SEASON ONE

3/6/18 3/6/18

Blessed are the Blended featuring Sandi Patty

In this spirited episode of Dinner Conversations, hosts Mark Lowry and Andrew Greer invite America's favorite inspirational singer Sandi Patty to sit around the table as she talks about the treasures and trials of blending a family, and cultivating healthy relationships (and hope!) while in the thick of the mix.

In this spirited episode of Dinner Conversations, hosts Mark Lowry and Andrew Greer invite America's favorite inspirational singer Sandi Patty to sit around the table as she talks about the treasures and trials of blending a family, and cultivating healthy relationships (and hope!) while in the thick of the mix.

Transcript

Mark: Hi, I’m Mark Lowry

Andrew: And I’m Andrew Greer

Mark: And you’re listening to Dinner Conversations

Andrew: Turning the light on one question at a time

Mark: Presented by Project Beautiful. Blessed are the blended. I am so excited about today’s show. One of my favorite singers — it’s Sandi Patty. I’ve known her since 1988. We’ve been friends ever since, and I’m thrilled she’s here today, and she’s going to be talking about blended families.

Andrew: That’s right. She has such a unique family situation — she and her husband, Don, and their blended family of eight children. There’s a quote by Brené Brown that we talked about. Brené says, “Those who have a strong sense of love and belonging have the courage to be imperfect.” And what Sandi does is she invites us into the story of her family as she shows how the stories of our lives that are imperfect are then a pathway for God to redeem us and then as we share that story for others to join in on the redemption, so I think it’s pretty exciting.

Mark: It was a great conversation, and there’s one seat left at the table — and it’s yours. Let’s join the conversation.

Mark: Years ago when you and I and Debby Boone did something—

Sandi: Hold on, let me grab that name you just dropped.

Mark: I remember it was at Anderson University, and I told you that night, I said, “I’m so thankful I was born in your lifetime to hear that voice.” I remember I was sitting with my friend Deena at the outdoor theatre in LA, that beautiful amphitheater thing.

Sandi: The Greek

Mark: You were at it. It was your concert. It was sold out. This is before I knew you, before I had my big break that you gave me.

Sandi: Well, we’ve got to talk about that.

Mark: Yeah, but let me just say that I remember thinking, I wish she knew my name. Isn’t that weird?

Sandi: Here we are.

Mark: And here we are.

Sandi: Having dinner.

Andrew: She knows it now.

Mark: I’m at Estes Park. I’m finally getting to sing at Estes Park.

Sandi: The year?

Mark: 1988, I know exactly. I can tell you what I was wearing. I see that Dallas Holm is supposed to introduce me in the morning, and I want you to because the two biggest stars in our world at that time were Amy Grant and Sandi Patty. There were no bigger stars. I mean superstars all right, and everybody else was down here. So she introduces me. She doesn’t know what I’m going to do. She introduces me, and I said, “Thank you, Amy, for that wonderful introduction.” I said, “Your first album My Father’s Eyes is still favorite.” And then I said, “Are y’all ready to rock ‘n’ roll?” I said, “Tough. I don’t do that.”

Sandi: And in that moment, I knew. I think I wet my pants that morning. I think I did. I’d never heard such smart comedy. It was just the most brilliant 10 minutes I’ve ever seen in my whole life.

Mark: So you are retiring.

Sandi: You know, I am.

Mark: You are. Farewell Tour’s going good, huh?

Sandi: It’s done. It’s farewell.

Mark: You’re not going to do like Cher and have an Adios Tour, an I’ll See You Later Tour, a We’ll Be Back in a Minute Tour?

Sandi: I’m not.

Mark: No, you’re done.

Sandi: I’m done. I mean, music has always been such a huge part of my life there’s no way I can not do music.

Mark: Of course, no.

Sandi: But being on the road, it just looks very different on a 62-year-old body than on a 30-year-old body.

Andrew: Sure. When we went to the Concert Tours, when my parents and I came to that, and you see this picture, to me, this is the story of redemption that’s happening throughout your family, but you see you, your husband Don. You see one of Don’s girls. You see your twins. You see Katie, your daughter-in-law. So all this literally up on stage singing together.

Mark: Because you blended a family.

Andrew: I mean, blended-ness right in front of us.

Sandi: And Anna, who runs the business, and then road manager son, we just employee them all.

Mark: A family corporation. A friend of mine yesterday, in fact, and they’re a little older than me — in their 60s probably — they recently married. Her husband passed away, he went through a divorce, but they married, and he said that if he had known. He said the hardest thing he’s ever been through in his life.

Sandi: You know, blending a family, there’s nothing easy about it. Nothing. So some of things that Don and I have been really fortunate in the last few years to be able to share with a lot of couples is not out of how we did it right. It’s how we messed up, and please, if you’re going to make a mistake, make a new one, but don’t make this one. But every blended family, no. 1 — you have to start here — is born out of loss. You just have to let that sink in. Every blended family is born out of loss, so whether there’s been a death of a spouse, parent, or whether there’s been a divorce, there’s a loss. That is just a reality. That doesn’t mean it’s set up to fail, but you do have to start there.

Andrew: It’s a recognition.

Sandi: Yes. You just have to own that. The second thing is you have to keep the foundational relationship strong. You’re the only ones in the whole mess that chose it.

Mark: Write that down.

Sandi: Nobody else did, right. You’re the only ones in this whole mess that chose it, so you’ve got to foster that, you’ve got to nurture that relationship, and we just tried to establish date night once a week. And I think you know in your second marriage you have to work harder than you did in your first. I don’t know, you just have to.

Andrew: Is that from a fear thing?

Sandi: No, it’s from, I think, an experience thing. Nothing magically happens when you say, “I do.” All the stars align and all the baggage is unpacked and understood — it’s just the beginning.

Mark: Let me ask you this. What kind of insecurities in your children does it breed when their parents stop loving each other? Does it, in some way, make them feel like it could happen to them, too? Is that part of it or not?

Sandi: That’s a very interesting question. It has made them look at marriage much more seriously knowing this could happen.

Andrew: Because they know you and they know their father and they know Don, and they’re going these are people we love, we trust, we see their relationship with God’s fostered, and yet here it was present.

Sandi: Yeah. And I think one of the things that we chose to do early on is to be as age appropriately honest with them, that there was not a question that they couldn’t ask that we wouldn’t answer somehow. And to be real honest, the questions have gotten deeper as they get older.

Andrew: And even as they get married?

Sandi: And as they get married, it’s like you know what, I understand differently than I did before. It’s hard work.

Mark: Now, let’s go with Andrew as he sits down to talk more about blended family life with Sandi’s daughter Jenn Crider, worship leader at Christ Church here in Nashville.

Andrew: How did coming from this blended family impact before you were married, now that you’re married, now that you’re a mom?

Jenn: Yes, oh my goodness. Wow, yes. I think I chose not to let people close for a very long time, and that was with my family, that was in friendships, that was in relationships. My husband was my first serious relationship, and we were 24 when we started dating, and I just became kind of self-reliant, which is not a bad thing, but it was from an unhealthy place. He gave me a lot of space to process how scared I was of marriage because of my lens. I was scared of being hurt, and I was scared of hurting. Both were equally strong in me, and I could see the capacity of both within me, which we all have and I think maybe it’s a good thing to come to terms with that, but it was paralyzing to me. And on the night we got engaged, he had set up this elaborate, beautiful, amazing engagement — the most perfect thing — and I realized finally what’s happening and I said, “I’m not ready to get engaged. I’m not ready to get engaged.” And he said, “Yes, you are. Yes, you are. Yes, you are.”

Andrew: You said that out loud?

Jenn: And I said, “I’m not ready. I’m not ready.” And he said, “Yes, you are. Yes, you are. Yes, you are.” I almost said, “No,” not because I was scared of him. I knew he’s amazing and I trust him completely and I do want to spend my life with him, so I wasn’t scared of him and I had peace about him. I was so terrified of marriage. My husband’s parents met and married in 12 days and are still together to this day, so we just had very different lenses that we walked into marriage with. So he’s like, “This is great. This is great. Why don’t we just get married now?” But I remember on my wedding day, I woke up and realized, OK, this is it, but I remember feeling this delight from the Lord because I felt for me and my story and my fears this redemption in some ways. And honestly, I know what I’m getting into. I have no rose-colored glasses but seeing that that actually can be a benefit instead of a crippling thing.

Andrew: I think what’s beautiful about that is what we realize is that we’re not whole. We’re not going to be whole on this side of life, so that’s a continual journey and that’s where you can begin to relate. No matter what your story is, no matter what your parents’ story is, no matter what my story is or someone else’s, that’s our relating point. If we’re surrendered, I think, to God through this life, then it’s a continual healing process that will never end.

Sandi Patty singing “’Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus” with Andrew Greer and Mark Lowry

Sandi: I love this song so much.

Mark: I do too.

Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus,
Just to take Him at His word.
Just to rest upon His promise,
Just to know, thus saith the Lord.

Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Him,
How I’ve proved Him o’er and o’er.
Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus.
Oh, for grace to trust Him more.

And I'm so glad that I’ve learned to trust Him,
Precious Jesus, Savior, Friend,
And I know that thou art with me,
Will be with me to the very end.

Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Him,
How I’ve proved Him o’er and o’er.
Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus.
Oh, for grace to trust Him more.
Oh, for grace to trust Him more.

Project Beautiful Sponsorship Message

Mark: Dinner Conversations is presented by Project Beautiful.

Andrew: A passionate community committed to saving innocent lives from the terrors of modern day slavery, Project Beautiful has intercepted over 12,000 people from the frontlines of sex trafficking, and today, you can partner with us and help.

Mark: So will you partner with Andrew and me? Go to projectbeautiful.org/dinnerconversations for more information.

Andrew: If we don’t help, who will? Project Beautiful, because every life is beautiful and worth fighting for.

Andrew: Y’all created a name. Anna was telling me about it the other day.

Sandi: Because on vacation, Don would go, “Hey, Peslis family, let’s go.” And then, finally, the Helvering kids go, “I’m sorry. We are not Peslises.” But it sparked a conversation that, you know what, that’s true, so we need to address that. At first we thought, well, what if just for fun, we combined our names, so we took “Hel” from Helvering, “p” from Patty, and “lis” from Peslis, but that was Helplis and that just felt a little bit too real. It just felt too soon. So then we thought, OK, let’s just put all the letters of all the last names in a paper bag and we drew them out one at a time, and whatever order they came out in that would be our fictitious name, which came out Geniselapivy.

Mark: Geniselapivy

Sandi: Very well done. But I think what it has said is that we all have a place and we all matter, and some of those realizations we came to in a hard way because the kids would say, “You know what? That’s not my name.” Well, you know what, that’s true.

Andrew: Does it ever feel like here’s this hump and we’re never going to get over it because no one’s ever going to have the same last name, no one’s ever going to be all biologically related? Did you and Don ever feel defeated by that possibility or fact?

Sandi: Yeah. You hope that you can create a safe enough space that conversations can happen that will lead you to new things. You hope. That’s the best you can do. I say hope, and I mean prayer and discernment and thoughtfulness, all that.

Andrew: But you’re not going to control it, right?

Sandi: You’re not going to control that, and I’ll tell you something: This happened probably four or five years ago, and so Don and I’ve been married now 22 years. Twenty-two. We’re suddenly those people now that people come to. When did that happen?

Mark: For advice?

Sandi: Yeah

Mark: Well, why not?

Sandi: We can tell you what we did wrong, don’t do that. And this happened on one of the cruises I was hosting, and it happened to be around Don’s birthday. All the waiters came over and celebrated the crazy birthday and all of our family was around, and I realized I was hesitating to celebrate him in front of my kids because I never ever wanted them to think that I’d forgotten what it cost them. But then I realized, you know what, I’m also a wife, and if I don’t celebrate him, someone’s gonna, so I need to figure out how to celebrate him in front of the kids. So I set out on a mission, and it took me a year to accomplish, but I wanted to have a one-on-one conversation with each of my kids where there was no time constraint — it could go as short or as long as it needed to go — and say to them, “I don’t ever want you to think for one minute that I’ve forgotten what it has cost you, but I love your dad. He is my best friend, and I want and need to celebrate us.” And I’ve always said, “If you need to pick up this conversation at any time, then let’s do that.” But that has freed me to be able to celebrate my husband because that is important to do.

Mark: And you do it well. What do you call him, Reverend Don?

Sandi: Yeah, Rev. Mister Don.

Andrew: That’s in turn freed them up, don’t you think? Even though they may not have thought that at first.

Sandi: You know, the comments from each of them, one of them said, “Well, of course, we know that.” One of them said, “Mom, if you don’t move on, how are we supposed to?” So it was a very freeing—

Andrew: And how are they, then, to celebrate you if you can’t celebrate your love?

Sandi: Right, right. And I think that’s one of the foundations we tried to establish in our blended family, is even if it’s crazy, lets’ talk about it. But I think now we can converse, and the kids especially are really close.

Mark: Are they? That’s great.

Sandi: They really are.

Andrew: It’s pretty amazing to seem them together.

Sandi: They refer to us as stepparents, but they refer to each other as siblings. But they’ll say to us now, “our parents,” and that’s been a new thing.

Andrew: When you think about all those different personalities under one roof, and then on top of that, you have this personality that would like a little space to feel her feelings and maybe someone to hear those feelings when you need it, was it ever hard, especially with your biological siblings. Did some of them seem a little bit more go with the flow? Were you like, what’s wrong with me? Why can’t I just run into this full force?

Jenn: Yes, absolutely. Have you read all my diaries? My mom told me a story later. I started doing some work and going to counseling. When I first moved to Nashville almost nine, 10 years ago, I had the incredible privilege of doing some very intense counseling with Al Andrews actually. In the midst of that work, I was processing some things with mom, and I remember having a conversation with her which was so healing for our relationship, that just said, “I need to have a conversation—“ Because I can feel all my feels, I can also feel all your feels, so sometimes I feel like I can’t say that because then that’s going to be taken that way. So I remember calling her on the phone after a counseling session and said, “I just need to have a conversation as a 4-year-old girl who’s really sad about things that happened,” and she just let me talk. She heard me and let me be seen, and it was so powerful in so many ways. I was just 4 when they got divorced, and my mom and dad sat us down and told us that they were getting divorced and tried to explain it however you can to a 4-year-old, and she said I just cried and cried and cried and cried. And she said at some point that day, I just stopped, and she didn’t see me cry for years because I think, as a 4-year-old, I realized that pain is so great to open yourself up, and I think once I reopened some of those things that were very painful at first, that then allowed some work to begin. But that was my journey, and my siblings had very different ones. Some of them were more able to go with the flow, and their work looks a little bit different. Sometimes it was them having permission to stop and say, “Oh wait, this did affect me,” and have that conversation and for us to all see that it did affect us, just as every person’s story affects them no matter what they walked through.

Al Andrews | Porter’s Call

Andrew: Mark sits down with Al Andrews, founder and executive director of Porter’s Call, a counseling and support center for recording artists here in Nashville, Tennessee.

Mark: Have you worked with blended families?

Al: I have.

Mark: What is the biggest hurdle they have to face when you blend a family?

Al: Well, it’s really interesting because let’s say there’s six people in a blended family, six kids — three kids in this one, three kids in this one. When they come together, everybody’s been through a trauma, but if I met with each of those kids individually, I would hear a different story because everybody experiences a different story. My sister and I grew up in the same family, and we have a bit of a different story the way we experienced our family. The way I would work with people is just not assume, well, if you’re in a blended family, this, this, and this happens and, therefore, that’s what you’re dealing with. But what I’d rather do is go, no, each person, including the parents, lived a different story.

Mark: And they see that story through their own grid.

Al: Through their own grid, which is influenced by the things in their own life. One of the big things we want to do with everybody that comes in is almost treat them like a novel that has a beginning, a middle, and an end and a number of chapters because I feel like people need to know their story or their story will live them.

Project Beautiful Sponsorship Message

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Mark: And they know the red flags to watch for.

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Mark: Won’t you join Andrew and me? Go to projectbeautiful.org/dinnerconversations

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Mark: If we don’t help, who will? Project Beautiful, because every life is beautiful and worth fighting for.

Sandi Patty and Her Family

Mark: So you have eight total?

Sandi: Eight total. So when we got married, I had four: Anna, John, Jenn, and Erin. Don had three: Donnie, Aly, and Mollie. And then we adopted our youngest one Sam, so we own him jointly.

Mark: So do you like all of your kids?

Sandi: I am so for them, and I want them to know that.

Mark: And I know that might be an odd question, but, you know, you can love a kid and not always like them.

Sandi: Right. There are kids who maybe are taking the long way home and there are kids that have taken a little bit shorter route, and so the ones who are taking the long way home, it’s hard to know how to support them sometimes in decisions that are hard. It’s just a journey to sort of let them feel—

Mark: Is it you want to fix it?

Sandi: I just want them to know just do this and you’re going to be fine, but can I tell you this? And I actually have not shared this with anyone else but my kids, so I haven’t got it all figured out yet in my head. I’ve been very convicted as a mom in some of the choices that I make, particularly around food, and yet I want to say to some of my kids who are taking the long way home, “All you need to do is…” Because that looks easy to me, but that’s not my struggle. Just in the last two weeks, God has just kind of said to me, “Look, it’s this simple. You put less calories in your body than you burn, you’re going to lose weight. That math is not going to change. It’s one of my universal principles.” And I have for 62 years wanted to do different math, and so in fasting for my children, my fast is not away from something but it’s toward something, and that is six things of protein, five starches because I can’t tell my other kids that I know it’s hard but it’s worth it if I have not surrendered this in my life. It’s a new place. It’s so brand new like I have blisters from it, you know. It’s so brand new.

Mark: We never heard any sermons on gluttony. I didn’t.

Sandi: No, no, no.

Mark: And our preachers were all fat.

Sandi: Right? I know.

Mark: They’re all going to give the Lord a challenge in the rapture because they’re so heavy. No, seriously, but I did not know until I went to college gluttony was a sin.

Sandi: Yes, yes.

Andrew: Well, how we worship with our bodies, right?

Mark: That’s all we did was eat and go to church.

Sandi: Thank you

Mark: Dinners on the ground.

Andrew: You know what’s cool? I want to say this. How cool that you are coming to that realization and then applying that to your relationships with your kids because then, guess what, for those taking the long way home, well, hey, mom’s right here shoulder to shoulder with us.

Sandi: Yes

Andrew: I think as kids, as adult children with our parents, as they are still learning things about themselves and then presenting those to us willingly as well, man, that is such a convicting thing for me because it’s like, OK, so mom and dad and I get to commune together. They’re not controlling. They don’t hold all the answers. We’re all looking up.

Sandi: Right. You know, my dad, who’s 84, just said to me the other day, he said, “I wish I had known really in a sense what a weak man I was growing up.” He said, “Because knowing that at 84 has made me a stronger man.” He’s 84, and it’s what you just said, he’s still growing and still learning.

Andrew: And alive.

Sandi: Yes

Mark: I’m sure there were struggling times when you were struggling, and you can’t let the kids know you’re struggling. How do you parent them when you are also struggling?

Don: Well, actually, my wife and I decided that we were going to let them know when we were struggling.

Mark: Oh, really?

Don: And age-appropriately, we might let them know what we were struggling with because they know you’re struggling.

Mark: And they need to know you’re human.

Don: They know that you’re sad. They know you’re upset. I remember a time when we told our kid — he was probably 8 — I said, “Mommy and I are having an argument like you and your brother have, and it’s going to take a while to get through, but we’re going to be OK, but that’s why things are a little tense.” And he went, “OK.” But it kind of put words to what he was feeling.

Mark: Wow, that’s cool.

Don: Again, as they got older, we might say, “This is what we’re struggling with.” And they might go, “Oh, OK.” Because I want to model for them that it’s OK for them to struggle because if you don’t—

Mark: How are they going to know how to handle when they are?

Don: Exactly. And one of the things that I think that I struggle with as a parent is that I believe that maybe they can not have to struggle as much. It’s like I want a shortcut. I want them to be fixed, but—

Mark: There are not shortcuts.

Don: There really aren’t. I really wish there were, Mark. I really wish there were, but there’s not.

Mark: But it’s not that long, 80 years you think compared to eternity. This is just boot camp. That’s all that this is.

Don: Isn’t that true? And yet it’s a boot camp that’s difficult sometimes. We invite our sons into it, and I feel like that’s been helpful to us because when they come up against it, when it hits them in the face, they’re not surprised like, “Oh my gosh, this happens?” Yeah, people betray you. Things hurt. Bad things happen, and it stings. People get mad at one another, and even if they love each other.

Andrew: So, going back to you having conversations with your children through all the years and you and Don saying, “At this table, we talk here. We ask questions,” that’s a foundation, a helpful one, and could be and should be for any family, right?

Sandi: Yes, yes

Andrew: Because there are families that don’t talk that have never had divorce or remarriage.

Sandi: Right, and you don’t know how to start the conversation. You don’t start the conversation with, “So I know you made a really bad, life-altering choice last week. Should we talk about it?” You can’t start there. What you do is you start when they’re little. So when the kids were little, we’d have dinner and we’d go around the table and say, “Tell me your high/low for the day. What was good about the day? What was hard about the day?” And so, sometimes it was, “Well, recess was extra long. That was the high. And we had green beans for lunch. That was the low.” But what you’re setting, you’re setting the table for conversation, so that when the high/lows get harder, you’ve already established the conversation.

Mark: Yeah, you can’t start that in their teens.

Sandi: No, you can’t, and listen to this: My mother, she knew she was loved, but she wasn’t told the words a whole lot by her parents. Her biggest fear was when she had children, she was not going to be able to say, “I love you,” so when we were younger — this makes me cry — when we were little, she told me this just a number of years ago, she would go in our rooms when we were asleep and she would practice saying our name, “I love you.” She would practice that so when the time came that we could hear it, she had practiced it. Now, that is just an amazing life lesson for me, that even if it’s hard for us, let’s practice it. Nobody gets it right.

Andrew: Yes. Yes, and to know that she wasn’t set up for that.

Sandi: She wasn’t set up for that.

Andrew: But yet, she chose.

Sandi: Which is amazing because people who know my mother, she says, “I love you,” to everyone.

Andrew: She’s well rehearsed now.

Sandi: But to hear that context was so sweet that what you don’t know, learn it. Learn it.

Mark: Well, you know, my dad, same thing. His parents never hugged him. He got on a train leaving to college. He sees his best friend and his father embrace, and he decided from that moment on he would hug his parents every time he saw them.

Andrew: He decided.

Mark: He decided. My grandparents were like Ma and Pa Kettle. Do you remember Ma and Pa Kettle? She was a big, tall, German, busty woman, and he was a little shrimp of a man. Well, that was my grandparents, and my dad would hug them and say, “I love you, mama,” and she’d stand there, you know.

Andrew: That takes me back to when you were saying that now people are coming to you and Don for advice, but what a gift, right, because through your all’s decisions, choices, would you say that’s a result of that? What goes through your mind when you think, Wow, we are now able to help someone else?

Sandi: Well, I think I’m so glad God makes all things new. Something new like Geniselapivy, which is the silliest, but out of all that, made something new. I do feel like Don and I were willing to do the work, and we were willing to put ourselves under some counsel and some leadership for a while, and I think those pieces are really important, too. But now, we get an opportunity to be that for other people, and them knowing our story because, you know, you can Google it — it’s just there forever — but I think it does allow people to be freer with what they tell us because they can’t shock us. It’s like, OK, what else? What else? And so, that’s why we have to tell our stories to each other. Out of brokenness, I think God can do just some miraculous things.

Mark: Show your scars.

Andrew: The floodgates of communion.

Sandi: I love that.

Andrew: I’ve got a quote for you. I’ve got to read this. It’s Brené Brown.

Sandi: Love it.

Andrew: “Imperfections are not inadequacies; they are reminders that we’re all in this together. The irony is that we attempt to disown our difficult stories to appear whole or more acceptable, but our wholeness — even our wholeheartedness — actually depends on the integration of all of our experiences, including the falls.” It feels like you guys are pointing us in a direction of hope, one that exposes brokenness but also it then therefore exposes grace. Have you felt that kind of spiritual impact? It could be just personally, like you and your relationship with God, or even as you communicate to people from a spiritual platform, like talking about spiritual things.

Sandi: At first, it was hard, I think, to share the brokenness, but when I began to see, like you said, people coming up and going, “You know, that happened to me,” or, “I was abused, too, when I was younger,” and whispering it. And it’s like all of a sudden it lets you be more brave, so the first thing I want to be is maybe help people put words to some brokenness in their own life. It’s hard to speak out of the rawness that you’re going through, unless you’re, of course, Mark Lowry, because there’s a difference between being emotional and then just having feelings about what has happened. It’s hard to speak out of a super raw emotional place. But as I began to be encouraged to talk about it, it just was amazing the freedom that came in me because once you speak it out, it no longer has hold on you, right?

Mark: The cloud lifts.

Sandi: Yes, and it offers an invitation to others to do the same, to be brave and to take that first step. It’s like, God, only You could do something like this, only You. We just bring all of our stuff, we just bring it and allow Him to reframe it and reshape it and remold it, and it’s really amazing.

Sandi Patty and Family singing “It Is Well”

It is well (It is well)
With my soul (With my soul).
It is well, it is well with my soul.
Amen, amen, amen.

Andrew: Thanks so much to our wonderful friend Sandi Patty for joining in on the table talk today. Thanks so much to Mike Atkins and Anna Trent of Atkins Management. We want to thank our friends the Breen Family for opening their home to host this podcast, Quentin Philips for his expertise, Dana Claremont for all her assistance, and also thanks to Stacy Kennedy for her extra set of helping hands. Our show is recorded by Center Street Recording Studios in Nashville, Tennessee

Andrew: Turning the light on one question at a time

Mark: Presented by Project Beautiful.

Andrew: Join us next time for more conversation around the table, and don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss one single episode. While you’re at it, rate and review our show. It’s an easy way that you can help us continue the conversation. Dinner Conversations is a production of Center Street Media.

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2/27/18 2/27/18

What’s the Point of Grace? featuring Point of Grace

In this spiritually thought-provoking episode of Dinner Conversations, hosts Mark Lowry and Andrew Greer gather 'round the table with the lovely ladies of platinum-selling trio Point of Grace to dialogue about the role of scripture in a Christian's life. The B.I.B.L.E. ... is it the book for me?

In this spiritually thought-provoking episode of Dinner Conversations, hosts Mark Lowry and Andrew Greer gather 'round the table with the lovely ladies of platinum-selling trio Point of Grace to dialogue about the role of scripture in a Christian's life. The B.I.B.L.E. ... is it the book for me?

Transcript

Mark: Hi, I’m Mark Lowry.

Andrew: And I’m Andrew Greer.

Mark: And you’re listening to Dinner Conversations.

Andrew: Turning the light on one question at a time.

Mark: Presented by Project Beautiful.

What’s the point of grace? A friend of mine, Paul Johnson, said to me one day, “Jesus saved God for me,” and I think what he meant by that is like you said. You fell in love with Jesus—

Andrew: Then you had to figure out what to do with God.

Mark: If all I knew about God was the Old Testament, I’m not sure I’d care for Him much, but Jesus came along and said, “When you’ve seen Me, you’ve seen the Father.” The conversation today started out about a Bible study.

Andrew: That’s right. Our friends in Point of Grace — Leigh, Denise, and Shelley. Shelley I learned had had this really significant discovery through the Bible of grace by doing a Bible study for a year, just not doing a Bible study but studying the Bible alone. And so we wanted to sit down and talk with them today, some about growing up in the Bible Belt, talk about the Bible itself, and then talking about discovering grace throughout life.

Mark: So let’s join the conversation.

Andrew: Last year, when we did a show together, when we were on the plane ride home, this was kind of the first time, Shelley, I think you and I had actually had any conversation together, and we were talking about the Bible. I don’t even know how it came up.

Leigh: Maybe she was reading hers.

Denise: Maybe

Shelley: I always say if I’m flying on a plane, that’s probably what I’m doing.

Andrew: We started to talk about the Bible in our culture today, even in church culture, outside of church culture, is an interesting, sometimes controversial— I think it’s always been a bit of a controversial subject, the inspiration of the Scriptures, but you were telling me how in the past couple, two, three, four years from a Bible study that really prompted kind of a change in your perspective about the Bible. I was interested in what that change is. Did it affirm some things? Did it completely shift some of your perspectives about the Bible? Or did you even care before that?

Shelley: I was raised in church, but I think I have the same story that a lot of people have, which is you go through Sunday school and you learn all these different stories, like Noah and Jonah, but how they all really connect and tell the greater story that you’re still a part of, I think, sometimes falls by the wayside. And then you get into this adult life, and you think you’re supposed to— I remember being in Point of Grace those first years and just going, Oh my gosh, we’re in front of all these people. I hope nobody— If I had to do a Bible drill, I would be like, Suck. Do you know what I mean?

Andrew: Where’s Habakkuk?

Mark: That’s funny.

Shelley: I was like, I mean, I believe in the Resurrection and all that, but I didn’t feel like my biblical knowledge was very good. I kind of happened upon it, but it was the Lord looking back, this Bible study at my daughter’s school, and we just did like a chronological read-through of the Bible, because it’s not exactly in chronological order, close but you know.

Mark: Job would be first. Is that right? What do you mean?

Andrew: Historically speaking.

Mark: So it jumps all around.

Andrew: No, not the order it was written in.

Shelley: Not the order it was written in, the order in which it occurred. But that was really just a small piece of it.

Mark: Tell us the big piece.

Shelley: That, to me, just starting at the beginning and kind of understanding what the purpose of the Levitical codes and holiness was and that was set up. It was kind of like the Jews were a set up. It was the great farce. That’s what I always say. They didn’t really know. I never really knew the whole story of the Jews and the Levitical codes and how we can’t be that holy and there has to be a justice scale, just all of that, and then that’s why we needed Christ. The thread was never really there for me. And then it just awakened my faith so much because I’m like the thread’s still going and I’m part of it.

Mark: Which is sort of like the Bible’s still being written? Is that what you mean?

Shelley: Well, no, I think it’s been done, but God’s story, for sure, my part in it.

Andrew: And it’s still being written in our lives and through our experiences.

Shelley: Absolutely

Andrew: So the thread thing, that kind of is what we’ve talked about, how you filter— So many people have trouble with the Old Testament.

Mark: And it’s a red thread, the blood of the Lord Jesus.

Andrew: That is kitschy, kitschy, kitschy.

Shelley: I’m feeling a song coming on.

Rabbi Aaron Finkelstein | Congregation Sherith Israel

Mark: I am fascinated by the conversations Andrew and I had with Rabbi Aaron Finkelstein at Congregation Sherith Israel here in Nashville. […] We were always told we can have a relationship, and I believe I do, through Christ, but what’s that look like? A relationship with God, how do you get there? How would you tell someone to have a relationship with God?

Rabbi Aaron: I think it’s challenging. I think Jews, in general, struggle with it because not having an intermediary— I have a good friend who’s a minister, and she’s like, “Yeah, Jesus is my buddy,” and I’m like, Wouldn’t that be nice? That sounds great. So Jews, at least in America these days, tend to talk less about God. I think the way we have a relationship with God is by following commandments in the Bible and the Torah. There’s a famous passage, “Just as I am merciful, you should be merciful to your fellows,” and so a lot of it ends up manifesting, I think, through action toward others. There’s, of course, prayer, which is a pretty central piece and that I think for a lot of Jews is challenging.

Mark: Why is it hard?

Rabbi Aaron: Well, you’re talking, but no one ever talks back.

Andrew: So the mysterious nature of God.

Rabbi Aaron: At least for me. I’m having a whole conversation, but, you know, you don’t ever know if you get a response.

Mark: Well, that’s true— I mean, God’s never spoken to me audibly or anything like that. I’ve seen nothing. Pentecostals, they get all the miracles. Baptists, we get nothing. We have to walk by faith.

Andrew: If you see a thread of Jesus, which I think as New Testament Christians, that’s who we most closely identify with in our relationship with God.

Shelley: Sure

Mark: Well, He’s the only way to God.

Andrew: Right, so if you see a thread throughout, it’s a gracious, more generous way of reading.

Denise: Totally

Andrew: The Old Testament though, that’s where everyone— Mark, you’ve said what about the Old Testament?

Mark: My mother could keep the law better than anybody, and I could break it better than anybody and I needed grace. To me, sometimes if you look at the Old Testament without the lens of Jesus to look through, it’ll make you mean. Even the Bible itself says of itself, “The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” Sometimes I’d tell mama, “It looks like God was in a bad mood until Jesus showed up.”

Andrew: Here’s a question based on that then, which I think your head’s going to spin.

Shelley: Watch this.

Andrew: So God is all knowing, all powerful, but to be all powerful — someone explained it to me this way: For anything to be all powerful, He must be able to also limit Himself. If you can’t limit yourself, then you’re not actually powerful over yourself. Maybe part of God’s limitation was Jesus. Like He put on skin. He limited His omniscience and all powerfulness to be able to relate to us. So that’s where I’m going with it, but is it possible that God in the Old Testament — bad mood God, is it possible that He could actually evolve in an effort to be real-time? Like instead of just create everything and let it spin so that we’re just puppets, is He actually living in time and space? Because we see these things in the Old Testament where it does seem — I’m not saying this is what happened — God is a bit flexible, even with the Jews.

Mark: Well, He repented that He made man on the earth. That’s in there. That looks like He changed His mind, which I don’t think it means He—

Denise: But do we really understand what He was saying?

Mark: I don’t think it means He repented that He made man. I believe that He repented that He made man on the earth because it said He did, but what does that mean to Him? And also, could it mean that here He’s God, He sends Satan to earth to keep Him here when the angels fell, and then He decides to plant His crown and creation in the middle of a war zone.

Andrew: So, perhaps, He repented putting us in the middle.

Mark: Who knows? But it does say whatever repentance is to God, it said it. He divorced Israel in Jeremiah 3. God went through a divorce. God couldn’t pastor a Baptist church. He’s been through things we’ve been through so He can relate. Even in the Old Testament, I think he’s trying to relate to us. And I don’t think He came to Himself; I think He knew before the foundation of the world, so I would disagree with you.

