Who I am // pt. 2

This has taken far longer to finish than I meant. But this is the second of three posts on a trip I took back to LaGrange, Georgia recently, a city I lived in during high school.

The trip from Charlotte is a straight shot down I-85. I've long marveled how the course of my life has  poetically stayed in close proximity to this interstate with the exception of my year and a half in Charleston. Grantville, LaGrange, Newnan, Anderson, Greenville and Charlotte are all cities that are not just accessible by 85, but 85 runs straight through them like points on a constellation.

Friday evening we arrived in LaGrange, Ga, right off of West Point Lake where Micah's parents still live. Micah asked me if I recognized it, and I didn't. But when we walked inside, memories rushed back in. The one I've never forgotten is the time that Micah convinced me in an act of piety to destroy all of my secular CDs. I'm not sure how much of this act was for the sake of purity and how much was for the sake of the exciting colors and shapes that CDs make when you burn them with a cigarette lighter. But we took my CDs out into the back yard and sacrificed them unto the Lord, as a burnt offering. The moment we walked into Micah's old room I felt as though I could see all the burnt CDs, and I could remember listening to Johnny Q. Public and the W's and the Supertones. Micah told me that one reason he liked me being around is because he could just say "play this song" and I would start playing and singing it. For him it was like having live music following him around. That was actually gratifying for me to hear.

Saturday was when all the festivities were planned at the school. The deal was that there would be a girls basketball game and a guys basketball game, old students versus current or recent students. I had no part in this, but after the games there was a concert with former students performing. I was really excited to play a couple of my own songs for this, as well as accompany a couple of other pieces. But more on that in a moment, just one more excursion. While watching the games, I had a moment to catch up with Mr. Cippola, the principal of WGCA then and LCS now. I never had a particularly close relationship with Mr. C. but he walked up to me after 12 years and knew who I was. I was grateful to be able to share a memory I had of him that left a mark on me. When I was in 9th or 10th grade, someone from a newspaper in LaGrange contacted me and asked if they could take some photos of me for a back to school fall fashions bit they were doing, I won't even attempt to try to explain this because I never understood it. My personal style was just rebellion and I never knew why they had my name and number. But I kept at what I find to be a hilarusly unlikely situation. Somehow, though, mew ended up at my school, taking pictures of me in my safety pinned hoodie and cut off dress pants in front of the school sign. The article ran and Mr. C. started getting angry phone calls. So he called me in his office to talk about it. I was geared up ready for "the man" to tell me what I could and couldn't do, and how small minded people were upset because I, in one fell swoop of fashion iconoclasm had deconstructed their perfect worlds of pleated khaki shorts and polo shirts that all Christian kids wear to Christian school. (Insert anarchistic punk rock anthem here)

But Mr. C. handled me in a different way. He didn't tell me I was wrong or berate me for being "different." He talked about the concept "deference" and what it means to willingly lay down rights out of love for others. This was a category I didn't have, and it stuck with me. I'm not sure how much of this idea sunk in and effected change in my life, but I've never forgotten it.

Onto the concert. It was a surprisingly diverse performance base spanning from a classical aria to folk music to praise and worship to hip hop. Organizing the music was a dear lady who was one of the most important people in my life, Mrs. Darlene Shaw. I'm not sure I could overstate the influence this woman had on me as a musician, singer, performer, and worship leader. She was the head of music and drama at WGCA and she encouraged and validated me like few ever had. Micah asked me what about Mrs. Darlene impacted me so much. After some consideration I said that Mrs. Darlene was an amazing musician who made me feel like an amazing musician. Something about that encouraged me to work and excel and to think of myself as capable of a higher goal musically.

After going out for some drinks, we retreated back to the Vickery's. Before going inside, Micah, Blair and I laid down on his driveway to look at the stars. I don't see a lot of stars in Charlotte because of the city lights but from Micah's house the heavens were overflowing with an army of radiant celestial sentinels. We laid there just silent watching shooting stars and still stars and planets and feeling very small and just a part of something very big. We must have laid there for an hour, and we were all just hoping for one final shooting star to end the night. Instead, a bat flew right over our faces and scared us to death. We jumped up with stifled screams and started running and flailing our arms frantically finding our way safe inside, still human, to sleep.

Who I am // pt. 1

I'm writing this in three parts because it has just gotten unwieldy for a single blog post. This is part 1, and the other two parts will follow in subsequent days. 

I've never lived in one place for very long. I can think of at least 8 different residences I had in 5 cities and 3 states before I graduated high school. Many folks have stories like this due to military life or some other vocation but I'm honestly not sure why this was our story. Because of this, I've always thought of myself as a sort of restless go-er, without the need to really put down deep roots or keep in touch with people. It wasn't until college and marriage that I started to think of people and places as things not to be simply discarded with a change of address like so many pieces of junk mail to a prior resident. 

