Almost Heaven

I was stumbling along my boring comfortable life when I stepped out of the red van in the West Virginian summer sun. I was a chaperone on a Youthworks weeklong mission trip. We take one every summer—as a teacher that everyone loved, I was often asked to go. At that time I still saw my role in the church as a spectator- a person meant to ‘come and see.’ I saw church as a place to receive… of which you are a member. Something was about to change my way of seeing radically. Little did I know, I was about to meet that agent of change.

There he was- God’s road block for my life. A short, cleanshaven black man- no older than twenty-two- came up to me with a huge smile on his face. Right there, he grabbed my hand and gave me a violent handshake. He proclaimed at the top of his lungs, “The LORD has revealed that you are going to do great things in His name… You’re going to go back home and lead many youths to the Lord and great revival will follow….”

His voice was dynamic—like a southern preacher man and he said foreign words to me like “Praise GOD!” and “Halleluiah” with ease.

I nervously shook his hand back and said, “Hi my name is ‘Digger’…” the nickname my youth group sometimes call me. He was so outside the box of what I was comfortable with. He was radical and loud… and he changed my life forever. During that week of service and worship, this ‘roadblock’ preached, sang, laughed, counseled and taught. I would never be the same. Most of all he challenged me… challenged my way of think and way of seeing. There are two men… the one I was before that mission trip, and the new one Christ was building up afterwards.

Four weeks later, I sat at a youth service at King of Kings Lutheran Church in Omaha, NE. I had taken a small handful of youth to worship there but truly I was hoping to run into an old Christian musician friend. Nervously I asked him- sweaty palms and heart racing- if he would join me in creating a worship band. I said, “I have been having this image in my mind… to form a Christian band, you and I. Punk… none of this safe, easy to listen to, romantic love songs like you hear at places like this…” pointing at the band playing at that moment.
He smiled and said, “You know, I have been have the same thought. I keep thinking a lot about those times when I used to play Christian music… I would love to start a band with you.”
And so our little group came together.