Last week I attended the Arise Arts Conference at Willowcreek Community Church, where Ross Parsley, Worship Pastor of New Life Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado, made this statement: “The power is not in telling the story, but in becoming the story.” That’s what Jesus did.
CHINA
It wasn’t the end of the age, but it was the summer of 1991 and at the other end of the world where I fathomed for sure that He is with me always. I found myself standing in front of a class of Chinese businessmen, teachers, people of influence in hopes to teach them some English. I was 24 years old and had not a clue of how that experience alone would change my life in many ways. It was my first trip outside the United States. I had traveled with a group of sixty teachers to Mainland China. We were divided into small teams of about six to ten people and dispersed to several cities in the Eastern provinces of China.
I was assigned to a University with five other people. There, for the first time in my life, I encountered what it was like to be a minority and to not be able to understand the language being spoken around me. I had had no previous experience around Chinese people, but in one month I became very aware that I looked very different and that my mannerisms and speech were foreign. However, within that month. too, I became very aware that people in China were no different than people in the USA, people in need of a Savior and Lord, people who need to be loved and valued, and who need a relationship that passes all understanding.
I stole a lot of glances during that trip because everything was new to me from the moment I stepped off the plane to when I stepped back on to return home. I knew immediately that my blondish-brown hair was an eye-catcher amidst a sea of coarse black hair and millions of bicycles! People spoke to me merely because I looked like I could speak English, a language that serves as a link into the Western world. For a few weeks, I was the expert in the English language regardless of my high school and college scores. Whatever I said was considered fact and I had the power to portray my country however I chose to my captive audience.
You may wonder where am I headed with this story; well, I didn’t stop being a musician when I took this first step to international missions. Music was in fact, a tool I used to communicate and teach English. If anyone knows the slightest about Chinese culture, than one would know that John Denver, Karen Carpenter and James Taylor songs are widely known in the urban cities of China. These songs are the English ones in the Karaoke bars and hotel lounges. I did not hang out in these places, but I know this because my team was taken one Saturday to a Karaoke bar and Karen Carpenter’s “Top of the World” became my vocal debut in China! The lyrics of these songs are very easy for people learning English to grasp, and the melodies are simple for an average singer.
I used some of these songs to teach English concepts and pronunciation. As well, I discovered that the movie, The Sound of Music, was a classic in China. The students knew all the words and sang along while watching! Teaching the names of the fifty states became fun when singing Ray Charles’ “50 Nifty” song. The people absolutely loved to sing. Did you know that most people who learn English in other countries learn a majority of it by just listening to a radio station that plays English music?
That first step out from our beloved USA continues to impact my life. I’m still learning things from that one experience and I am still a part of God’s Kingdom work in the city He took me to so many years ago. You see, I met a Chinese girl that summer of 1991 who has become a dear friend to me over the years. We had traveled one fateful weekend to Beijing together to see the Great Wall. That trip alone sealed us forever as sisters and friends.
I am still praying for her salvation, but I am trusting God to bring that about in His time. In the meantime, we continue to keep one another in each other’s lives through e-mail and phone calls. She now lives in Montreal, Canada and has a baby. In her attempts to teach him English she sings children’s songs in English to him. I was blessed to have visited with her just this past December in Canada. We had not seen each other since 1994, and for the first time I was able to give her a Bible - a bi-lingual one in Chinese and English. She told me that she is thinking about Jesus. It’s taken sixteen years of sporadic contact to finally have the opportunity to hand her a Bible and to talk more intimately of my relationship with Christ to her. I hope soon that she will be a co-disciple with me.
Something interesting I found out just this past December: Did you know that in China today, there are many people buying pianos for their homes and making their children learn to play? How do I know this? My friend and I were visiting with another Chinese woman and her baby. While sipping hot tea and eating a Chinese "biscuit" this lady told us of such information when she learned that I teach piano. She is from a major city called Guangzhou near Hong Kong. Now there’s something to think about.
GREAT BRITAIN
Music was a tool for me to use during that China experience in 1991. It was used for communication, for finding a somewhat-commonality or -connection between two cultures and a way to share life with a people who were so unlike me and yet very alike. I did wonder, though, if all those years spent in learning to play a piano since childhood could ever be used in the mission field.
I returned from that summer to my third year as an elementary music educator but soon felt His Spirit moving my heart towards something else - what, I really didn’t know at the time. I resigned my job after that third year and pursued seminary studies. But, before I went to the "foreign field" of Texas, I answered a call to spend a summer in England with some missionaries.
The work was mainly to the existing congregations in hopes to encourage and strengthen God’s work within them. It was in 1992 that I spent time on the farmlands of Devonshire, southwest England, and in the northwest urban area of Lancashire. I was away from the tourist scene and never did get to London during that summer except to fly back to the USA.
During that summer, I found myself as a rare find at times just because I played the piano. I went to several churches and often encountered a minister asking me at the last moment if I would accompany the congregational songs. Cranking up an old organ or playing a piano with a little more ‘umph’ brought inspiration to a people who were losing hope. You see, Christian worship through congregational singing is waning in many small congregations. If you know anything about England then you would know that in the rural communities away from the tourist areas, several Anglican chapels and even Protestant ones have been bought by Islamic believers and turned into mosques. This is a growing concern today. I saw this happening in 1992.
JAMAICA
I did make it to seminary. In 1993 I had an opportunity to spend a week on a medical mission trip to Jamaica. Yet again, I found a connection by making music with the Jamaicans as they waited for their eye examinations and surgeries. I even witnessed how some of the doctors I was working with were also musicians at heart. They sang and played the guitar for the people and as well were used as a vessel from God to literally give sight to the blind! I was truly humbled and amazed.
