The Famished Patriot

Every year, on the final Monday in May, Americans pause to honor all of those who “died while in the military service.” There is no greater gift one can give to his or her country.

From the brave ones who fell from the first shots fired at Lexington-Concord, to the latest American casualty brought home in a “pine box” from Afghanistan, the willing surrender of ones life in the defense of ones country is the profoundest of sacrifices.

Foreign Armies on American Soil. America has long contended with enemies. But due to our unique geographic setting, we have remained relatively free from the threat of foreign armies on our soil. We beat back the British a second time in the War of 1812. We brought Japan to her knees after her assault on Pearl Harbor in 1941. And we kept vigilant watch for German U-Boats along our eastern shores in WWII. It has been almost twelve years now since the Islamic Jihadist assault on New York’s Twin Towers and the Pentagon on 9/11 was met quickly with the taking out of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Americans have always been quick and decisive in their reactions to armed assaults from our enemies. But we have been very slow to grasp the more insidious invasion—that from within. Abraham Lincoln once wisely intoned,

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter, and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

Foreign Enemies in our Midst. Following the events of 9/11, when then President George W. Bush identified Islam as a “religion of peace,” I reacted to his wrongheaded mantra. In that same piece—found on my old blog Kingdom>>Church>>Culture—I also called out President Bush for his failure to deal with the lawless invaders from south of the border. And I called his reckless insistence on passing his beloved “Immigration Reform Bill” a “.. load of CRAP!”

Today, radical Islamists, disguised as genuine Americans, occupy government offices, make major policy decisions, and even advise our highest ranking governmental appointees. Meanwhile, millions of illegals, just walking into our country without permission, sap our precious resources, take advantage of our largesse, and chide us for our “racism.” And we just say … OK.

In hindsight, it is now clear to me that the long-maligned Democrat Senator Joseph McCarthy was far more on target with his claims of communist infiltration than we ever knew. Today the communist/socialist/progressive mindset is pretty much mainstream thinking in America. Two generations since McCarthy, the foreign invaders have almost achieved their goal.

Keeping Our Republic. Let us step back in time for a moment. On a hot September afternoon in 1787 Philadelphia, the day our Constitution’s framers finally finished their masterful work, Benjamin Franklin stepped out onto the cobblestone street for a breath of fresh air. He was met by a woman, purportedly a Mrs. Powell, who asked him a question.

“Dr. Franklin, what have you given us?” she inquired.

“A republic, madam, if you can keep it,” was the sage’s wise reply.

Keeping our republic has always been our biggest challenge. As Lincoln, and so many of our founders warned, the greatest threat to our liberty has never been an external military force, but rather a threat from within, fed by our own weakness of character. America’s greatest asset—the idea of genuine personal liberty—has also been her greatest weakness. When fallen humans are given the freedom to choose their own way, eventually, even with the inestimably magnificent Constitutional framework provided by our founders, we weak men fail. No longer bolstered by the founders’ recommended triad of “religion, morality, and virtue,” we weak-minded Americans have succumbed to the sweet-sounding, once-whispered but now trumpeted wicked and deceitful promises of those who seek our demise.

Keeping Our Garden. Yesterday morning, my pastor, Jeff Ling, began a series of messages built around the theme of the Biblical mandate for work. Yes, you read that correctly. I wrote “work.” Putting our hands to the proverbial plow as they say.

Biblically speaking, work is not a part of the curse that came after the fall. For Adam was given the charge of tilling and keeping the Garden (of Eden)—that’s work in case you had not noticed—before sin ever entered the human equation. What was cursed, Jeff explained, was the “ground,” not man’s work upon it and with it.

Keeping the garden was also a part of Adam’s responsibility. Jeff explained that “keeping” means “protecting.” In my telling of the Ben Franklin story above, I have always interchanged the word “keep” with the word “maintain.” But the idea of “protecting” clearly adds a new dimension to the conversation.

Jeff then threw out a question to us that he did not answer. Rather, he let it hang there for us to ponder. He asked, “If Adam’s job was to “protect” the Garden, how then did the serpent get in?” Hmmm …

Honor and Dishonor. Today, we rightfully honor those in uniform who gave their lives to “protect” our republic. But sadly, while these honored ones laid their lives on the line in order to “keep” our republic—and continue to do so—those of us in civilian clothes at home have utterly failed to “keep” the crafty, deceitful, lying serpent out of our Garden of Republic.