Leigh: I would so.

Mark: I do not believe God is evolving.

Denise: I believe He is who He is.

Mark: I believe the revelation of God is like a crescendo, and we are learning who He really is and it apexes in Jesus. Moses learned there was one God. That was big news. And he got some things right and some things wrong. He said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” Well, back in that day, you knock out my teeth, I’d go kill your whole family, so he made it equitable. And then Jesus comes along finally and says, “No, you’ve heard it said, ‘an eye for an eye,’ but I tell you…” And Jesus trumps the Old Testament, Jesus trumps Moses, and He’s got the better way, the best way — forgive, love.

Shelley: Yeah, and when you say Jesus trumps the Old Testament, I actually think of it as He fulfills the Old Testament.

Mark: I like that better too.

Shelley: Because a lot of people these days will try to go, “The law is gone and that doesn’t matter.” The moral law never went away. The ceremonial law—

Mark: We can eat shrimp.

Shelley: Yes, we can eat shrimp. That’s ceremonial law. He came to break the ties of the ceremonial law, but a lot of people try to mix the ceremonial law and moral law together. Does that make sense?

Mark: What is the moral law?

Shelley: I’m just saying anything that has to do with the heart. The flesh doesn’t have to do with the heart.

Leigh: The Ten Commandments is the moral.

Denise: I heard a pastor say the other day, and I really loved this. I guess I’ve known this, but the Israelites, they had been living with Egyptian rule. They did not know moral codes. Egyptians, you murder, who cares? Live the way you want to live, so nobody knows. And so that grace, that law, that He put in, it was to go, “Don’t murder. Hey, y’all, don’t murder one another. Hey, love your neighbor. Be kind.” That’s not mean.

Mark: The law was a babysitter ‘til Jesus could show up.

Denise: Yes, but we look at His laws like He’s so harsh.

Mark: There’s only 10, but then Moses came along and added 613 more.

Denise: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind.” If you just do that, you’re following these.

Andrew: Was that the origin of legalism, then, when Moses added all the—

Mark: Oh, we’ve always been trying to get back under the law. We love rules.

Shelley: Are you talking about the Levitical codes?

Mark: I’m talking about the 613 laws.

Leigh: The Jewish laws

Shelley: Is that the Levitical codes? The shrimp?

Mark: I don’t know what code it is, but I do know that God gave him 10 on the mountain and then Jesus had an eleventh one before He left, “a new command I give you.” Not “Love your neighbor as yourself,” because He’d already said that, but “As I have loved you, you love your neighbor,” because He realized after working with humans for three years we don’t love ourselves. He backed up and said, “As I have loved you.” And He said, “This is a new command. This is No. 11.” Somebody should’ve written that down.

Project Beautiful Sponsorship Message

Andrew: Dinner Conversations is presented by Project Beautiful.

Young girl: I have so many emotions right now. I’m so excited. I never thought I would get an opportunity like this to change my life. I’m from a small village outside Kathmandu, Nepal. I’ve never left the area. Now, I’m going to leave the country. I love my community, but it’s so hard to find a job, and my family is very poor. Now, I have a chance to change that. A few weeks ago, a man came to our village offering some girls jobs working at a clothing factory across the border in India. At first, it sounded too good to be true, but he showed us pictures of the factory and the apartments we will be staying in, and I will be able to send most of my paycheck home to my family. If I can do this even for a few years, it will make a big difference for my family. I had to accept his offer. I took a bus to Kathmandu to meet the recruiter. We purchased my tickets to the border. […] What am I doing? I’m traveling to a country I’ve never visited for a job that I don’t know how to do that was arranged by a man I just met. Desperation makes you do crazy things.

Every day in South Asia, men, women and children are targeted by human traffickers and lured into a life of slavery. Although there are many types of slavery in this region, there is none so common, so insidious, as the trafficking of Nepali and Bangladeshi women and children into the Indian sex industry. But what if…

Young girl: I’m almost at the border, and a woman stops me. She separates me from the man who I think is helping me. I’m nervous. I’m confused. She asks me if I know the man I’m with. I say, “No, he’s a stranger. Then, they ask him how he knows me. He says, “She’s my cousin.” This scares me. She tells me stories of girls like me who were tricked and the bad things people did to them. I don’t want that to happen to me. She helps me get back home. What if the woman at the border had not been there to stop me? Where would I be right now?

Andrew: If you go to projectbeautiful.org/dinnerconversations, you can find out how to partner with us in bringing home vulnerable lives today.

Mark: If we don’t help, who will? Project Beautiful, because every life is beautiful and worth fighting for.

Mark: Do you divide the laws like that?

Rabbi Aaron: No, we don’t.

Mark: They’re all under one umbrella.

Rabbi Aaron: Yeah. It is a debate, but, in general, Judaism actually has a number, 613 commandments, and they’re all equal. One way to break it down is between positive and negative commandments, meaning “you shall” and “thou shall not.” There’s a lot of things that you should do, celebrate the holidays, all that stuff which is so much a part of Judaism, and the calendar is barely covered in the Ten Commandments.

Andrew: Isn’t it interesting that Christianity is so into this grace, the freedom that we receive through grace, and we are so stiff about some things. We don’t know how to celebrate our spirituality. We really don’t. I think we know in reverence. I think sometimes through liturgy, just like any tradition, but as far as just relationally, I don’t know if we fully understand. You know, we hate to drink. Everything that’s good about that comes from the earth and we can’t stand to partake of.

Rabbi Aaron: In Judaism, it’s like, No, wine is here. Wine is at every celebration because it’s meant to be a conduit for joy.

Andrew: It is?

Rabbi Aaron: Oh, sure. Marriage ceremony. That’s how you start Shabbat is with a blessing over wine.

Mark: Well, Jesus turned water into wine; Baptists turned it into grape juice.

Rabbi Aaron: It’s a shame.

Andrew: It is a shame.

Andrew: So many of my friends and so many of our friends grew up with this major toxicity of Scripture where it was used to browbeat, it was used to manipulate and control. How do we help those friends, and how do we help even ourselves because I’ve still used Scripture against myself— How do we take out, what I always say, the mom and dad issues? Go work on your issues with mom and dad so that we can rediscover God for who He is and what He’s saying.

Mark: So the first question is what?

Denise: I’m very grateful. I did not grow up resenting church.

Mark: Me either.

Denise: I loved my foundation of church, and our youth group was great and all of that. I still somehow feel like I missed it along the way. I still wanted to be that good girl. I worked so hard to be that good girl. This is what it looks like to be a good Christian girl. And again, we like the rules. Like, I want you to tell me how I should think, what I should do. I can do that.

Andrew: It’s more tangible.

Denise: Yeah. But to deal with my jealousy of somebody else. I just need to be a good girl and do these things. Even though I feel like looking back I had a relationship with Christ and a sweet one, I still for the longest time, until literally my 40s, did I deal with this is what— I worked so hard to do it right. I guess God’s gracious because in your 20s, 30s, you’re young, you can do it, and then in the 40s, everything just starts falling apart a little bit. You can’t quite handle all the balls that you’re juggling, so at that point, I began to really deal with why am I so upset with myself, and I came to realize that somehow I had added rules. Jesus loves me period. For the Bible tells me so. First song I ever sang, but somewhere along the way I put—

Andrew: He loves me if.

Denise: If I do this. If I look this way, He thinks nicer of me; and I want to please Him, and I am a people pleaser. I just finally came to rest with He loves me. As I’ve done that, Scripture, for me, has become so much sweeter because I know the tone of voice. Maybe it’s having teenagers, but I love my teenagers. I read something that says, “May the words of your mouth and the meditation of your heart be pleasing to Me.” Where I used to be like, OK, I’ve got to zip it up. It’s like, No, sweetie, if you are kind to people, if you don’t say what you want to to your husband sometimes, if you’ll choose to not say that, you’re choosing life in that relationship. When you look at these little things along the way, it says, “Parents, don’t aggravate your children,” and sometimes I go, Oh, my teenager, I just keep nagging away at him. I’m nagging away. And God’s going, “Look, I’m showing you right here. Just ease off a little.”

Mark: He’s a lot nicer than they told us.

Point of Grace singing “How You Live”

Wake up to the sunlight with your windows open
Don't hold in your anger or leave things unspoken
Wear your red dress, use your good dishes
Make a big mess and make lots of wishes
Have what you want but want what you have
And don't spend your life lookin' back

Turn up the music
Turn it up loud
Take a few chances
Let it all out
You won't regret it
Lookin' back from where you have been
Cause it's not who you knew
And it's not what you did
It's how you live

So go to the ballgames and go to the ballet
And go see your folks more than just on the holidays
Kiss all your children, dance with your wife
Tell your husband you love him every night
Don't run from the truth cause you can't get away
Just face it and you'll be okay

Turn up the music
Turn it up loud
Take a few chances
Let it all out
You won't regret it
Lookin' back from where you have been
Cause it's not who you knew
And it's not what you did
It's how you live

Oh, wherever you are and wherever you've been
Now is the time to begin
So give to the needy and pray for the grieving
Even when you don't think that you can
Cause all that you do is bound to come back to you
So think of your fellow man
Make peace with God and make peace with yourself
Cause in the end there's nobody else

Turn up the music
Turn it up loud
Take a few chances
Let it all out
You won't regret it
Lookin' back from where you have been
Cause it's not who you knew
And it's not what you did
It's how you live
Cause it's not who you knew
And it's not what you did
It's how we live

Project Beautiful Sponsorship Message

Mark: Dinner Conversations is presented by Project Beautiful. Did you know for only $30 a month you can save three people a year from sex trafficking around the world? Just think if this was your daughter, wouldn’t you be glad someone is spending $30 a month to get her home? Go to projectbeautiful.org/dinnerconversations and join Andrew and me as we try to stop sex trafficking in the world today.

Andrew: If we don’t help, who will? Project Beautiful, because every life is beautiful and worth fighting for.

Leigh: I used to say growing up I didn’t know anybody that didn’t know Jesus and love Jesus and live for Jesus and have Him in his heart. I didn’t know anybody. So I would say for me, the Scripture, I still would go back to the fact that as far as understanding just that whole thread of God being revealed through my life, it’s still, even to this day, something was revealed to me today through His Scripture.

Andrew: Was it when we were talking?

Shelley: She said the Scripture.

Leigh: I wasn’t a wife 35 years ago, so the dripping and nagging in Proverbs, that Scripture didn’t come to life for me until it was my experience. I was a dripping faucet; I drove my husband crazy.

Denise: Drip, drip, drip

Leigh: So the Scripture comes to life as it’s a part of your experience. For me, when I had the courage to share a part of my story with my family and they exuded God’s grace, grace was woken up. Oh my gosh, I walked different, I spoke different, I lived different because I never saw the hand, the feet, the eyes, the arms of God’s grace until the lies were released, truth was revealed, and what truth brought me was grace.

Rabbi Aaron: Do you mind defining grace? I’ll tell you, for Jews, it’s not a concept that is particularly important, resonant. We talk a lot about gratitude. The word Jew comes from Judah, which the name comes from being grateful. But grace is not a concept that comes up a lot, and I know it comes up a lot in the Christian world.

Andrew: This is very elementary and basic, but isn’t mercy withholding what we deserve and grace is giving us more than we deserve? It’s a very basic way to apply those terms to other things.

Mark: It’s like when a police officer pulls you over and he doesn’t give you a ticket, he gives you an ice cream cone.

Rabbi Aaron: So that’s grace?

Mark: That’s grace.

Andrew: It’s like literally offering you something that you’ve never earned, and that all is filtered, in my experience, through the work of Jesus dying for our sins to save us to offer us salvation. And what is salvation? For me, that’s reconciling us back to God in spite of our sin. That’s all grace to me because I don’t believe that I could’ve done anything in my own flesh— There’s nothing I could’ve done in my own understanding to attain God to reconcile, to bridge that gap. Here’s God, most holy God. Here’s me, sinful Andrew but created by God to be in relationship with God. So then grace is what is the connective tissue.

Rabbi Aaron: We tend to believe that people are created good and have their faculties and have strengths and weaknesses and maybe have challenges that they can overcome or not, but it isn’t that you’re starting from a place of sin.

Mark: There wasn’t original sin; there was original virtue. The Garden of Eden, they were virtuous, right? It was before sin, and we were infected with it.

Mark: We’re all walking in all the light we have. And you can’t walk in light that you don’t have. That’s what helped me forgive my mother for not keeping up on the grace issue. She’d say, “When I get to Heaven, I’m going to go crawling in on my hands and knees.” I said, “Not me. I’m kicking the door in and saying, ‘Ain’t y’all glad I’m home.’” And she said, “If I get a crown, I’m going to lay it at His feet.” I said, “Not me. I’m trying mine on. I mean, how rude, mama.” You go to a party and somebody hands you a party hat, you throw it at their feet? I’m being facetious.

Andrew: But that’s the reception of grace.

Mark: But I will ever more give God the glory. I remember one time we were leaving a Gaither concert, and I’d already pushed the buttons. I knew which buttons to press with her, and they’re all theological.

Denise: Gloria or your mom?

Mark: My mother. We never argued about anything but the Bible because we loved the same God and couldn’t agree who He was, on His temperament. I don’t know what I said. She finally swung around and looked at me and said, “Are you even saved?” And were not even out of the parking lot and this well came up in me. I’d never experienced it before, and it was falling out of my eyes and I couldn’t stop it. And I said, “Mama, I have loved Him since the day you told me His name, and if He sends me to hell, I’ll go there praising His name because that will be where I fit in the best because He’s always had my best interest at heart, and I’ll praise Him because I trust Him that much.” I think I do. I haven’t gotten to that point where He says, “Mark, you’re going to hell.” “Oh, thank you, praise the Lord.” I do tend to live in hyperbole a lot, but I trust Him.

Andrew: There’s a true surrender there.

Mark: Anybody who loves you enough to die for you is on your side. And I don’t fear Him.

Leigh: I’ve heard somebody say the older I get the more I realize how far apart I am from Jesus as far as understanding Him because He reveals Himself and He reveals Himself, and we just realize, Oh my gosh, how did I miss that? Thank you for your gentleness. The fruits of the spirit, He wants us to have them because it makes a difference. When you’re gentle towards someone, when you have self-control towards that sweet man I’ve been married to almost 25 years— We should know better. We really should.

Mark: But give yourself grace too.

Leigh: But I can give myself grace. I can wash this in some nice Tide or Gain, whatever, new day and everything’s OK.

Mark: His mercies are new every morning because we wear them out everyday.

Leigh: And I’m thankful.

Shelley: Sometimes by 2 or 3 o’clock.

Mark: Then you’ve got to go sit in the corner until morning. I say on my journey, it was all about legalism at first, but it was great. I didn’t know anything. I had a mama who loved to sing and loved God, but there were a lot of rules. I’d hear preachers preach 1 Corinthians 11:14, “Doth not even nature itself teach you it’s a shame for a man to have long hair.” That was one we memorized like John 3:16.

Andrew: We want to thank our sweet friends Leigh, Denise, and Shelley of Point of Grace for being today’s episode guests. We want to thank our friends the Breen Family for opening their home to host this podcast, Quentin Philips for his expertise, Dana Claremont for all her assistance. Our show is recorded by Center Street Recording Studios in Nashville, Tennessee.

Andrew: Turning the light on one question at a time

Mark: Presented by Project Beautiful.

Dinner Conversations is a production of Center Street Media.

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2/23/18 2/23/18

Fear, Forgiveness and Friendship Part 1 featuring Anita Renfroe, Patsy Clairmont and Jan Silvious

This one-of-two parts Dinner Conversations episode is focused on the things gleaned through the real-life friendship of best-selling Women of Faith author/speaker Patsy Clairmont, comedienne Anita Renfroe and life coach and author Jan Silvious. Hosts Mark Lowry and Andrew Greer facilitate the table talk as the wise trio relay messages of hope through conversations about cultivating close relationships, details to disclose (and not to disclose!) in a tell-all world and why drama.

This one-of-two parts Dinner Conversations episode is focused on the things gleaned through the real-life friendship of best-selling Women of Faith author/speaker Patsy Clairmont, comedienne Anita Renfroe and life coach and author Jan Silvious. Hosts Mark Lowry and Andrew Greer facilitate the table talk as the wise trio relay messages of hope through conversations about cultivating close relationships, details to disclose (and not to disclose!) in a tell-all world and why drama.

Transcript

Mark: Today’s episode is about friendship. I love the topic because as a single person, my friends, my close, close friends in Houston where I grew up, are my family. We’ve got some wonderful guests today.

Andrew: Yeah, we’re talking with three ladies who are really close friends, best friends, with each other — Anita Renfroe, a super funny comedian; Patsy Clairmont, one of the wisest women in the world and one of my close friends, so that was fun for me to have her on; and Jan Silvious, who is a life coach. They’re talking to us about how friendship literally is the support of our life through the mountains—

Mark: And the valleys and the hilltops. It’s a great conversation, and there’s one seat left at the table. It’s yours. Let’s join the conversation.

Mark: Why does the world need more women’s stuff?

Anita: We just keep demanding, and we’re women.

Andrew: Your friendship, how did that inspire that in the beginning?

Anita: We were friends separately to each other. Like Patsy and Jan have known each other a while, and I’ve known Jan but I didn’t know Patsy until I was booked to be a part of Women of Faith. Then, I was in the middle of a crisis in our family with one of my kids, and these two held my hand through that whole thing. And they never got tired of loving me or praying for me. I’d get on the plane and be thinking, How am I going to make it through this weekend? And my plane would touchdown, whatever city it was, and there would be texts. Ding, ding, ding. My phone would go off. “We’re in room 237. We’re waiting for you. We have snacks.” They were not only there but they were eager to enter in to that with me, and they loved me through it, walked me through it, and it cemented something between us. I think sometimes you can be with people and not truly know them, and when the knowledge hits, then you have to make a decision, Are we in this for the long haul or not? And they said yes, and it’s been a blessing.

Patsy: And we’ve never been sorry for saying yes.

Jan: No. Well, we needed each other. It was a we need each other.

Patsy: There was reciprocity in all of it.

Jan: Absolutely. Always reciprocity, so it wasn’t a matter of thinking, Well, poor dear.

Anita: Can I say that every time you use the word reciprocity I think of viscosity like oil in a car?

Mark: But you were on Good Morning America for how long?

Anita: About a year. I had regular spots over the course of a year, not like every day. No, they couldn’t pay me for that.

Mark: What brought you to that party was?

Anita: “The Mom Song”

Mark: And you wrote the one you’re about to do.

Anita Renfroe singing “Fiber”

Anita: Well, everybody’s got health issues these days, so I thought I could provide a little help, so here we go. And I don’t really play the ukulele. Andrew made me do this, so here we go. He thinks because he plays so good that he should showcase other people playing badly.

Andrew: So well.

Anita: Stop it, grammar police. Here we go.

Are you feeling kinda out of sorts
And you don’t know exactly what’s wrong?
You’re not quite feeling up to par
But it’s nothing you can put your finger on
Are you moody, lethargic, feeling blue
Lacking vigor and vitality
Life has lost its joie de vivre
And you can’t reclaim your youthful energy
Are you hairless, friendless, you lost your dog
Your family moved and didn’t let you know?
Well, I’m here to say you’re suffering can end today
So here’s my word of hope

All you really need is fiber
Fiber’s what you need
When you’re full of fiber, my friend,
You are full indeed
All you really need is fiber
It’s everywhere

Jamie Lee Curtis can tell you why
And give you a camera so you can share
You can find it in a liquid, yogurt, tablet, or gummy
To help with the trouble you keep having with your tummy
Fiber can change your life
And I know this without a doubt
Because, honey, if you’ve got enough fiber in you
You can pretty much work it all out

Anita: Get you some fiber, y’all.

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Mark: Dinner Conversations is presented by Project Beautiful.

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Mark: I don’t mind drama as long as I’m not the center of it. You go to a movie and there’s no drama, how bored would you be? You’d want your money back. And I look at life as this big drama, and how boring would it be if you went through your whole life and there was no drama?

Patsy: I think often we believe that life should be all highs and maybe a low once in a while, but we’re seeing more like that type of graph. But if you look at Moses’ life and you chart that, he started here and then he went there and then he went up there and then he went down there and then he went over there—

Mark: He needed a GPS.

Anita: He did, for sure.

Patsy: And by the time you get done, the map looks like a tangle of knots, but that’s more consistent to how life is. There’s lots of interruptions. There’s lots of joyous moments. There’s lots of sorrow. So you’re right — without the drama, where would we be?

Mark: It would be boring.

Andrew: But it takes a great deal of generosity and grace with yourself, don’t you think, to be the center of the drama. There are times, whether we choose that or not—

Anita: Yeah, I didn’t have a choice.

Andrew: We become the center, and I think, for me, it takes a great deal of open-heartedness to invite people — or to allow people, not even to invite— Like you guys just happened to be around Anita in this time, but then, Anita, for you to allow them to surround that time with their soothing balm and all that kind of stuff, that’s going outside of our normal comfort zone, right, because we do like this I’m OK…

Anita: Sure

Jan: I’m OK. I can handle this.

Anita: But there was a survivability factor that was involved. We were required to stand and deliver and give encouragement to other women in that same time when I was like desperately needing it, so if I had not had them to say, “Come on in.” They would let me vent, they would pray with me, they would give me wise counsel, and then the next morning, we’re standing up in front of thousands of women and I had some resources available. Because, you know, when you’re standing and giving out of deficit, the Lord has to show up. He does. And they would always take my little empty tank and put a little in there so I had something to draw from the next day, and God is always good. You know. You’ve had to stand on stage when you don’t feel like it either.

Mark: I know.

Anita: But then He shows up. It’s a miracle every time.

Mark: It’ll bless you too.

Anita: It does. It does.

Patsy: Yeah, because you find out it’s not all about us, and we need those reminders. We believe it, but we forget it. That does something for our faith.

Mark: We’re blessed also to have the luxury of sitting on the back porch and thinking about things on our days off. A lot of people have to teach school all day, come home and cook for their families, and all those kinds of things. I think our job is to deduce the unfathomable into sound bites so they can grab a hold of it and get through the day. Have you had times when you didn’t believe any of this?

Patsy: I’ve had times when I’ve stepped back and said to myself, What is it you believe? What is it you believe, girlfriend, because right now you’re looking a little wobbly? So it is a good thing to go back in and to weigh out your heart before the Lord.

Jan: And also the feeling of what if it’s not true. What if it’s not true? And yet, to come back to if it’s not, we’re all in trouble, and so I’m just going to believe that it is and then see the manifestation of those small ways that God shows up. And if it’s not true, there is way too much circumstantial consequence.

Anita: If it’s not true, I spent a lot of time worrying about what a lot of people think.

Mark: Isn’t that the truth?

Jan: We worry about a lot of things if it’s not true.

Anita: I know. Well, we grew up independent fundamental Baptists, so we’re still recovering.

Jan: Well then, you’ve just got stuff to worry about just for the heck of it.

Mark: But if it’s not true, I personally am very grateful that I grew up that way because they crammed the Word of God down your throat. That was to their great detriment because I found out through that Word that He’s a lot nicer than they told me. That grace really is big and deep and wide and vast and all-inclusive, and it’s amazing.

Mark Lowry|Recovering Fundamentalist

Mark: Did you know that I’ve heard someone say one time that you spend the first 40 years of your life for success and your second 40 years for significance? When I did leave the vocal band and took that year off, I really took time to read the red part of the Bible. Have you ever read the red part of the Bible? It’ll mess you up. And you know what I found out? I found out we’ve been hanging around the wrong people. We’ve got to start hanging around some more prostitutes. Jesus hung out with the outcasts. Jesus hung out with the freaks and failures and the vagabonds. The only people He ever chewed out were the religious folks. I read Matthew 23, and I put my name in there. I thought, What would I do if Jesus looked at me and said, “Mark, you’ve gone clear around the world making disciples, and you’ve made them twice as fit for hell as yourself.” Or He said, “Mark, you’re polished on the outside, but on the inside, you’re full of dead men’s bones.” That’d scare me. That’s the reason now I’m a recovering fundamentalist. Really. You know why? And I tell you, it’s Bill Gaither’s fault because he introduced me to all you people. As long as I was in my little petri dish of independent Baptist world, I was fine. From 1980 to 1988, I thought we were right and all y’all were wrong, and then I met Methodists who love Jesus because when I met Bill Gaither, he introduced me. Well, he’s not a Baptist either and he loves Jesus. That freaked me out. I met Catholics who love the Lord. I met Nazarenes who love Christ. I met Pentecostals who love God, who could do more than shout — they actually cared about people. I’ll never forget the day I met a saved Democrat.

Project Beautiful Sponsorship Message

Compelled by the words of Jesus, Project Beautiful has intercepted over 12,000 lives from the front lines of human trafficking. “Whatever you do for the least of these, you do for me.” Matthew 25:40

Mark: Dinner Conversations is presented by Project Beautiful, which helps bring young people home from a life of sex trafficking but before they get into it. This is incredible. And there were five young ladies who were really saved in 2015.

Andrew: Yeah, that’s right. April 2015, Nepal was ravished by an earthquake, and so these five young ladies, Dolma, Fursang, Maya, Tika, and Sayg, all found themselves in a place of destitution and loneliness because their village, which was already impoverished, was unable to recover from the trauma of that earthquake. They were simply looking for a way to survive, to provide for themselves, so they were looking across the border for some opportunities, and a trafficker presented them under the guise of this amazing employment opportunity in some of the bordering countries.

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Andrew: And so the trafficker asked them to meet them, which we hear this is common, at the border so that he could then take them across the border—

Mark: Or she.

Andrew: That’s right.

Mark: A lot of women are doing it too.

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What if they could be rescued before they were trafficked?

Andrew: If we don’t help, who will? Project Beautiful, because every life is beautiful and worth fighting for.

Mark: If it wasn’t true, I’ve had a blast believing that it is.

Anita: Right, still a great way to live.

Mark: Yes, but it’s more than that. It’s not a list of rules to live anymore; it’s I’m in love with this Jesus who loved the broken and the outcast and the disenfranchised. Whenever you draw a line in the sand and say, “It’s us and them,” look across the line. He’ll always be standing with the other side.

Patsy: I love that He is for the broken and disenfranchised because it makes space in grace for us. We forget how much we are in that same grace and mercy.

Andrew: We were talking earlier about this culture where we’re actually allowed, and Jan, you as a therapist and life coach, we have the luxury of time and finances to actually sit around and ruminate about our problems.

Anita: I’d like to time out for just a second. As a mom and a grandma, I don’t have that much time to sit around and ruminate about anything, so I’d just like to take myself out of that.

Mark: He and I. Those that are like Jesus at this table who remained single like Paul said to.

Patsy: And I remember earlier you said about not having to cook for people. I’m thinking, Oh, really.

Anita: I was chained to the kitchen from December 20 to the 31.

Mark: Well, you know what? That doesn’t apply to you all at all then.

Anita: I want to ruminate.

Andrew: I’ll take this back to counselor terms. You want to be sent to your room alone, don’t you? So for me, I’ve learned this in recovery — I say I, not us — but I have had time to ruminate and to discuss my issues. We’ve talked about this. The first time I met you ladies we ruminated and discussed. While you’re busy not ruminating on your troubles, you definitely took time on mine.

Anita: You ruminate for all of us.

Andrew: That’s probably true. It’s interesting in our culture, I think, where we have the ability to over share in a way we never have before, through social media, etc. and discovering that line. We’ve all done this from a platform. We want to be transparent, we want to show our wounds and our weaknesses in order to help us and others realize their potential, but what’s the difference between divulging the details for the sake of maybe salaciousness or for drama or for—

Mark: Exhibitionism. When is it showing your scars versus exhibitionism?

Andrew: Sharing your story.

Anita: That’s a great question. You have to maintain your sense of privacy. When I first started out in comedy, I had a rule, which was I wouldn’t tell any stories about my kids until three years after they had happened, and it was a discipline. You know what I found out? Three years, it didn’t seem funny to me anymore. In three years, they would’ve been past that stage and they wouldn’t mind me talking about it. Well, what it turned out to be was that I found out I didn’t need to talk about them at all; I could just talk about myself.

Andrew: That’s a deep well of humor.

Anita: I was going to say, “Dude, you don’t really know me. If you think it’s a deep well, I’ve got a shallow end.” I always find that if I’m saying something and I’m resistant to saying it, it’s normally the Holy Spirit. Because if it’s something I don’t want to share and I find myself sharing it, it’s like, Whoa, I didn’t mean to do that. I feel that same way about conversations. If you’re going into a conversation where you need to confront someone, if you’re going there resistantly, it’s probably something good that needs to be said because you’re not jonesing for it like, I can’t wait to lay into them.

Andrew: Patsy is who I have had the most life experience with at this table, but I’ve learned a lot about boundaries. And I think that’s probably something with maturity and with age we become more successful and more relaxed about having boundaries, that that’s a good thing. But when I first went to counseling because I was really digging in some deep stuff, I think I thought I had to disclose everything, every detail, to everybody if I was going to be authentic. But is that true?

Jan: Whoa. That’s, I think, one of the major mistakes of this time and this culture, calling authenticity the exposition of everything that’s every happened in our lives, and really there’s a brain function that goes on when we begin to divulge those things. If there were a negative thing that happened five years ago, there was a certain dump of brain chemicals that happened at that time, and when we tell it again, we tell it again, we tell it again, you get hit again with those same brain chemicals, and they’re the negative brain chemicals, the cortisol that hits us—

Anita: That’s why we get fat.

Jan: And it hurts our bones.

Anita: So don’t relieve negative experiences — it’ll make you fat.

Jan: It will.

Andrew: And it diminishes our healing, right?

Jan: It diminishes the healing, and the thing is it takes you back to that moment. Your brain goes back to that moment, and it does not know the difference from the moment that something happened the first time and your retelling. Your brain doesn’t know the difference, and it’s like it’s happening again, it’s happening again; and so a lot of people who get up and share the same negative story over and over and over, you will see they’re not moving forward in their lives.

Andrew: They relive it, literally.

Jan: And they relive it, and then they take pleasure in reliving it. When we do that and we dump those chemicals in our body, it is just the ruination of us.

Mark: Wow

Jan: One of the things that I believe we need to communicate is you keep telling that story over and over again, sister, that’s who you become — and brother — and in that becoming, you wonder why you’re not getting better. You wonder why God is not enough. God is not enough if you’re going to tell the story over and over because He’s standing over here saying, “Come on, honey. Come on. Cross the river.”

Mark: “There’s new stories over here.”

Jan: That’s right. “And I’ve got new stories to tell through you.”

Patsy Clairmont |Women of Faith Live

Patsy: I mean, I’m the joke at Women of Faith. If there’s going to be any singing with all of us, they give me the dead mic. They shut it off. I know nothing about music. And so for me, to think that God, at this stage and age of my life, would give me that delight, that is so sweet. You are more than you know. That’s why oftentimes you will say something, and you’ll go, I didn’t know I felt like that. Or you will share with someone something absolutely brilliant, and afterwards you go, Whoa, that wasn’t bad. I think if we anointed our self more often and prayed for our self, we wouldn’t be as surprised when we learn that we are more than we know, that God is so much more than we know, than we have experienced, that it delights Him to reveal Himself at different levels to us. And so I continue to be in a journey. I said, “Lord, as long as there’s even one thin brain cell bouncing about up there and twirling, may I continue to be open to learn.”

Andrew: So, OK, sisterhood. I think women more naturally seek out relationship with each other — good, intimate friendship. I think men, it takes more for us to — I don’t know if we just don’t think about it or we’re not interested in it, to seek out true intimate friendships. But I’ve heard that to connect with the same gender is extremely important in our overall health, our wellbeing, in our loneliness — that we’re often lonely for someone of the same sex because we relate so closely to each other. So one, is there truth to that?

Jan: Yes

Anita: Short answer

Mark: That’s a wrap.

Anita: We’re out of here.

Jan: And I can tell you why. Because, especially female to female, when we rub shoulders with one another, there is a release of oxytocin in our bodies that has a sense of wellbeing, and we feel good after we have been together. That’s why sometimes we say, “You know what? I just need a good estrogen fix. I need to be with my girlfriends.” But then, when you’ve had enough of that, you say, “You know what? I’ve had enough of this. I need to go be with some men.” But for some men who have the capacity to do both, to be relational with women, which I think is something that is missing in manhood. They haven’t been taught how to be relational with women, and women haven’t been taught how to be relational with men; and I think this has come out of our church experience where I can’t be alone with a man who’s not my husband, and it’s like, how am I going to talk to him? I’ve got a lot of friends that are men, and I like men. I like them to behave, but I like men. But we have drawn these lines that have made it all sexual.

Anita: It’s artificial, yeah.

Jan: It’s artificial and it’s all sexual, and all of life is not sexual.

Mark: No, it’s not. It’s about three minutes of your day.

Anita: Is that speaking from experience?

Andrew: Is it everyday?

Mark: Not everyday.

Patsy: And moving right along. I think that any man who has a girlfriend or any husband with a wife are relieved to have women go spend time with other women because our needs are different, and we go on and on in our drama that they don’t need or understand.

Jan: Or want to know about.

Mark: Isn’t that interesting.

Patsy: And once we can interact and get some of that out, we go back in a much better place to the men of the world.

Anita: Well, also, we need perspective. So when you’re in your own head in your own relationship with whomever and you’re thinking, Oh my gosh, we’re the only ones facing this difficulty. Then you get together with your girlfriends, and you’re like, Oh wait, everybody’s… All of a sudden, you’re more content with life because you don’t feel alone anymore.

Jan: It’s normal.

Anita: To me, that is the real value — your sanity, your mental health. That’s why it’s so great. We’re so happy to be a part of women’s events because you have those set aside times for everybody to go, Wait a minute, we’re not the only ones. I think the “me too” factor is one of the most satisfying parts of being a part of that.

Andrew: We want to thank our friends the Breen Family for opening their home to host this podcast, Quentin Philips for his expertise, Dana Claremont for all her assistance. Our show is recorded by Center Street Recording Studios in Nashville, Tennessee.

Andrew: Turning the light on one question at a time

Mark: Presented by Project Beautiful.

Dinner Conversations is a production of Center Street Media.

