Worship, Just Worship

It’s been a week since my friend Mike died. He was 36. I think back to last Saturday night when I finished my last song on stage and Mike was working in the cafe, he immediately came out to tell me how much he liked the song and the bagpipe player we hired to play the song with me.  His wife Traci was out of town.  I asked how he was when she was out of town. The two of them were inseparable, in the truest sense of the word. We talked for a bit and then he stuck out his hand for that man to man grip, we did the cool guy hug thing I told him “love ya man”  and he said “love you to bro!”  That was it.  That would be my last encounter with my friend and fellow musician Mike Moore.  No warnings from heaven to tell me to make this last conversation really count.  No last glance back to catch a grin. Nothing. 

A week of fundraising, funeral planning, worship team counseling and set planning for his funeral and here I am in my basement trying to unpack my thoughts.  After the funeral I came home and wrote a letter to every business owner and car dealership I knew to try and get someone to give them a car.  When I hit the send button God whispered...”You’ve done all you can do, it’s ok to grieve.”  I burst into tears at my computer sobbing uncontrollably.  My family came in to see what was wrong. I think I scared them.

I kept thinking over and over in my head, did I know him enough.  Could I have been a better friend, pastor or worship leader to him.  I thought of all the days I was off on Monday and I knew he was out of work and I could have driven a few miles up the road and taken him to lunch, or had him come hang at my house just to pass some time.

He was at every Spaghetti Sundays, and he was content just to be there. He asked me for about 3 months straight when the next one would be, because he wanted to cook for it.  I am sooo thankful we had that last Spaghetti Sunday even though he dropped the entire pan of lasagna on my front porch.  Mike let the world think what they wanted of him but he always thought the best of us.  Mike had nothing of worldly possessions.  He loved being on the worship team.  He didn’t have a really good bass and owned no amp so he would turn down the music really low and lean over the bass to hear in order to learn the songs for the weekend.  Then he would come to church and play one of the basses we had hanging on our wall in our band room.  They belonged to Trentin and Charlie two members of or worship family that died 10 months apart just over the past two years. 

One Spaghetti Sundays a young woman came over with an amp and Fender P-Bass and just gave it to him.  He was elated.  He plugged it in and stood in my morning room just playing away.   

I’m not really sure how to handle his death.  The pastor in me kicked into gear to come along the family and help them through this.  The military brat and business man in me, immediately went into strategic planning mode, raising funds to cover funeral expenses since they had no life insurance.  The friend part of me just shut down no time for that yet.

I’m hurting right now pretty bad.  I’m not trying to take it out on my family but things are pretty tense around the house, we still have a worship team member fighting cancer, and another that has been in and out of the hospital all of last year.  So I’ll say again the only thing I know for sure.

Life is fragile, God is in control even when we don’t think so, and in His time he will pick up the shattered pieces of our life and tell a beautiful story with them.  Today, right now, the world is a more quiet place, a more lonely place, a more empty place, and a darker place.  The pain and aches of losing a friend can’t compare to what his family is going through so you ache twice, once for your loss and then magnify that by a bazillion and you grieve for the family.  

So in the morning, if we wake up, we put air in our lungs, and we plant our feet on the side of our bed, we shower in silence, and the songs on the radio either bring us to tears or are hollow beyond measure.  We go on!  I don’t know how but we do. And somehow the memory of Mike, and the legacy of servanthood that he leaves, takes root in our heart.  We create a bit more space for those we mostly tolerate because Mike loved them. We make more time for those conversations that we think we’ll have again, because the next one isn’t promised to us.  We give because we have way more than we need and our excess gives life to people.  We slow down and know that work can wait, it’s not going anywhere.  We take time to get to know the families of our worship team members, because it’s their sacrifice of time without their loved ones that allows us to do our jobs.  We create opportunities to do life outside of the stage, and we love each other with the love of God and walk through the darkest times with them so they can hang onto something when God seems far away. If you are a worship leader, I'm begging you to please consider what you are doing on stage.  People need the words that give life to them in their darkest hour.  Since you don't know if that darkest hour is about to be the following morning, like it was in Mike's family's case.  Be open to the Holy Spirit, leave time for silence if you have to.  But above all WORSHIP, don't perform, WORSHIP, just worship.