So today, as we remember those who surrendered all, let us ask what we have given. The great American patriot and soldier, General Douglas MacArthur, admonished us that,

"No man is entitled to the blessings of freedom unless he be vigilant in its preservation."

Today I am publishing the second in my series of six questions. These questions and their commensurate answers will help us better understand how Worldviews shape our lives. In answering, I will be comparing the response from two Worldview perspectives:

1. The Judeo-Christian Worldview

2. The Statist Worldview

If you missed the first question, “How Did We Get Here?” you can find it here.

The second question is “What Went Wrong?”

The Judeo-Christian Worldview. The Christian understands that mankind’s troubles began long, long ago in the Garden of Eden, when our first two parents decided that they could do life better without their Creator as their Lord. All that is broken in the world can be traced—according to those who espouse and hold to the Judeo-Christian Worldview—back to that fateful day when Adam and Eve chose to pursue knowledge and wisdom outside of God.

Those first two souls rejected their transcendent Designer and Maker and stepped out on their own, in hopes of finding their own way absent of His principles and laws. They also expected to be made into gods themselves.

How crushed they must have been to discover that their Maker did not approve of, or excuse their foolish choice. They quickly realized that their act was an act of rebellion against a just God, and that there would be consequences—serious consequences—for their choice. They were not just slapped on the wrist and sent to sit in the corner for a while. No! Everything they had, except their breath, was stripped from them. They were cast out of their beautiful garden-home, sent packing basically, with virtually nothing in their bags, and thrust out of their garden as the gate was locked behind them.

And that was the good news. The bad news presented itself in the reality of their now broken, severed relationship with their Maker. What’s more, they came to understand that their God’s promise of an unending life of bliss was now lost, and one day death would take them.

The first hard evidence of human dysfunctionality arrived when their son Cain murdered their son Abel. Oh what grief must have been theirs! And so it has been, down through the millennia, year after year, decade after decade, century after century, right into the present, when foolish men still believe that they can reject their Maker, live under their own rules, and create their own utopias outside of God. It has never worked. And it never will.

For more detail read Genesis two through four and Romans one and two.

The Statist Worldview. State worshipers, having rejected the creation story and the idea that man is made in the image of God, for a purpose, and with a plan, must, by default then also reject the story of man’s fall as told in Genesis chapter three. After all, if there is no God, how can there be rebellion against Him?

The statist then, must turn to other explanations for the general dysfunctionality of the human race. And it would seem he has settled on one that really works for him. It does not take long to understand that men have, almost since time began, been seeking to build the perfect society. Because you see, in the statist’s Worldview, it isn’t the people that are broken, it is the systems under which people organize themselves that need fixing.

We begin with the Tower of Babel, the first recorded quest for the human utopia.

“Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”” (Genesis 11:4 ESV)

God had told both Adam and Noah to disperse, to spread out across the globe. But the wisdom of men directed the opposite. Let us gather ourselves together and get organized in a single place, they said, under a singular government and for a singular purpose—to make a name for ourselves.

Whether merely imagined places, like Plato’s Republic and Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, or one of the hundreds of actual attempts to flesh out the perfectly-ordered society, man’s quest for happiness in the flawlessly-structured community has been pursued pretty much since the beginning of time. Even here within our own country we find such failed utopias as New Harmony Indiana (1814-1824), Oneida, NY (1848-1878), Amana, Iowa (1855-1932), Ephrata, Pennsylvania (1732-1813), and the more recent debacle known as Jonestown (1956-1978), which began within our American borders but ended tragically in the South American Republic of Guyana. Most of these utopian communities have, at their core, an overt religious component.

The above, small-scale, American examples all failed. Except for Jonestown, these experiments in the pursuit of the perfectly ordered society, left minimal damage in their wake compared to other, more deadly, national-scale, utopian quests. The most deadly utopian experiments exist at the national level and involve some form of socialism. Among them we find the failed, socialist, utopian experiments known as The French Revolution (1789-1799), the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) (1922-1991), and Nazi Germany’s National Socialist Worker’s Party Movement (1933-1945). All produced large, tyrannical, centralized governments, and left millions dead in their wake.