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12/21/17 12/21/17

Adopted, Aren’t We All? featuring Mark Schultz

Platinum-selling singer-songwriter Mark Schultz — who was adopted as a child, and recently adopted his first child — joins Dinner Conversations hosts Mark Lowry and Andrew Greer for some mealtime musings in a conversation all about adoption.

Platinum-selling singer-songwriter Mark Schultz — who was adopted as a child, and recently adopted his first child — joins Dinner Conversations hosts Mark Lowry and Andrew Greer for some mealtime musings in a conversation all about adoption.

Transcript

Mark: Our guest today on Dinner Conversations is Mark Schultz. Mark is a contemporary Christian recording artist. He’s sold over 2 million records, and he’s a nice fellow. And he was adopted.

Andrew: That’s right, yeah. And a lot of his songs even, his storytelling way of writing songs, is a lot about his experience as an adopted child, and now he is an adopted parent. They just adopted, he and his wife. They have two biological sons, adopted a daughter, and what we talk about— We get into how adoption is not something that is just for families who are adopting, but it’s—

Mark: It affects everybody.

Andrew: That’s right. It’s a community thing, especially as the church, that children, orphans, and widows—

Mark: And we were adopted in Christ.

Andrew: That’s right. So we all understand that relationship, and then we’re able to extend that relationship to others like Mark.

Mark: It’s good.

Andrew: I think it’s a beautiful conversation.

Mark: We should all have T-shirts that say, “I’m adopted,” and be proud of it. Hey, there’s one seat left at the table, and it’s yours. Let’s join the conversation.

Mark: So you were adopted?

Mark S.: Uh-huh.

Mark: How’d that go for you?

Andrew: So, growing up adopted but with a brother and a sister who are biological to your parents, I’m interested in that. Did that produce any insecurities or tension, or how has that played out?

Mark: Did they like you best?

Mark S.: I didn’t know I was adopted until I was like third grade probably. Kept it a secret. So I didn’t even know to ask. So we’re going through our baby books, and I’m looking through there, and my sister is a year younger than me. She’s in second grade. My brother’s five years older than me. My sister’s looking through her baby book and I’m looking at stuff, and I’m like, Hey, you’ve got that, but I don’t have that in my book. And so I said, “Mom, I’ve got a discrepancy here.” I maybe didn’t use that word, but you know what I mean.

Mark: You were a smart kid. Third grade?

Mark S.: And my mom said, “You don’t have certain things because we don’t have them because you were adopted.” And I was like, “What does that mean?” And they were like, “Well, with your brother and sister, that’s who we got. God gave us them. You, we got to go pick you out special.” I was like, Man, that feels good. And so I got to about the eighth grade and my sister was a seventh grader, and we were arguing over something really important like shoes, and she was just mad because I’d won the argument. She goes, “You’re not even supposed to be in this family because you’re adopted.” I stopped for a second and I looked her, and I started to smile on the inside, and I said, “Yeah, you know what that means? Mom and dad got to pick me out special. They just got stuck with you.” It still feels good to say that, even when I’m older. That was about it.

Mark: That’s all you knew.

Mark S.: That was all I knew. I didn’t think about it that much growing up really because I had a great family.

Andrew: Because it was fulfilling. But the questions about birth parents and stuff, that’s got to be natural to think about at least.

Mark: Have you ever wanted to meet them?

Mark S.: I think it would be neat to meet her to thank her, to say how grateful I am because I could’ve missed out on the whole thing. I played this benefit, and it was in Texas. It was for adoption, and I remember this girl and she was a cheerleader, just a cute thing, and she came to the show with her mom, and I was playing my songs. I had a song about being adopted, and she knew it. She came up to me after the show, and there were probably a thousand people there that knew her and knew her family, and she was trying not to cry and she was just holding it together. Her mom said, “Hey, can we talk to you for a second?” I said, “ Sure.” And she said, “My daughter has just given her baby up for adoption, and nobody in town knew she was pregnant.” I remember she was standing there and she looks at me and she said, “I know you were adopted. I know you have a birth mom. Is my little boy that I gave up for adoption, is he going to hate me one day?” And I remember holding her, and I hugged her just for so long. In that moment, though I’ve never met my birth mom, it was me hugging my birth mom and her hugging her son that she gave up for adoption. It was so beautiful because it was me affirming her. And so, several times when I meet a birth mom and I feel that weight, for me to say, “You’re a hero to me. There’s nothing coming from me except pure love for who you are.” OK, who’s got some jokes?

Mark Schultz singing “Everything to Me”

I must have felt your tears
When they took me from your arms
I'm sure I must have heard you say goodbye
Young and so afraid had you made a big mistake
Could an ocean even hold the tears you cried

You had dreams for me
You wanted the best for me
And you made the only choice you could that night
You gave life to me
A brand new world to see
Like playing baseball in the yard with dad at night
Mom reading Goodnight Moon
And praying in my room
So if you worry if your choice was right
When you gave me up
You gave everything to me

And if I saw you on the street
Would you know that it was me
And would your eyes be blue or green like mine
Would we share a warm embrace
Would you know me in your heart
Or would you smile and let me walk on by

Knowing you had dreams for me
You wanted the best for me
Oh, I hope that you'd be proud of who I am
You gave life to me
A chance to find my dreams
And the chance to fall in love
You should have seen her shining face
On our wedding day
Oh, is this the dream you had in mind
When you gave me up
You gave everything to me

And when I see you there
Watching from Heaven's gates
Into your arms I'm gonna run
And when you look in my eyes
You can see my whole life
See who I was and who I've become

Because you gave life to me
A brand new world to see
Like playing baseball with my sons late at night
And reading Goodnight Moon
And praying in their room
I’m so grateful that I’ve had this life
When you gave me up
You gave everything
When you gave me up
You gave everything
When you gave me up
You gave everything to me

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Mark: Dinner Conversations is presented by Project Beautiful, and we love them.

Project Beautiful has intercepted over 12,000 people to prevent them from being trafficked. With your help, that number is growing every day.

Mark: They told us the other day about those five girls over in Nepal, was it?

Andrew: Yeah, yeah, in Nepal.

Mark: The trafficker comes up to them — they’re uneducated — promised them jobs because they’d just had an earthquake in their hometown and they speak a local dialect, which limits their opportunities. So here comes a trafficker and says, “We’ve got jobs in Iraq. Come with us.” So they get to the border and Project Beautiful is there looking for red flags. They’ve been trained in red flags. And the trafficker told the girl, “Don’t talk to anybody. Don’t speak to anybody,” which is one of the things they do. So Project Beautiful goes up to the girls and the trafficker and asks them questions, and, of course, the trafficker immediately denies he even knows these ladies. He’s arrested. The girls are taken back home and taught what to look for, and they are so grateful. And it was before they got into the sex trafficking, so they didn’t have to go through 25 years of therapy.

We’re on a mission to stop human trafficking, and you can help.

Mark: That’s why I love this organization. They intercept them before.

Andrew: That’s right. They intercept them and then they educate them about the gospel message too, which I think is one of the wonderful things. So after they have already extended this tangible hope of bringing them home, they then offer this eternal hope. So we are asking that you partner with us, that our Dinner Conversations family comes along side Mark and me. Go to projectbeautiful.org/dinnerconversations, and for $30 a month, three lives a year are rescued, are intercepted, from modern day slavery. Before they ever get into human trafficking and being trafficked, like these girls in Nepal, they are intercepted and educated. So for $30 a month, three lives a year —projectbeautiful.org/dinnerconversations. We have a special gift for you there as well that we’d like to offer just to say how important this is to us and how important we hope it becomes to you.

Mark: And if we don’t help, who will? Project Beautiful, because every life is beautiful and worth fighting for.

Mark: So do you want — you still didn’t answer my question. Would you like to meet her?

Mark S.: At some point in time, I would, but, you know, my mom and my dad are my mom and my dad. And I think it would be hard for them; I think it would be hard for me to say, “Hey, I’m bringing somebody home for Christmas this year.”

Andrew: I want to go back to this. I’ve heard you call your birth mother a hero. I think if I was adopted and was in a real, whole family, I would go, you mean you’re calling your birth mother a hero? I would call my adopted parents a hero. I’m interested in where that terminology comes from or where that perspective changed for you or came from?

Mark S.: I remember I was getting ready to do a concert one night, and I remember this lady said, “Would you ever want to meet your birth mom some day?” I was like, I think it’d be kind of weird now if I just showed up at her door and was like, “Hey, remember me?”

Mark: I was balled then, too.

Mark S.: Still here. Put me in a onesie and I’m still there. I said, “No, I’ve never met her,” and I said, “ I think it would be kind of weird.” She said, “Would you ever want to?” which is the question you all asked me, and I said, “You know what? Man, I don’t think so because she was probably young and it was just one of those things, and she was insecure. Maybe she just felt like it was the best thing to do, kind of like a selfish thing for her maybe, but she just said, ‘Hey, I can’t raise a baby.’” This lady could’ve come across the table. She was a sweet old lady, but she would’ve grabbed me around the thing. I could see her lip quivering, and she was getting tears in her eyes. Honestly, she looked at me and said, “Did you say selfish?” I said, “Yeah, but I’m just saying when you’re young and you give somebody up for adoption.” She goes, “Let me ask you something. Have you ever been pregnant?” That’s what she said, and I was honest and I said, “No.” Just right off the bat. I said, “I have not.” And she said, “You know, for a birth mom who’s young to go through life pregnant and everybody knows she’s not married and they know her story, for her to actually take the time to walk through those nine months and carry you instead of having an alternative option, that’s not out of selfishness that you were born.” And then she said, “To give birth and go through the pain of that process, it wasn’t out of selfishness that you were born.” And then she said, “Hardest of all, for her to be in the hospital room and say, ‘You’re my little baby and I want to give you the best life possible, but I know that I can’t right now, but I know that there’s a family out there that can and will and wants to,’ and then she kissed you on the head” — here’s your Barbara Walters moment — “she kissed you on the head and she gave you to a nurse, who then gave you to another family.” She said, “That was the hardest thing she would’ve ever done in her life.” And she said, “I guarantee it wasn’t out of selfishness that you were born. It was out of love that you were born and given up for adoption.” And my jaw hit the floor, and then all of a sudden, I thought, Oh my gosh, I’ve never thought through that whole thing. But the process of what she would’ve had to have gone through, especially back in the day, that’s where she became a hero to me.

Mark: Al, you talk a lot about story, and why is it important that we share our story?

Al: I think it’s important because I only see things through my set of eyes, and so the story that I’ve lived is through my perspective. But when you share your story, often there’ll be someone that comes in from the outside and says, “Did you ever notice this?” The perspective of another person adds color to your story often, whether they’re a professional or whether they’re a friend, and sometimes that perspective will really heal you or be a part of your healing. So yeah, sharing it just means that there are other eyes because, again, I just see out of my eyes, but you can see me and I can’t see me.

Mark: And don’t you think also when you open up and tell your story that people who’ve had a similar story instantly relate to it?

Al: Absolutely.

Mark: And then they open up about theirs when they might’ve been embarrassed to.

Al: Absolutely. I think that’s the power of story. Most people really want to share their story. They really want to, but they don’t know they have permission or they weren’t taught that it’s OK. Another set of eyes just changes things.

Sandy: Yeah, and I think the convenient thing at the moment is to have an abortion because a pregnant, scared birth mom just wants it to go away. Stick your head in the sand, it never happened. So to carry a baby to term and then follow through with an adoption plan is like the ultimate gift. It is likened to our Heavenly Father and Him giving His son to us.

Andrew: Well, and you know because you have a biological child as well, so as a mother, which I, of course, have not had this experience, but having carried a child, the intimacy of that type of experience with a child, that where we’re talking about this is truly a sacrifice of love because there has to be immense connection immediately from the time that child is birthed to still be able to say, “I know the best thing for this child at this moment in time.”

Sandy: When I did pregnancy counseling with girls who were pregnant, we would do a hospital plan: I’m going to see my baby, I’m going to hold my baby as soon as it’s born, or I’m not going to see the baby, hold the baby. We’d write out the whole hospital plan, and we’d make sure that the social worker at the hospital had a copy of that plan because things can get a little chaotic and a little muddy.

Andrew: And emotional, I’m sure.

Sandy: And very emotional, and lots of opinions can get involved in that situation. But, I always prepared the birth mom: “What we have on this piece of paper may or may not be what you want to happen at the time that you actually deliver, and you are the mother and you have every right to change… This is not a contract. We’re just writing it down to alert the social worker or the adoptive family.” But oftentimes, a birth mom would decide not to hold that baby because they were so afraid they would change their mind if they held that baby and had that connection. And now I will cry. So going from that mom perspective, you think, Could I do it? I would like to think I was strong enough to do it for the love of my child, but selfishly, I don’t know if I could.

Andrew: It’s courage that I don’t think crosses our minds.

Project Beautiful Sponsorship Message

Andrew: Dinner Conversations is presented by Project Beautiful.

Mark: And Project Beautiful has saved over 12,000 lives from sex trafficking around the world, and what I love about Project Beautiful is that they intercept them before they get into it, and you’ve got to go to their website and see how it’s done.

Andrew: If you go to projectbeautiful.org/dinnerconversations, you can find out how to partner with us in bringing home vulnerable lives today.

Mark: If we don’t help, who will? Project Beautiful, because every life is beautiful and worth fighting for.

Mark S.: I didn’t find out until after our first son was born, and I tell the story that I was putting him to bed and I was looking at him one night, and he finally smiled, he started laughing, and I looked at him. I’m like, Those are my eyes, and that’s my smile, and that’s my face. And it was like 3 in the morning because that’s when he liked to eat milk, and my wife walks in and she’s like, “Hey, why is he laughing and why are you crying?” I was like, “I’ve always wanted to meet a blood relative. I finally found one. He’s right here.”

Mark: Now you’ve just recently adopted a little girl.

Mark S.: Funny you should ask about that because I happen to have a picture on my Instagram. This is her in China the day she became an American citizen. Isn’t she the cutest thing ever?

Mark: So let me ask you this: Do you like her better than your natural children?

Andrew: Natural — I like that too.

Mark S.: Funny you should ask that because the natural ones are 5 and 3. They’re boys, and so they’re like energizer bunnies. You don’t even plug them into the wall; they just go all the time. And her, she’s just docile. She’s like a kitten.

Mark: Is she?

Mark S.: Yeah. So my wife, as soon as she met her, she was just like, You’re my baby, and she came; and to me, it was like, Hey, you’re a Chinese baby, and I don’t know that you’re mine yet.

Mark: Yeah, I was wondering about that. How long did it take you to connect?

Mark S.: For her, it was just right away, you know. And for me, to be honest, it took a while because I was just like, You don’t look like me or smell like me or have any of the same— You’ve got more hair than I do. The whole thing was different. And then, when we got her home, it got to the place where my wife was like, “I just can’t get her down.” She’s the sweetest girl ever, but at bedtime, she’ll cry and do that whole thing. And I remember the first time I went in and I’m holding her — oh gosh, here we go again — and I’m holding her and I’m looking at her and I’m getting her milk, and then she looks at me and smiles really big and she puts her head right there and she holds on and she’s out. And so every night, I put her to bed, so I’m just telling you there is nothing better in the whole world.

Andrew: That kind of inspires a thought in that in my family, there’s a lot of family, cousins, brothers, etc., who have adopted. I’ve always wanted to adopt. My oldest brother has three girls, my nieces, and one time, he was just really eager to have a boy. Out of all of us, he’s the most man’s man and hands-on and stuff, and he has these three girls, which we think is hilarious.

Mark S.: Which happens all the time.

Andrew: And they even tried by the Chinese calendar or something like that to change the gender of the child.

Mark S.: Get the candles out.

Andrew: Yeah, it didn’t happen.

Mark: Stand on her head.

Andrew: You know, I said, “Well, you could always— I don’t think this is strange. If you want a boy, why don’t you adopt a boy. You’ve got three girls that you love.” And he said, “My wife and I have talked about that” — my sister-in-law — and he just said, “We feel literally zero calling to adopt.” I believe adoption is a spiritual thing. What would you to say to someone in that role, not feeling called to adopt themselves?

Mark: Don’t do it.

Andrew: But how do they support the community of adoption?

Mark: If you don’t feel like you should do it, you shouldn’t.

Mark S.: Yeah. If you’re not being called to it, I think you probably shouldn’t do it. I’m going to talk both sides of the coin because I think that’s right. When my wife wanted to adopt and she was doing all the paperwork, I wasn’t doing any of the paperwork and I was kind of dragging my feet like, It’s kind of a good idea, but I’m also scared out of my mind what that’s going to be. But my wife always makes the right decisions, so I knew she’s going to make the right decision again and we’re going to have a great kid. And so, she was more leading the train than I was at that point in time, but then you hold her and then you’re just like, Man, this is the way it was supposed to be. Never close the door and to keep listening, but if there’s some interest in there, maybe there’s a spark of something that’s in there, that might be a little tug.

Andrew: What is all of our roles? Me as a single person who is very much interested in adoption and believe in that as far as there are children who need homes, we can provide those homes.

Sandy: I serve on the board of Tennessee Alliance for Kids. Our current governor, he wanted to make a difference in the foster care system. He actually made the statement from the stage that the state had not done a great job with managing all the children that had been removed from homes and that he thought the one missing link might be the faith-based community.

Andrew: Really?

Sandy: And he wanted to give us all a pat on the back, a tap on the head — permission — to try to merge the faith-based community with the foster care system and see if we could propel it to a different level.

Andrew: OK

Sandy: There’s a gentleman in Texas who has a very small little congregation, and he and his wife took in some foster children and then more people in the church took in foster children and, in his county, I mean revolutionized the foster care system. I’m not saying that you need to become a foster father either.

Andrew: No, but maybe.

Sandy: One thing that we say about foster care, or adoption in general, it doesn’t mean that you’re parenting the child, but you can go to Target and buy some diapers to give to a foster family or you can cook a meal for your next door neighbor who’s foster parents or who’s coming home with a child from Uganda. Because they’re hibernating at home, they don’t have time to go to the grocery store and cook, and you can offer that for them.

Andrew: All the way from childhood to today, how’s that impacting your spiritual perspectives, your ideas about God, how you relate to God, how you feel God relates to you?

Mark S.: So, what I would say is, from my experience of being adopted, it’s not a big jump for me to say, “Oh, God loves me unconditionally.” I rode my bike across the country a few summers ago. Greg Lucid, my manager, I called him and said, “I’ve got this idea. Instead of taking a bus across the country, why don’t I just ride my bicycle from California to Maine and do concerts along the way, and we’ll raise money for orphans.” One of the neatest things was a minister at the end of a concert said, “Hey, we’re going to raise some money for Mark, and it’s all going to orphans.” And he said, “Let me ask you a question here. How many people are adopted in this room?” A couple thousand people in Missouri, and there were like 10 hands that went up out of the 2,000 people. He said, “OK, put your hands down.” He said, “Let me ask you another question. How many in this room would consider yourself a child of God?” And like all the hands in the room went up, and he said, “Alright, put them down.” He goes, “Let me ask you again. How many people in this room are adopted?” Everybody’s putting their hand up, and he said, “It touches everybody.” He said, “If it’s God’s blueprint and He did it for us, this is a blueprint for us down here.” So, to use that terminology, it’s not a big jump for me to say God loves us unconditionally, and I know that because my parents did such a great job of loving me unconditionally. And I thought I had it figured out until I adopted Maia Mae. She can do wrong right now in my eyes, and I know she just turned 1 on Monday.

Mark: Did you not see that with your boys? Did you not feel that unconditional love? Did you not get it then?

Mark S.: Yeah, I did, and that’s because it comes from they’re a part of me. But to go clear outside of, you know what I mean. I had no connection to this. I could’ve walked by her on a street and never known who she was, and then all of a sudden, I’m like, Oh gosh. And so for me spiritually, when people say, “What’s the jump off point for you?” That’s it for me. That’s everything.

Mark: And I think that people who have children should get that better than those of us who don’t, right, because you got it once you saw your reflection looking back at you in your little boy. I hate to say it, but I think there’s a greater judgment for you guys because you should get this. We get a pass. We get a pass, but you’re in trouble. Seriously though, what I think is for you to now ever think that God doesn’t love you, that would be saying that my love for my child is greater than God’s.

Mark S.: That’s right.

Andrew: Yeah, and I would say it just seems like you would, even as a parent to both your boys, so your biological children, and your adopted child, I think you have every leg up to be a better parent than any parent, just because you have so much understanding and perspective.

Mark S.: The other thing, and I tell people all the time, and I think people are anyway. People wait longer and longer to have kids. And I always tell my wife, I’m like, I’m a much better parent now than I would’ve been at 20. I’m about three-quarters of a tank less energy than I would’ve had when I was 20, so I have to time my caffeine intakes, but I enjoy being a dad. I do. It’s one of the coolest things I get to be a part of.

Mark: Is she talking yet?

Mark S.: You just really tapped into something cool. So, kids start to talk when they’re like 13 or 14 months, unless you’ve got a—

Mark: Savant

Mark S.: Yes, I got one. He’s named Ryan. He’s 5, and when he was one-and-a-half, he would walk into the house — this is a true story — and he would go, “Look, daddy. I’ve got a plethora of leaves.” I was like, “Well, you might be grounded for the rest of your life. Let me check the internet and see what that means.” So that’s where we come from in my family.

Mark: Plethora?

Mark S.: Plethora. He just dropped that at 2. I haven’t used that in my— So anyway, Maia Mae comes and she just turned a year on Monday, so if she could speak, she would speak Chinese because that’s what she’s been soaking up for a year. Wouldn’t that be great? I’m like, “Time for a bath,” and she’s like… Everybody’s like, What just happened there? But I will say this.

Mark: So she is speaking a little Chinese?

Mark S.: No, that’s just my version of what I think she would do, you know what I mean. That was my Chinese version of what she would do. And Chinese people across the world are offended.

Mark: I felt like Barbara Walters here for a minute. You’re the first person we’ve had cry.

Mark S.: That’s right. It’s the sauce on the salad. I’ll never forget. I did a show. It was for MOPS, Mothers of Preschoolers. Wooo, they need more than a weekend.

Mark: What happened?

Mark S.: They need a whole week to just get their stuff out, just kind of get right.

Mark: This is our last show. We’re kind of losing it.

Andrew: Yeah, this is our last show this season.

Mark S.: Oh yeah, don’t even care anymore.

Andrew: Actually, someone cancelled, and so. But, um.

Mark: Man, this is brutal, isn’t it? Aren’t you glad you came?

Mark S.: Let’s call him. He’s a punching bag.

Andrew: We like you.

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S01, E01: Comic Grief featuring Chonda Pierce and Ken Davis

WATCH OUR OTHER EPISODES:

S01, E02: Blessed are the Blended featuring Sandi Patty

S01, E03: What’s the Point of Grace? Featuring Point of Grace

S01, E04: Fear, Forgiveness and Friendship Part 1 featuring Anita Renfroe, Patsy Clairmont and Jan Silvious

11/2/17 11/2/17

Racism in the Church featuring Nicole C. Mullen

Dove Award-winning singer-songwriter Nicole C. Mullen — a generous voice in the conversation about race and a positive proponent of diversity-related dialogue — joins hosts Mark Lowry and Andrew Greer for the most poignant Dinner Conversations table talk to date.

Dove Award-winning singer-songwriter Nicole C. Mullen — a generous voice in the conversation about race and a positive proponent of diversity-related dialogue — joins hosts Mark Lowry and Andrew Greer for the most poignant Dinner Conversations table talk to date.

Transcript

Mark: Today's guest I had never met until today. Her name is Nicole C. Mullen and what a sweetheart she is. And you know her song. “I know my redeemer lives.” She wrote that. Anyway, she's our guest today, and she had a discussion with us about racial relationships and tensions in the culture and inside the Church.

Andrew: Yeah, I think sometimes we think that race division is just a cultural issue, but we know that that also happens inside of the Church. And so what we were asking Nicole C. and what we were talking about is what can we do to meet that issue head-on. How can we as disciples of Christ be unifiers in our culture, in our churches on race issues. And I think you're especially interested because you go to a church—

Mark: My church, Grace Church, Humble, Texas, it was started by a white family and now it's grown to I'm the minority. I go in there and there's no one in there that looks like me hardly, but we worship together because, you know, our blood is all red.

Andrew: That's right. We're learning that relationship, getting to know one another, is the core experience that helps us to actually unify and see each other not as different but as alike.

Mark: There's one seat left at the table, and it's yours. Let's join the conversation.

Andrew: I would say in our culture that — let me maybe say American culture but I think world culture — community is not… We are not interacting with each other. Do you feel that and do you feel the tension…?

Mark: Who?

Andrew: Just culture, in general. People, humanity is not communing with each other. There's extreme tension…

Mark: Well, they’re yelling at each other. There's a lot of heat, but there's very little light, you know. It’s all fire.

Andrew: There’s no conversation, right?

Mark: Yeah, it's just yelling at each other.

Nicole C.: Monologues.

Andrew: Why is that?

Nicole C.: I think part of it, honestly, and I am…we're all creatures of our society in one way or another. I think part of it is we are talking to this, and we get emboldened by saying what we want to say here without really having like one-on-one conversations with people, hearing what they have to say, interacting this way. And then I think because we don't know each other, we're afraid of each other, you know, and so we began to like fill in the blanks of what we think about each other with our own imaginations, our own stereotypes, instead of saying, “No, let me sit down and really get to know you,” because I'm a lot more likely to take up for and to go the extra mile for someone I love than for somebody that I just fear or have, you know, an outside opinion about.

Mark: So you're saying to get to know your neighbor?

Nicole C.: Yeah.

Mark: You know, when I first met the Lord… OK, in our church, we were taught to witness to everybody, right? So we'd sit next to people on the plane, and the first thing out of my mouth would be, “If you were to die today, do you know where you’d spend eternity?”

Nicole C.: Yes, yes, yes.

Mark: And now, as I've grown up and I've gotten to know the Lord better, it's like the Lord taught me get to know them, find out where they're coming from before you cram Me down their throats.

“It’s like the Lord taught me to get to know them, find out where they’re coming from before you cram Me down their throats.”

— Mark Lowry

Nicole C.: Earn the right to speak.

Mark: You know, I'm a gentleman, and I would like to be introduced the proper way. Don't just cram Me down people's throats. And then, when you let them tell their story, there'll be a door that's obviously open.

Nicole C.: Yes, yes.

Andrew: Well, story will trump any… If there's difference in race, difference in lifestyle, difference in whatever, story is where we relate.

Mark: That’s why Jesus told parables. That's why there's People magazine. They're stories, you know. People love to hear about other people.

Nicole C.: And He told stories at people's homes, too. You know what I’m saying? He came and He ate. He set the table, you know, or He was at the fish fry. He was there, and it was there that He told stories. He didn't go and just… I mean, He preached, but He loved on them. He demonstrated who He was by what He did. He got involved in their lives. He came down to where they were at and not just saying, “I'm only gonna preach in the synagogue, and if you don't come to the synagogue, then you won't hear Me.” Nope. He went to the parties. You know what I'm saying? He went to where they were. He went to the streets. He went to where they were being condemned. He went to where they were at in order to communicate who He and His Father were.

Andrew: That takes actual time, energy, which translated is love.

Nicole C.: Which is love, yeah. And I think all the time because He could so easily have done like mass prayers to where He said, “Everybody be filled. Everybody be healed. Everybody be made whole,” and then He could have been on His way in like two seconds flat. But according to scriptures, He took time and He talked to people individually.

Dr. Chris Williamson | Strong Tower Bible Church

Andrew: What is my role and responsibility as a white male in 2018 who also believes that everyone was created equal because God has created us like Him?

Dr. Chris Williamson: I think the typical American way is to ask, “What can I do?” And sometimes that is the right question to ask because we should do something. Faith without works is dead, and if we see our brother or sister hurting — you know, good Samaritan parable — we should help. We should do something. But I think sometimes the question that we should ask: Help me to see? You know the book of Ecclesiastes says, “If you see the poor in a district and they're being oppressed by someone higher than them…” It's interesting how Solomon says, “If you see the poor,” because many times, as Mother Teresa would say, we'd rather talk about the poor than have conversations with the poor. We'd rather give someone a sandwich rather than sit down and get to know them and understand why are you homeless to begin with. So I would back it up for many of my white brothers and sisters who may be burdened with, “What do I do?” Maybe step back and say, “Lord, help me to see what my brothers and sisters see. Help me to feel what they feel. Help me to have more compassion, more understanding, because when you see and feel and you are burdened, you don't have to worry about what to do. The gospel is not just John 3:16 — get me to heaven. The gospel is also Luke 4:18, where Jesus said He was anointed to bind up the brokenhearted and to set the captives free, to give sight to the blind, to proclaim liberty to the oppressed. That is the gospel as much as going to heaven is. But I grew up with such a focus on, hey, pray this prayer and go to heaven but not really dealing with the nasty, here and now of how to love my neighbor who's different than me, especially one who may be marginalized and poorer. But if we read Jesus properly, I mean, man, His last long parable in Matthew, the sheep and the goats — when you stand before Me in heaven, I'm not gonna ask you your theological position. I'm not gonna ask you your voting record. I'm gonna ask you how did you help the least of these. And when we think about America, who are the least of these historically in America and what are we doing, what have we done, to help the least of these, whether they be in prison, whether they be naked, thirsty, on and on. So if the posture of our Christianity doesn't lead us towards people who are marginalized…

“As Mother Teresa would say, we’d rather talk about the poor than have conversations with the poor. We’d rather give someone a sandwich rather than sit down and get to know them and understand why are you homeless to begin with.”

— Dr. Chris Williamson

Andrew: Yeah, then are we following Jesus’…

Dr. Chris Williamson: Right.

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Mark: Dinner Conversations is presented by Project Beautiful. Did you know for only $30 a month, you can save three people a year from sex trafficking around the world? Just think if this was your daughter, wouldn't you be glad someone is spending $30 a month to get her home? Go to projectbeautiful.org/dinnerconversations, and join Andrew and me as we try to stop sex trafficking in the world today.

Andrew: If we don't help, who will? Project Beautiful — because every life is beautiful and worth fighting for.

Churches Infected with Racial Division

Andrew: Or maybe I’ll say do you feel like this, that our church is also affected and maybe sometimes even infected by the division, especially…

Mark: Are you talking about the racial division?

Andrew: Especially racial division.

Nicole C.: Absolutely, yeah.

Andrew: So how are we the seed of change? How do we reflect something different?

Mark: How do we fix this? How do we mix the races?

Andrew: Is it a fix?

Nicole C.: Absolutely, it is a fix. I grew up in, you know, all black churches, all white schools — grew up in a mixed neighborhood. So from my earliest recollections, my world was mixed. It was diverse. So I'm not speaking from an all-black perspective, you know. Two of my children are biracial. You know what I'm saying? So this has been my life from the beginning. Some of my best friends are Caucasian, some our African-American, some are other ethnicities, so I'm not here saying, you know, they're wrong, they're right, you know. But I do think that there needs to be not just dialogue but there needs to be like true respect given back and forth and to be able to — like I said earlier, like Jesus heard their stories — to hear someone else's story because if I hear your story, now I have to validate the way you feel because your perspective is legitimately different than mine and they're both real and right, you know. But the way we get together is how do we, you know… We get together on this bridge of like I respect what you've said, I believe what you’ve said, and now because I have heard you out, I have a little more empathy for you. Now I want to take up for you. Now I want to say, “OK, then how do I give up a little of what I have to help you over here,” and vice versa. So now we can link arms because we've heard each other, we respect each other. And I think what has to happen is that… Do I believe we need to have our churches a lot more, you know, integrated? Absolutely. I think it needs to be represented from the head all the way down, so that's absolutely, yes. But even more so than that, I think after church is what matters most. So after church, am I willing to go out to lunch with that family that looks totally different than mine? After lunch, am I willing to have them over to my home? Am I willing to go to, you know, their plays for their kids? Whatever it might be, am I willing to…

Mark: Get to know them.

Nicole C.: Absolutely.

Mark: Because it's hard to hate it when it has a face.

Nicole C.: And when you get to know them. Absolutely. Then they go from being just friends, brothers and sisters…

Mark: Or something you fear.

Nicole C.: They become family.

Andrew: So relationship. We were talking earlier about my cousins, who live here in town. They've got two biological boys, Caucasian family, adopted an Ethiopian girl. Just in love. I mean, Lidi’s the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. But my cousin, who's her mother, she so respected the culture she came from and wanting to respect that in her life, Lidiyanna's as she grows up, but then also respecting her as an African-American girl and woman and not being an African-American woman herself, like not knowing how to take care of her hair, her skin, you know, practical things. And so what did she do? She went and asked one of her closest African-American women friends and said, “I don't know. I want to know. Teach me.” You know, because she's afraid of being in the grocery store and…

Nicole C.: That’s great because we get funny about that. You probably already know. We’d be like, “Look at her hair.”

Andrew: Yeah, and that’s what she was afraid of.

Nicole C.: She was wise.

Mark: I love that story.

Andrew: But that's an effort of respect.

Nicole C.: It is. And I’m sure she won favor among the lady that she asked for help from, you know. And even though she's going after the well-being of her daughter, you know, at the same time, she's forming a bridge.

Andrew: And she's understanding things she's never understood before.

Nicole C.: Yes.

Mark: And you get to discover their food.

Nicole C.: Yes.

Mark: You know, every culture has a whole wonderful world of food.

Nicole C.: Like a jambalaya, gumbo, you know.

Mark: And I am a foodie. I’d love to go eat home cooking from some other culture. My sister's ex-husband, who I still dearly love — we're all great friends still; I love him — he befriended these African-American people up in the hills of Virginia. He would talk about them, tell stories about them, and made them sound so wonderful. I said, “Please, take me.” And so we all went up there and they loved on me and I ate chitlins for the first time.

Nicole C.: Sorry.

Mark: Oh, they were horrible.

Nicole C.: They stink.

Mark: It’s the guts of a pig, but I had to try it. I’ll try anything. No, I had to try what they loved. I didn’t care for it, but I did find a lot of things… Like I love chicken livers and stuff like that. Anyway, I don’t know how I got off on that.