In 1994, I chose to complete my seminary degree with a practicum experience to Scotland and the South part of England. I spent a month with a woman who was a musician, a missionary, a minister and a friend to many people. I learned much from her by just walking alongside her and interacting with the people she had come to love so deeply. It was this experience that I began to see more clearly what I had only felt after leaving China.
COSTA RICA/CUBA
A missionary to Costa Rica came to the seminary during my last semester and spoke in my music missions class. She told of needing someone with piano skills and other musical abilities to work alongside her in what God was doing through music at the Baptist seminary and within the churches in Costa Rica. It was this divine encounter that introduced me to the next step I was to take. I answered her request and in February of 1996 found myself waking up in the tropical paradise of Costa Rica for the next four years of my life.
I fell in love with the place and with the people. I spent time with a specific group of musicians daily who became my voice when I had no comprehensible Spanish on my lips. They were my colleagues, sisters and brothers in Christ. They were my friends. They have become more precious to me as the years go by and I have mourned the separation of their company. We walked together in ministry, missions, in music, in life. We laughed, we cried, we gave each other headaches, we hurt one another, and we played together. Something I always thought interesting was that I turned thirty years old that first year in Costa Rica, and I was thirty-three when I left. How thankful I am for them and that time in my life. I will never be the same.
We spent time in each other’s homes and met each other’s families, the place where all of us are most vulnerable and most safe at the same time. We participated in music projects within Costa Rica. These projects sometimes were music-teaching projects, some were choir presentations in public parks, and sometimes we just gathered to make music. In the last seven years of my life, I have had the privilege to work with two of them outside Costa Rica in music related projects to Mexico and Cuba. The time spent with all of them is immeasurable and invaluable.
I wrote to some of them about this conference and they encouraged me to stress to you that what has become the most endearing of all the time spent was the relationship built with one another. The so-called Missionary - National titles were irrelevant between us. We had become family and co-laborers in God’s work together. We had taken time to know one another. We were disciples, together discipling one another and others.
It’s been within these relationships that I began to discover what missions is all about. We must first know the Lord and His Lordship in our own lives and then we must seek to know the disciples whether they are the ones we make or the ones we are co-laborers! It’s that simple. It’s that hard.
We are musicians. We make music. But in order to make it, we must listen and comprehend. It is through our comprehension that we can do it. Our ears must be opened. My Costa Rican friends taught me much in this. I had not played with many musicians who did not depend upon music notation very much until I encountered the ones in Costa Rica. Several of them were musicians who only played by ear, others played with their ear and a little with notation. And still others had the best of both worlds!
Many times in our endeavors to make music with one another a written score was peripheral and often just added frustration amongst us. Let me explain it this way: they were the kind or musicians who wore their instruments as one wears his clothes. For some, I think their instruments were handed them at birth.
They could hear the chord progressions before ever playing them and their hands would instantly execute them without their eyes needing to see a notation. My eyes had been trained like their ears reacted and we had many a discussion and moment in helping one another comprehend each other’s way of making music.
I realized quickly that if I was going to really make music with these people I had to learn to listen, so that I could comprehend and thus, do. I often sank more than I swam during those years, but I soon learned to tread water and they were gracious to throw me a life jacket on occasion! In my treading water I gave them the Finale computer program and several learned to read and even write their own music with this program! In other words, we taught one another in making music together.
An exciting thing happened years later between several of these Costa Rican musicians and several musicians in Cuba. In 2002, Dr. Ed Steele, of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, began teaching several Cuban musicians how to use the Finale computer program. They used this skill to publish a Cuban hymnal that was presented and dedicated in February 2005 to the Cuban Baptist churches. This first edition has helped preserve a 20th/21st century hymnody that reflects the hearts of a people who continue to praise God amidst their life’s circumstances. 117 of the hymns included are Cuban originals mostly written within the last fifty years.
In turn, several Costa Rican musicians had part in this effort through the editing and lay-out design of the hymnal. Six of the hymns included are the artistic expressions of my friends with three being original compositions and the other three being lyric translations. They had made music together and some have never met one another personally nor have ever stepped outside their own countries.
CODA
My college piano teacher used to tell me after all the lessons, all the time in the practice room, after all the preparation done before a competition or recital performance, to just go and make music. He would say exactly, “Hon, just go and make music.”
I could hear the rattle of his keys in his pocket, as I would step out onto the stage. He was nervous with me and yet, he used to say, “Hon, if you didn’t get nervous, then I’d worry.” I knew my teacher was with me all the way. He had discipled me, he had taken the pianist in me before my college years and molded me into a musician. He taught me how to study and to learn the music. He taught me how to make music. Now it was my turn to do it. “Just make music, Cathy, just go and make music,” is what would I tell myself on the way to a piano bench.
We must be about making music. What does that mean? It means to prepare well, plan your trips, practice much, play with your mind and a skill that has come at great costs, but in the moment of actually being about your task of mission, just go and make music. Be nervous in your humanity, but be confident in knowing that Christ has gone before you. He has prepared the place for you, and He is with you. Go and make music, um, I mean, disciples!
I leave you today with a glimpse of Christian musicians who are about God’s work in their own countries and even here in the US. These are faces of people who I have walked with at one time or another. They are leaders in their churches, their conventions, their homes and their neighborhoods. They are making music, um, I mean, disciples.
Cathy Rogers is a church musician serving on staff at First Baptist Church of Vidalia, Georgia, as music assistant and pianist/accompanist. She also works as a freelance accomanist and private piano teacher. She holds a music degree from Shorter College in Rome, Georgia, and a Master of Music with a Missions Concentration from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