Last weekend I did something I honestly never expected to do: I attended a high school reunion of sorts. Now, I didn't even graduate from this high school. From 8th grade until halfway through 11th grade I lived in Grantville, GA and attended West Georgia Christian Academy (WGCA) in LaGrange. At that point we moved again to Charleston, SC. WGCA has gone through much turmoil since I left in 2001 and is now called LaFayette Christian School, but it is in the same location and buildings after these 12 years, albeit having expanded significantly. Some of the staff who have been there for many years decided to organize an event they called ReConnect 2013, and they basically invited all former and present students and staff to attend. I wouldn't have been inclined to go, but one of the few people providentially back in my life from that era is Micah Vickery. We were close friends in high school, but didn't stay in touch when I moved away. At this point our lives have circled back on each twice, (3 times if you count the fact that we just discovered we were born like an hour away from each other in Oklahoma). Micah is an intern at Uptown Church where I serve as worship director, and I got pumped to go only because he was pumped to go.

So I jumped in the van with Micah, his lovely wife Blair and their two girls and we took a road trip to western GA. The whole experience was bizarre and surreal for me. I moved in January 2001 the day after the annual Madrigal Feast and performance in which I had a substantial role. For some period of time after that, I tried to hang on to my old world. I had a girlfriend from Georgia, and I remember making trips back for that relationship. But at some point she broke up with me and I think western Georgia just became another shadowy place from my past, another place from which I would maintain no lasting relationships. But Micah's family still lives in Lagrange, so this is home for him. It is fairly unavoidable for him to bump into people from his past by the nature of visiting his family and going to their church. So traveling with them, staying at his parents house, going to their church, and of course attending this school-wide reunion, all of this was my experience on this trip.

I was pretty apprehensive just before leaving. I had been pretty excited up until the day before, but then I got spooked thinking about the past. I remembered that I had old girlfriends who would probably be there. I remembered that people were in different places spiritually, and that some had rejected the faith entirely. I remembered that I wasn't nearly the "good Christian guy" I liked to think I was and many of these people knew that. I remembered that these people haven't been tracking with me and seeing how I've changed and who I am now. I remembered that the past is a mixture of good experiences and bad experiences and that all the experiences are tangled and flowing in and out of and around and through each other like the roads at the intersection of I-85 and I-285 northeast of Atlanta they call "Spaghetti Junction." I very nearly backed out, but Micah talked me back away from the ledge (or maybe back to the ledge), and Friday at noon, we hit the road.

Brethren, We Have Met to Worship

I've been experimenting with mastering technique with Logic 8, and this is the first audio I've attempted it on. I'm assuming I have just WAY too much going on. And it's live. But I still think it sounds better than it did before.

This was from worship this past Sunday at Uptown Church. Had a great crew, and this piece was particularly fun.

Church and Marketing

I hope Escher is at the top of these stairs or we will fall

As is my habit, I am in the middle of a big overhaul project. This time it is our church website, uptownchurch.org. The current site actually looks decent, it just isn't functional. The backend is Adobe InContext Editor, which no longer exists. So of course updates and support have ceased. I used to be able to get in still, but now, using three different browsers, I can no longer edit the site without going into the code. Which is not among my talents or skills.

So we're converting our site to a Wordpress based site, using StudioPress's Genesis framework as the skeleton. We've got most of the wireframe data in place, just working through style. And in the process, I have been digesting more than the daily recommended allowance of church websites looking for ideas and inspiration.

I don't know anything about marketing. Or web design for that matter. I am, however, concerned with the relationship between form and function, particularly as they relate to ultimate things such as the praise of the Father, Son and Spirit. And maybe this is just another reference to that classic triad truth, goodness and beauty. When we redesigned our worship guides, those three perspectives were of utmost importance. Perhaps form is beauty and function is goodness, while truth is, well, truth. The goal was to be as helpful as possible in assisting God's people toward the end of more and better worship. Scripture references, citations, liturgical headers and definitions, all are intended serve that ultimate end.

I want this website to be the same. But traversing the web on the sites of some of the more notable churches in America can be disillusioning. My struggle is that there seems to be a very fine line between the language used to sell a product, and the language used to invite people to live. Our goal is not ultimately more web traffic, more stuff, more notoriety or visibility, or any of that. But to the extent that we see information and technology as an avenue of fulfilling the great commission, those things may ore may not accompany.

I think the beauty of these multiperspectival triads is that, being rooted in the Trinity, or the offices of Christ, they are parts of a fixed pie. Christ is not 1/3 Prophet, 1/3 Priest, and 1/3 King, he is infinitely and perfectly all three. Nothing we do could possibly be infinitely or perfectly anything, but the realization that you don't necessarily have to rob one to fund the other is encouraging. So, as a goal, we want our web site to be as fully true, good, and beautiful as possible.