Nicole C.: We don’t all eat chicken livers, we don’t all eat chitlins, just so y’all know.

Mark: These people, they had a different take on family, a different take on fun. They were a blast.

Nicole C.: It enriched your life. It enriched you.

Mark: Oh, it enriched my life. Oh yeah.

Andrew: Change did.

Mark: Listen, when I was growing up, I wanted a black friend. I wasn't around anybody because we went to a private Christian school, and I really think looking back some of that was racially motivated because integration was happening, and I wonder how much of it was to protect us from what they were teaching because I was in Texas in the ‘70s. I don't know. You can edit this out, but I was full-grown when I heard the Martin Luther King letter from the Birmingham prison. I was full-grown.

Nicole C.: Yeah, because they kept you away from it.

Mark: Well, evidently. I called my parents — it was a book on tape that I was listening to — and I was like stunned. It was the most incredible letter. And I called my parents. “Have you ever heard about this?” “Well, yeah.” I said, “Well, why haven't I?” I called Bill and Gloria Gaither. “Have you heard about…?” I was just stunned that I had never heard about this and angry because it was not the education I deserved.

Dr. Chris Williamson | Love Bears All Things

Dr. Chris Williamson: You know, when I was growing up, we played hokey-pokey. You know, you put your right foot in, put your right foot out, and all that stuff. And you go through the whole song putting something in and putting something out, and I think we approach reconciliation that way. We may put a foot in it, but we're gonna pull it right out, especially when it gets tough, when I get uncomfortable, when it gets hard. It happens in churches, whether they're homogeneous churches or multicultural churches, and people just want to leave. But wow, I think love bears all things. We gotta stick this thing out. And so the world is looking at the Church, and the Church, unfortunately, we've lost our witness. We don't have salt in this area.

Andrew: And why is that? I mean, I know that's a broad question, but think about in terms of racial unity.

Dr. Chris Williamson: Ha ha. Andrew, my man. The Church's fingerprints are all over the racial caste system that built America, and the Church OK’d the slave trade. The Church misused the Bible to say that people made in the image of God were truly not made in the image of God, that we were cursed, that our lot in life was to be subjected to be slaves, that it was divine order for us. So when the Churchco-signs a wicked economic system, we can't get that thing right in America until we go back again and admit our sins. And no, I wasn't there, but watch this though. Daniel confessed the sins of his forefathers. Nehemiah confessed the sins of his forefathers because those sins had repercussions on where they were in the present. And where we are today, we're suffering from the repercussions of our ancestors, and if we're not willing to confess those sins and repent of them and, when proper, make restitution for those sins, we just can't have an apology and again to shake hands. We need to address systems. We need to make wrong things right. But it takes humility. It takes honesty. If I was an abusive husband and let's say I beat on my wife for 20 years, man. Then year 21 I have a revelation, and God talks to me and says, “Man, that's wrong,” and I say to my wife, “You know what, I'm sorry. Things are gonna be different from here on out,” and hopefully she'll forgive me, but I can't get upset with her if I walk in the room a week later and she's still jumpy and she doesn't trust me because the time in which I abused her has forged something in her psyche that's off. She's still afraid. And my words are one thing, my actions are something else, and it takes time and consistency to prove that I'm sorry.

“The Church’s fingerprints are all over the racial caste system that built America.”

— Dr. Chris Williamson

Andrew: Has the evangelical Church in the Western world, the American evangelical Church, disappointed you?

Dr. Chris Williamson: Yes. Absolutely. I can't remember the person who said it. It may have been Mahatma Gandhi, but you know, follow Jesus, not His followers, something to that degree — that I believe in Jesus, I don't necessarily believe in His followers. Oh, it's definitely a disappointment, for sure. I was educated in a white evangelical institution, and the lack of attention, sensitivity towards issues that are important to me and my community, sometimes it would make me wonder is my presence here only for entertainment, to make the football team better? Reconciliation without a redistribution of power is nothing more than colonialism. The essence of the gospel is to empower the powerless. The Bible says that Jesus was rich, yet He made Himself poor so that we, through His poverty, might become rich. Jesus emptied Himself, without ceasing to be God, to save people from their sin. If we're not emptying ourselves, if we're not lifting other people up, if we're not giving power that we have to other people, I dare to say it's not the gospel.

Andrew: Spiritually speaking, what do you personally do with that disappointment? How do you hash that out with God?

Dr. Chris Williamson: You just lament. And you stay there until the Lord lifts you up. But it's OK to pour out your heart to God and tell Him how much you're hurting. But yet, I serve a God who understood sorrow and was acquainted with grief. The Bible says He was a Man of Sorrows, so with the disappointment, sometimes… You know, historically for the black Church, we would pour out our heart at the altar. We would weep before God. We would cry. We would fast. You know, you see that again with Daniel, Nehemiah, so again, before we try to fix it — oh God, hear my cry, oh God.

Andrew: But it begins with humility.

Dr. Chris Williamson: Oh.

Andrew: Everything we're talking about points back to if we will humble…

Dr. Chris Williamson: Dude, remember is it Luke 18? They're praying in the temple — Pharisee and the tax collector. Tax collector can’t even lift his head up. What's the Pharisee doing? “I'm glad I'm not like other people. I don't do this. And I tithe.” And Jesus said, “I tell you what. That humble guy went home justified, but that religious man… We’ll say Micah — we need to walk with Him humbly. Oh brother.

Diversity from the Creator

Andrew: So if we are as diverse as we are, you look around the world and we’re as diverse as we are, hopefully, if we're created in the image of God, what do you think that says about God.

Nicole C.: It says that God is diverse. It says that God, matter of fact, He made no mistakes when He made different ethnicities, different colors, different cultures. It was intentional. You know, this is a reflection of Him, so for us to think that our own culture is the whole totality of who God is is really just arrogant and misguided for any of us. But to know that He is diverse, therefore He created diversity. He has that inside himself — Father, Son, Holy Spirit — as we were talking about earlier. And so He didn't make one color flower and nothing else is…

“God made no mistakes when He made different ethnicities, different colors, different cultures. It was intentional.”

— Nicole C. Mullen

Mark: Wouldn’t that be boring?

Nicole C.: Wouldn’t it? He didn't just make everything in grayscale. He gave us the colors and the flavors of life to enjoy, and I think life is richer and more full when we put those things together, when we accept each other and say, “You know what, let me take a piece of your culture. Let me learn about that. Let me learn about this. Let me learn about that,” especially those of us who claim to be a part of the body of Christ, especially. And I think we have an extra charge to be the ones who model this to the world. Otherwise, we're taking cues from a society that really doesn't know how to do it right, when we have the blueprint.

Andrew: We've got the Spirit guiding us, right?

Nicole C.: We have John 15 — “Make them one even as we're one.” He wants us to love each other because that's the way we're going to show that we're followers of Him, not by how well we preach, not by how well we sing, not by how well we travel around the world telling people about Him, but by the way we love.

Andrew: You say learn a little bit about this culture and learn a bit about this and take a little bit of this and that, and isn't that then also saying discover a little bit more about God, discover a little bit more about God, discover a little bit more about God.

Nicole C.: And His creation.

Mark: Very good. I’m being serious. That is good.

Nicole C.: I’ve learned the richest lessons from other people and other places and other cultures.

Mark: Yeah, same with denominations. I was raised Baptist, right. Independent Baptist, which is, you know, sometimes we're independent of God it seems.

Nicole C.: We real independent.

Mark: But we love Jesus. But we were Independent Baptists, so when I joined the Gaithers, it opened my life that there are Presbyterians who are madly in love with Jesus and there are Pentecostals who can do more than shout. They love Jesus.

Nicole C.: Thank you.

Mark: And there are Methodists who love Jesus. I used to get Jerry Falwell's Christmas card and Tony Campolo’s Christmas card. They used to argue with each other on CNN, and they both loved Jesus, and I know both of them. And I put them side-by-side on my refrigerator, and I think, OK, here are two men that I know love the Lord, but they came to diabolically opposed political conclusions. Which tells me stay out of politics.

Nicole C.: But we need to be there or change your heart.

Mark: No, we need to be there. I believe we should vote.

Andrew: We serve. In our service, that's our service to our neighbors, right? But it is saying, “What's the main thing?” And politics is not the main thing, and our opinions and preferences are not the main thing. That's what you’re talking about with worship.

Nicole C.: Yes, absolutely.

Andrew: Where all our preferences and our comfort lies is not necessarily the heartbeat of who we are, I think, because the heartbeat of who we are is in reflecting who God is and that takes a great deal of surrender.

Nicole C.: And it's sometimes it’s uncomfortable.

Nicole C. Mullen singing “One”

You and me may not always see identically
And there’s some things where we’re simply gonna disagree
A tune of many notes can still have harmony, a symphony
Cause I need you and brother, you need me
And they’ll know we are one
By the way we love, by the way we love
And they’ll know we are one
By the way we love, by the way we love

Take my hand and walk a mile with and you will see
Together we can conquer anything in unity
Through the blood of Christ
He turns diversity to family
Cause I need you and sister, you need me
And they’ll know we are one
By the way we love, by the way we love
And they’ll know we are one
By the way we love, by the way we love

There is just one Spirit
One hope, one body
We believe, believe
There is one baptism
One faith and Lord of all
We believe, we believe

And they’ll know we are one
By the way we love, by the way we love
And they’ll know we are one
By the way we love, by the way we love
And they’ll know we are one
By the way we love, by the way we love
And they’ll know we are one
By the way we love, by the way we love
By the way we love, by the way we love
By the way we love, by the way we love

Project Beautiful Sponsorship Message

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How to Process the Fear from Racism

Andrew: Just think about it. I mean, it's natural that I would relate to God potentially as a white guy as a child. I grew up in a predominantly Caucasian and Hispanic community, so I would see Him in some of those shades, and just in my imagination and mind, if I'm putting human skin on God.

Nicole C.: Or paintings or whatever.

Andrew: Yeah. Of course all the blue eyes. You know, blue-eyed, brown hair Jesus. And that's naturally what I relate to, but as my worldview expands, as my perspectives expand, as my relationships expand, as my experiences expand, I can no longer just relate to the God of my childhood in the sense of how I'm picturing Him.

Nicole C.: And I think the more we get into the Word, we get a chance to see the real Him too. Therefore, it expands our worldview, you know. It expands who I love. Let me see who He loves. He went to the Samaritan, the mixed breed back then, according to what they would say, you know, and He spoke to her.

Mark: He wasn’t even supposed to put His feet on the land.

Nicole C.: And still He did.

Mark: He walked right up.

Nicole C.: Exactly.

Mark: Middle of the day.

Nicole C.: So He broke a lot of these like social, you know, whatever.

Mark: He’ll break the law to get you home.

Nicole C.: He sure will. If He did it, then why aren't we going across those lines, saying, “I'm still going to love you. I'm still gonna be your friend. I'm still going to, you know, do what I can to serve you.”

Mark: Well, you gave a good example about go to church, find a family that doesn't look like you, and ask them… How would you feel? How would you do it so you don't make them feel like you're being a project?

Nicole C.: I think maybe, first, if you just even with an introduction — “Hey, I'm so-and-so,” you know, and “Hey, really enjoyed having you guys here.” Then maybe the next Sunday you're like, you know, “Hey, I would love to maybe sometimes get together. Maybe we can go do lunch sometimes. What do you like to do?”

Mark: Overtime. Warm up to it.

Nicole C.: Yeah. Maybe ask a little bit.

Andrew: And even stating your intention when it's an appropriate time.

Nicole C.: Absolutely.

Andrew: Saying, “I would actually love to get to know you and your family. I would love to get to know… I see this. I've observed this.”

Nicole: Absolutely. And I wanna be a part of the solution. Being upfront about it is fantastic.

Andrew: Because we don’t do that, do we?

Nicole C.: No, because sometimes we want to skirt around it.

Mark: So what if I say, “Hey, listen. There’s racial tension everywhere. Can we get to know each other?” Is that what you’re saying?

Nicole C.: Yeah, but not like that.

Andrew: But with earned trust because otherwise, you know what I think we do? I think we demonstrate otherwise because if we can't be straightforward with each other in our interactions individually, we then have demonstrations that are hugely divided. Someone asked me recently, “What do you think about demonstrations in general?” I said, “Why don't we start demonstrating to each other.”

Mark: OK, what does that mean?

Andrew: That means why don't I demonstrate… Like either it could be…

Nicole C.: Mutual respect right here.

Andrew: Yes, even if there’s a conflict or I don’t understand something. Or can you explain this to me? Or can I be heard on this? And so you're demonstrating love.

Nicole C.: I think everybody has a right to publicly protest what they want as well.

Andrew: Sure, sure. Not gonna control that.

Nicole C.: So we’re agreed on that. However, but I do fully agree with what you just said because, for me, I've had people ask me, like Caucasian people say, “OK, well, I'm really stuck on this issue. Can we talk about it? I'm not trying to be offensive, but can I ask you some questions?” I welcome it 100 percent, 200 percent. I love the conversation, never been offended by it, and so I'm like please, if there are things you don't know, then let me be your tour guide. Let me show you another perspective. I get a chance to hear yours. You get a chance to hear mine. And I'm not trying to speak for all African-Americans, but there's some things that I do know that are common about the way we think about certain things or the way we may perceive the reception of public opinion. So even like you’ve got the Black Lives Matter and you’ve got this over here, to me there's different issues being talked about. Like the Black Lives Matter, I haven’t marched with them. However, I will say it started from people saying, “No, we want to be heard to say that our lives matter as well.” Not matters more than, but it matters too. And so with that, of course, you’re always going to have people that are gonna hijack different things to make it a concept that it was not. So you have that. However, at the core, you can't say everything about it shouldn't be and they have no right because they're just a bunch of thugs. No, a lot of them are politicians, a lot of them are doctors, lawyers, pastors, and they're marching peacefully like in the days of Dr. King because they're saying our sons and our daughters have the right to make it home. I've taught my sons, you know, when you get pulled over, you go the extra mile. You show your hands. When they tell you to do something, you do it. They tell you to get out of the car, you get out of the car. A lot of times that works, but sometimes even all of that doesn't bring your child home. We've seen that, so as an African-American mom, there are some real issues that the African-American community are saying, “I know y'all keep saying we're just crying racism, but we're saying for real. There really are problems.” But if you didn't grow up with it… I validate you all because you said, “I don't see it. That's not my world.” And so yeah, you’re valid in that, but we're saying, “But can you look at ours and give us validity and say, ‘There's something different about this, so how can I help. Not how can I put more fuel on the fire, but how can I actually be a part of the solution and demonstrate right here the mutual respect.’” Because when we respect each other, then like I said before, we go beyond just feeling like friends. We become family, and I'm gonna fight for my family. I'm gonna take up for my family. I'm gonna care for them. I’m gonna make sure that they're not abused.

Mark: And especially if you're Christian. Christians are as bad at this as the world, aren’t they?

Andrew: Yeah, sometimes.

Nicole C.: Because it’s fear. Sometimes we’re just afraid of each other. On the white side, sometimes you’re afraid of the black people, and some of the blacks are afraid of the whites.

Mark: So fear’s the bottom line.

Nicole C.: Fear is the bottom line. And where there's fear, you have all this other like malady that comes from it because we don't know, you know. We're assuming. And I think if we got to know each other, we would see that we're a lot more alike than we are different, we have a lot more in common than uncommon, and there can be love between us and mutual respect.

Dr. Chris Williamson: But you know, again, the Bible, Psalm 133 — how good and how pleasant it is when brothers can dwell together, not just visit. How can we intentionally intersect our lives? And it's gonna be work on everyone's part because…

Andrew: And there’s gonna be discomfort, right?

Dr. Chris Williamson: Yes, there’s gonna be discomfort because I like hanging with who I like to hang with. But again, we follow this Middle Eastern Jewish man who had a way of destroying comfort zones, and if we're really gonna follow Him, then that means at His table, as He told the Jews, there are people coming from north, south, east, and west to sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And what He was saying, it was paramount. He was blowing up their worldview where Jewish people pretty much, not only were they a monotheistic people and a people with a rigid moral code, but they kept to themselves ethnically and they looked down on other people because they considered them not clean because they weren't Jewish. And here comes Jesus saying, “They're gonna sit down at the table with our patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” that that is the kingdom of God. But too often our sociology has greater power than our theology, and we've got to flip that around. But I'll add a caveat to that. Some of us are so theological that we're not practical. We know the right answers.

Andrew: So then we’re not seeing though? The practical is the not seeing, right?

Dr. Chris Williamson: Not seeing it. I heard John Perkins say when God decided to change the world, He started a multiracial church in Acts chapter 2. So man, there's something when the world can see people loving each other who typically don't love each other, where they have a bad history. But they can get over the history. They can confess those sins and move on. They can forgive each other. That's power.

Prejudice, Regardless of what Race and Ethnicity

Andrew: I have a question because I've been thinking through this question in my own mind. Even with, you know, the strides that have been made that we continue to struggle, we know that slavery, the Emancipation Proclamation, did not end slavery in the world, and it certainly did not…

Mark: Emancipation did what?

Andrew: Did not end slavery in the world.

Mark: Right, correct.

Andrew: And we know that tens of millions of people are enslaved in different ways, from different backgrounds, different races. In the world perspective, slavery is still a stronghold, still an issue. What is it that is in humanity that is compelling us to enslave each other?

Mark: Money.

Nicole C.: The pride of life. Yeah, money.

Mark: They’re making money off those kids, right?

Andrew: But where did I separate money and treatment of a human being?

Mark: Well, they’re freaks. I mean, anybody who would sell another human being is a complete reprobate.

Andrew: But also a person created in the image of God.

Nicole C.: I think it goes back to, and I'm gonna quit trying to sound like… Y’all think I’m trying to be super religious, but I’m not.

Andrew: Gosh, no.

Nicole C.: But you know, it goes back to the pride of life. I want to feel better than someone else, so you have prejudice. Regardless of what race and what ethnicity, it's I have to feel better than you; therefore, have to put you down, degrade you. And I know we have it all over the world, and I think part of the tension — I'm gonna come back to this and then I'm gonna get off of it — but even in the African-American community, like I was never a slave. We can agree on that. However, I'm a descendant of slaves, and there's still some things I think in our society that have been perpetuated, the mentality of it has been perpetuated, even though some of the exterior has changed a little bit. Underneath, you still have a system that has benefited off of that mentality or the working of slavery, and then before you know it, you have families that have been separated back then. Then you had things that happened even after slavery was abolished that there are systems that are still in place that perpetuate dividing the family. Dads are now incarcerated at a higher rate in African-Americans than it is in the white community for the same crimes. That's a fact. So now you have sons and daughters without a father, and now they're trying to figure it out, but dad has been incarcerated. All black dads are not incarcerated. There's some great ones. Mine was not. I know some great African-American men that are very upstanding, so most of us are upstanding. So now you have families that are torn apart, and you have kids growing up without them. Now you have another generation. Now you have another generation. Now you have another generation. And we're looking, why are they out in the street picketing? Why are they out in the street rioting? Because dad’s not there. Not just because dad was bad but because there are still systems in place that stem back to the slavery mentality, not just for blacks but in the larger community as well, to where it has perpetuated the same evil. And that has been something that has been perpetuated not just from the states all over the world but you have human nature. And because you can't legislate human nature, therefore, you do have these things and only Christ can come to redeem that. If He doesn't redeem it, it can't be changed. You can't make laws that are really gonna change the way I think about you. I can still go home and secretly hate you, even though the law says I can’t do it publicly.

Andrew: You can’t legislate a heart, right?

Nicole C.: No, but Christ can come and rewrite it and change it, so only really redemption through Christ can really fix the problem. So we who have been redeemed, that's why we're the answer to it. So we, the church, if we don't take our place as the redeemed of the Lord, then our society won't be fixed. There’s no other remedy outside of Him.

Andrew: In any area of discord or disease.

Nicole C.: In any area, yeah. He is the remedy, and He's given it to us. He's put it in us to live it out to affect the world.

Andrew: You talk about teaching your children, and your sons especially, like what to do in a situation getting pulled over, and I think about something I would never have to think about potentially with my children. Well, maybe. I haven’t married yet. But I am so grieved by that, the fact that it would have to be different, that I would almost want to say I wish it happened to me so I could understand it or so at least… Either let’s all be treated well or let's all be treated… I think we’ll just go against the devil, you know.

Nicole C.: I think when you have an opportunity to do good, do it. When you have the opportunity to stand up for what’s right, don't back down. Stand up.

Andrew: I don't think everyone's a mystery. I don't think everyone's different just because we look or have different traditions.

Mark: Well, you’re blessed.

Andrew: Well, that's not putting me on some thing.

Mark: I mean, your parents must have done something right.

Nicole C.: Honestly, every group has their thing though too, so everybody has a measure of prejudice in them that they have to deal with. It's not just a white against black or black against white. Everybody has a measure of that, and it's our own pride. It's how we feel better about ourselves, the root, so we have to surrender that individually to the Lord too and then say, “What can I do and how can I show love for my neighbor, regardless of their color, ethnicity, their culture?” Those of us who've been redeemed, we're called to go out and to show that redemption in how we love each other, and sometimes that each other doesn't look like us, doesn't sound like us, doesn't dress like us, doesn't believe like us.

Mark: Oh, now you’re meddling.

Nicole C.: But we’re still called to love.

Andrew: Yeah, but talking about prejudices.

Nicole C.: We’re still called to love. We’re still called to love.

Mark: Love without an agenda is tough.

Nicole C.: We're just called to love. We don’t have a heaven or hell to put anybody in. We water, we plant; He gives the increase. If He doesn’t give the increase, it wasn’t in the hat. We still are called to water and plant.

Andrew: And He’s the judge as in He's like the justice bringer. Our idea of judgment, which is why we were so afraid of God's judgment, no, justice is a judge and justice makes things right, makes things whole.

Nicole C.: And He’s also merciful.

Andrew: Yes, merciful and mighty.

Mark: Amen.

Nicole C.: That's good.

Mark: Well, I did 23andMe.com and found out that I am 12 percent Jewish, and I believe that's the Jesus in me. And I am .05 percent African-American, I'm sad to say. Oh, and I am 65 percent Neanderthal. Seriously, there’s a Neanderthal thing in there. They say it’s somewhere between monkey and human.

Mark: To learn more about Dinner Conversations, go to dinner-conversations.com.

Andrew: And don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel. That’ll allow you to get a new episode every week. Like us or don't like us, and leave a comment, good or constructively criticism.

Mark: And if it's really, really, really mean criticism, we can delete you.

Don't Miss an Episode! Subscribe Today:

S01, E01: Comic Grief featuring Chonda Pierce and Ken Davis

WATCH OUR OTHER EPISODES:

S01, E02: Blessed are the Blended featuring Sandi Patty

S01, E03: What’s the Point of Grace? Featuring Point of Grace

S01, E04: Fear, Forgiveness and Friendship Part 1 featuring Anita Renfroe, Patsy Clairmont and Jan Silvious

S01, E05: Adopted, Aren’t We All? featuring Mark Schultz

S01, E07: Dinner Conversations Another Christmas Special

11/1/17 11/1/17

Liquor and Legalism featuring Russ Taff

Cheered by Billboard as "the single most electrifying voice in Christian music," Grammy-winning legend Russ Taff joins hosts Mark Lowry and Andrew Greer to share his story of alcoholism in this sobering Dinner Conversations table talk.

Cheered by Billboard as "the single most electrifying voice in Christian music," Grammy-winning legend Russ Taff joins hosts Mark Lowry and Andrew Greer to share his story of alcoholism in this sobering Dinner Conversations table talk.

Transcript

Mark: Russ Taff is our guest today, and I've known Russ since 1988, when I joined the vocal band, but I knew of Russ long before that. I remember going to hear him in Roanoke when he was with the Imperials, and I was in college at Lynchburg, and I thought, oh man, what a voice, what a great man. He is one of the true friends. I mean if he is your friend, he will go to battle for you. He's a good guy.

Andrew: And I think that loyalty in his friendship comes from a place of a lot of hardship for Russ. Began with his journey through alcoholism, that he speaks about so eloquently, and is very articulate about how, if the church was able to provide a true place of sanctuary, a place where we can really confess to each other that we wouldn't even potentially need recovery programs, so it's a fascinating conversation to me.

Mark: It is. And we've got one seat open, and it's yours. Let's join the conversation.

Russ: My dad was an alcoholic before he became a Christian, and he was saved in a Pentecostal church. He was a welder, and he got some slag in his eye, that metal that, you know, white hot, that sparks, and it got into his eye. He went to the doctor, almost lost his eye, and they gave him some pretty powerful pain meds. He really liked the pain pills, really liked 'em.

Mark: I really like 'em too. I'll be honest with ya.

Russ: No, no, yeah.

Mark: When I broke my leg, Lord have mercy, thank God for morphine drips and pain pills, but, you know, like we've lost Norman and others.

Russ: And you can't stand there in the pulpit loaded.

Mark: No, no, no, no.

Andrew: Is that how it was?

Russ: Yeah. It got—

Andrew: Or how it became?

Russ: And then when the, when the pain pills ran out, my dad disappeared.

Mark: Was he going to look for more pills?

Russ: No, he would buy a big bottle of vodka. Dad carried a lot of pain. It started a pattern of about every six months. That man loved Jesus, and such a communicator, and he felt like God was calling him to preach, and so Dad started pastoring.

Mark: Do you think preaching became an addiction too?

Russ: Yeah.

Andrew: And fed into the other addictions?

Russ: Because when he was preaching, he felt like he was really serving Jesus. And he had not a clue what grace was.

Andrew: So that was legalism on himself. If I'm preaching, that was the only time he probably felt safe with God.

“If I’m preaching, that was the only time he probably felt safe with God.”

— Andrew Greer

Russ: And like God likes me right now.

Mark: And then he transferred that to you, right?

Russ: Oh, yeah, yeah. So when I was seven, he didn't show up to church. And Mom sent me home to look for him, because it was getting close to preaching time. And I got to the back of the room, and he was sprawled out on the bed, and just drunk out of his mind, and I'd never seen anybody drunk, you know? And I thought something horrible had happened. And then the cover-up started. You know, we can't let anybody know. One of my little friends — I was 9 — I had told him that Mom and Dad had an argument, and that was betrayal to them because you don't tell anybody what goes on in the family. You don't tell anybody, so she would, when I got home, she was waiting for me. I had spent the night with my friend, and she just blew, took her shoes off, and just started throwing at me, grabbed books and just screaming at me, "You don't tell anybody what goes on in this family," and came over and like started punching me with her fists, just punching me.

Andrew: This is your mother.

Russ: Yeah, and then she started kicking me, and I wound up just in a ball in the corner, and her just kicking the crap out me, screaming, "You don't tell anybody what goes on in this family." So, you grow up just in chaos. I mean, you... And every day you didn't know what you were waking up to, and after awhile, it's survival. It's not anything but just flat-out survival. How can I get through another day?

“And every day you didn’t know what you were waking up to, and after awhile, it’s survival. It’s not anything but just flat-out survival.”

— Russ Taff

Andrew: Did anyone ever sit down with you or come up behind you and say, "How you doing, Russ? How are you feeling?"

Russ: No, no.

Mark: So no one from the church reached out to you at all?

Russ: Oh no.

Mark: Oh wow. Isn't that sad that the church didn't do that for you? If the church didn't gossip, I think that's why God says that slanderers will not enter the kingdom of heaven. We always use the big sins. Well hey, gossip. You share your inner most secrets, and they share them? That is a catastrophe. We wouldn't even need AA if the church did what they're supposed to do.

Russ: Absolutely, absolutely.

Mark: 'Cause AA really is the Church.

Russ: Yes.

William Bryan Bell, M.D. | Psychiatrist

Dr. Bell: How can the church be a better support system, one, an understanding that even though we may define your problem as depression or anxiety or bipolar disorder, there are normal fight-or-flight mechanisms. There are still spiritual battles that are a part of that. The church plays a powerful role as burden carriers. If I know that you are walking with me through my experience that I don't fully understand 'cause my brain and my emotions are going berserk inside me, your presence not condemning me is a strong comfort. It's part of carrying one another's burdens, but again understanding the problem at the root as a spiritual problem that has very powerful genetic, psychological attributes that are beyond. I've done this for 29 years. I still don't fully understand what drives what's going on inside. I can't differentiate, is that physical, is that psychological? It's both, but more powerfully, there's a spiritual aspect that trumps, that is more powerful. So understanding that in the church makes carrying burdens, what we're called to do, more of what we do and support one another.

“If I know that you are walking with me through my experience that I don’t fully understand ‘cause my brain and my emotions are going berserk inside me, your presence not condemning me is a strong comfort.”

— Dr. William Bryan Bell

Mark: Don't you think it would help people also if the pastors would show their scars rather than their trophies? I think you help people by showing, here's what I deal with.

Dr. Bell: Sure. Helping us to be free to identify, this is how God is redeeming me.

Mark: That's what I think happens in my world, is then once you get on TV, once you get on the stage, people look up to you like you got some key to the kingdom.

Dr. Bell: Sure.

Mark: And I tell 'em, look, the only difference between me and you is I got the microphone. We're all in the same boat. We're a pack of freaks trying to find our way home, and our big brother has come for us. And I believe that with all my heart. I really do believe Jesus is the answer, but I'm still trying to figure out all the questions.

Dr. Bell: Lots of questions.

Project Beautiful – Rescuing Beautiful Lives from Human Trafficking

Mark: Dinner Conversations is presented by Project Beautiful, which helps bring young people home from a life of sex trafficking, but before they get into it. This is incredible, and there were five young ladies who were really saved in 2015.

Andrew: Yeah, that's right. April 2015, Nepal was ravaged by an earthquake, and so these five young ladies, Doma, Fersong, Mia, Tika, and Saig, all found themselves in a place of destitution and loneliness because their village, which was already impoverished, was unable to recover from the trauma of that earthquake, and so they were simply looking for a way to survive, to provide for themselves. So they were looking across the border for some opportunities, and a trafficker presented them under the guise of this amazing employment opportunity in some of the bordering countries. And so the trafficker asked them to meet them, which we hear this is common, at the border so that he could then take them across the border.

Mark: Or she.

Andrew: Or she, that's right.

Mark: A lot of women are doing it too.

Andrew: He or she, they take them across the border to their new employment opportunity, but in fact what the trafficker was asking them to do is to meet them there so that they could take them over into India to be trafficked.

Mark: So will you partner with Andrew and me today to help bring the innocent home through Project Beautiful? For just $30 a month, you can save three people a year. Bring 'em home. Go to projectbeautiful.org/dinnerconversations.

Andrew: If we don't help, who will? Project Beautiful, because every life is beautiful and worth fighting for.

Russ Taff | Church Legalism’s Impact on Family

Andrew: OK, passed-out pastor daddy from drinking, how does that shape your view and perspective of God? You obviously are already thinking about God. You're in your church background.

Russ: I loved Jesus. I loved Jesus.

Mark: Even then, back then?

Russ: I would go down to that church. It started when I was 12, and I would just kneel at the altar, and I just started talking to Jesus and telling Him how scared I was and I didn't know what to do. But, you know, the face of your dad is the face of God, and I knew God wouldn't like that. What was done is not right. And then you attach God to that. And it's confusing as hell.

Mark: How did you live through that?

Russ: Well, something would happen when I would sing. And I would feel the Holy Spirit, because you know you grow up Pentecostal and you—

Mark: I felt it too when you sang.

Russ: Well, but.

Mark: Everybody felt it when you sang.

Russ: But it was.

Andrew: And we didn't feel it growing up in a Baptist church.

Mark: No, we didn't.

Russ: But Dad got jealous of me, and Mom would use me as a weapon, and she would say, “At least somebody's in this house trying to serve Jesus.” And so he would take his anger and rage out on me, so after I would feel the Holy Spirit, and I would feel Him when I sang, but I knew I'd pay for it, and so there was just this yin and yang and yin and yang, and God loves me, God hates me. God loves me, God hates me. But the gospel that they presented and the Jesus they presented was so, He judged you, and it was like sinners in the hand of an angry God. And you're dangling over hell, hanging on by a thread, and He could let you go at any minute.

“It was like sinners in the hand of an angry God. And you’re dangling over hell, hanging on by a thread, and He could let you go at any minute.”

— Russ Taff

Mark: You said to me one time, you said, "If your Jesus is a condemning Jesus, you need to fire Him. You have the wrong one."

Russ: And find one that loves you.

Mark: "And find one that loves you, 'cause that's the right one."

Russ: Yeah, my AA sponsor told me that years ago, and I thought it was sacrilegious. I thought like, well you're blaspheming God.

Mark: Yeah, I thought the same thing when you said that. But then I started thinking that, you know, He said, “I'll stick closer to you than a brother.” I thought my brother wouldn't wake me up in the night reminding me of everything I've done wrong. So I must have the wrong Jesus, and I went by a waterfall on Center Hill Lake, and wrote a letter to the one I had been serving, and said, “You are fired. You’re Jesus with a little j, and you are now fired. I'm going with the real one, the one that rose from the dead, the one that loves me, will be with me, and is encouraging me and applauding me.”

Russ Taff, Mark Lowry and Andrew Greer with Ron Block and Buddy Greene singing “Hold to God’s Unchanging Hand”

Russ: 2, 3, 4.

Time is filled with swift transition
Naught of earth unmoved can stand
So build your hopes on things eternal
And hold to God's unchanging hand
Hold to God's unchanging hand
Hold to God's unchanging hand
Build your hopes on things eternal
Hold to God's unchanging hand

When your journey here is ended
If to God you have been true
Fair and bright your home in glory
Your enraptured soul will view
So hold to God's unchanging hand
Hold to God's unchanging hand
Build your hopes on things eternal
And hold to God's unchanging hand

Sissy Goff, M.Ed., LPC-MHSP | Daystar Counseling Ministries

Andrew: You know, a lot of times, especially in ministry, families that are part, whether their father is a pastor, their mother is a minister, whatever, what I've discovered is that oftentimes the children don't feel like they have a place to go when the family's broken, when there's traumatic circumstances inside their family, their parents' relationship. Do you experience that, have you experienced that, children of ministers, and the tension there? What have you experienced in that realm?

