I am so grateful for good friends, both old and new, and especially now that God has brought our lives together. As we enter into the first half of 2010, never has there been such a pivotal point in history to experience! Fast-paced lives in the family, shake-downs on the job and a political arena that seems out of control, all signify that human-kind is desperately in need of purpose and direction now more than ever.
Who holds the answer to purpose and direction? Who can make sense out of a chaotic world? Well, we know it is Jesus. But isn't it our responsibility to mentor and help people see this truth - not only for their personal lives, but for their heart's desires and dreams?
For every dream that God gives a man or woman, there comes a day and an hour when the dream is birthed into the realm of tangible reality. Nineteen ninety-eight (1998) is that moment for the vision that God gave to me.
When I was twelve years of age, I was awakened one night with a strong sense of the presence of the Lord in my room. For nearly an hour, I felt as if the Lord were speaking to me. The vision He poured into my young heart during that time has both inspired and empowered me these many years. Although there was much my mind did not understand, I never doubted the promises the Lord gave me that night. My doubts were only about me; would I or could I obey Him.
For years I tried to implement the vision, using the techniques available to me in the music business. Neither the techniques nor my own level of commitment to Christ was sufficient. I learned the reality that we all must discover: we cannot mingle our peculiar message with even the best of the world's system. What we are as a people, and what we say in our message must stand apart from what the world is saying. We have to be different. A different people. A different message. A different product. Stunningly different!
Have you noticed that the world never compromises its message? Yet, in order to gain their attention and approval we often abandon our methods in preference to accommodating their tastes.
As you allow me to explain the vision that I am walking out with the Lord, please remember one very important thing...when we wish to plant something of eternal value, we have to channel our resources into something immortal. The only institution on the planet that is immortal and eternal is the Church, Christ's own Body. To help those who are called to build up the Church is to do your own part in building that which is eternal. In the background information and the plan to follow, I will explain to you how BridgeHeart is about equipping the Church to reach its potential of artistic worship and praise, bridging with excellence the heart of man to the heart of God.
Over thirty years ago I began my ministry in Christian music as a church choir director/minister of music. God blessed the various choir programs and they grew to be great in number. In 1975, I had a wonderful invitation for employment with Word Records as an assistant to Kurt Kaiser. After having become Vice President of A&R and Music Publishing at Word Inc., I had the opportunity to open up an entirely new division for CBS Records. I happily accepted this challenge and thusly, CBS/Priority Records came into being. I was stepping in taller cotton that I could ever have imagined possible. Surely working for the largest record company in the world would grant me the perfect platform from which to launch the vision I had received as a boy of twelve.
However, it was not to be! My adventurous rise to the top was a rather short-lived thing. In spite of the fact that Priority Records was doing well and making wonderful strides into the general market arena, the powers-that-be at CBS aborted Priority Records. My demise was humiliating as well as devastating. I grieved for my own losses as well as the losses of those who had joined the company as artists, producers, writers and staff. In a few short years, I lost everything for which I had worked years. The sense of failure seemed to smother not only the dreamer in me, but the man in me as well. I found myself stripped naked and alone...and prostrate before God, (thankfully) having discovered that no man can ever use the methods of the world to do the plan of God. One cannot serve two masters, nor can he survive for long with a divided heart. In time, all divided houses do fall.
However, I found that it was God's mercy that allowed such devastation. Laughingly, I have told friends that someday I will write a book called "How Losing My Shirt Saved My Neck". For it was in losing all that I discovered that a few steps taken in the wrong direction would inevitably lead you to the wrong destination. The road back from the wrong destination to God's perfect will often takes one right into (and ultimately through) the desert.
It is in the desert that God offers us as much time as we need to allow Him to rebuild our faulty foundations so that they rest solely on His precepts. Isaiah 54 as well as Isaiah 61 presents a great picture of this. Read it. It will bless you. It was in this desert that I began to remember who I was born to be, and what I was born to do.
As I submitted to Jesus, He began to shatter the false image of what I had become. (I call this the "Ishmael Image"). The true imprimatur of the Holy Spirit upon my soul began to emerge. I would like to stop right here and encourage those of you who are at this moment in a similar crucible of God to stand strong. For it is His love that allows the fires of adversity to destroy all that is in our lives that is not of His plan and purpose. That which mimics the true work of God, yet is not, must be allowed to burn. Embrace the refiner's fire for in it you will discover your destiny. As we let God move us and move in us, we soon find that we are in "The Move of God".
However, I am no longer that Nashville Music businessman. God allowed my dreams to die. My circumstances to be traumatically reversed and my own soul to be shaken to its depths. I have eaten the bread of brokenness and have washed it down with my own tears. And may God be praised that it was so with me. The severity of the crushing revealed itself to be the very passion of love that Jesus had for me.
The mercy of God is such that often with great reversals of our plans we are blessed to catch a glimpse of something far more magnificent...His Plan. It took me quite some time to allow the anger, hurt and loss to subside. But, in time, I could honestly and gratefully bow my knees to God's Sovereignty. It was then that "BridgeHeart" was born within me.
BridgeHeart Ministries is the direct result in my life of the process I have just described to you. I want to tell you about what BridgeHeart is; but it is first necessary to lay a foundation of understanding by giving you a brief historical sketch of music within the Church.