This is the legacy of the statist, the one who would pursue the perfect society at the national level, outside of God’s plan and clear instructions.

Some of you know of my involvement with the Manassas Tea Party. All of you have no doubt heard about the IRS’s intimidation tactics against the Tea Parties and other Constitution-supporting, patriotic groups. What you may not know is that our local Manassas Tea Party organization (MTP) was involved in the ACLJ lawsuit.

Since February of 2012, I have been privileged to serve on the MTP Board of Directors. About this time last year, following the grievous burden laid upon the MTP following our application for 501(c)4 status with the IRS, I was authorized by our board to engage in a lengthy telephone conversation regarding the IRS requirements with Tom Zawistowski, Executive Director of the Portage County Ohio Tea Party and a Tea Party leader throughout Ohio. Tom put me in touch with Toby Marie Walker of the Waco Texas Tea Party. Subsequently, several members of our local board joined a conference call with Tea Party leaders throughout the country.

It was out of that conversation that many of us decided to join in with the ACLJ in their quest to confront the IRS regarding their egregious demands. The MTP was one of 27 groups involved in that action. As you can read about here, the lengthy delay in the IRS response to our application pretty much had the affect it was likely designed to have – it essentially hamstrung our group and, for a season, diminished our impact.

We received notice from the IRS in November of 2012—after the election of course—that our application had been approved. And now, all of this is finally making news!

I understand that many of my evangelical Christian friends do not grasp or even appreciate why I have decided to involve myself in these efforts. And I don’t really feel all that comfortable talking so forthrightly about my small role in this work in which I am engaged with so many other God-fearing, American patriots. But I feel that I must.

I will say this however. If it was not for the courage of so many within the Tea Party movement these last few years—and other God-fearing Americans in numerous other patriotic groups—it is likely that the horrendous abuse of governmental power for political ends by the IRS would still be fully in play right now. As things stand, light has finally been turned upon this unspeakable abuse. I believe we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg. And I think that the current administration is just one of many in a long chain of those who have abused their privilege of leadership.

Did you hear about the Tea Party leader in Ohio who responded to the IRS demands by sending them a copy of the Constitution?

Oh Christian. You take your gift of political freedom so lightly, not understanding how precarious it is and how close we are to losing it. Some of you even scorn or look down your nose at people like me. Most of you just think that what I and so many other Christians like me are doing is just a “niche,” an area of interest. “That’s your thing,” you say.

Well founding father Benjamin Franklin warned us that the gift of our free republic—given to us by his generation 236 years ago—was a gift that would have to be maintained—to be kept or cultivated. We have done an extremely poor job.

Authority has run amok all across our land at the highest levels. And even here in my own city of Manassas. It has run amok because my generation—and my Christian brothers and sisters—have been asleep at the wheel.

And as pleased and encouraged as I am to have been involved in a very small way in this very little victory on a much bigger battlefield, I carry a deep—a very deep—frustration with my brothers and sisters in Christ and their lack of engagement in this arena.

Where have you been?

Oh by the way, did you know that 55 million unborn children have been murdered in their mother’s wombs since 1973? zzz … I can hear the crickets. Can you imagine what would happen if the whole Church across America—every Bible-toting evangelical, and every devoted, practicing Catholic—would rise up and just say STOP IT! Can you imagine the impact?

Where have you been?

1970—I Am Free

I wrote this song in 1970, but when I sat down to record it in 2006, I was in a wild and crazy state of mind. I cranked up the special effects and came up with the sound of a large concert hall. I added in the applause and dubbed it I Am Free (Live at Carnegie Hall).

Hey … I’m havin’ fun!

No doubt you have heard that the IRS has recently admitted to targeting certain public advocacy groups. Using trigger words and phrases like “patriot” or “Tea Party,” some “low-level” IRS employees (ahem) took it upon themselves to single out applications for 501(c)3 status from recently-formed organizations created to defend our Constitution and traditional, historic, American political liberties.