Sissy: Yes, I think the tension and the sense that they do have to hide whatever's going on, and so it feels like they can get lost easily, because there's this image they're trying to portray, and sometimes I think the parents inadvertently add to it. I don't think that's their heart at all, but there is this sense of, they come in and have to sit in the front, and have to engage in a way, and they're being watched in a way that for kids, it doesn't give them the freedom, even, probably particularly through adolescence, when so much of their time is about individuating, pushing against their parents, and they don't have the freedom to do that, because they are being watched in this way, and they can either swing towards, you know, what we would always typically think of a rebellious pastor's kid that pushes back anyway, or a child who is maybe typically the oldest and has more of the built-in need to please and perform, and so they go underground with it in a way that I think can be really damaging.

Andrew: In trying to keep up with that pressure, do they, I mean it seems like human nature so we find our vices to deal with whatever it is that we're having, whatever we feel like we're having to mantle, or some perception we're having to keep up. It seems like, at least in my life, I saw how that resulted in addictive behavior, compulsive behavior. Where do you see addiction, you know, begin? Like that's a curious thing to me. It seems like we deal with addiction and recovery as adults.

Sissy: Right.

Andrew: But it's gotta start somewhere sooner, right?

Sissy: Right, right, and the tricky thing is when we're dealing with it as adults, we're typically naming it, and we're wanting to work through it, and so for, I mean I would say it starts young. In a lot of different ways, and maybe our personalities — we could talk about the Enneagram — but our personalities kind of drive us one direction or the other. I mean, Gerald May talks about how we all have some kind of addiction. That just gets reinforced and reinforced through adolescence, because typically they're not looking at it, and not even looking at what's driving me to it, and so until they will do that, until we will do that, we can't get to a place of health, which is why I'm so glad that more kids probably than ever before are seeking counseling, are talking to people, trying to process their emotions, and more parents are helping them get there.

Project Beautiful – Rescuing Beautiful Lives from Human Trafficking

Andrew: Dinner Conversations is presented by Project Beautiful.

Mark: And Project Beautiful has saved over 12,000 lives from sex trafficking around the world, and what I love about Project Beautiful is that they intercept them before they get into it, and you've gotta go to their website and see how it's done.

Andrew: If you go to projectbeautiful.org/dinnerconversations, you can find out how to partner with us in bringing home vulnerable lives today.

Mark: If we don't help, who will? Project Beautiful, because every life is beautiful and worth fighting for.

Russ Taff | Road into Addiction & Finding Your Support

Mark: When did the alcoholism for you come in to play? How did that happen

Russ: With the Imperials. They had been away from Elvis for two years.

Mark: Elvis Presley, just to be clear. For all the millennials that may be watching. This was a singer in the ‘70s. And you joined them, and then what, was that a good experience?

Russ: For a little bit. I built this image of this young man that was humble, which I was. But I was terrified, and so this image gets all the love, gets all the praise, but standing behind that image, you're an Auschwitz survivor, and you're starving to death. Because that love doesn't get to you.

Mark: I remember you telling me, after some concerts, how you would just go do a concert, then go drink yourself to sleep. Is that right?

Russ: Mm-hmm.

Mark: What was that process like?

Andrew: How did you get there?

Mark: How did you get there?

Russ: It was one Friday, and again I never drank, but Tori and her brother and our sister-in-law, they would have like wine with dinner. They lived on the fifth floor in the Village. There were three Heinekens in the refrigerator. I thought, well, I'll just, I'm hot. I'll just have one of these. Tori drinks 'em sometimes. And I drank it, and I started feeling something. And so I drank another one. And within 30 minutes, I had drank all three of 'em, and Mark, I thought a miracle was happening. All the pain went away. And I remember praying, saying, “Thank you, Jesus, thank you. It doesn't hurt anymore. And the chaos is at a distance.” When things would start getting real painful, a lot of these memories would come up, and I remember being in therapy, and every time they would start talking about family, I would just wig out. I don't wanna go there, don't wanna talk about it. I'm acting like it didn't happen, but it's tearing me up inside, because growing up that way, it rewires your brain. I mean, it, you know, circuits connect to this circuits.

Mark: Did alcohol kind of align the chaos?

Russ: Yes.

Mark: Did it kind of like, everything felt like it made sense now.

Russ: And it's okay, you know. The fear is gone, and then after two years, before that, it turned on me. I mean, it had me in its clutches.

Mark: Did Tori see it?

Andrew: Did you become scared of it at that point, or did you recognize it?

Russ: You're scared of it, but you have used it for a crutch so long, you're scared to let it go 'cause you don't know what's gonna happen.

Andrew: Old friend, yeah.

Russ: You know, it may just, your brain may blow up. And the whole time I was crying out, “Help me, God. Somebody help me. I don't know what to do with all of this pain. I don't know what to do with it.”

“Help me, God. Somebody help me. I don’t know what to do with all of this pain. I don’t know what to do with it.”

— Russ Taff

Andrew: Uh huh, and this is the one thing.

Russ: And this anger and this rage, and you're singing about Jesus, and people are coming to Christ, and you go back to the hotel, and there's chaos in your head.

Andrew: I mean, did that produce this kind of tension that—

Mark: The hypocrisy?

Andrew: Did you feel, yeah, what did you feel of that?

Russ: It split my personality. It split it.

Andrew: Which goes back to the one that was loved and the one that's not.

Mark: People don't understand that you can be an alcoholic and be madly in love with Jesus.

Russ: Absolutely.

Andrew: How do you, in your own mental and emotional processes, work through that feeling that I think sometimes is projected on us of the dualism? Like Mark has told me before, “Russ is one of the most Christ-like men I've ever known,” and at the same time knowing that the weaknesses that we carry, that seeming dualism. How do you, just in your world internally, how do you process that? Because the world and the church is telling us we should look and act, and certain things are taboo. But we're having to survive. We have to confess on a daily basis.

“Because the world and the church is telling us we should look and act, and certain things are taboo. But we’re having to survive. We have to confess on a daily basis.”

— Andrew Greer

Mark: If you tell on yourself, you've told on yourself. There's no secrets with you. You know, I think that's what I've seen you do. When you tell all your secrets, nobody can hold it against you, right?

Russ: Yeah, yeah.

Mark: And you don't have that far to fall when you've already climbed down the ladder. If you have a secret, I wouldn't have a clue what it is 'cause you've told me stuff about yourself that you did not need to tell me, but you did.

Russ: But I knew that you would hold it for me.

Mark: To the grave.

Russ: And I have always wanted to be that for you too.

Mark: And you have been.

Russ: There is no judgment, you know. We're all just people trying to figure this out. And trying to let Jesus change us.

“There is no judgment, you know. We’re all just people trying to figure this out. And trying to let Jesus change us.”

— Russ Taff

Mark: If you need to judge somebody, grab a mirror.

Russ: There you go, there you go.

Andrew: Well, and the acceptance of others, right? The open acceptance of others, when we literally confess everything, and they accept us as we are, that quiets our internal voices, doesn't it some?

Russ: Oh yeah.

Andrew: Internal judgment because we have all these inside voices. I think that's what I was thinking about earlier is, how do you quiet the inside voices? But as I'm listening to you, this is part of it — confessing to others.

Mark: Tell 'em to shut up.

Andrew: And them receiving us exactly as we are.

Russ: When you find a few people in your life like Mark that you feel completely safe with, that's all you need, you know. But with somebody that you trust so much and that you can tell your story to and you're not judged, you know.

Andrew: Not even seen differently, right?

Russ: Yeah.

Andrew: Not even viewed differently.

Russ: Because they know your love for Jesus, because they have that love for Jesus, and they know the weakness, because they've experienced both, you know. And so these days, if you haven't been broken in some way, I really don't have any time to sit and talk to you.

Andrew: Are there times you still feel— We were talking about this earlier, and I have addiction and recovery background, and there are times I feel safer as a person and as an individual and as a spiritual person in my recovery meeting, still, even years of recovery, than I do in the—

Russ: 'Cause I'm not judged. They understand me.

Andrew: And you can talk, right?

Russ: And you talk about it because they know what you're thinking. They know what you're going through.

Mark: They've been there.

Russ: They know why your head is in this spot.

Andrew: And we're all confessing.

Russ: Absolutely, and in that confession, the Holy Spirit's opening doors, opening doors, opening doors, of all of these cubicles that's in your head that you put there to survive, just to survive.

Mark: Chains fall off when you confess.

Russ: Yes.

Andrew: It's literal freedom.

Finding a Sanctuary of Confession

Andrew: We were talking about this. Mark and you and I were talking about how we don't know how to confess. Are there practical things we can do as the church, like the broader church, you know? Not just this congregation or this congregation. To really encourage people to confess? I mean, you were saying we wouldn't even need counselors, right?

Sissy: Yeah. Larry Crabb says that, that if the body of Christ was doing what we're called to do, we wouldn't need counselors because we would love each other in a way that brings healing.

Andrew: How do you do that?

Sissy: Yeah, no, exactly. And I don't, I mean, I think as much as we can create safe spaces, I think that's the thing, and what we were talking about—

Andrew: Sanctuary.

Sissy: Yeah, yeah, a sanctuary where people feel like they're free to talk about what's really going on in deeper places, and I think we've got a problem in that social media is pulling the opposite of that. For us as adults.

Andrew: Because we're just putting perception.

Sissy: Yes, I think it's becoming less safe because it becomes so image oriented that, then if everybody else looks like their life's so amazing, I sure can't talk about how hard mine is.

Glimpses of Grace

Andrew: Where did you get your glimpses of grace?

Russ: When did the grace movement really hit?

Mark: Well, I know for me, it was Chuck Swindoll, The Grace Awakening, and Henri Nouwen, The Life of the Beloved, those two books.

Russ: Yeah, and then it just exploded, I mean, where all of us started getting like, oh my God, oh my God.

Mark: He likes us. He not only loves us, He likes us. Isn't that a revelation?

Russ: That changed my world.

Mark: 'Cause it's the love of God will constrain you. The fear of God will get your attention, but it will never constrain you. Because I've done some of my best sinning when I was fearful of God.

Russ: Right.

Mark: But when you fall in love with Him, like Vestal Goodman used to say, "I just don't wanna hurt His feelings."

Russ: But, you know, it's like these last 10 years, I feel like I finally crossed over, and I'm living in the positive. And I'm not trying to repair the past because it's been repaired. When something like this happens, I know what to do now, you know, and when the old tapes start playing in your head or, you know, the devil trying to make you feel guilty for something you did 20 years ago.

Mark: What do you do?

Russ: What do I do?

Mark: Yeah. What tools do you use?

Russ: I laugh.

Mark: You laugh at it?

Russ: I laugh at it, and I remind myself, He separates as far as the east from the west. He has no clue what you're even talking about.

Mark: Yes.

Russ: That's my dad.

Andrew: Why bring it up?

Russ: That's my dad.

Mark: And He will not wallow with you in your past or worry with you about your future because He's only in the present, I believe.

Russ: Yes, yes.

Mark: Living in the present is hard to do. Didn't you have an inkling that it could be true?

Russ: Yes.

Mark: There's something in you that kept you running after Jesus even when everything was telling you in your world He hates you.

Russ: Absolutely.

Mark: But you knew.

Russ: Yeah.

Mark: Something deep down, you just know, He's crazy about you somehow, I think.

Russ: That He loves us so much that He repairs those tiny little cracks, you know, and maybe the vessel's not broken all the way, but there's cracks, there's cracks, there's cracks. And you're frayed, but He comes and He begins to heal, first that little crack, and that little crack, and that little crack, and now, I didn't know He loved me that much. That He would come in and heal those deep, deep things that just tears our lives apart, but He loves us so much, and He never stops, He never gives up, you know? He's right back there the next day, you know? “Are you willing to listen to me now?” Yes, sir. I had to beat my head against the wall four times, you know, but I'm ready now. I'll do it your way. But Mark.

Mark: Oh how I love Jesus. Oh how I love Jesus. Sing with me. Oh how I love Jesus because He first loved me.

Russ: That is great.

Mark: Well, your dream came true.

Andrew: Yeah, that's right! Right here.

Mark: He said, "Please, it'd be great for me to get to sing with Russ Taff." I said, “OK. My Lord, I sing with him all the time.”

Mark: To learn more about Dinner Conversations, go to dinner-conversations.com.

Mark: And if it's really, really, really mean criticism, we can delete you.

Don't Miss an Episode! Subscribe Today:

S01, E01: Comic Grief featuring Chonda Pierce and Ken Davis

WATCH OUR OTHER EPISODES:

S01, E02: Blessed are the Blended featuring Sandi Patty

S01, E03: What’s the Point of Grace? Featuring Point of Grace

S01, E04: Fear, Forgiveness and Friendship Part 1 featuring Anita Renfroe, Patsy Clairmont and Jan Silvious

S01, E05: Adopted, Aren’t We All? featuring Mark Schultz

S01, E07: Dinner Conversations Another Christmas Special

S01, E08: Racism in the Church featuring Nicole C. Mullen

10/25/17 10/25/17

Fear, Forgiveness and Friendship, Part 2 featuring Anita Renfroe, Patsy Clairmont and Jan Silvious

This second-of-two parts Dinner Conversations episode reveals lessons learned through the real-life friendship of best-selling Women of Faith author/speaker Patsy Clairmont, comedienne Anita Renfroe and life coach and author Jan Silvious. Hosts Mark Lowry and Andrew Greer encourage the lively the table talk as the wise women shine a light on why we fear, loving others locally and the health benefits of forgiveness. (And guess what? You can't forgive yourself!)

This second-of-two parts Dinner Conversations episode reveals lessons learned through the real-life friendship of best-selling Women of Faith author/speaker Patsy Clairmont, comedienne Anita Renfroe and life coach and author Jan Silvious. Hosts Mark Lowry and Andrew Greer encourage the lively the table talk as the wise women shine a light on why we fear, loving others locally and the health benefits of forgiveness. (And guess what? You can't forgive yourself!)

Transcript

Mark: Today we're talking about friendship and forgiveness and fear, and we got three great guests today. Now, this is part two. If you haven't seen part one, you need to go back and watch that. And our guests today are once again ...

Andrew: Yeah, Anita Renfroe, Patsy Clairmont, Jan Silvious, continuing the conversation from last time but going into a little more of a serious realm with fear, something that I think is impacting and driving, not just impacting but driving our entire culture. So we talk especially about Patsy's personal story of fear and how she began to work through that and with that. And then forgiveness, which I think forgiveness is actually one of maybe the elements of coming out of fear, not only culturally but personally. So, we put those things together, and I think we got a lot of interesting conversation ahead.

Andrew: And there's one seat left at the table and it's yours, so let's join the conversation.

Mark: I heard something interesting, Jan, about you that you say it's useless to forgive yourself. Is that the correct ...

Jan: It is useless to say I can't forgive myself or I have to forgive myself, and most people you hear talking about it are saying, “I'm really having trouble forgiving myself.” And there's a reason they have trouble forgiving themselves, is because we were never intended to forgive ourselves. Nowhere in scripture are we told to forgive ourselves. We are told that we are forgiven by God through Christ. We are told that we are to forgive and the people we are to forgive are those who have offended us. But nowhere are we told, “And by the way, while you're at it, forgive yourself for that last affront, for the way that you hurt Mark. You need to forgive yourself.”

“Nowhere in scripture are we told to forgive ourselves.”

— Jan Silvious

Anita: I meant to.

Jan: That may be one of the reasons …

Anita: I'm not sorry. I'm not the least bit sorry.

Jan: See, God knew. Hopeless. And so, what we have to come to is to recognize I'm not equipped to do that so I have to humble myself to receive forgiveness from God and to forgive other people, to give forgiveness to other people. That causes a lot of humility.

“I have to humble myself to receive forgiveness from God and to forgive other people, to give forgiveness to other people. That causes a lot of humility.”

— Jan Silvious

Andrew: Really, if we're saying that and it is an honest observation of what's happened internally, then really we're talking about a pretty strictly spiritual experience. What we mean is we've received forgiveness.

Jan: Yes, it is received. Now, it is absolutely correct, and the actual transaction is I know I've been forgiven by God and I receive it, but that takes humility. But forgiveness is a transaction. It's something that has to be done for you and to you.

Patsy: Well, that's the finished work of Christ, so for us to think we can add or subtract anything to that is where the arrogance comes in and where the possibility for humility to be birthed and grow inside of us happens.

Mark: So, you can never forgive yourself? You can't do that?

Jan: But you can receive it all day long. That's grace—

Mark: You can receive it, and then you can also hopefully forget the horror of what you've done. I mean, that's important to me or at least let that ... You don't have to carry it every day.

Jan: You can't carry it every day because that's that reliving of stuff that destroys you, and so I have to just know. I've known people who've done terrible, terrible things, and they—

Anita: Stop talking about me.

Patsy: You promised you wouldn't tell.

Anita: You said you wouldn't bring it up.

Mark: So you have a sin scale.

Anita: Horrible, horrible things—

Andrew: Horrible things—

Anita: Not just horrible things.

Jan: No, no, I mean things that they can't forget. I mean, we can hurt somebody's feelings and think, well, good night, I didn't mean to do that and they have to still forgive us. It's not as, well, if I hurt you. No, it's like, I hurt you. I had no intention but that doesn't matter. “I'm sorry” doesn't cut it. It's like, would you forgive me? But I said I'm sorry. Well, pshaw, I don't care that you said that you're sorry. It's like there's a transaction that has to take place—

Mark: Forgiveness.

Jan: When there's been a hurt and an offense.

Anita: I would also like to say I think one of the basics of a good, long-standing friendship is the idea of pre-forgiveness. The way that—

Andrew: Very…

Mark: Interesting.

Andrew: Calvinist.

Anita: No, no, no, it says that while we were yet sinners, Jesus died for us. Like, while we were still in our sin continuing to sin, gonna sin in the future, people generations and generations and generations continue to sin.

Mark: And still He forgives.

Anita: And still He forgives. So it's a continuing action but we rely on the goodness of God and the mercy of God through that forgiveness transaction, knowing that as we sin, if we'll confess, He's faithful.

Jan: I think He's faithful even if we don't confess—

Mark: Yes!

Anita: OK, great.

Mark: It's true.

Anita: Sorry, I read the Scripture. I was being literal.

Andrew: Fundamental Baptist!

Anita: I'm just saying that in our friendship there is a pre-forgiveness. I don't know of something they could do bad enough to where I wouldn't be like—

Mark: Visiting them at the prison.

Anita: Staying with them overnight while they knit. OK, I'm just saying there's no things that I can't imagine a scenario. I mean, one may exist—

Mark: Well, I can.

Anita: OK, go ahead.

Mark: Murder my sister.

Anita: Yeah, that's a good one.

Mark: I'd have a problem hanging out with you.

Andrew: But we have seen the amazing act of forgiveness when these stories come to light of someone—

Mark: That's only God.

Andrew: It is. That's when you cannot look and observe that and experience that and not say there is something deeper than just us because we don't do that naturally.

Jan: No, it has to be deeper, and I think when we understand grace, then we understand that it's what God does in you, through you, to you, and for you that you cannot do for yourself.

Mark: All of it.

Jan: Then we understand it's all of Him. It's not of us, and so why would I think I can forgive myself?

Mark: Well, it's kind of nice … Now, you're saying we don't have to. That's the good news.

Andrew: Mark's on the loose.

Mark: I am loosed. I no longer have to worry about forgiving myself because it's something someone has to give to me.

Jan: And it's already been given to you so you can just live in it and say I'm forgiven.

Mark: Yeah, justified.

Jan: And we're very forgiving toward people when we recognize we're forgiven. Forgiven people forgive people. Unforgiven people, people who are holding onto I just can't forgive myself and you know what, I'm having a little bit of trouble with you.

“Forgiven people forgive people.”

— Jan Silvious

Mark: Forgiving someone else is really in your best interest.

Jan: Absolutely, it sends away your right to punish, but it also sends away your connection to the offense. It's like I'm not connected to this offense anymore. I'm not gonna bear it.

Anita: So those people are not taking up real estate in your head.

Jan: Absolutely.

Mark: And holding one second of a grudge...

Jan: What a waste of time.

Mark: Is a waste of time, you're right.

Jan: We forget what it does internally in our bodies. We are eating ourselves up and we wonder why we have all of these diseases that are not generated from our DNA. We have just brought them on ourselves because we're too pigheaded to forgive somebody or we have our nose out of joint because you said that and until you confess it, I'm not speaking.

Sissy Goff, M.Ed., LPC-MHSP | Daystar Counseling Ministries

Andrew: What is forgiveness? What is true forgiveness?

Sissy: I've heard something about how it is the ability to truly wish somebody well that's hurt you, which I love that. And Anne Lamotte says it's when it finally becomes unimportant to hit back.

Andrew: I love that, yeah

.Sissy: Kind of the same idea with a little more grip--

Andrew: Yeah, right, exactly.

Sissy: To me, that's what it feels like in my own life is when I lay it down.

Andrew: How does carrying the spirit of unforgiveness or not being able to get to the place of not needing to hit back, what does that do to us, the person who's holding that? Forget the person who did the harm, how's that impacting us?

Sissy: What I watch is that it just seems to harden our hearts and that the walls around them get thicker and thicker and thicker, and then to work through the forgiveness, which seems like so much of that does happen in the context of relationship, either with the person or somebody else safe that helps you get there, then to work through that, the wall becomes so thick nobody can really get to us anymore.

Andrew: So then what does that produce in our families and our relationships? We stop functioning, don't we?

Sissy: We stop functioning, yes.

Andrew: So forgiveness is essential to mental, emotional, spiritual health.

Sissy: Yes.

Andrew: And forgiveness has been exemplified to us, right, through Jesus so that's our practice.

Sissy: Yeah.

Andrew: Does forgiveness even require the other person?

Sissy: I don't think it does because I think sometimes forgiveness, the other person you're not able to ever work through it. I mean, say you've been sexually abused or something like that, that you cannot sit in the context of a time with that person to work through and have a conversation about it, but we would still need forgiveness for our own self. And it takes away … I think when we don't forgive someone, that person has so much more power, which is one of the things I talk about with kids a lot is they just stay in that place of perpetual power and how do you get to a place where ... I think what gets confusing too in terms of therapy is the issue of boundaries and forgiveness and how do you have boundaries where you still love because it can become I'm not gonna forgive because you hurt me because I'm having a boundary. And so it almost cancels each other out in a way.

“When we don’t forgive someone, that person has so much more power.”

— Sissy Goff

Andrew: So that there's appropriate boundaries to say, OK, I may not be able to sit in a room with you. We don't need to have a relationship, but you can literally genuinely come to a place to say, I forgive you, right?

Sissy: Yes.

Andrew: We see that … Like we've heard the stories of prisoners who forgive the families of perpetrators. And I heard someone say it doesn't make the other person right but it sets you free, right?

Sissy: I love that idea, yeah, sets you free.

Project Beautiful – Rescuing Beautiful Lives from Human Trafficking

Mark: Dinner Conversations is presented by Project Beautiful.

Andrew: A passionate community committed to saving innocent lives from the modern day terrors of slavery, Project Beautiful has intercepted over 12,000 people from the front lines of sex trafficking and today, you can partner with us and help.

Mark: So will you partner with Andrew and me? Go to projectbeautiful.org/dinnerconversations for more information.

Andrew: If we don't help, who will? Project Beautiful, because every life is beautiful and worth fighting for.

Living Fearless

Mark: What could you accomplish if you were fearless?

Patsy: Ooh, what could I accomplish if I was fearless? I'd get over myself.

Mark: If you were fearless, you would get over yourself. What does that mean?

Andrew: We're so obsessed with ourselves, and isn't that fear driven?

Patsy: Well, it's scary to look at your own issues.

Jan: That's it.

Patsy: It's very scary.

Jan: It's getting over your scary.

Patsy: And that's where the fear comes in at and that scary place where you think if I embrace this truth about myself, I'm afraid it's gonna eat my lunch, then I'm gonna be the main course on my own diet here. So it's hard to look at all of that, the truth of who you are but yet in doing so, the Lord promises us there'll be liberty in it but doesn't mean you're not gonna be miserable on your way to liberty.

Mark: Wow, and lose a lot of friends, lose a lot of things, lose a lot of—

Andrew: And we're in a culture though paralyzed by fear, aren't we? In a sense of isn't that why we're obsessed about politics and about hot topics? Isn't part of that obsession because maybe even back to what you're saying because we're so afraid of actually living our lives that we have to then project—

Anita: It's easier to get distracted by all of that and then not have to deal as she said. But you know fear is the Bible tells us only one of two motivators in the world. It's fear or love, and perfect love casts out fear, so what does it say about—

Patsy: Because fear has torment.

Anita: Torment in it, so what does it say about us that we would more easily embrace fear than love? But I'm also so inspired by people like Bob Goff who make it their daily aim to do everything out of love, every decision they make—

Mark: How do you even do that?

Anita: I don't even know, but he seems to be doing it. That's why I want to be—

Jan: It's a choice.

Patsy: Oh, you gotta follow him. Follow him on Twitter—

Mark: Bob Goff–

Anita: His thing is called Love Does, and he believes love is a verb, it's an action word, and everything he does, you know what I'm talking about, he believes that love is the motivator and if we follow Jesus, love will be everything.

Mark: Well, I agree with that.

Andrew: OK, so here's what's interesting. It's more of my generation thing, Mark, but—

Anita: Oh, wow. Fear just came across the table.

Andrew: That's right. Here's the thing is that I get almost called out if I express in the context of some conversation about culture or in fear-based things — I'm afraid of Muslims, I'm afraid of gays, I'm afraid of the next president, whatever — if I say, well, what if we just set that aside for now and we get outside of our house and we go next door to our neighbor and see what they need? Or we know someone's got this need, this need, or I just go to my friend Patsy's house and sit with Les a little bit and see how he's doing and how is she doing and all these things that generate love and open an environment of love, and I almost get called out that to actually ... I'm not saying I don't care about these things that impact our lives, but not to obsess about it. It's almost like walking away and taking it.

Jan: You got your head in the sand.

Andrew: Yeah, and that I'm some kind of—

Anita: Isn't it good that we know exactly what the other person's gonna say? Right now, we both said—

Jan: We know the same cliché.

Anita: But love is almost always local.

Mark: And it's hard to hate it when it has a face. Fear is a horrible thing, but then there's a healthy fear, too, like teaching your kids not to play in the street. You gotta know—

Anita: I think that's caution. It's not the same thing as fear.

Mark: Yeah, fear, you're right.

Jan: And there's a healthy fear that looks at things as they are but is not as obsessed with them. But the thing was that we can distract ourselves from these major fears, but we also need to be aware, and so it's be aware, don't be stupid, and there are things in the world that we have to look out for—

Patsy: That are dangerous.

Jan: And we need to be wise and not stupid, but on the other hand, look closely because what's in your world right there is where God has you and He's gonna give you the grace for the moment to deal with that as He will for the greater things if you encounter them.

Andrew: Here's what's confusing to me, though. And not about what you just said, but I'm interested in maybe sometimes I think, well, maybe I'm just a naive, maybe I am a Millennial or something, maybe I'm just dumb.

Mark: You are. I mean a Millennial.

Anita: Ain't no maybe about it.

Mark: You're not dumb, not dumb.

Jan: No but Millenialistic.

Andrew: I talk to friends of different generations, more my parents generation, and we'll discuss what's going on in the current climate of this or that. I talked to these individuals and I say but here's what's interesting, you're saying you're afraid of this person or that person who's in this lifestyle or from that country or whatever, but if they were your next door neighbor, I know you and I know your heart. You would be over there in a second. When their kid is sick, you're taking the casserole over. You are not actually afraid of what you say you're afraid of. So how do we get past what we say we're afraid of, but yet in our hearts, I find that's not true and yet we're dying on these mole hills. What is that about? Why is that?

Anita: Before you answer that, can I interject one thing because I know you have a good answer for that. I don't know that we were ever meant to know the things we know.

Jan: There you go.

Anita: We have a 24-hour news cycle that is driving our consciousness, and I just heard Denzel Washington say on T.D. Jakes’ show ...

Andrew: Wow, that's a combo.

Anita: I know, right. Is there 24 hours worth of news? No, there is not. There's not. We were never meant to know as much as we know as often as we know it. So when I hear you reporting these fears and these concerns, 94 percent of it is churned up out of things if we didn't know, we would not be obsessed. We would only know local love. We would only know global missions and global love. We would know that in the esoteric larger sense, not this way that we know and we obsess and we're afraid of it because of what is in our face all day long. So I would say, first of all, we know too much and we don't know enough at the same time, but it churns these things up that shouldn't be issues if we weren't watching 24-hour news cycles.

Andrew: Turn the TV off and go next door, right? Love is local. Love is almost always local. So now, what you were gonna say.

“Love is local. Love is almost always local.”

— Andrew Greer

Jan: I think you said it well. We're so bombarded with all of this stuff and I think we get a mindset and that's what happens. Everybody gets in their worldview and their mindset, and it's not expansive enough to take in the next door neighbor as well as the whole world, and so it's either or. We're just obsessed with this whole huge worldview of we're going to hell in a handbasket or the next door neighbor. And the thing is we need to be aware so we don't have our heads in the sand, but on the other hand, the Bible says occupy till I come. And so what are we supposed to occupy? Whatever's in front of us. Do what's next. Don't get all head up about that.

Anita: But I believe because of social media, we believe we can affect it.

Andrew: OK, so--

Anita: So here's the thing. We get the news and we're like, oh gosh, I gotta tweet and get people on this. It's a false sense of action when all the action is next door, but we believe somehow we're impacting it, and I'm not saying we're not, at all. I'm not denying that. I'm just saying it's too much responsibility. We were never meant to bear that.

Mark: When we were growing up, there were three channels.

Anita: Three channels and one time of news with somebody you trusted.

Mark: Right, Walter Cronkite.

Anita: That's right, and it was only half an hour. Half hour they got the whole world in in half an hour.

Andrew: And then you went on?

Anita: And you went on. You ate your dinner and went on with your life, and you're like, oh, well, I guess that's what's happening.

Jan: I Love Lucy and then you went to bed.

Anita: You're back with your neighbors.

Andrew: And that's what I think when I'm having these conversations that span generations. I'm thinking you lived through Civil Rights, you lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis, you lived through harrowing things, and you're afraid of today? Yes, there's equal fears, but I think that—

Anita: Cuban Missile Crisis wasn't on TV.

Andrew: Right.

Mark: No, it wasn't.

Andrew: Exactly, we didn't know–

Mark: I didn't know about it till the movie came out.

Jan: It was, 1962, it was.

Andrew: I didn't read about it until 30 years later.

Anita: But it was one day in your life. It wasn't every day.

Jan: Exactly, and then we went on about our business because we weren't gonna blow up. There was tension, but it was momentary tension. It was not this daily tension. And I think we were informed but we weren't informed on an hourly basis.

Patsy: That's how I became agoraphobic. Same story, over and over until it began to affect my mental health, and I became so stuck that I was hopeless, and I went from hiding in my house to hiding in my bed and one day I woke up and I though, well, where will I go from here? There wasn't much of a path open, and so it was at that point that I began to say, Lord, I wanna get well, and if You show me, I'll walk on that path. So He began me on a very slow process I thought but a very deliberate one and helping me get well, and it was by the very thing she said is the fact that our brain can choose paths to how we feel. And so God has designed us with the will that's stronger than our emotions. So we can make a choice based on truth from a principle of God even when our emotions are objecting, and eventually, they fall in line with the truth.

“God has designed us with the will that’s stronger than our emotions.”

— Patsy Clairmont

Mark: Wow, how long were you agoraphobic?

Patsy: About six years in my home.

Mark: What age were you at this time?

Patsy: I was in my 20s.

Mark: And now, were you married?

Andrew: With children?

Patsy: I was married. Yes, I married when I was 17.

Mark: And you had children at this time, too?

Patsy: Had one child when I turned 20, and then that's when things were accelerating.

Mark: Do you think it was postpartum?

Patsy: I think part of it was. I think not having the insight or the information that we have today delayed some of the help I could've had, but then again, I look and I think God's timing is never wrong, so as stuck as I was, it may be how stuck I needed for my temperament to get to a place to say, "God, whatever you want me to do." And when I began then to see breakthroughs, hope started coming back into my heart.

Andrew: And she lived in Michigan.

Anita: That's a depressing place.

Mark: I love Michigan.

Patsy: I do, too.

Anita: No, but in the winter time, really everybody is agoraphobic, right? Like just get me inside next to a fireplace.

William Bryan Bell, M.D. | Psychiatrist

Dr. Bell: We have a condition, agoraphobia panic attacks drive that kind of a fight or flight. It's like somebody just threw in 30 rattlesnakes, but I don't see that—

Mark: That's what they're feeling?

Dr. Bell: That is what they're feeling, and so I don't see snakes, I don't attribute what's going on inside me to what I can see, and so I target I might be having a heart attack.

Mark: Right.

Dr. Bell: There's an urgent intensity. Just as with 30 snakes, there's an intense response to do something to get out of the situation That's what agoraphobia panic attack feels like inside. Sometimes with panic, it's just not that understandable that what triggers are. Are they out there? Yes, that's how we work.

Mark: So what would you say to someone who says, "Oh, that's what I go through. He's talking about me." What would you say? I would say, and I know from experience, when I feel that, and I have felt what you're talking about where I'll feel this anxiety. There's nothing wrong. Everything in the world is great. My heart'll start racing and I'll think everything's OK. Take a deep breath. And I'll tell myself and literally just deep breaths help a lot, for me, but I also take Effexor. I take the smallest amount you can every day so mole hills aren't mountains.

Dr. Bell: Sure, counselors, 29 years of doing this, I'm kind of used to talking with people who have been in the middle of a rattlesnake pit and don't fully understand it. And so sometimes people … support isn't quieting the reaction down enough. People are imperfect. Medications can be used supportively. They work in the physiology of the fight or flight reaction, kind of as you describe. They help chill it out. They help quiet the reaction. I see 30 snakes — my reaction to them is subdued. Is that helpful? It can be. If I wanna learn to deal with the snakes better, that's the spiritual part. If all I want to do is make the uncomfortable feelings go away, well, that wasn't God's purpose in providing the trial and tribulation. We're called to rejoice in trials and tribulations. Nobody does that. Most racing hearts, rejoicing isn't ... Well, why do the authors say that? Because through it, God's helping us grow and mature, but that would mean what I'm going through has some spiritual attributes also.

