing is God's "judgement"! Facing the truth of our brokenness and learning God's better way is healing. 

Let all creation rejoice before the Lord, for he comes,

    he comes to judge the earth.