As I look out across my own local landscape and circle of friends, and speak with others about the course and direction our American republic is currently on, I hear great concern and frustration—and in many, a sense of helplessness. Hold that thought.

The Tea Party movement, and others engaged in the quest to right our errant “Ship of State” have been excoriated by the mainstream press, painted as a bunch of radical, racist, bigoted, extremists. Racist? No. Bigoted? No. Extremists? No. Radical? Well maybe … that is if one considers the following definition of the word “radical.”

“of or going to the root or origin.”^1.

I would proudly consider myself a radical if by “radical” one means that I seek a return to the “roots” or “origins” of historic American political liberty.

I write today to report that there is absolutely no reason for millions of Americans—especially American Christians—to feel hopeless or helpless in the face of the fast-paced, sweeping tide of political tyranny that is rapidly encroaching on oh so many fronts. Two clear reasons come to mind.

1. Christ sits on His throne, busily establishing His kingdom and managing history. The Scriptures tell us that He prevails.

2. Each of us CAN make a difference. All we have to do is get engaged. America will be lost if most, as they are, continue to sit on the sidelines and whine and moan and complain about how bad things are and yet do nothing about it. But we do not have to remain silent.

Twenty-seven Tea Party-type groups had the courage to connect with the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) and stand up to the IRS. Because of their courage, we now have an acknowledgement and evidence of what we already suspected—that the IRS has indeed been targeting the conservative movement. And recent developments indicate that this is just the tip of the iceberg.

In the big scheme of things, Humanism, Marxism, Progressivism, Communism, Socialism have no future. The future belongs to Christ and His Church.

“Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are yours; Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; And ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s.”

I Corinthians 3: 21-23

Jesus Christ is a lover of liberty. He came to set the captive free. Don’t shrink back. Engage in the fight.

^{1. radical. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged. Retrieved May 13, 2013, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/radical}

1971-Ever Grateful

I spent my teen years in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, in a small town named Berea. We lived in a comfortable Cape Cod that sat on a large corner lot. Our big yard served as the meeting place for lots of young folks who gathered to play kickball, baseball, and shoot hoops.

Entering our home by the front door, the first thing that came into view was an old, upright piano sitting against the wall. In addition to plucking on my guitars, I banged around on those ivories a good bit and came up with a tune every now and then.

One of the tunes I plunked out is a song that expresses my gratitude to the Lord for re-birthing me into His family. I call it Ever Grateful. You will also hear me play my small free-reed instrument (a.k.a) harmonica toward the end of the tune.

Like most of my friends, I have long held Ronald Reagan in high esteem. It is hard to imagine that his last day in office as our president happened almost twenty-five years ago. I remember the hopeful feelings I had when he first was elected to office in 1980 almost thirty-three years ago. We had lived through the tumultuous 60’s and the Watergate-debacle-malaise-stricken-Nixon-Ford-Carter ‘70’s. Reagan was a breath of fresh air and a sign of hope for a new era.

But jump back a decade and a half to the mid-to-late ‘60’s. It was in those years that a revival sprang up in America. I was a part of that revival, coming to Christ in 1968. For about a decade—from the late sixties to the late seventies—the Holy Spirit was poured out upon our land. We experienced miracles, signs and wonders, healings, manifestations of prophetic utterances, the Baptism of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of other tongues, anointed Holy Ghost inspired teaching, and most of all, the manifest presence of God in our meetings which arrested us, shut up a full room of souls completely silent for minutes on end as we sat quietly, drinking deeply, some falling to their knees in worship as God moved so powerfully among us. Early on we were called Jesus People and our movement was dubbed the Jesus Movement. Many of the non-denominational, evangelical/charismatic churches and organizations of today find their origins in that movement.

And yet we all saw that on the whole, our nation was moving slowly, inexorably, away from God. On our watch the US Supreme Court made abortion the law of the land. And as the 1970’s drew to a close, we saw the beginnings of the Christian conservative movement with folks like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and James Dobson coming on to the scene. And then he appeared out of the mist—or should I say out of the silver screen. A Moses-like figure in our minds—a deliverer, a godly man with the rights kinds of principles and deeply-rooted convictions. Voted into office in 1980 and swept into office again in 1984, we all but worshiped this man. He was our George Washington, tall rugged, courageous, virtuous, articulate, Reagan represented the true, historic American spirit. We loved him.