Project Beautiful – Rescuing Beautiful Lives from Human Trafficking

Mark: Dinner Conversations is now sponsored by Project Beautiful, which I love this organization but I had not heard of them until you brought them to my attention. How did you hear about them?

Andrew: Yeah, our executive producer, Celeste, and I found out through a friend of ours here in Nashville about the organization and, of course, human trafficking and the idea of modern day slavery is something that's still fairly new to me as far as hearing about it and not just hearing about it but then understanding that this is a relevant conversation in our world today, that at this moment in history, more people than ever are actually enslaved, which is mind boggling to me. I think of it from a textbook scenario, American history or pre-Civil War, but in fact, through human trafficking rings, more people than ever are in slavery. You hear a lot of stories about people helping girls, women, boys, men, whoever, people who have already been in—

Mark: There are grown people involved in this?

Andrew: Adults.

Mark: Yeah, getting trafficked?

Andrew: That's correct. Well, what Celeste and I were initially so impressed by is that with Project Beautiful, they're not being rescued after being trafficked, they're being intercepted before they're being trafficked as they're in the process. So, as human traffickers are deceiving them and—

Mark: Yeah, then they catch them at the border.

Andrew: That's right.

Mark: I mean, that'd be kind of exciting. Hey, let's tell them where to go.

Andrew: Yeah, it's a easy thing. Go to projectbeautiful.org/dinnerconversations. That's how you'll find our partnership with Project Beautiful explicitly. You'll be able to partner with us there, give. We're gonna give you a little something just as a thank you because of how much it means to us. We hope that Project Beautiful becomes a part of your own big picture spiritual conversation in your family.

Mark: If we don't help, who will? Project Beautiful, because every life is beautiful and worth fighting for.

Overcoming Fear

Andrew: Patsy, something we talked about earlier was getting over our self in the elements of understanding fear, putting fear in its place. Part of overcoming fear is getting over.

Patsy: One of the things that has really helped me in my development and growth is the truth that I wrote on two years ago, and that was a book entitled You Are More Than You Know. And what I learned in that is that I was more than I knew not because I was really something special but because God is greater than we can imagine and because He is Creator God, He has placed within us potential beyond what we've experienced yet. We cannot get to the limit of our potential because He is potential-less in regard to what He places within us opportunity wise as far as our gifting. So a friend came and asked me, "Would you like to go to a poetry class and an art class?" And I said, "Well, I don't paint and I don't poet." Then I thought about that and I thought, well, I really need to learn how to take more risks or I won't know what I'm capable of. And so I agreed to go, and when I went to the poetry class, every time the poetry teacher would give us an assignment, she would give us a word and say, "Write on this." Every time she gave us a word, I would say, "Oh, I have nothing to say about that." And then I would have to get over myself and I would have to say, "Give it a try. Risk it. See what's inside here." And so I would say to myself, "Self, do you have anything to say about water?" And that went down in me to a deep place and rose back up, and I knew immediately what I wanted to write about, and that was a story about my husband and I. We have been married for 54 years.

Andrew: And you're 56-years-old.

Patsy: And I'm only 56. That little robber. This is what I wrote that day, and this is to my husband. The first time I met you and you held my hand, it was on the shore of Lake Superior. I was 15 and you were 16. The water stretched out around the world and back again. I thought I had heard a song on the waves as they washed my feet and caused me to leave for a moment imprints of my walk with you, and then as if a lake breeze had caused it, your hand found mine. My heart smiled at the thought that we, like the water and the shore, belonged together. And now we are seasoned with years and tears. We've known rough waters of change and loss. We have held tightly to each other's hand, even when we weren't sure why. The crashing waves of hardship wash away at our footprints but not our love. You are water. I am shore. We belong together.

Addicted to Fear

Patsy: Being someone who is addicted to fear, I can tell you that it has an addictive quality because there is a certain surge in there. There is a certain–

Anita: Adrenaline gets in there.

Patsy: Adrenaline but also sadness. You can get addicted to your own sadness and the sadness of the world—

“You can get addicted to your own sadness and the sadness of the world.”

— Patsy Clairmont

Jan: Ain't that the truth.

Patsy: Just helps add to it.

Andrew: Why are you pointing this way when you say that? You get addicted to your own sadness, cue to the left.

Jan: Well, addiction to sadness. So when you begin to think about that, what is it about sadness that is so addictive?

Mark: Or attractive?

Jan: Yeah, who wants to be sad?

Andrew: I do.

Mark: You do?

Andrew: It is so–

Anita: A true melancholy.

Jan: What is good about it?

Mark: You love to be sad?

Andrew: Listen, the first time I ever knew you could actually feel good while being sad was when I first heard Emmylou Harris sing. And I grew up in Texas, and that old hollowed out voice, which has always sounded old even when she was 25-years-old, sang these strains, very plaintive strains—

Anita: The fact that you used the word plaintive strains means that you do not belong to this time. You were born in the wrong era. Plaintive strains, continue.

Andrew: When I was in elementary and middle school at recess time, I'd get asked to play kickball or volleyball or whatever, and sometimes I would, but more often than not, I would say, “No, thanks,” and opt to walk the perimeter of the playground on my own.

Mark: Oh, you were high drama. That is just high drama.

Andrew: Some of that's introversion and lack of medication—

Mark: And you probably thought they were filming your life. I used to pretend I was the center of the universe, and they would be filming my life—

Anita: Like The Truman Show?

Andrew: And then he made it true. Welcome to Dinner Conversations.

Mark: Then Facebook made it true.

Mark: Or you can only relate to the people who deal with that same problem.

Andrew: It's specific thing—

Mark: You become a poster boy or poster girl for agoraphobia or whatever, however you say that.

Jan: For that.

Anita: Arachnophobia.

Mark: Too scared to leave the room, that kind of thing.

Patsy: And what I like to deal with is fear in general because then that fits everyone.

Mark: Yes, really nice. It’s like writing a song. You can't be too specific.

Andrew: What song did you write?

Mark: “Mary, Did You Know?” We like to mention that every program.

Mark: To learn more about Dinner Conversations, go to dinner-conversations.com.

Andrew: And don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel. That'll allow you to get a new episode every week. Like us or don't like us and leave a comment, good or constructively criticism.

Mark: And if it's really, really, really mean criticism, we can delete you.

Don't Miss an Episode! Subscribe Today:

S01, E01: Comic Grief featuring Chonda Pierce and Ken Davis

WATCH OUR OTHER EPISODES:

S01, E02: Blessed are the Blended featuring Sandi Patty

S01, E03: What’s the Point of Grace? Featuring Point of Grace

S01, E04: Fear, Forgiveness and Friendship Part 1 featuring Anita Renfroe, Patsy Clairmont and Jan Silvious

S01, E05: Adopted, Aren’t We All? featuring Mark Schultz

S01, E07: Dinner Conversations Another Christmas Special

S01, E08: Racism in the Church featuring Nicole C. Mullen

S01, E09: Liquor and Legalism featuring Russ Taff

10/24/17 10/24/17

Musical Theology featuring Buddy Greene and Ron Block

Two of Nashville music's most inspiring musicians, Dove Award-winning singer-songwriter Buddy Greene (who co-wrote "Mary, Did You Know?" with our own Mark Lowry) and Grammy-winning songwriter-banjo extraordinaire Ron Block (of Alison Krauss + Union Station) join hosts Mark Lowry and Andrew Greer for an expressive table talk on how music helps form, and inform, our faith. Plus, lots of live music and guest appearances by singer/songwriter Cindy Morgan and hymn expert/author Robert J. Morgan!

Two of Nashville music's most inspiring musicians, Dove Award-winning singer-songwriter Buddy Greene (who co-wrote "Mary, Did You Know?" with our own Mark Lowry) and Grammy-winning songwriter-banjo extraordinaire Ron Block (of Alison Krauss + Union Station) join hosts Mark Lowry and Andrew Greer for an expressive table talk on how music helps form, and inform, our faith. Plus, lots of live music and guest appearances by singer/songwriter Cindy Morgan and hymn expert/author Robert J. Morgan!

Transcript

Mark: Today's conversation is gonna be how music has impacted our theology. I know the hymns of the church that I grew up singing are the ones that come back to me when I'm in times of trial or testing or having an MRI. “Blessed Assurance” is a song that comes to me all the time. And I wanna talk about that today. How the music has impacted the theology. And tell them about our guests.

Andrew: Our guests are some great friends of ours. Buddy Greene who co-wrote “Mary Did You Know” with Mark Lowry. But he's a great singer-songwriter and harmonica player. Ron Block, who's potentially — I think he is actually, officially — the world’s most famous, best banjo player.

Mark: Wow.

Andrew: And also a songwriter. Plays with the Alison Krauss & Union Station. Tons of Grammys. But what's important and what's really cool about these guys in this conversation especially is that in their lives, music especially has informed their spiritual journey.

Mark: Especially, it has. And I am especially glad to have them here today. Let's join the conversation.

Mark: I mean you travel with—

Andrew: Alison Krauss.

Mark: Alison Krauss. … All I've ever known is the gospel world. And there have been some stories in the gospel world, too, of craziness going on. But my question I guess is is it harder? Did you always want to play country music or bluegrass?

Ron: Bluegrass, yeah.

Mark: So, have you ever played in a Christian band at all?

Ron: No, but I've done gospel my whole life. Not in the gospel world.

Buddy: I drag him out on the road with me sometimes.

Ron: Yeah, I go with Buddy.

Andrew: But do you feel a freedom in that? Like we've been talking about this legalism. We talked about all the things that bind us up spiritually. But what about musically? Do you feel a freedom? You know, sometimes I think we — and Buddy, I think I can include you some in this — but work a lot in the field of gospel music. And we feel sometimes, I would say.

Mark: What is expected of us.

Andrew: Yes, and parameters that I'm not even sure I agree with because I'm like, well, this is still within the context of my faith and my spiritual world. Do you feel free from that? Or does that feel too free? Like, I'd like to go to church today when I play. You know, that kind of thing.

Ron: Generally, I've always had a strong compulsion that I'm to play music. And gospel is included with that. But it's basically, I play in a secular band. And we do gospel within the show. But like, for gospel artists, doing gospel, they're bringing that to Christians mostly.

Mark: You're hauling the water to the desert.

Ron: You go out there into the world and you… We'll do these long sets of sad songs, fun songs, all kinds of stuff, and then at the end, there's kind of this gospel segment that's a spirit...

Buddy: That's what I was gonna bring up. I remember seeing Alison and Union Station play at the Ryman one night, and there was just this great concert, an incredible virtuoso musicianship going on up on stage. Amazing singing, all of them. And then these songs, just great songs, so well crafted. And you're right. Most of them are sad. Most of them are about some sort of brokenness, in a relationship, whatever. And then at the end of the night, they leave the stage and everybody's going nuts, bringing them back out for an encore. And they come back out, and they get around one microphone. And they sing this gospel song, “He Is the Reason.”

Mark: “He Is the Reason”?

Ron: “There Is a Reason.”

Buddy: “There Is a Reason.” It's a song that Ron wrote. And it was just like all of a sudden... And then the great thing about it is here's an encore moment, everybody's on the edge of their seat listening.

Andrew: Talking about Jesus is the reason.

Buddy: That's right. There's one mic on stage and about five people leaning into it singing, and everybody's hanging on every word. And so the gospel just got shouted into the Ryman that night at that moment. And I would say it's probably a more effective three minutes than the hour and a half gospel concert that you went to.

Alison Krauss & Union Station singing “There Is a Reason”

Hurtin' brings my heart to You
Crying with my need
Depending on Your love to carry me
The love that shed His blood
For all the world to see
This must be the reason for it all

Project Beautiful – Rescuing Beautiful Lives from Human Trafficking

Andrew: I'd like to introduce you to someone’s daughter. This is Amorita. Amorita is from Nepal. She grew up with the same hopes and dreams as our daughters. To get an education, a good job, meet the man of her dreams, and live happily ever after. Unfortunately, thousands of girls never have the chance to follow their dreams because girls like Amorita are prime targets for human traffickers. No one’s sister, friend, or daughter should have to endure this kind of evil. Human trafficking is the greatest injustice of our time. Project Beautiful is an initiative to stop human trafficking, to intercept victims at the most strategic moment, while they are being transported and before they have been exploited or enslaved. Thankfully, Amorita was intercepted, saved, and returned home safely. Visit projectbeautiful.org/dinnerconversations to learn how you can join the fight. And with our mobile app, you'll be alerted when trafficking victims are intercepted, so you can literally see the impact you're making. Join Project Beautiful today. Because every life is beautiful and worth fighting for.

The Christian Artist in Ministry

Ron: I think sometimes it happens where people will have a message and they go, I wanna get this message. And it happens sometimes in Christian movies, sometimes in Christian music, and where the message is too much the primary thing that they cannot give sufficient attention to the rest of it. So, in going, well, the message is good and it's God’s message, so God's gonna bless it anyway. And Dorothy Sayers has this fantastic essay called “Why Work?” She said some of the worst religious films — she wrote this back in the 40s.

Mark: Wow.

Ron: She said some of the worst religious films I ever saw were by a company that chose its staff exclusively for their piety. And then she said, bad acting, bad photography, bad writing, made a result so grotesquely irreverent that the films could not be shown in churches without bringing Christianity into contempt. So that's the level of contempt she had for that. Like where it's all message and then no technique. You have to study guitar technique. You have to study songwriting technique. We have to study the craft of what we do, the craft of singing. And be excellent and do the job. Then you can be a vehicle for the message.

“We have to study the craft of what we do, the craft of singing. And be excellent and do the job. Then you can be a vehicle for the message.”

— Ron Block

Mark: Grateful. That is the truth.

Buddy Greene, Ron Block, and Mark Lowry singing “Twelve Gates to the City”

Well I saw the new Jerusalem city
As long and deep as it was wide
Coming down out of heaven
Beautiful and holy
Prepared to be God’s bride
Well there's no more crying in the city
And no more death or pain
Well everything's made new
It's the gospel truth
And all the old things are passed away
Can you help me now?

Oh, what a beautiful city
Oh, what a beautiful city
God knows it's a beautiful city
Twelve gates to the city
Hallelujah amen

Oh well I didn't see no temple in the city
I saw God and the Lamb instead
I saw the glory of God give the light of the Lamb
It was a lamp like the revelator said
Well, every tribe, nation, and tongue
Well, they were walking together as one
And all the kings of the earth
Were bring their worth
To the city that needs no sun
Can you help me now?

Oh what a beautiful city
Oh what a beautiful city
God knows it's a beautiful city
Twelve gates to the city
Hallelujah amen

Buddy: Play it, Ron Block.

Yeah well now the Alpha and the Omega
The beginning and the end
You know the Lion and the Lamb
The Great I Am
He got a message for every kinda man
And He says if you're thirsty come to the city
Come drink from the water of life
You know there is no cost
Don't stay lost
Come inherit your eternal life
Well, can you help me now?

Oh what a beautiful city
Oh what a beautiful city
God knows it's a beautiful city
Twelve gates to the city
Hallelujah, amen

Buddy: Oh, do it again, Ron.

Well, there were three gates in the east
Three gates in the north
Three gates in the south
Three gates in the west
Woah and that makes twelve gates to the city
Hallelujah, amen

Oh what a beautiful city
Oh what a beautiful city
God knows it's a beautiful city
Twelve gates to the city
Hallelujah, amen
Mark, I said there was twelve gates to the city
Hallelujah, amen
Ron, you say twelve gates to the city
Hallelujah, amen

Mark: That was good.

Music and Spirituality

Andrew: In my mind, music, the act of participating in music, is a direct link to God. How has music in your lives played out in a spiritual sense? Has it been a spiritual connector for you? Has it been a revealer to you of maybe God in His character? And how?

Ron: So many levels that music has revealed to me who I'm not and who I am.

Mark: Really?

Ron: One of the ways when I was young, I got my identity from playing music. That was a way as a teenager I felt good about myself. Well, I'm playing good, I feel good. I played with a bunch of people and they liked my playing. I feel good. Right, so I got my identity from what other people thought of my playing and also from the playing itself. If I played good, I just went, yeah! Which there's nothing wrong with those things in and of themselves. But when your identity comes from that and begins to come more and more, it's an idol. And so through that I got in Union Station, and that idol just ramped up and just threw me to the ground. A couple years later—

“When your identity comes from that and begins to come more and more, it’s an idol.”

— Ron Block

Mark: What happened?

Ron: Well, just internally.

Mark: Okay.

Ron: It just didn't work.

Mark: It wasn't fulfilling.

Ron: It wasn't, and I felt bad about myself. And I couldn't figure it out. But I knew I was a good Baptist boy, that the answers were in the Word. And I started finding truths in the Word that pointed me to Christ. Where it said things like, for you are dead and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Now I'm free, I no longer live but Christ lives in me. And things like that where, he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit. If any man is in Christ, he is a new creation. Not will be a new creation, but is. And then the old has gone, the new has come. So those tenses like really banged against my theology in those verses. Those kinds of verses that talk about it as now instead of as future. And in my theology that I grew up with, it was all talked about as future. It's all horrible now and Jesus forgives us for all our horribleness but someday.

“If any man is in Christ, he is a new creation. Not will be a new creation, but is.”

— Ron Block

Mark: Someday.

Ron: So I began to take that, what I had always thought was someday, and look at it in the Word as a present tense thing, and it began to change how I thought about myself and how I felt. So that's one of the ways in which music, for me, was a revealer.

Cindy Morgan|Singer-Songwriter

Andrew: As someone who appreciates the hymns and the history of church music but who has been very current and respected and in demand as a writer of current music for the church, how do you balance that from a heart level?

Cindy: I think in some ways it's easier to go one extreme or the other. OK, this is like a hymn and this is a radio song. And especially now that I think modern Christian music has turned into church music in a way, like the modern church music, worship music, I'm not a huge fan of most of it because I think it's poor songwriting.

Mark: I agree.

Cindy: A lot of it is poor songwriting and poor crafting and reusing a lot of old phrases and not... And sometimes, like when you mentioned earlier about balancing the paycheck of being a writer in today's society against the kind of time honored tradition of hymn writing, I can't help but believe that the kind of financial aspect of getting paid from a CCLI check does not factor into like your kind of purest attitude of writing a song versus like the old hymn writers who are writing out of an enormous amount of angst and suffering and need for God, and that was an outpouring of that. And so now I do believe that there are songs in the modern worship culture that break through and that are sincere and you can feel it. And for me, immediately, it's like a gut reaction.

Mark: Absolutely. I call it hearing from home.

Cindy: Yeah. Well, that's cool.

Mark: You never know when you're hearing from home. This your ET light goes off.

Cindy: Yeah.

Mark: Remember ET?

Cindy: Phone home.

Mark: When we think about home. Oh, that movie made me cry.

Cindy: I know. It's so sweet.

Mark: But seriously, just about the time I think, OK, I'm sick of music. I don't even wanna be involved in it anymore. Another great song will be heard.

Buddy Greene, Ron Block, Mark Lowry, and Andrew Greer singing “Leaning On the Everlasting Arms”

Buddy: One, two, three.

What a fellowship, what a joy divine
Leaning on the everlasting arms
What a blessedness, what a peace is mine
Leaning on the everlasting arms

Leaning, leaning
Safe and secure from all alarms
Leaning, leaning
Leaning on the everlasting arms

Buddy: Gonna lead it up there, Ron.

What have I to dread, what have I to fear
Leaning on the everlasting arms
I have blessed peace with my Lord so dear
Leaning on the everlasting arms

Leaning, leaning
Safe and secure from all alarms
Leaning, leaning
Leaning on the everlasting arms
Leaning, leaning
Leaning on Jesus
Safe and secure from all alarms
Leaning, leaning
Leaning on Jesus
Leaning on the everlasting arms
Leaning on the everlasting arms

Mark: Yeehaw!

Project Beautiful – Rescuing Beautiful Lives from Human Trafficking

Mark: Dinner Conversations is presented by Project Beautiful. And we love them. … They told us the other day about those five girls over in Nepal, was it?

Andrew: Yeah, in Nepal.

Mark: And the trafficker comes up to them, they're undereducated, promises them jobs because they've just had an earthquake in their hometown, and they speak a local dialect, which limits their opportunities. So here comes a trafficker and says, “We've got jobs in Iraq. Come with us.” So they get to the border, and Project Beautiful is there looking and looking for red flags. They've been trained in red flags. And the trafficker told the girls, “Don't talk to anybody. Don't speak to anybody,” which is one of the things they do. And so Project Beautiful goes up to the girls and the trafficker and asks them questions, and of course, the trafficker immediately denies he even knows these ladies. He's arrested. The girls are taken back home and taught what to look for, and they were so grateful. And it was before they got into the sex trafficking, so they didn't have to go through 25 years of therapy. That's why I love this organization. They intercept them before.

Andrew: That's right. They intercept them and then they educate them about the gospel message too, which I think is one of the wonderful things.

Mark: Yes.

Andrew: So after they have already extended this tangible hope of bringing them home, they then offer this eternal hope. And so we are asking that you partner with us, that our Dinner Conversations family comes alongside Mark and me. Go to projectbeautiful.org/dinnerconversations, and for $30 a month, three lives a year are rescued, are intercepted from modern day slavery before they ever get into human trafficking being trafficked like these girls in Nepal. They are intercepted and educated. So for $30 a month, three lives a year. Go to projectbeautiful.org/dinnerconversations. We have a special gift for you there as well that we'd like to offer just to say how important this is to us and how important we hope it becomes to you.

Mark: And if we don't help, who will? Project Beautiful, because every life is beautiful and worth fighting for.

Robert J. Morgan|Author and Hymn Expert

Mark: When I had my MRI, when they thought I had a mass, and the guy slung me into that MRI, and then right before he did it, he said, “Oh, they just wanna rule out MS.” Well, that's the first I'd heard of MS on me. And so I was sitting there thinking, what is MS? And I was racking my braining and going through all this. It was the hymns that carried me through that.

Robert: Yeah?

Mark: It was “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine,” and quoting every scripture I knew to calm my heart.

Robert: Yeah.

Mark: It wasn't one of the new praise songs. And I know I'm at the generation now that's supposed to be old and bitter and hate everything, but I'm starting to understand why they did.

Robert: You know, I do love the new praise songs. I just don't want to lose the old hymns in the process.

“I do love the new praise songs. I just don’t want to lose the old hymns in the process.”

— Robert J. Morgan

Mark: I do too.

Robert: And one of the things you were just saying is that when you were rolled in for that MRI, you knew the hymns because you had been singing them for so many years. And these songs contain great truths, and as we sing them over and over and as we sing them over a lifetime and as we sing them over generations, then they get deep into our hearts and they become pools of meditation. And so when you no longer are memorizing and learning hymns that you were singing over a lifetime, then that pool from which you can meditate is drained dry. And that just cannot happen without an impoverishment of the soul.

“[Hymns] get deep into our hearts and they become pools of meditation.”

— Robert J. Morgan

Living The Power of Jesus Christ in Our Lives

Andrew: Ron and I have talked a lot about living, truly living, from the power of Christ that is alive in us now through He in the Spirit. Right?

Ron: Right, right.

Andrew: What would look differently if we actually lived out of the place of power rather than what we're talking about, instead of focusing in on our weaknesses, instead of constantly focusing on our sin selves.

Ron: Yeah, or just accept the right estimation of yourself.

Mark: Which is?

Ron: Well, apart from God, I'm completely weak and helpless and unable to be good. I do not know what eternal good is. I have no idea how to help somebody in a way that is eternal on my own, apart from… If God was not in me, I would not be able to help people in that way.

Mark: I have atheist friends who believe that they don't need God to be good. They look at us like, you're afraid God is gonna spank you if you're not good? I'm good because I wanna be good. I wanna be nice. I wanna help people. And so what would you say to that? I mean, they really are good people.

Ron: Yeah, absolutely. What I mean is eternal good. They’re not concerned with eternal good because an atheist, by definition, you don't believe in an eternity.

Andrew: In fact, that's maybe why they would say do as good as you can now.

Mark: Which we should.

Ron: Which, yeah, you should as well.

Andrew: But for different reasons.

Ron: But for different reasons. The Christian believes people…

Mark: I see that look. I've seen this look. Have you seen this look? It's like, where are we going? Alright, tell me what you’re thinking.

Buddy: Well, that I can be good without God. It's like, well, Kimball, what do you even base your idea of goodness on? I mean, there have been people who felt that child sacrifice was good. So, I mean, where's your idea of goodness come from?

Andrew: That's a great point.

Mark: Yeah, it is.

Buddy: I think God's behind it all. And the fact that you wanna do good, He's behind that too.

Mark: I believe it.

Buddy: You may not know it, but He's not in the business of getting all the credit. If He was, He'd never get anything done.

Mark: Now there's a quote.

Cindy Morgan, Mark Lowry, and Andrew Greer singing “If That Isn’t Love”

Andrew: Old school writers though, you are talking about that. This segues into what we're gonna sing.

Mark: Fanny Crosby.

Andrew: Dottie Rambo.

Cindy: Dottie Rambo.

Andrew: Somebody who probably wrote from the heart.

Mark: Oh, listen. She never thought she'd have anything more than the trailer in Kentucky that she lived in. And she wrote all those. She's a big fan.

Cindy: Oh, huge, huge. First song I ever sung in church was a Dottie Rambo song.

Mark: Was it?

Andrew: Well, let's sing one.

Cindy: OK.

If that isn't love
The ocean is dry
There's no stars in the sky
And the little sparrow can't fly
If that isn't love
Then heaven's a myth
There's no feeling like this
If that isn't love

Mark: Every head bowed. Every eye closed.

How Music is Indeed a Universal Language

Andrew: I think that music is communal universally. So you don't just have to be a musician to connect to music, where you might need to be a golfer to connect to golf in a more meaningful way. But music seems to me to be a broad stroke medium. It seems to really unite people.

Mark: Tone-deaf people can enjoy it.

Andrew: Yes, and it resonates in a place deep within and without. You don't have to be able to play music, right, or even know anything about music for it to resonate in a deep place and also I think to really unify us. That's where I see the spirituality of music because when I see people in an arena, it could be a Justin Timberlake concert or it could be Aretha Franklin — it doesn't really matter who it is — people come together almost in the style of corporate worship.

“You don’t have to be able to play music, right, or even know anything about music for it to resonate in a deep place and also I think to really unify us.”

— Andrew Greer

Buddy: Well, music is a carrier. It delivers something. And I think that's one of the most powerful things about it. We'd all rather hear probably — this is definitely a musician saying this — we'd all rather hear a three-minute song than a 50-minute sermon.

Mark: I disagree.

Andrew: He's the only one at the table.

Mark: I really love great sermons.

Buddy: I've heard plenty of good sermons, but there's something about, there's something magical about what a song can deliver and the economy of that.

Mark: Yes, the economy is great.

Buddy: But also, that's the beauty of how it's delivered, that carrier of music. It just makes you listen more. And sometimes I can get lost in a 50-minute sermon. It's like it's too complicated. Wait a minute, you lost me on point four. But something in that song, it is that economy. It brings you in. You almost become a part of the song.

Andrew: It stays with you versus a sermon. Like to tie a melody to words I feel like has a way of translating it from here in your mind into your heart. I think that's why we carry it. I think that's why we remember it so well.

Buddy: You know, I think I've told you this story. I don't know if it's ever happened, but it's a great antidote about Johnny Mercer. You know, the great lyricist who wrote “Moon River”?

Mark: Yeah.

Buddy: So he was in a public bathroom one time, and he hears the guy down the way going. So they're both washing their hands a little later, and Johnny Mercer goes, “That was a great tune you were whistling.” He goes, “Oh yeah, man. That Mancini. He's quite a musician and he's quite a gifted composer.” He goes, “Well, yeah, but those words, they were written by Johnny Mercer.” And the guy goes, “I wasn't whistling the words.”

Special Music during Worship Service

Cindy: You know what I'm sad about? I'm sad in today's culture, there's no more special music. There's not somebody who gets up there, one person on a piano, and just puts it on the line, a person who's kinda putting it out there. You don't have the safety of five or six people.

Mark: I didn't even realize that.

Andrew: I think we got away from special music because of fear of performance in church.

Mark: You made all these decisions without notifying me.

Andrew: Or anybody really.

Mark: Really?

Andrew: Oh, Chris Tomlin.

Mark: We're old school here.

Cindy: I'm holding on to the hymnal. You know what I'm saying?

Mark: Think about it, a hymnal. Here is a hymnal.

Andrew: But you know a writer…

Mark: But it's in Chinese, so we can't understand it.

Andrew: Oh, that's a Chinese hymnal.

Mark: This is a Chinese hymnal.

Cindy: Is this really Chinese?

Mark: This one's Chinese, look. Look, go ahead and sing.

Andrew: “Glory to the Lamb.” Here we go.

Mark: That's great. The Chinese have hymnals and we don't.

Mark: Like my shower has become that for me. And I get in there bawling and squalling, and talk to God and look at myself in my fog proof mirror, and I'll see those blood shot eyes and that basil in the middle, and I'll start laughing because it's so hideous, and I'll go back to crying. But the thing I love about that is that I know I'm not performing.

Andrew: Yeah.

Buddy: Yeah.

Mark: There's no one there but me and God, and He's the only one that can stand to see me naked, so He's the only one that ever did.

Robert J. Morgan singing “Of the Father’s Love Begotten”

Of the Father’s love begotten
Ere the worlds began to be
He is Alpha and Omega
He the source, the center He

Robert: I can't believe that I'm singing to an old timer.

Mark: To learn more about Dinner Conversations, go to dinner-conversations.com.

Andrew: And don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel. That'll allow you to get a new episode every week. Like us or don't like us and leave a comment, good or constructively criticism.

Mark: And if it's really, really, really mean criticism, we can delete you.

Don't Miss an Episode! Subscribe Today:

S01, E01: Comic Grief featuring Chonda Pierce and Ken Davis

WATCH OUR OTHER EPISODES:

S01, E02: Blessed are the Blended featuring Sandi Patty

S01, E03: What’s the Point of Grace? Featuring Point of Grace

S01, E04: Fear, Forgiveness and Friendship Part 1 featuring Anita Renfroe, Patsy Clairmont and Jan Silvious

S01, E05: Adopted, Aren’t We All? featuring Mark Schultz

S01, E07: Dinner Conversations Another Christmas Special

S01, E08: Racism in the Church featuring Nicole C. Mullen

S01, E09: Liquor and Legalism featuring Russ Taff

S01, E10: Fear, Forgiveness and Friendship, Part 2 featuring Anita Renfroe, Patsy Clairmont and Jan Silvious

10/23/17 10/23/17

Season One Finale: What is Worship? feat. Travis Cottrell, Sandi Patty, Nicole C. Mullen, Robert J. Morgan, Seth & Nirva and Michael W. Smith

Dove Award winner Travis Cottrell is one of the modern church’s leading worship leaders and songwriters. Travis sits down with show hosts Mark Lowry and Andrew Greer for an interactive conversation about what “worship” means inside and outside the context of music. Fellow worship music-minded artists Michael W. Smith, Sandi Patty and Nicole C. Mullen round out the insightful table talk. Plus hymn historian and best-selling author Robert J. Morgan chimes in and urban-pop duo Seth & Nirva lend their voices to Travis’ song, “The Power of the Cross.”

Dove Award winner Travis Cottrell is one of the modern church's leading worship leaders and songwriters. Travis sits down with show hosts Mark Lowry and Andrew Greer for an interactive conversation about what "worship" means inside and outside the context of music. Fellow worship music-minded artists Michael W. Smith, Sandi Patty and Nicole C. Mullen round out the insightful table talk. Plus hymn historian and best-selling author Robert J. Morgan chimes in and urban-pop duo Seth & Nirva lend their voices to Travis’ song, “The Power of the Cross."

Transcript

Mark: Our guest today is Travis Cottrell. He travels and sings with Beth Moore, but he does more than sing — he leads worship. And what we're wanting to find out today is what is worship?

Andrew: Yeah, that question, which I think Travis has embodied well in helping to answer that for musicians but also for people who are coming into the congregation to understand what is our act of worship through music and even outside of music. We also have some of our favorite friends who've been here at the table, people like Sandi Patty, who we love, Michael W. Smith, Nicole C. Mullen weighing in on the conversation of how they perceive that question. What is worship?

Mark: And we have one seat left at the table and it's yours, so let's join the conversation.

Mark: So you auditioned for the vocal band when I was leaving, I think.

Travis: Yes.

Andrew: Was it for his part?

Travis: Yeah, I'm a baritone.

Mark: That's the best part, yeah.

Travis: It is the best part.

Mark: It is. It's the glue that holds the group together. But you're doing the praise and worship and you're kind of a leader in that. From my vantage point, it looks to me like you're one of the leaders of the praise and worship. You write songs?

Andrew: Do you feel that way?

Travis: You need to get closer.

Mark: Well, why are you here?

Travis: Yes, I'm a worship leader. I've traveled and led worship for a number of years. This is actually my 20-year anniversary with Beth Moore.

Mark: That's been a good job.

Andrew: Well tell me this. OK, so in the culture of today, you think about music and you think about especially how worship music has become a genre. Like now we say worship, and we automatically assume we're talking about music.

Travis: Right.

Andrew: But how do you as a leader of worship through music, like in the service of worship you are helping lead music to help facilitate worship

Travis: Right, that's a good differential to make because worship is broader than the way we use the word, particularly in the industry.

Andrew: Right.

Travis: But in my context, it is music. I'm also a worship pastor at a church, so my context is worship. Now I do try to consider a broader definition for my people that I lead week in and week out.

Mark: What do you mean?

Andrew: So as you're facilitating…

Travis: Even as I'm facilitating.

Andrew: Through music.

Travis: Worship through the Word, worship visually — every component of worship that's in the Word, we try to kinda dab into at some point.

Andrew: And embody. So music's the leader in that for you, but it's not the end all be all.