My heart is heavy and the tears keep coming, the words don’t come but I have to write. So I’ll just say this. I want to be more like Mike.....because Mike was so much like Jesus!

Black History Month

Photo: Freedom taken by ” 

- Roy Rudolph DeCarva 1919 - 2009

I was asked recently by some young friends of mine if I thought Black History Month promoted racism or helped to eliminate it.  I posted the question on my Facebook page to let people give their thoughts before I responded.  

Let me first start by sharing a story of an encounter.  Many years ago, my friend said, "How do you get away with it?", referring to BET - Black Entertainment Television.  He went on to say, "we could never get away with White Entertainment Television."  While I empathized with the double standard, I told him he already had it, and it was called ABC, CBS and NBC.

This was the start of my answer to my two young friends. I told them, Black History Month was simply that, Black History Month.  Is racism a part of black history? Absolutely.  Is it part of Black History Month? Absolutely, but not because of the reasons you think.  Black History is not white guilt month, it is Black History Month.  When learning about what African Americans had to overcome to be considered equal, racism will certainly be a hurdle.  If that makes white people uncomfortable, truth sometimes hurts.  

This is part of the reason I started my daily Black History Post on my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=630158264.  It is impossible to talk about African Americans within the American story without covering the topic of racism. Therefore it is impossible to avoid it when we discuss Black History Month.  Just because we talk about it doesn't mean we hinder or help it.  Actions speak louder than words.  So for me, Black History Month has been about doing some homework on African Americans and African American firsts in our Nation's History.  

In the media today, everything gets compared to the civil rights movement. Healthcare, gay marriage, pro-life, the mortgage crisis, even the occupy demonstrations. We are told there is the 99% and the 1%. Personally I believe there is no 99% or 1% we are all in it together and I have little sympathy for people who stand in line for hours to get their $299 smart phones so they can tweet pictures of how under privileged they are. I never saw any photos of lines outside the retail stores during the great depression unless there was a help wanted sign in the window. So are we really as bad off as we think, and how does this get linked to Black History Month.  Let’s shine some light on that perspective. Did you know 75% of people wear corrective lenses.  Where is the other 25% demanding they get eyewear or contacts. Did you know that 61% of wealthy people considered to be in the top 1% drive Toyota, Honda & Ford cars.  Where is the outcry for the little people to be able to drive a Camary or a Fusion?  Did you know that only 5% of the worlds population has flown on a plane. Oh the horror.  31.6% of Americans have no internet access!  It's like the stone age! I fear sharing this..., 98.2% of Americans do not own an Apple Computer,..Oh - Dear - God! Perhaps the one we never see marching in the streets, is because they lack the coordination to march, only 8% of Americans play a musical instrument.  Riot in the street over that one and demand an instrument and lessons. This is not a debate between the have’s and have not’s it is between the have’s and I want’s. And for the record it has nothing to do with Civil Rights. But for the sake of argument, I’ll indulge.

What about the woman who wrote the Harry Potter series, when she was a financially struggling mom. How about Steve Jobs and Woz in their parents garage working on a personal computer. Or Bill Gates when he dropped out of college. Even NASA Rocket Scientist - Homer Hickam, when his father was shoveling coal, and he was building model rockets.  Were these people in the 99% or the 1%? Or did they simply change their story?  

You see that type of language is dangerous.  It is beyond dangerous, it is apocalyptic throughout history. Think back on how blacks were made less then human during slavery. Think back to how the Jews were blamed for all that was wrong with Germany during Hitlers holocaust in WW2.  We saw it recently in the Ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia.  We are seeing it again in Syria and Egypt. And even still in our own country with regard to the discussion of illegal immigrants. All over the world, the sex trade is booming. Terrorist think others are less than human and should not be allowed to exist on the planet. History marches down this road repeatedly.  

The dangerous language of the Civil Rights movement was not that Blacks wanted to be in the same percentage or have the same possessions as whites.  It was that we believed God made us all equal, and He didn’t measure it by possessions.  

Pay attention, I'll say it again.  The dangerous language of the civil rights movement was that WE ARE ALL EQUAL. That is inflammatory speech when coming from a group of people you have deemed less than human. It wasn't our rights or lack of, it wasn't our money, or lack of, and it wasn't our employment or lack of that we were fighting for. We were fighting for the right to be free. Then and only then could we begin to write our American story. We had to be free.  