Jump forward to a couple of weeks ago. In my class on Judeo-Christian Worldview and the founding of our nation, we looked at I Samuel chapter 8—the story of Israel’s rejection of God and their request for a “king like the other nations.”Hold that thought.

Joel McDurmon of American Vision just yesterday published an article on the first part of I Samuel 8 titled National apostasy (I Samuel 8:1-9). In it he explains that Israel had just come through a nation revival (I Samuel 7) and that after a very short period of time (one generation) they had forgotten God. He writes:

“In reading this account quickly in the space of just a few verses, we probably do not understand the full weight of the situation. As I said a minute ago, this change signals a drastic swing in the faith of Israel compared to the great revival of the previous chapter. After all, Samuel set up the stone called Ebenezer specifically as a memorial device so Israel would not forget what had happened. And now here we are a couple decades or so later witnessing just that: Israel forgetting God.”

But then McDurmon begins to question whether Israel was actually forgetting God, or just getting nervous because Samuel was getting old:

“There is no doubt that Samuel’s leadership had been established among the people. They trusted him or else they would not still have come to him for approval even though they were about to sell him out. The problem here is that the people apparently did not learn the heart of the lessons Samuel had led them through. The mighty revival in chapter 7 was all about God’s presence and particularly God’s preeminence in all things. The Israelites in 7:11 would not have been able to rout the Philistines as they did had not God first moved with a great thunder to put the enemy in a flight of terror (7:10). We recall that the chapter 7 episode was a return to God’s Law and the idea that the battle is the Lord’s (Deut. 20:3–4). But now how far have they come from that reality? Now it appears that it was Samuel himself whom they had ben trusting all this time, for the moment he begins to show signs of aging, they start to fear about their future. Had their faith been squarely in the God to whom Samuel pointed, their concerns would have been quite different. Instead of inquiring about a king, they may have been resolved in the fact that God Himself was their king, and that they needed nothing else but to trust in Him.”

I am seeing some parallels here, aren’t you?

We came off of a revival (70’s), elected a great man to lead and deliver us (80’s), and when he exited the stage, immediately began our quest for his replacement. McDurmon continues:

“Adding to the elders’ fear, however, and to their condemnation, is the fact that they assessed their chances for the future upon their current corrupt leadership. Samuel had appointed his two sons as judges under his command. Despite their wonderful names—Abijah (“My father is Yaweh”), and Joel (you can’t get a much better name than Joel, or “Yaweh is God”)—they failed to live up to them or to walk in the righteous ways of their father. They reversed the reign of justice that Samuel had established in chapter 7. They accepted bribes, a vice which perverts justice in favor of those willing to pay. This favors the wealthy who will pay large sums to sway a decision. It also crushes the poor who are either found unfairly on the losing end of such suits, or who must scrape together and sacrifice virtually their life savings to get a favorable ruling. In the end, bribery means that justice according God’s Law is superseded by the material gain of the judge. The elders had enough moral sense to know that this practice was wrong. They did not want a society in which it was perpetuated. But again, they were focused upon the men and not upon the God who had previously delivered them. Thus, instead of turning to God, they despaired and turned to human devices.”

History repeats itself.

McDurmon then explains that the Israelite’s rejection of God as King, and their clamor for a “king like the other nations,” is DEMOCRACY in action. “This is what the people want,” God said. “I am going to let them have it.” McDurmon next offers four “applications.” I will call them lessons or warnings:

1. 1. Be wary of proposals made in times of crisis and fear.
2. 2. Be critical of all political discourse.
3. 3. Beware of the lust to rule.
4. 4. Government must be transformed by God’s Word, not conformed to this world.

And yet, we continue to look for the next Ronald Reagan.

We do need good leaders. Perhaps if we sought God first, and not good leaders first, He would provide the good leaders we need.

I HIGHLY recommend your reading of McDurmon’s article.

For the next several blog posts, I am going to be raising and answering six critical questions which will help us better understand how Worldviews shape our lives. In answering, I will be comparing the response from two Worldview perspectives:

1. The Judeo-Christian Worldview

2. The Statist Worldview

The first question is “How Did We Get Here?”