Travis: Correct, correct. And even beyond music for me, as a worship leader, my goal is to help people sing. I think that's something that we lose sight of, you know, we're not just dishing out our good songs to them and say, "Listen to this great song." Or "Listen how great we sing or sound." No, the bottom line as a worship leader is to put something in their hands and put words in their mouths and hearts for them to sing. It doesn't really matter how good we sound or — I'm starting to get soap box-y, I need to not get soap box-y.

Mark: No, no. Go ahead. I wanna hear it. I got a few soapboxes I'm fixin' to pull out.

Travis: Oh good, good, good.

Mark: And I wanna know what your soapbox is.

Travis: Well, you know, I just think our job is to put songs in people's quiver that they can use to express something to God.

“Our job is to put songs in people’s quiver that they can use to express something to God.”

— Travis Cottrell

Mark: Exactly.

Travis: And that they can do together.

Mark: And alone.

Travis: And alone, you know.

Andrew: That they take it with them.

Travis: Yeah, take with them. Not songs that, you know… A song may sound great if a worship leader sings it, but if the congregation can't hit the notes, or can't grasp the melody, or can't find some context to respond to God in some way, then I wouldn't really call it a worship song. I would call it a Christian song. It may be a personal worship song for the worship leader or for someone, and that's great and that has its place; but for me I always have to come back to the bottom line of my calling is to help people to connect to God by helping them sing.

“The bottom line of my calling is to help people to connect to God by helping them sing.”

— Travis Cottrell

Mark: What is your criteria for a great song?

Andrew: For the church?

Mark: You know, for his.

Travis: I don't know. What is yours? You're a better songwriter than me.

Mark: Please.

Andrew: One time.

Mark: Yeah, once. But that's all you need.

Andrew: That is true.

Travis: Which is one more than you. And me.

Mark: What are you looking for when you are going through songs? Because I mean, my soapbox on another topic—

Andrew: Go ahead.

Mark: Is that we've left, who is the gentleman we had on here? He wrote the book and brought to our attention that...

Andrew: The Enneagram?

Mark: No, millennials are the first group to leave the hymns behind.

Andrew: Robert J. Morgan, who did all the Then Sings My Soul devotionals and the hymn history.

Mark: And he was on our Dinner Conversations, and I never noticed this or I kinda saw it in my own church, but he contends that the millennials are the first generation to not bring the psalms and the hymns. Like when Isaac Watts came along, they still brought the psalms; and Fanny Crosby came along, they drug the psalms and Isaac with them. Bill Gaither comes along, we haven't discarded the past. Do you sense that we're leaving the hymns and psalms behind?

Travis: I don't sense that in a desperate measure. I do believe, you know, this is just my personal opinion I'm just kind of rattling off from the top of my head.

Andrew: Say what you want.

Mark: Nobody watches this.

Travis: I don't think we are to a degree that's dangerous. I think that a lot of us…

Andrew: That it'll disappear.

Mark: It feels that way to the older folks.

Travis: I know it does, but every generation has had its own musical context.

Mark: Right.

Travis: You know, like, so for Gaither's early generation, it felt that way to them when Gaither's music was new. Chris Tomlin is kinda the Gaither of our generation, I would say, and Bill before him. So I think it's all in context. I think we have a tendency to want what we've always had, even in worship.

Andrew: And what resonated with us first, whether it was as a kid or as, you know, like maybe when Tomlin songs are no longer viable in the church marketplace but there's people who grew up on those songs that was their first introduction to God. When they're 70, they're gonna be like, "Where's ‘How Great is Our God’?"

Travis: Right, and I think we're made in the image of God and God is Creator, and so I think creating is part of our spiritual DNA. So to leave those who are given the gift of music, and song, and worship to say, "You need to stay mute and we need to keep singing this because it's what we've always sung," I think that's unhealthy. I think what God is expressing through today's worship writers are great. Again, I think the responsibility comes with the worship leaders to offer a palate and offer a diverse offering to their people, you know? And something that they can use to sing.

Robert J. Morgan | Author, Hymn Expert

Mark: It's so good to be with Dr. Robert J. Morgan, teaching pastor of Donelson Fellowship. And you are an expert on hymns.

Robert: Oh, I love the hymns. I don't know that I'd use the word expert.

Mark: Well, here's a book that sold over a million copies, Then Sings My Soul, that is all these hymns with stories. I'm so excited to have this.

Robert: You know the first hymn ever written — which is recorded for us in Exodus 15 when the Israelites went across the Red Sea, and on the other side they just paused and then they burst into this song — I suppose Moses wrote it on the spot. "I will sing unto the Lord for He has triumphed gloriously. The horse and rider fell into the sea." So that was about 1,400 years before Christ, so David sang the great hymns and wrote the psalter, many of those songs, about 1,000 years before Christ. The New Testament is full of hymns that were written. Every generation of Spirit-filled believers has to have music. It's gotta write its own music.

Mark: Interesting.

Robert: And so you did have Spirit-filled believers through every generation. God has never left Himself without a witness. So you had, for example, Bernard of Clairvaux in the monastery writing “O Sacred Heart Now Wounded” and some of these great hymns. You have that wonderful song, probably my favorite hymn, “Of the Father's Love Begotten,” which we often sing at Christmas. You don't know "Of the Father's love begotten, ere the world began to be"?

Mark: No.

Robert: Oh, you'll love it.

Andrew: Sing it, Rob.

Robert: Of the Father's love begotten ere the worlds began to be. He is Alpha and Omega. He the source, the center He. I can't believe that I'm singing to Mark Lowry.

Andrew: I can't either actually.

Robert: But this is the most beautiful and, in some ways, haunting of all of our Christmas songs, except for “Mary Did You Know?” and the melody is called Divine Mysterium. It's a thousand years old and the words are about 1,500 years old.

Mark: Wow.

Robert: And so we'll have to play it for you. I'll get you a good rendition. You'll never like it after hearing me sing. It really is beautiful. But these were being written during the medieval time when congregations were not singing; however, you know what was also happening during that time was the church was becoming hollow. The church was becoming corrupt.

Mark: Oh really?

Robert: The church was becoming bureaucratic. The priests were becoming corrupt, the theology was deteriorating, and conditions in the western Church were getting worse and worse until Martin Luther came and said that's enough of this and he started the German Reformation, which returned Bible reading in the vernacular to the people. It returned hymn singing, and it returned that passion that we need to receive Jesus Christ and be saved by grace through faith. But the failure of the medieval church to sing and to express itself freely in the theology through the singing of the hymns I think contributed to the hollowness, which eventually led to the Reformation. And then Luther helped us start singing again. He brought music back to the church.

Mark: So out of all these hymns that you've studied, that is your favorite hymn, that one? How did you pick one?

Robert: Well, I would think that depends on the day.

Mark: OK.

Robert: Yes. “Of the Father's Love Begotten,” it's hard to love a hymn more than that one.

Mark: Really?

Robert: But my other favorite, which also comes out of the medieval period, was written by Saint Francis of Assisi. It was called “Canticle to Brother Sun.” You know Saint Francis loved nature.

Mark: Yeah.

Robert: And he took one of the psalms and sort of paraphrased it into this “Canticle of Brother Sun,” which has been translated and versified in English as our hymn, "All creatures of our God and King, lift up your voice and with us sing, alleluia, alleluia." Do you know that one?

Mark: I do.

Robert: All creatures of our God and King. It is just so triumphant and happy, and so really my two favorite hymns come out of that medieval period when, ironically, the church was not allowed to sing.

Mark: Interesting.

Robert: But you could not silence the church because Spirit-filled people have got to write their own music. And this is what I tell people who complain about contemporary Christian music. I say, "You know, I love the old hymns and I don't wanna lose them, but we also have got to love the new music because if there is ever a generation that does not write its own music, then Christianity is dead." And what I try to tell people in churches, they don't listen very well, but this is really my principle: The older people in our churches badly need to sing contemporary Christian music and the younger people in our church badly need to sing the old hymns. And if we can get the older people energized with new music and we can get the younger people solidified with the old hymns, then we've got inter-generational worship. We have got what I think Ephesians 5 is talking about with hymns, songs, and spiritual songs.

“I love the old hymns and I don’t wanna lose them, but we also have got to love the new music because if there is ever a generation that does not write its own music, then Christianity is dead.”

— Robert J. Morgan

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Music in Worship

Andrew: Why is it so powerful in the corporate setting? Why is music such a powerful tool? Because maybe that's why worship has become defined as music in some ways because music is one of the most powerful.

Travis: Right, and it comes from the Word of God. I mean, our model for everything is in the Word, including worship, especially worship. You know, people are marching around walls and declaring the power of God in song and God is announcing the birth of His Son and what does He use to do it? A choir, you know? So I think we take that model and there's just something innately powerful like worship. The presence of God wins. It wins everything.

Mark: It unifies people.

Travis: And it unifies people, and so sometimes we complicate it, you know? A lot of times I think we complicate it too much, but just the bottom line is we go to those verses that tell us, "If I be lifted up, I will draw everyone to Myself." You know, "Where two or three are gathered, I will be there." And then of course the psalms like you mentioned, so powerful and they tell us what to do and we do it.

Andrew: Growing up, I don't remember a lot of sermons, at least like I can't repeat them back to you. I may remember an idea, there may have been a small, little revelation and I was like, "Ooh, that's a good nugget." But I can totally recite the songs. I mean, I can recite the verses without even the melody. And I would offer that maybe I wouldn't have been introduced to God in the same way without music.

“I wouldn’t have been introduced to God in the same way without music.”

— Andrew Greer

Travis: Agreed. I think something else that's interesting, and you can get this on camera, OK. You are younger than me. I wouldn't say a whole generation…

Andrew: Twelve or 13 years is a generation.

Travis: But those of us who are our age, you know… This is going off on something. I don't know. You're gonna edit this out I think.

Andrew: Probably not. We love it when people say that.

Travis: I think another thing that those of us who grew up in church are… There's something at play and that is the ability to sing, we grew up where music education was a huge part of our school, so in the education system I went to music class, I think, every day in elementary school. I think we had it every day. I can't remember. Maybe it was once a week. Either way, it was more than they have it now, which is none. And so, we're learning music in school, then we're going to church and what are we doing? We're reading music for every song and it wasn't that the songs were lower then. Everybody complains that the songs are higher now. Well, and some of them are. And that drives me crazy.

Andrew: But when you look at old hymns there's Ds and Es.

Travis: Yeah, and what you're learning to do in school and in church is to sing a part that is relative to your vocal range. So you know, you're in 7th grade or 8th grade and your voice starts transitioning, those of us whose voice did.

Andrew: I knew it was coming.

Travis: You're learning how to navigate that and you're looking on the paper at these hymnbooks, and so we've taken away music education in schools. We've taken away the music in churches as a result of that I would say. I would say the beginning of the fall was taking it out of the school systems. And so now we're stuck with no music knowledge in the average worshipper, so that's all having a play in what we remember, how we learn songs, and how we sing them, and if we're able to actually sing them. Are y’all tracking with me?

Andrew: That totally makes sense.

Mark: The difference though between a worship song and a song like I tend to write, it is the worship songs are horizontal like, no, what's this? Vertical

Travis: That's vertical.

Mark: Vertical, and the others are horizontal, right? They're like from me to you or they're about God, you know? A lot of the ones I write are about Him rather than to Him.

Travis: Right, right.

Mark: And so the worship, when it came along, it started… There were some occasional ones in the hymnal that sang to God.

Travis: Right.

Andrew: There's a lot of storytelling in hymnody.

Mark: A lot of storytelling and a lot of longing for home, a lot of heaven songs, and I think when I'm in church and I'm standing there, because they stand a lot now. I remember when we'd sit and sing. And where I'm reading some of these songs and I'm wondering how did it get by? It's poorly written, the rhymes aren't good, it's like the old joke, 7-11, you know?

Andrew: So you're saying there's not songwriter prowess anymore? Like there's not that astute…

Mark: Are they churning them out?

Travis: They are. See, I vacillate back and forth with that kind of ideology because I've had that same experience, but I don't think you can tell anyone that every generation hasn't had that same experience.

Mark: Oh yeah, Fanny Crosby wrote 3,000 songs and five survived.

Travis: Right, right.

Mark: So time will tell which one of these songs will last.

Travis: Time will tell. And again it goes back — I say it all the time.

Mark: If it sticks, it'll be here.

Travis: Right.

Mark: If it doesn't, it'll fall away, but let's not forget the ones that stuck.

Travis: Right.

Mark: Like the ones that were great. We don't have to bring all of Fanny Crosby's stuff forward, but my gosh, let's don't leave “Blessed Assurance” behind.

Travis: A hundred percent. Again, the worship leader is the gatekeeper. You know, it's their responsibility.

Mark: The young people need to know those songs.

Andrew: But I think they do more than we give them credit, as well. I would debate that it's not being left behind at all.

Mark: I hope not.

Music Informs Our Theology

Andrew: One, I have a love for hymnody. Now I'm on the older end of who we're talking about, but I still experience among people who are in their 20s and even teens who have significant experiences with hymns. And I think that's because, I mean, there’s a significant experience with God in it? Do you think that music informs our theology?

Travis: A hundred percent. Absolutely. OK, when you find yourself in a trial, when you find yourself where you need something from the Lord, like, "God, I need a word." You know the Word says, "I've hidden your Word in my heart that I may not sin against You." The Word says, "I'm a stranger on earth. Do not hide Your commands from me." You know, the Word says, "Your Word is a lamp to my feet." It tells us. So we hide our Word, but how do we remember things? More than anything, like you said, we don't remember the sermons. I don't remember the geography that I learned in 1984, but I remember Huey Lewis and the News. I remember Phil Collins. We'll tell you about them later. And so absolutely, you know when we get into those situations in life, we go, "When darkness veils His lovely face, I rest on His unchanging grace. In every high and stormy gale, my anchor holds within the veil." Right? That's what we go to, and that's why it's important.

Mark: Well, and Jesus went there on the cross. Psalm 22, I think it is He's quoting. "My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?" And back in their day, they didn't read and write, they would sing them, and they'd start off like I can go, Amazing grace how sweet the sound. The congregation: Amazing… They do that in the hills of Kentucky still. Tony Campolo is the one that brought this to my attention, that He's on the cross and He starts quoting Psalm, that everyone there knew it. All the people knew that because it's like the way they did it back then. And that is prophesying of course of what's happening on the cross.

Travis: Powerful.

Mark: Maybe He was singing from the cross.

Travis: We don't know.

Mark: We don't know.

Andrew: Maybe He was singing, Because He lives…

Mark: No, He wasn't singing that.

Travis Cottrell singing “The Power of the Cross” with Seth & Nirva

A lonely hill, a lonely hill
A rugged tree, a rugged tree
Time stands still, time stands still
And waits for my answer, and waits for my answer
This sacrifice, this sacrifice
Is calling me, is calling me
Into a life, into a life
Of total surrender, of total surrender

The power of the cross is moving in my life
'Cause the power of Your blood has saved me
The power of the cross still draws me to Your side
'Cause the power of Your love has changed me
Oh, let my life be lost in the power of the cross

Lord most High, Lord most High
Hope of men, hope of men
You are mine, You are mine
My Redeemer and Savior, Redeemer and Savior
And all my days, all my days
My days are in Your hands, are in Your hands
And all my praise, all my praise
Will be Yours forever, will be Yours forever

Where mercy was great and grace was free
Where pardon was multiplied to me
Where my burdened soul found liberty
Hide me in the power of the cross

The power of the cross is moving in my life
'Cause the power of Your blood has saved me
The power of the cross, Your cross
Still draws me to Your side
'Cause the power of Your love has changed me
Oh, let my life be lost in the power of the cross
In the power of the cross

Power of Worship & Music to Unite and Divide

Andrew: It seems like there's an ability to unify with music. Like we have a lot of divides. Culturally speaking, we have a lot of divides, so those enter our church too because as people, we are part of culture who come to church. And it seems like music has the ability, even in a non-spiritual context or a non-church context, to me it seems like music has a great power to actually unify, to bring together. Have you seen that in worship leaders? Have you seen divides, divisions, those kind of things begin to dissipate just through the course of music?

Travis: Yes, I do think, you know, it's dependent upon the Holy Spirit and your leadership's dependence upon the Holy Spirit because worship and music also divides. And I think that's a scheme of the enemy. You know, I think the enemy, who was a worship leader before he was banished from heaven, knows the power of worship. And so where has he in these recent years of change, and recent I mean from the 90s on, where has he sought to divide churches so often?

“The enemy, who was a worship leader before he was banished from heaven, knows the power of worship.”

— Travis Cottrell

Andrew: Sure, music.

Travis: It's music. So the very thing that could provide so much division is actually, just like you said, what's meant to unify. And it can, and it will, dependent upon the Holy Spirit and leadership's submission to it is what I believe.

Andrew: Leadership submission, that's interesting 'cause we were talking about it actually — I think it was when Sandi was here, we were talking about like what do you do because she's in this new wave of—

Travis: Sandi?

Mark: Patty.

Andrew: She's in this new wave of being some kind of, you know, part-time leader, church kind of thing, and a worship leadership thing, and we were talking about so what do you do? Submitting to the Holy Spirit, submitting to Christ, that's an every day thing, that's a continual lifestyle decision, but there are weekends, there's a Saturday night where I screw up or there's a week where my life is not in line necessarily with God and His plan for me or whatever, but yet I need to be in the seat on Sunday to lead worship. That's my responsibility. What do we do with that rub? Does that make sense? I mean I could involve myself in shame, and I could say, "Well then I'm not worthy to lead God's people in music because I'm still screwed up in this area, this area, this area." But do we still have a place to… I mean, we're all

Travis: We do. We have to be obedient. I mean, we walk in obedience to our calling even when we don't feel like it and especially when we don't feel worthy. I mean, who is, right? There is a rightful understanding of the mercy of God and the level ground of the cross, or none of us could ever do it, could muster up, "Oh Lord, I can't do it." But there's a greater "Yes" on the other side of it. You just kinda push through, you know? I talk to my young worship leaders in my life a lot about that because they are so idealistic, you know? Millennials are so idealistic and things are a lot plainer to them, and so I have to just go, "You know what, sometimes there's a greater 'Yes' on the other side of your obedience." You get up there and you lead those people as best you can, and God will deal with you accordingly.

“We walk in obedience to our calling even when we don’t feel like it and especially when we don’t feel worthy.”

— Travis Cottrell

Mark: What do you see from them that is, you say, "There's a bigger 'yes'"? Like what are their dilemmas that they're facing right now? Are they changed through the years?

Travis: No, not really.

Mark: Or are they all the same?

Travis: No, not really, and I was kinda thinking about exactly kinda that thing that you're painting, like when you don't feel worthy to serve. And they're going through things you know that young people go through that are sometimes a little different than older people, sometimes not, but just dealing with their own inadequacies and their own failures and their own insecurities.

Mark: Point to David.

Travis: Right.

Mark: Point to David.

Travis: Exactly. He's the best.

Mark: Yes, he murdered and adultery.

Travis: And he's a man after God's own heart.

Mark: Yes, Psalm 51, he came back and God said, OK. Still, He never changed His mind about David.

Travis: Do you remember — don't include this — but do y’all remember that project My Utmost for His Highest that Brown Banister did?

Andrew: Yeah, I remember it.

Travis: And Gary Chapman sang that song “After God's Own Heart.”

Andrew: Yep.

Travis: That's one of the best songs ever.

Andrew: Oh yeah, it's an absolutely gorgeous song that I think Michael wrote, I think.

Mark: I haven't heard it. I'll have to listen to it.

Andrew: Oh yeah, you should listen to it. And then it's Gary. I think it's Gary

Travis: It's Gary, and Michael Millett sings a little duet.

Mark: I love Gary's voice.

Travis: Remember Michael Millett?

Andrew: Oh yeah, and he's singing that harmony part on it?

Travis: The most amazing background singer ever.

Mark: Gary is a great singer too.

Travis: Yes, he is.

Andrew: Yeah, he is. You talk about soul. So we all have a place, like I think there's probably been many people who have reserved themselves or taken themselves out of the ring of possibility to lead in church in various ways, that may be in a pastoral way, that may be in just a simple service way because, "I'm not worthy."

Mark: Well they got better stories too. Who would you rather hang around, the prodigal or his brother?

Travis: Right.

Mark: I mean, the prodigal came home with great stories.

Travis: I know.

Mark: The brother always hung around the house.

Travis: I've been the brother so many times though. Sometimes that brings the worse shame of all when you look around and go, "I was so self-righteous."

Mark: He didn't get to go to the party. He stood outside. That's how that story ends. He was faithful and missed the party.

Andrew: So what's your dirt?

Mark: I guess my point is we're all really both of those people.

Andrew: Yeah, at some point in time, we have been.

Travis: Absolutely.

Sandi Patty – Spiritual Act of Worship

Mark: Now you are the…?

Sandi: Well, I have an amazing privilege now in this new season of my life to be the artist in residence at our church in Oklahoma City. And basically what I get to do is what I've always wanted to do and that is teach.

Mark: Really?

Sandi: I really did. I started out in college wanting to teach and then met Bill and Gloria, and they said come do this tour and I was like, "OK." Now 30 years later. And so I'm getting to really speak into the generation that's coming behind about practical things, about spiritual things, about relating to an audience and what does that look like.

Andrew: In the context of worship?

Sandi: Of Sunday morning worship, but just in general, your whole life. I mean worship in and of itself is not limited to music. Music can be worship, but worship is how we live.

“Music can be worship, but worship is how we live.”

— Sandi Patty

Mark: Right.

Sandi: Romans 12:1-2, "I urge you brothers and sisters to present your bodies as living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. This is your spiritual act of worship." It's who we are and how we live and how we walk every day of our lives.

Andrew: Which impacts the way we sing, the way we play, the way we plan.

Sandi: All of it.

Mark: And you said there are 12 words.

Sandi: Because there are 12 words all throughout Scripture between Hebrew and Greek that talk about worship. In the English language, we have one word. It's so limited, but there's 12 different words that talk about worship and only three of them have to do with music. The rest are our body posture, our heart posture. There's one that does have to do with instrumental music, one that has to do with a sudden eruption of song out of the joy in our heart, but it all is inward driven. And so that's one of the first places that I like to start is just say if you think Sunday morning is your journey with Christ, it's got to be how you are Monday through Saturday, and then you bring that to what you do. You bring your story on those words that you say.

Andrew: We're not going to live perfectly even if I'm trying to live out a heart of worship and try to understand who God is and pattern after that. How do we then represent ourselves, or that may be the wrong word, every Sunday or for the service? Is that just an act of surrender? Is that just saying…?

Mark: You mean you screw up on Saturday and worshipping on Sunday

Andrew: Right, yeah.

Mark: We do it all the time.

Andrew: Right, but how do we…? I think there's a lot

Mark: Well you just don't be so hard on yourself.

Sandi: That's one, that's absolutely one thing.

Andrew: Still show up.

Mark: You just don't ever forget you're a sinner.

Sandi: You still show up and you still press into what is true, whether you really are feeling it or believing it even in that moment.

Andrew: Sure.

Sandi: Do you know what I mean by that? Because there's times Monday through Saturday I will have conversations with God that are not very pretty. I wouldn't want people to hear, but you often say about the psalms, you know if there had been Prozac, what do you say?

Mark: If David had Prozac, we'd never had Psalms.

Sandi: Exactly.

Mark: He was up and down, up and down.

Sandi: But what I love about the psalms is such a beautiful picture of speaking in the moment how we feel. And sometimes, when my brother was diagnosed with cancer and passed away, I just literally said to God, "You know what? You're really bad at your job today."

Mark: Ooh.

Sandi: "You are really bad at your job." And to just hear Him go, "You know what? It's not an easy job."

Mark: Aww.

Sandi: And I don't mean that flippantly because it grieved Him as much as me, but the freedom to be able to say that and bring all of that authenticity then, when you are leading music in a worship setting. That to me is you just have to be authentic.’

Mark: It's honesty, right?

Sandi: It's honesty, and David models that. I mean, that's the most beautiful model of what authentic worship looks like.

Mark: And repentance, Psalm 51, when he repented and God still said about him, "He's a man after My own heart."

Sandi: I love that.

Mark: Don't you love that right there?

Andrew: Maybe real communion or the most authentic communion comes through honesty and our vulnerability.

“The most authentic communion comes through honesty and our vulnerability.”

— Andrew Greer

Sandi: I think there's a lot of it.

Andrew: That is communion.

Sandi: Because you know what, it's not for God. He already knows how we feel.

Mark: Oh yes.

Sandi: It's for us to be able to trust even our ugliest thoughts, like "You're really bad at your job today." "And I'm really sad," you know?

Mark: I heard some preacher say that years ago, "Has it ever occurred to you that nothing has ever occurred to God?"

Sandi: Oh wow.

Andrew: Has it what?

Mark: Has it ever occurred to you that nothing's ever occurred to God? And that's when we get home, I worry I won't be able to tell Him a joke. He'll already know the punch line.

Andrew: Who are you gonna entertain now, Mark?

Mark: You know, I love the idea of telling God a joke one day.

Andrew: That's such a level of knowing-ness that I think we crave for with our relationships.

Mark: But He's my Father. And a healthy father is delighted when you're delighted.

Sandi: A healthy father, yes.

Mark: And is sad when you're sad.

Andrew: Every time with my dad. It's like to be there beside us, not necessarily to just repair—

Mark: And we only get 80 years to get this right, right? And we're almost done. You're not, but.

Sandi: We're closer to the 80 and you're not.

Mark: I mean, we're closer to home.

Being Faithful With The Life in Front of Me

Mark: What season are you in right now? Do you think this is a season or do you think—

Andrew: An older season?

Travis: Do you deal with that all the time?

Mark: Not for long.

Andrew: Do you notice his position at the table? He doesn't want to look at each other.

Mark: You’re 40?

Travis: I'm 48.

Mark: 48? You look good for 48. Well, I don't know what 48 is supposed to look like really.

Mark: And you have children?

Travis: I have three kids, yeah. One's in college, two are in high school.

Mark: One wife?

Travis: One wife. It's our 25th year anniversary.

Andrew: Ooh.

Travis: Twenty-five years wedding, 20 years with the Beth Moore ministry.

Mark: Well, you can do what you're doing. There's no age limit on it really.

Travis: Well, you know, it's funny. I always tell this joke, and it's not original. I don't remember where I got it, but it's not fair that pastors are like fine wines and worship leaders are like Cokes, you know. They get better with age, and once you open us, we're like a 10-year plan or something before we lose our fizz.

Andrew: But I would say like in just observing you, you have a certain timelessness in the style of your leadership, like Cindy and I have talked about this, is very unique in the sense that it has seemed to always be pointed to serving the church, not necessarily serving a career as far as a musical, commercial career, though you've had elements of that, etc., come in and out and will continue to that really. That must be the core of your calling.

Travis: Yeah, you know, I think I just love people and I combine that with this whole separate idea that's kind of connected but kind of not. I love people and also I've never been a vision-caster. Like I don't know what I'll be doing in 10 years. I don't know what I'll be doing in five years. In all of these years that I've been doing this, I've just done what was in front of me.

Mark: That's it.

Travis: Just try to be faithful in what's in front of me. And does that lead to this? I don't know. I mean, it may or it may not. I mean, I've had more failures it seems than successes in the industry's eyes, but at the same time, it's been a ride I wouldn't change for a million dollars. I love it. And I love where I am immensely, you know? I love the chance to be with this church family that I love week in and week out. That was something that in the first 20 years of living in Nashville, even though those were great years and God gave me some great things to do, I really was missing the chance to pastor people from week in to week out. And that's been a real blessing. It's been a blessing for my family, for my kids, my wife to do that. But then even beyond that, just the ministry with Beth, to be able to kind of see and kind of measure out what God is doing all over the country through her ministry, and just in, I don't know how to say what I'm thinking. Just like what worship looks like in a very wide cross-section of denomination and age, and race, and to be a part of that for the past 20 years, it's just been such a blessing. I just wouldn't change a thing for it.

Michael W. Smith, A Natural Worship Leader

Andrew: This is an honest question. Like I feel like you've kinda been mantled, whether you receive this or not or feel it or not, as kind of in gospel music as the premier worship leader, you know, or worship artist, however you want to term it. Do you feel mantled with that, and if so, do you receive that? Do you like that? I mean, you know, or does it feel like sometimes an obstacle to making and creating the music that maybe you wanna do at times

Michael: No, I feel like it's over me, and I hold that lightly as well. I can't deny it. I mean, I'm not saying that I'm any more important than anybody else, just saying I think there's something there, and it feels so natural and there's no striving when I'm leading. So there's that side of me, and it's important and it's something I'll do the rest of my life.

Andrew: I've always had this thought that if you think about it, you know music is, if you play an instrument on acoustic level, is just manipulating the sounds that are already resonating throughout the earth as if the earth is singing. So do you think there's something special? When we plug into that, you know it's as if the earth is already worshipping God and we plug into that. Could that be part of what is so unifying about singing together? Because if you think about, go beyond worship music, go to a U2 show. I mean like there's an element of experience, not everyone may point to who I say God is as their experience in that moment, but there's a very spiritual experience happening when we sing together.

“There’s a very spiritual experience happening when we sing together.”

— Andrew Greer

Michael: Definitely, yeah.

Andrew: What is it about singing together that connects us compared to doing anything else? You could go play board games with everybody, you know?

Michael: It's astonishing for sure. It's a lot of bodies, man. It's a lot of people singing together. I just think God honors that, and especially if you're real unified and everybody is sort of dialed in, large gatherings, I think moves mountains. Things change, but you know what? Things changed when David played his harp for Saul too. It's all really the intent of the heart. Two things that I go on, what's your motivation and how's your posture? The two big things right there. If you're dialed in on those two things, I think anything can happen.

Andrew: Is there something, that could be an exercise, a discipline, a prayer, a quote, that has helped you through the years to remind yourself to be… I mean, how do you achieve that level of humility to really be able to open up and minister, to lead in service of worship, but when there's so many platforms? I mean it is a platform-oriented profession.

Michael: I just pray Scripture. I got my go-to Scriptures, you know? "Search me, O God, know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts." "Create in me a clean heart, O God." "Cast me not away from Your presence." All those. Psalm 139, I'll just quote Psalm 139 just driving down the road. I find out that those are really my most powerful prayers, really. And then sometimes you just groan. Sometimes you can't find the words and you just go, ‘Oh God.’ You just can't, and I think those are prayers. I mean, He knows what I'm trying to say. Maybe I don't, but it's just, "God, I just, I long for You and I know there's a destiny on my life and I don't wanna miss it." There's too much at stake. I don't wanna miss it.

Project Beautiful Sponsorship Message

Mark: Dinner Conversations is presented by Project Beautiful, and we love them. They told us the other day about those five girls over in Nepal, was it

Andrew: Yeah, in Nepal.

Mark: And the trafficker comes up to them, they're uneducated, promises them jobs because they've just had an earthquake in their hometown and they speak a local dialect, which limits their opportunities, so here comes a trafficker and says, "We've got jobs in Iraq. Come with us." So they get to the border and Project Beautiful is there looking for red flags, they've been trained in red flags, and the trafficker told the girls, "Don't talk to anybody. Don't speak to anybody." Which is one of the things they do, and so Project Beautiful goes up to the girls and the trafficker and asks them questions. Of course, the trafficker immediately denies he even knows these ladies. He's arrested, the girls are taken back home and taught what to look for, and they were so grateful. And it was before they got into the sex trafficking, so they didn't have to go through 25 years of therapy. That's why I love this organization. They intercept them before.

Andrew: That's right. They intercept them and then they educate them about the gospel message too, which I think is one of the wonderful things. So after they have already extended this tangible hope of bringing them home, they then offer this eternal hope. And so we are asking that you partner with us, that our Dinner Conversations family comes alongside Mark and me. Go to projectbeautiful.org/dinnerconversations, and for $30 a month, three lives a year are rescued, are intercepted from modern day slavery before they ever get into human trafficking, being trafficked like these girls in Nepal. They are intercepted and educated. So for $30 a month, three lives a year. Go to projectbeautiful.org/dinnerconversations. We have a special gift for you there as well that we'd like to offer just to say how important this is to us and how important we hope it becomes to you.

Mark: And if we don't help, who will? Project Beautiful, because every life is beautiful and worth fighting for.

Nicole C. Mullen – Worship is a Lifestyle

Andrew: When we say worship now, like in evangelical circles or just church circles in general in the 21st century, we immediately have come to define and associate that with music, right? But that's only skimming the surface. I know that's a big word, but how would you in your life from your experience with God define worship?

Nicole C.: Wow, and I'm gonna go back to Romans 12 again, and Romans 12:1 says, "Therefore I urge you brothers in view of God's mercy to offer your bodies as living sacrifices holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship." So our spiritual act of worship is not necessarily the style of music or the tempo of a song or if we have guitars, if we have orchestra in it, or if it makes me cry or not. Really, our spiritual act of worship is to offer our bodies, our self to Him. And so, you know, all through the Scriptures worship entailed a sacrifice, and so for me to say, “I am not it, but You are,” I choose to go low, not just in my being but in everything that I am. I choose to decrease that You might increase. I choose to be invisible so that You might be seen in everything I do. Worship is a lifestyle. When I'm driving in the car, when I prefer somebody instead of me taking that spot, you know? When I choose to remember that it is not about me, but it's about Him and so, "Not my will, but Thine be done." That is worship. Now we can include music in that and music can be a conduit to lead us into worship, but music itself is not worship. And I think we have to be careful because sometimes we want to worship worship. We wanna worship the feeling that worship brings us or gives us, and to me, that can be dangerous because we start seeking. It becomes flesh because it feels good.

Andrew: Right.

Nicole C.: But real worship doesn't feel good. Real worship is a sacrifice. It hurts the knees. It hurts the forehead, you know? Real worship puts me in positions that I wouldn't wanna necessarily be in. It makes me forgive, you know what I'm saying? That's what real worship does. I'm offering everything I have as a sacrifice that's not dead, but on one hand it is but is still living, but is dead, but it's living, you know? So He said that's our real spiritual act of worship, and we have to do that, like Jesus told the woman at the well. The Father is looking for those who will worship Him in spirit and in truth. That entails the essence of what worship is, the breath of life, you know? And according to truth, the truth of who Christ is and the truth of who we are, it's a combination of the two.