This is why it is so important to see yourself as part of the American story.  The whole story.  For me, Black History is the infusion of truth into the American Story.  It is how, where, why, and when African Americans changed the direction of this nation.  In order to fight racism, you have to change the paradigm.  Much of our history has been whitewashed.  Contributions made from African Americans were simply left out of history. This is why racism can be seen woven through Black History Month. There is no agenda, it is simply truth and in many cases an unpleasant one to admit. Without the ability to see a culture or a race as an integral part of our country, we devalue that race or culture and over time we lose that country. 

Black History month is more than the Mass 54th, the first combat colored regiment in the Civil War. It is beyond the Tuskegee Airmen, It is bigger than Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Jackie Robinson, and President Obama. It even goes beyond Whitney Houston being the first African American to be on the cover of Seventeen magazine or Doug Williams being the first black quarterback to win a Super Bowl.  We’ve been sold the story, that success looks white in this country.  It has been said that whoever tells the best story wins the culture.  How do African Americans expect to impact current culture when the stories being told on television and in film still portray us as the criminals, the car jackers, the drug store gunmen, the unfaithful fathers and husbands, and the uneducated gangsters who control the drug trade with a secret language and hand gestures.  Black History Month for me is about telling the whole story of America so that over time all Americans will know that we played just as big a role in birthing this nation as any other race.  Despite the generational wealth that skipped blacks in the founding of our country, Black History month should be an inspiration. No matter what percent you think you are in, most of us will never again have to face the types of hardships and discrimination that early African Americans did. Against all odds, we were able to beat back the chains of slavery, oppression, poor education, violence, unemployment and acts of terrorism to become scientist, authors, inventors, musicians, athletes, actors, politicians, presidents, doctors, dancers, military generals, pilots and astronauts.

Until the names of Charles Drew, Garret Morgan, and Lewis Latimer show up in history books next to Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, and Ben Franklin we will continue to shine light where there is darkness. Until we re-educate a generation of students that only read about blacks during the slavery chapter of their social studies and history books black history month will remain a tool.  When America sees how African Americans contributed equally to the great American Story, the world may begin to see true equality.  Once that happens then nothing can stop this country's ability to be what God intended.  I hope that answers the question.

“It doesn’t have to be pretty to be true, but if it’s true it’s beautiful. Truth is beautiful. And so my whole work is about what amounts to a reverence for life itself.” 

- Roy Rudolph DeCarva 1919 - 2009

Just A Shell?

This is a picture of our house, being built.  It is the house we currently live in now.  I recently set it up as a desk top wall paper.  I found myself starring at it one day and realizing that it was simply a shell.  Not because it was lacking brick and siding and windows and doors but because it was lacking life.  Then like that scene from Titanic when the old rose sees a video of the sunken ship and see all the life that took place at that place on the ship.... it started to happen.  I saw the driveway filled with cars of my friends from small group.  I see through the wall in the back of the garage where our family room now is, and I see 48 of my friends jumping up and down at a Superbowl party when the giants won.  And none of us were giants fans. I look through the front door and see into the morning room on the back of the house and see all of us sitting and playing monopoly or the counter top piled with desserts from Spaghetti Sundays!.  The big window upstairs in the loft where a friends little boy can be seen with his Indiana Jones hat playing the Wii. Or the bump out window where two friends started dating over a chess game and are now married.  But it's just a shell right?  Hardly, it is the hub of dreams and relationships.  It's a place where we do life with each other. It's the place where you mourn the death of your friend and celebrate the life of your friend's newborn.  Then I started to see this house as our lives.  We have dream and disappointments.  We have plans and tragedies.  But what makes these shells so powerful is the life that lives in them.  For me that live is Jesus.  He is the meaningful relationship, the fun, the dreams and also the pain of realizing that I'm not the man I should be and I have to learn a lesson all over again.  I guess the writer's block moment is to remind me that it's the life we do with people and vulnerability that comes from those relationships that makes the moments in these shells, so powerful.  Sure someday we'll sell this house and move our family somewhere else.  But then next time I have a photo that looks like this of my house, I will be filled with excitement for the life that is about to be lived in the new shell. I will however, tend to this shell of mine that is 45 years old now, and hopefully has a lot more life to live.  I'll approach my life like this photo of a my house.  That there is still so much more that God wants to do with it and I should look forward to the unexpected.