A Pretty Awesome Night

(I've been trying to get this posted for a week...)

I've been playing guitar and singing for about 22 years now (about 12 of those years were serious) most of which has been with some connection to the church. One of the main reasons I wanted to learn to play guitar and be able to sing with it was in order to lead worship at church. As many who knew me growing up probably know, the church music in those days wasn't conducive to guitars for accompaniment. I also played the drums, so it was easier to beat on things than actually play something that was unfamiliar.

Along the way, I discovered Vineyard Music, a music company that specialized in contemporary songs and arrangements for churches, written for a variety of instruments, particularly for the guitar. The discovery coincided with something called the Brownsville Revival in the mid-90's. An Assembly of God Church in Pensacola, Florida had nightly services for nearly 4 years, hosting visitors and pilgrims from around the globe and receiving national news coverage and even special reports at the same time. Lindell Cooley was in charge of the music and used Vineyard songs extensively. People from across the globe flocked to Pensacola to attend the revival meetings and came away singing the songs and took them back to their local congregations. One of those churches was Malakoff First Assembly of God, my home church.

I soon found out that there was more to the Vineyard catalog than just the songs that were played at Brownsville. At that time, a CD was released every quarter of the year with brand new songs on it. A separate songbook could be purchased that came complete with sheet music for piano, chord charts for guitar players and transparency masters for those who used a simple overhead projector to display song lyrics. (Later, these resources were saved on the CD, along with the audio tracks - a great resource) It probably seems so trivial now, but this was a big deal in 1997. I bought everything I could get my hands on and would learn to play it right away. Along the way, I started noticing the names of the people who wrote the songs. Brian Doerksen, David Ruis, Andy Park and John Barnett were just some of the prominent song writers at that time. Like I said before, I played as many of their songs as I could. Eventually, I ended up playing Andy's songs more than the rest. So, when I heard that Andy would be coming to our church in Conroe, I was going to be there. In fact, I sat on the front seat.

For about 90 minutes, Andy and his band played many of the songs I've played at one time or other in the same building. One of my friends said later "he played all your songs!" It was actually the other way around. Still, it was nice to meet Andy and sort of completed the evening for me. Of course, Andy is just an ordinary guy, and when I met him, it was no big deal. I told him I liked his songs and played a lot of them, to which he replied "good. I'm glad you do."

After the concert was done and we finally made it back home, I thumbed through the songbook and realized just how many of his songs I knew by heart or by sight. It's not that often we meet our role models. I'm glad he was the type that let me tell him how much I appreciate what he does.