Andrew: It's like an intersection.

Nicole C.: It's an intersection.

Andrew: So take it to music. So why do you think, and this is just your perspective, opinion, why is music such an important aid in our service of worship to God? Or even, you talk about these postures about literally how the experience of worshipping God will posture us in humility and will put us on our faces.

Nicole C.: Because it's a powerful tool. Music is very powerful. Music can sway the mindset, the mood. It can sway what you think about certain things. It can open up the spirit to another realm, good or bad. You know what I'm saying? So it's a powerful tool. It's what David used to chase demons away, so music is a demon chaser, or it can also be an invitation to demons, you know? So you have to be careful as to how it's used, but when it comes to worshipping the Lord, it is a conduit to have people open up their hearts to say, "Yeah, I want more of You, Lord." So it is very important I think. We as Christian artists, or artists that are believers, I think we carry a great weight, and it's a great privilege to be able to encourage people in worship, to invite them into worship by what we do.

“It’s a great privilege to be able to encourage people in worship, to invite them into worship by what we do.”

— Nicole C. Mullen

God’s Spirit in Worship & the Creativity in Music

Travis: I don't think there's ever been a greater time to be alive as a worshipper. I mean, I think we could find some weaknesses and we could find some holes in this or that, and they're all experientially-based, you know? But the end of the day is I think God is moving. I think He's pouring out His spirit on the area of worship and the creativity in music. I do think it's important to hold onto that which is good that's gone behind us. That's how we learn and we don't repeat mistakes, for one thing. But I think it's exciting for all of us in all our particular genres and callings, and I mean, don't you find it just a beautiful time to be alive and worship?

Andrew: Yeah. Well, and I think culturally speaking because of what we're experiencing, and I think in regards to the Gospel and being disciples, we're experiencing more of a having to actually express our faith in certain terms. It's not just a cultural thing that this is what to be a Christian means, and I think music is such a powerful and helpful tool in expressing that in a way that invites people into the conversation.

Mark: I miss the hymnal.

Travis: Well, I'll get you one. We'll put “Mary Did You Know?” in it.

Mark: It already is.

Travis: That's why you miss it. He's trying to sell hymnals, y’all.

Mark: No, but don't you miss it? I remember going to church, picking it up, "Turn to 232," and we'd all read, and I know it's better now that it's up there because you're not looking down while you sing. But you know, my dad used to say, "I don't know if it's good or bad, but I know what I like." And I told him one day, "You like what you know."

Travis: Right, and at the end of the day, worship isn't about what we like and don't like.

Mark: Right.

Andrew: It's not a preference thing ever.

Travis: Right, right, it's not. So I mean, I love it. I love this day.

Mark: Gloria made the comment one day that the problem is walking into church, you immediately start worshipping, is that before they got into Psalms they got through Kings and they told stories of how the Lord brought them through, and then how can you not praise Him? How can you not worship Him? I think we're missing some maybe, I'm just throwing this out there, some testimonies before we go into the worship? Like let me tell you what the Lord did for me this week. I haven't heard that in years. At my church, they had a little testimony time.

Andrew: At very minimum, how about Scripture to open up the service that tells the story of our forefathers and our ancestors that got through it.

Mark: And why we're grateful.

Travis: Right.

Mark: Because how would you feel if your son came, "Oh Daddy, praise you. Daddy, praise you, praise you, Daddy, Daddy, praise you," and never said why?

Travis: I would go, "I love you. You wanna go to Walmart? Ten minutes, whatever you can fit in your basket in 10 minutes you can get it."

Mark: But seriously, or if he just said, "Thank you, thank you," and never said why.

Travis: Right. Well, and the Word says we overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony. So that's part of it. You know, there's a scriptural mandate for us to proclaim the worth of God, so that's where we get the word worship. Worth, worth worship, worth-ship, and so something happens. I acclaim it to the character of God, that as you proclaim His worthiness, you cannot siphon out the character of God from who He is. You can't siphon out His love, His goodness to His children, and His faithfulness. So even as you proclaim His worth, you end up testifying. You know, a lot of people say, "Well, songs are too much about us." Well, you know, we do need to do a better job about singing songs that just proclaim His worth, but we can't help but testify. Number one because it's a biblical mandate. Number two, it's how we overcome in the word of our testimony, but also, number three, the character of God forces us to because it's such a good character. And so we say, "You have done this for me. I was here and now I'm here. And I was this and now I'm this and it's because of You, not because of me." So I agree with you. Our songs need to encompass all of that, even as we proclaim His work.

Mark: It's hard to get all that into three minutes though, isn't it?

Travis: It is. Yeah, it is.

Andrew: But that's where the creativity and the skill and gifts come in.

Travis: It is, and we think of it as a journey. Like we're not gonna cover everything in this little worship set, but we've got next time, we've got the next time. So, no.

Andrew: Our church has started singing, The blood of Jesus speaks for me. And then they go up the octave, Yeah-da-da-da.

Travis: I hope it sounds better than that. [Laughs]

Mark: Did you write that? Oh. Oh, this is… Wait for it. He really likes you, and you're sweet to put up with this. [Laughs]

Andrew: I do like you. I mean, you're, you know… I feel like this is kind of a project for me. I've been wanting to relate to older generations, and so I feel good about this relationship.

Travis: I've been waiting for a vibrato joke.

Andrew: See, so my vibrato can swim right through his, I know.

Travis: As if you could make a single joke about vibrato.

Andrew: His is like a wide, old hollowed out ocean.

Travis: His is like an assault rifle.

Mark: And he likes to sing.

Travis: I know. It's a problem.

Mark: To learn more about Dinner Conversations, go to dinner-conversations.com.

Andrew: And don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel. That'll allow you to get a new episode every week. Like us or don't like us and leave a comment, good or constructively criticism.

Mark: And if it's really, really, really mean criticism, we can delete you.

Don't Miss an Episode! Subscribe Today:

S01, E01: Comic Grief featuring Chonda Pierce and Ken Davis

WATCH OUR OTHER EPISODES:

S01, E02: Blessed are the Blended featuring Sandi Patty

S01, E03: What’s the Point of Grace? Featuring Point of Grace

S01, E04: Fear, Forgiveness and Friendship Part 1 featuring Anita Renfroe, Patsy Clairmont and Jan Silvious

S01, E05: Adopted, Aren’t We All? featuring Mark Schultz

S01, E07: Dinner Conversations Another Christmas Special

S01, E08: Racism in the Church featuring Nicole C. Mullen

S01, E09: Liquor and Legalism featuring Russ Taff

S01, E10: Fear, Forgiveness and Friendship, Part 2 featuring Anita Renfroe, Patsy Clairmont and Jan Silvious

S01, E11: Musical Theology featuring Buddy Greene and Ron Block

10/22/17 10/22/17

Dinner Conversations Christmas Special

Hosts Mark Lowry and Andrew Greer deck the halls with holiday stories and songs (and lots of laughs!) featuring some of their favorite folks — Cindy Morgan, Mark Schultz and Point of Grace. Plus, Mark performs a special acoustic version of his modern Christmas classic, "Mary, Did You Know?" on this special Dinner Conversations Christmas special.

Hosts Mark Lowry and Andrew Greer deck the halls with holiday stories and songs (and lots of laughs!) featuring some of their favorite folks — Cindy Morgan, Mark Schultz and Point of Grace. Plus, Mark performs a special acoustic version of his modern Christmas classic, "Mary, Did You Know?" on this special Dinner Conversations Christmas special.

Transcript

Mark: So it's Christmas.

Mark and Andrew: It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas everywhere we go.

Mark: Anyway, it's merry Christmas, everybody. It's the Dinner Conversations Christmas special.

Andrew: This is the Christmas special.

Mark: You know, I bought the jacket for $100 off the internet, and then a friend of mine took it and she put beads all over it. She must have used Elmer's Glue because some of them have fallen off, so everywhere I go, I leave a trail of sequins, which is a nice, happy way to spend your Christmas.

Andrew: I would say everywhere you go you leave—

Mark: A trail. So we're very excited about this special, aren't we?

Andrew: Yeah, I love it because it's gonna be more focused on music than probably we usually do. It's still gonna have conversations but conversations through some of our favorite songs and our favorite people.

Mark: Who are we staring with? I'm excited.

Andrew: We're gonna start with me.

Mark: This would be a good time to go to the restroom. No. What are you singing?

Andrew: "Go Tell It On The Mountain" with our good friend — it is redeemable — our good friend Cindy Morgan. Yeah, so we're gonna kick it off with a little...

Mark: All right, here he is.

Andrew Greer and Cindy Morgan singing “Go Tell It On the Mountain”

Go tell it on the mountain
Over the hills and everywhere
Go tell it on the mountain
That Jesus Christ is born

While shepherds kept their watching
O'er silent flocks by night
Behold throughout the heavens
There shone a holy light

Go tell it on the mountain
Over the hills and everywhere
Go tell it on the mountain
That Jesus Christ is born

Down in a lowly manger
The humble Christ was born
And God sent us salvation
That blessed Christmas morn

Go tell it on the mountain
Over the hills and everywhere
Go tell it on the mountain
That Jesus Christ is born

Go tell it on the mountain
Over the hills and everywhere
Go tell tell it on the mountain
That Jesus Christ is born
Jesus Christ is born
Oh Jesus Christ is born

Mark Schultz singing “Different Kind of Christmas”

Mark Schultz: Hey, I'm Mark Schultz, and Mark and Andrew, thanks so much for having me on your Christmas special. This song, "Different Kind of Christmas," was actually inspired by my wife growing up in her house at Christmastime. Ever since she could remember, she and her dad would go to the fireplace on Christmas Eve and leave milk and cookies, and the next morning she would come and there would be a letter from Santa Claus that would say, "Hey, I was coming down the chimney last night, and I bumped into your dad, and he told me that he thinks you're about the greatest thing that ever happened to him." And so my wife loved to get those letters every Christmas from Santa Claus. Even when she was in college, she would go home and write a note to Santa the night before. And even when we got married, the notes changed a little bit, but she still got notes. They'd be like, "Hey, I bumped into your dad coming down the chimney last night. He thinks you're the greatest thing in the world. Your husband needs to learn how to fix some things around the house." You know, he was a huge part of Christmas to her, so after he passed away, she was walking into my office and she said, "You know what?" She said, "We've got the Christmas tinsel and we've got the Christmas lights, and we've got all the things we decorate the tree with — those are all the same — but daddy's gone, and it's a different kind of Christmas this year."

Snow is falling Christmas Eve
Lights are coming on up and down the street
The sound of carols fills the air
And people rushing home, families everywhere
Putting candles in the windows
And lights upon the tree
But there's no laughter in this house
Not like there used to be
It's just a million little memories
That remind me you’re not here
It's just a different kind of Christmas this year

And in the evening, fires glow
Dancing underneath the mistletoe
A letter left from Santa Claus
Won't be the same this year in this house because
There's one less place set at the table
One less gift under the tree
And a brand new way to take their place inside of me
Well, I'm unwrapping all these memories
Fighting back the tears
It's just a different kind of Christmas this year

Now there's voices in the driveway
Families right outside the door
And we'll try to make this Christmas like the ones we've had before
But as we gather around the table, I see joy on every face
And I realize what's still alive is the legacy you made
It's time to put the candles in the windows, the lights upon the tree
It's time to fill this house with laughter like it used to be
Just because your up in heaven doesn't mean you're not near
It's just a different kind of Christmas
It's just a different kind of Christmas this year

Project Beautiful Sponsorship Message

Mark: This Christmas program is brought to you by our good friends at Project Beautiful.

Andrew: A passionate community committed to saving innocent lives from the terrors of modern-day slavery, Project Beautiful has intercepted over 12,000 vulnerable people from the front lines of sex trafficking, and today, you can help. Your partnership pledge of $30 a month will help save three lives each year from entering a life of slavery through Project Beautiful's sophisticated interception strategies. And if you sign up today, you will receive a special partnership package filled with exclusive show items straight from our table to your doorstep.

Andrew: Project Beautiful because every life is beautiful and worth fighting for.

Mark Lowry reading Piper’s Night Before Christmas

Mark: They said it was the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring not even a—

Kids: Mouse

Mark: Oh, but hours before, there was much stirring then for Piper the Mouse was the hyperist he'd been. He tried to be good, but his patience grew thin. He wanted it Christmas right there and right then. He stared at those presents like catfish to bait. What was inside them? He just couldn't wait. One gift was marked "Piper," so trying to peek, he pulled on the ribbon, stretching it with his feet. But instead of it breaking, it snapped with a force, catapulting poor Piper in the air. And of course, the window was open, so out Piper flew. There's no telling how many red lights he flew through. The church doors were open. He flew right inside, past the pews and the pastor. What a wonderful ride! He landed smack dab in a pillow of hay, then realized he was now in their Christmas Eve play. There was Mary and Joseph the shepherds and sheep. They were saying their lines. He didn't dare make a peep. They said that God loved us and gave us his son, so at Christmas, it's giving not getting that's fun. Piper looked right beside him and there on the hay lay the most precious baby ever born to this day. He jumped off that manger and ran to his house, breaking all the speed limits that apply to a mouse. He got his one gift, and he dragged it for miles to the church, to the stage, to the manger, and smiled. He gave it to Jesus. It was all he could do, but then the angel said, "Jesus would rather have you." The play was now over. The cast took their bows. Piper took one himself with the sheep and the cows. And he walked home that night with something new to believe, for he'd learned it's much better to give than receive. And when he got to his house, he did not make a peep. He just made gifts for his loved ones, then fell fast asleep. So that night before Christmas, that's why all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

Andrew: All right, so one of my favorite things is—

Mark: Oh no. He loves a Christmas quote, y'all. Quotes.

Andrew: I love quotes in general. Yeah, cause people–

Mark: I do too.

Andrew: You do.

Mark: I do, but I don't like—

Andrew: You don't like mine.

Mark: I don't, like, write them down and carry them around with me.

Andrew: Okay. See if you can guess who said this. You ready? "He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree."

Mark: I have no idea.

Andrew: You're not even going to guess? That's the game.

Mark: Benjamin Franklin

Andrew: No, Roy L. Smith.

Mark: Well, who's that?

Andrew: I don't know.

Mark: I'm shedding again.

Andrew: Okay. Here's—

Mark: But I shed Christmas everywhere I go. It just sheds. Go ahead.

Andrew: All right. You will know this name. "Christmas is not a time nor a season but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas."

Mark: Pee-wee Herman

Andrew: Close — Calvin Coolidge. Here's a good one: "Christmas, my child, is love in action."

Mark: Mother Teresa

Andrew: Close — Dale Evans.

Mark: Oh, Roy's wife?

Andrew: Yeah, which is kind of like a Mother Teresa figure. Okay, here's the last one. I love this one.

Mark: Oh, good.

Andrew: "Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love."

Mark: "Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love." Oh, conspiracy is an interesting word for that.

Andrew: It is.

Mark: I don't know. Who? I don't know.

Andrew: Hamilton Wright Mabie

Mark: Never heard of him either. Have you?

Andrew: No.

Mark: Okay. There's our Christmas quotes. Now, back to the music.

Mark Lowry singing “Mary Did You Know”

Mark: In this great ever-expanding universe, how are we going to find God? He found us. But you know what? He came through the back door. He came through a virgin girl. My college professor said she was 13 years of age. Now, I don't know where he got that in the Bible, but I learned a lot of things in Bible college I never read in the Bible. But we do know that she was a virgin maiden and she was young. If I had been God and I was coming to Earth, that's not the way I'd have come. I'd have had a big golden staircase coming out of the sky. I'd have had cherubim singing and seraphim swinging and Gabriel playing a Dixieland melody on that trumpet. And I'd have let them know I'm coming to Earth, and when I get here, I'm going to kick some tail ‘cuz I'm a Baptist. That's not the way God came. You know who I feel sorry for? The people that were in the motel while God was being born in the barn. Just a few barnyard animals got to witness the entrance of the King, and a virgin maiden and her espoused, her husband, Joseph. And then she got to grow up with him. Isn't that cool? Now, my dad— My dad's here tonight. My dad believes Jesus knew who he was the second he was conceived. I don't. And when daddy does his concert, he can say what he wants. I said, "Daddy, if Jesus knew who he was the second he was conceived, then he was faking all those diaper changes.” Because Mary changed God's diapers. Mary got to have God nursing her breasts. Mary taught God how to talk. Mary taught God how to walk because when our God came to Earth, he set aside his omniscience, his omnipresence, and wrapped himself in flesh and became one of us so we could know him.

Mary, did you know that your baby boy will one day walk on water?
Mary, did you know that your baby boy will save our sons and daughters?
Did you know that your baby boy has come to make you new?
This child that you delivered will soon deliver you

Mary, did you know that your baby boy will give sight to the blind man?
Mary, did you know that your baby boy, he will calm the storm with his hand?
Did you know your baby boy has walked where angels trod?
And when you kiss your little baby, you have kissed the face God

The blind will see and the deaf will hear, the dead will live again
And the lame will leap, the dumb will speak the praises of the Lamb

Mary, did you know that your baby boy is Lord of all creation?
Oh, Mary, did you know your baby boy will one day rule the nations?
Did you know your baby boy, he's heaven's perfect lamb?
And this sleeping child that you're holding, He's the great I Am

Mark Lowry and Andrew Greer reading Christmas Story from Luke 2 (The Message Bible)

Mark: Here's the Christmas story from Luke 2 in The Message Bible. At that time Caesar Augustus ordered a census to be taken throughout the Empire. This was the first census when Quirinius was governor of Syria. Everyone had to travel to his own ancestral hometown to be accounted for. So Joseph went from the Galilean town of Nazareth up to Bethlehem and Judah, David's town, for the census. As a descendant of David, he had to go there. He went with Mary, his fiancée, who was pregnant. While they were there, the time came for her to give birth. She gave birth to a son, her firstborn. She wrapped him in a blanket and laid him in a manger, because there was no room in the hostel.

Andrew: There were sheepherders camping in the neighborhood. They had set night watches over their sheep. Suddenly, God's angel stood among them and God's glory blazed around them. They were terrified. The angel said, "Don't be afraid. I'm here to announce a great and joyful event that is meant for everybody, worldwide: A Savior has just been born in David's town, a Savior who is Messiah and Master. This is what you're to look for" a baby wrapped in a blanket and lying in a manger." At once the angel was joined by a huge angelic choir singing God's praises: Glory to God in the heavenly heights, Peace to all men and women on earth who please him.

Mark: As the angel choir withdrew into heaven, the sheepherders talked it over. "Let's get over to Bethlehem as fast as we can and see for ourselves what God has revealed to us." They left, running, and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in the manger. Seeing was believing. They told everyone they met what the angels had said about this child. All who heard the sheepherders were impressed.

Andrew: Mary kept all these things to herself, holding them dear, deep within herself. The sheepherders returned and let loose, glorifying and praising God for everything they had heard and seen. It turned out exactly the way they'd been told!

Andrew Greer and Leigh Cappillino of Point of Grace singing “Silent Night”

Andrew: You start us off.

Leigh: All right.

Silent night, holy night
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon virgin
Mother and child
Holy infant so tender and mild
Sleep in heavenly peace
Sleep in heavenly peace

Silent night, holy night
Son of God, love's pure light
Radiant beams from thy holy face
With the dawn of redeeming grace
Jesus, Lord, at thy birth
Jesus, Lord, at thy birth

Project Beautiful Sponsorship Message

Mark: Dinner Conversations is presented by Project Beautiful. Did you know for only $30 a month you can save three people a year from sex trafficking around the world? Just think if this was your daughter, wouldn't you be glad someone is spending $30 a month to get her home? Go to projectbeautiful.org/dinnerconversations and join Andrew and me as we try to stop sex trafficking in the world today.

Andrew: If we don't help, who will? Project Beautiful because every life is beautiful and worth fighting for.

Mark: One, two, three, four.

Mark and Andrew: Oh by golly, have a holly jolly Christmas this year.

Mark: Merry Christmas, everybody!

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S01, E01: Comic Grief featuring Chonda Pierce and Ken Davis

WATCH OUR OTHER EPISODES:

S01, E02: Blessed are the Blended featuring Sandi Patty

S01, E03: What’s the Point of Grace? Featuring Point of Grace

S01, E04: Fear, Forgiveness and Friendship Part 1 featuring Anita Renfroe, Patsy Clairmont and Jan Silvious

10/21/17 10/21/17

Another Christmas Special

Who says one Christmas special is enough? Dinner Conversations ho-ho-hosts Mark Lowry and Andrew Greer trim the tree once again with more seasonal songs and funnies featuring singer-songwriter Marc Martel, platinum-selling vocal group Point of Grace, speaker extraordinaire Patsy Clairmont and a special appearance by Mark's always-popular dad.

Who says one Christmas special is enough? Dinner Conversations ho-ho-hosts Mark Lowry and Andrew Greer trim the tree once again with more seasonal songs and funnies featuring singer-songwriter Marc Martel, platinum-selling vocal group Point of Grace, speaker extraordinaire Patsy Clairmont and a special appearance by Mark's always-popular dad.

Transcript

Mark: Well, we had so much fun on our first Christmas special, the Dinner Conversations Christmas Spectacular part one, that we thought we would do Dinner Conversations Christmas —that's hard to say. Say that ten times. Dinner Conversations Spectacular part two, and with these new teeth, it's especially hard.

Andrew: Yes, and sans the coat.

Mark: Yeah, I got rid of the Christmas coat.

Andrew: So we're gonna have lots of Christmas music coming up and some conversations and a special little surprise with your—

Mark: Well, Point of Grace is gonna be here. We'll get to that. Point of Grace, Marc Martel

Andrew: Patsy Clairmont

Mark: Yeah, and then my father tells a very special Christmas story, and it is one of the funniest things I've ever seen in my life. So that's all coming up, but let's start off—

Andrew: With our good friends Point of Grace with "Joy to the World."

Point of Grace singing “Joy to the World”

Joy, joy
Joy, joy
Joy to the world, the Lord is come
Let earth receive her King
Let every heart prepare Him room
And heaven and nature sing
Heaven and nature sing
Heaven and heaven and nature sing

Joy to the world, the Savior reigns
Let men their songs employ
While fields and floods
Rocks, hills, and plains
Repeat the sounding joy
Repeat the sounding joy
Repeat, repeat the sounding joy

Hallelujah
Joy, joy
Hallelujah
Joy, joy
Hallelujah
Joy, joy

He rules the world with truth and grace
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness
And wonders of His love
And wonders of His love
And wonders, wonders of His love

Joy, joy
Hallelujah
Joy, joy
Hallelujah
Joy, joy
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah
Hallelujah

Mark Lowry’s Dad reading the Christmas story

Mark: A few Christmases ago, my brother brought out his video camera. He's one of those people who's always got a video camera going. You know what? I'm glad he does because we've got some incredible family footage. And my dad had received some email from some friend of his, and it was a Christmas story. And he started trying to read it to us, and he got so tickled. It is one of the funniest things I've ever seen. I hope you enjoy it.

Man: Daddy's gonna read a Christmas story.

Charles Lowry: This was sent to me by a friend. It says, "Subject: Merry Christmas, a little story to start your Christmas season in the right spirit" When four of Santa's elves got sick, the trainee elves did not produce toys as fast as the regular ones, and Santa began to feel the pre-Christmas pressure. Then, Mrs. Claus told Santa her mother was coming to visit, which stressed Santa even more. When he went to harness the reindeer, he found that three of them were about to give birth and two others had jumped the fence and were out heaven knows where. Then, when he began to load the sleigh, one of the floorboards cracked. The toy bag fell to the ground, and all the toys were scattered. Frustrated, Santa went in the house for a glass of cider and a shot of rum. When he went to the cupboard, he discovered the elves had drunk all the cider and hidden the rum. In his frustration, he accidentally dropped the cider jug, and it broke into hundreds of little glass shards all over the kitchen floor. He went to get the broom and found that the mice had eaten all the straw off the end of it. Just then, the doorbell rang, and an irritated Santa marched to the door, yanked it open, and there stood a little angel with a great big Christmas tree. The angel said very cheerfully, "Merry Christmas, Santa! Isn't this…a lovely day? I have a beautiful Christmas tree for you. Where would you like to stick it? And so began the tradition of the little angel atop the Christmas tree. A lot of people don't know why the angel's eyes are open so wide or her mouth is the shape of an "o." Ho ho ho

Mark: That's a funny video, isn't it?

Andrew: I love that your dad cracks him up. I love the family dynamic in there. Is that your niece or?

Mark: That was my niece Katelyn sitting there and my sister, you hear her. And it was funny cuz when my dad started cracking up, I could hear my sister trying to say, "Oh, daddy,' like trying to stop him. And I'm going, "Oh please, don't stop this. Please."

Andrew: It was perfect.

Mark: I kinda call her down a little bit. I felt bad about it, but I did not want her to stop him because I knew this was gonna be something I would cherish. But yeah, our family's got a lot of wonderful dynamic in it.

Andrew: And I love how laughter is a part of the dynamic of the holiday and of the Christmas season. And it is true for some people in our communities, in our neighborhoods, sometimes even in our families, Christmas is not the easiest time of year. It can be a real sad time for some people because of who they've lost, who they're missing at Christmastime, and so I wrote a song a couple years ago specifically for people. I think it's interesting that we celebrate Christmas in kind of the midnight of our calendar. The darkest part of the year is actually when we celebrate Christmas from an environmental standpoint, and I think that's partially what makes the light of Christmas so poignant.

Andrew Greer singing “My Troubles”

Choirs singing in the snow
Joy to the world, the Lord is coming
Choirs singing in the snow
My troubles

Repeat the sounding joy
Tenors singing loud and altos singing heavy
Repeat the sounding joy
My troubles

Ringing through the night
Bells and drums with joy and might
Ringing through the night
My troubles

Far as the curse is found
They say he's digging for diamonds in the rubble
Far as the curse is found
My troubles

Sing the songs and ring the bells
Father, can you hear us?
Like the steeple, we're here on Earth
Pointing to the heavens
Men their songs employ
Shining like the star that the wise men followed
And men, their songs
They quiet my troubles

No more let sorrows grow
Hold the child and hear him crying
No more let sorrows grow
He knows my troubles

Sing the songs and ring the bells
Father, can you hear us?
Like the steeple, we're here on earth
Pointing to the heavens

Project Beautiful Sponsorship Message

Mark: Dinner Conversations is sponsored by Project Beautiful.

Andrew: There's a great quote from Dale Evans that says, "Christmas, my child, is love in action." And we think this is one of the most perfect ways this Christmas season that you can put your love into action.

Mark: Project Beautiful has saved over 12,000 people around the world from sex trafficking, and the way they do it is they intercept them. I love this plan. And not only do they intercept them, they tell them about Jesus once they get them home. Did you know for only $30 a month you can save three people a year from sex trafficking around the world?

Andrew: You can partner with us in ending modern slavery today by going to projectbeautiful.org/dinnerconversations. If we don't help, who will? Project Beautiful because every life is beautiful and worth fighting for.

Patsy Clairmont reading from John 1 (The Voice Bible translation)

Patsy Clairmont: During this holy holiday season, there is nothing that adds a greater sense of music to our life than the Scripture. The translation that I'll be reading from is The Voice. Lean in, listen, and allow your heart to rejoice with what you hear. "Before time itself was measured,‘The Voice was speaking. The Voice was and is God. This celestial Word remained ever present with the Creator. His speech shaped the entire cosmos. Immersed in the practice of creating, all things that exist were birthed in Him. His breath filled all things with a living, breathing light — a light that thrives in the depths of darkness. It cannot and it will not be quenched…‘The Voice took on flesh and became human and chose to live alongside us. We have seen Him, enveloped in undeniable splendor — the one true Son of the Father — evidenced in the perfect balance of grace and truth.‘God, unseen until now, is revealed in the Voice, God's only Son, straight from the Father's heart. (John 1 The Voice, verses 1-5, 14 & 18)

Mark: Don't you love the way Patsy Clairmont reads the Scriptures?

Andrew: I do. I love the way that she articulates life in general. She has been one of the most poignant people in my life, the way that she expresses herself.

Mark: And I've just recently gotten to know her. You've known her a long time.

Andrew: I have. And the way that she articulates that scripture specifically, John 1, about—

Mark: God coming to us—

Andrew: Literally in—

Mark: Compressed and compacted into that 8-pound bundle was the fullness of the Godhead.

Andrew: And then that balance of grace and truth. That's the part of that passage that gets me every time because I feel like we are constantly erring on one side of the other, but He's that perfect balance of grace and truth.

Mark: And Marc Martel is a new artist that I'm not familiar with, but you introduced me to him.

Andrew: Yeah, Marc Martel was part of a band called Downhere, Dove-nominated band. Then, the original members of Queen discovered that he sounded just like Queen's frontman Freddie Mercury, and so now, he's the frontman of this huge Queen extravaganza revival.

Mark: Who's Freddie Mercury? While he was listening to Queen, I was listening to the singing Rambos.

Andrew: Well, we didn't grow up in the same era.

Mark: But Marc Martel is evidently a friend of yours?

Andrew: Yeah. Actually, no. I've just met Marc recently. I've been a big fan of Marc's music for a long time. We were thrilled to be able to have him on the show.

Mark: Well, here's Marc Martel.

A Christmas Conversation with Andrew Greer and Marc Martel

Andrew: I wanted to go back to you as a pastor's kid, and so I'm sure many Christmases were spent within the local church. Is there a certain sanctuary you find at this time of the year because of what that, you know, represented to you?

Marc: Yeah, I do. And I do count myself as very fortunate to grow up in a tradition where Christmas was a very positive thing. Family, gifts, the birth of our Savior — all that good stuff. But I can't help but remember so many people I've met in my life that just don't have that experience of Christmas. They've, you know, either maybe they've lost someone or they didn't grow up in a good family. Like you say, there's a lot of strife in the world, and that carries on in Christmas. You can't turn that off, which is totally fine because Jesus came into a very broken world, which is still very broken, and He's doing that work still.

Andrew: The humanity of God, the willingness of God to be human — to me, it's like, okay, if this Great Designer, this Great Creator was willing to provide sanctuary, then that's my example to also provide sanctuary for others.

Marc: Absolutely. I love that Christmas is that reminder that we have every year to remember why we live the way we live, you know. And I love that you can make it as meaningful as you want. People who only believe that there's nothing but the physical and when you die you die and that's it, Christmas can still be a very meaningful thing where you refocus your life, you think about your family a little more than usual, you listen to jazz a little more than usual. But for us believers, it's just a wonderful time to just get ready. It's a beautiful time to refocus, and the fact that it happens at the end of the year, you know, how is this gonna carry into 2018? I love Christmas.

Marc Martel singing “What Child is This?

What child is this, who, laid to rest
On Mary's lap is sleeping?
Whom angels greet with anthem sweet
While shepherds watch are keeping?
Why lies He in such mean estate
Where ox and donkey are feeding?
Good Christians, fear, for sinners here
The silent Word is pleading
The silent Word is pleading

This, this is Christ, the King
Whom shepherds guard and angels sing
Haste, haste to bring Him laud
The Babe, the Son of Mary

So bring Him incense, gold, and myrrh
Come, peasant, King to own Him
The King of kings salvation brings
Let loving hearts enthrone Him
Let loving hearts enthrone Him

This, this is Christ, the King
Whom shepherds guard and angels sing
Haste, haste to bring Him laud
The Babe, the Son of Mary

Raise, raise a song on high
The virgin sings her lullaby
Joy, joy for Christ is born
The Babe, the Son of Mary

This, this is Christ the King
Whom shepherds guard and angels sing
Haste, haste to bring Him laud
The Babe, the Son of Mary

Andrew Greer reading “Worry into Worship”

Andrew: Though the Christmas story happened thousands of years ago, it remains relatable in our lives today. This is an essay I wrote incorporating some of the Christmas story from Luke 2. It's called "Worry into Worship."

“We all wrestle with fear. We all get scared. Sure, some of us are less skittish than others, but being afraid of cancer, of the government, of the weather, of our finances, of each other has gradually become our cultural norm. We wear anxiety as a badge of honor, as if the unmanageability of our mind and emotions is some sort of status symbol. Maybe we have glorified fear because, quite frankly, we are scared to death of it. This is one of the reasons I am drawn into music. In the rhythm of a verse and crescendo of a chorus, generously moves our hearts beyond the angst of daily living towards the contentment of eternal life. The strains of song speak or sing out our doubts until our souls harmonize with faith. Music changes the most nervous of Nellies into people of peace. "And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid." I'm not sure how "sore" translates, but it sounds to me like the spotlighted shepherds were so filled with fear that it physically hurt. I get that, don't you? I have been stunned by panic before, so confused with worry that the task of getting dressed and leaving home felt like some sort of monumental achievement, as if with even the most basic aspirations to being a full-functioning, responsible adult, I was failing. "And the angel said unto them, "Fear not." I have a hunch that these celestial creatures didn't merely speak this quelling chorus into the atmosphere; they probably sung it, and in the current of a heavenly melody, the apprehension building inside of the shepherds' hearts was transformed from a quivering anxiety into a glorious anticipation. Under the cover of night came a great light, and worry was turned into worship. From fear, faith was born. "For, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord." He is here. God is present with us. We no longer have to be afraid.

Mark Lowry singing “It Came Upon A Midnight Clear”

It came upon a midnight clear
That glorious song of old
From angels bending near the earth
To touch their harps of gold
Peace on the earth, goodwill to men
From heavens all gracious King
The world in solemn stillness lay
To hear the angels sing
O ye beneath life's crushing load
Whose forms are bending low
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow
Look now, for glad and golden hours
Come swiftly on the wing
So rest beside the weary road
And hear the angels sing

Mark: Merry Christmas, everybody.

Mark: And now, it's time for Christmas quotes. This is something Andrew came up with because he likes really sentimental, deep—

Andrew: I do. I like really thoughtful articulations.

Mark: Yeah, so I looked up a few of my own, but you do yours first.

Andrew: Okay. This is one of my favorite Christmas quotes ever probably. "Christmas waves a magic wand over the world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful." That's Norman Vincent Peale.

Mark: Oh, that is nice. Well, Victor Borge who says, "Santa Claus has the right idea — visit people only once a year."

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