1. The Judeo-Christian Worldview. For those holding to a faith in Jesus Christ as the living Son of God, the Redeemer who suffered and died on the cross, the One resurrected from the dead, ascended, and now sitting at the right hand of God, and holding to the inerrancy of the Holy Scriptures, and holding a respect for and an adherence to the sound teaching and Biblical doctrines of the Church—for those who hold to those views, the answer to the above question is clear. We got here because God put us here.

Let’s look at what the Bible teaches:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” (Genesis 1:26 ESV)

Not only does this passage tell us that God made us, it also informs as that we were fashioned in His image. Furthermore, we are told why God made us. There is much good news here. We were made by God, made in His likeness, and made for a purpose. Let’s look at another passage of Scripture.

“… what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.” (Psalm 8:4-8 ESV)

Finally, let’s look once more at another selection from Scripture.

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. (Psalm 139: 13-16 ESV)

Here we see the detail in God’s design, the care, the thought that went into our making. We also learn something about God’s plans for us, and the idea that He knew and Providentially laid out His plan for our lives.

A great sense of security and comfort comes with these ideas. Not only did God make us, He made us in His image, built us with great forethought and design, crafted us for a purpose, and laid out a specific plan for us. How reassuring!

2. The Statist Worldview. For those in the Statist camp, those who reject the teachings of the Holy Scriptures and the teachings of the Church, great uncertainty remains about man’s origins. This uncertainty leads to all sorts of speculations. Although many explanations of man’s origins exist, we will limit our brief discussion here to Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution.

Charles Darwin, in his seminal work, On the Origin of Species, published in 1859, provided great hope to those who wished to be out from under the teachings of the Church, the demands of Scripture, and the judgments of a Holy God. Darwin’s work provided supposed scientific evidence of an eons-long evolutionary process, leading to the eventual development of the human species. With Darwin’s thesis came a gradual decades-long exodus from a large-scale belief by Americans in the Genesis creation story.

It is not within the scope of this study to examine the specific ideas of Darwin or provide a defense of creationism. Many others are far better equipped for that task. Our job here is to look at the wide-open, anything goes field that Darwinism provides.

Rejecting God and His Scripture-provided insights as to who we are and why we are here opens things up to all kinds of mischief. If God is not the Creator, the eternal, transcendent Maker and Orderer of all things, then something or someone must now fill that void. What might that be? Well, whatever we want it to be, of course!

“For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight …” (I Corinthians 3:19 NIV)

“He captures the wise by their own shrewdness, And the advice of the cunning is quickly thwarted.” (Job 5:13 NASB)

1970-The Floating Song

In early 1970, living in Berea, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, I got connected with a fella named Jim. He was a singer and he had a pretty daggone good voice. We formed a little duo called M&J and we wrote a bunch of songs together. The Floating Song is one of the first.

My guitar pickin’ capabilities had been slowly improving in those days, and this particular tune—a song about a horse—really stretched me guitar-wise. Lyrically speaking, The Floating Song is kind of quirky and a bit mysterious as to meaning. Hey, we were experimenting! But it is kinda fun too. I think you’ll enjoy it.

1970—Jesus, Ken Hager, Emory Worsham, and Me

I spent the Summer of 1969 traveling with a youth ministry throughout the Midwest. Ours was a team of six college-age kids hailing from Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Sweden (I think). Over the course of that summer, our time was invested with the youth groups of four different Lutheran congregations. One of the people I met that summer was a Youth Pastor named Ken Hager of Faith Lutheran Church in Cleveland, Ohio.

I lived in a western suburb of Cleveland—a town named Berea—and after that summer ministry time, I went back to visit Ken. We became friends. The above song—number seventeen in my song production story—grew out of those wonderful times of fellowship with Ken, Emory, and others.

Our ministry organization was named Lutheran Youth Encounter (L.Y.E.). The man who led me to Christ in 1968—David L.C. Anderson—is also the founder of LYE. LYE has since dropped the denominational marker from their name and are now known simply as Youth Encounter.

Please take a minute to “Like” This Old Guitar on Facebook.

And please read The Rescue Story, a harrowing tale about David’s rescue from the icy waters of the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska.