JUST SENT OUT BY DON DONAHUE VIA E-MAIL. MORE ABOUT THIS EFFORT IN THE NEXT POST AS WELL.
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Hey Friends,
You will undoubtedly received dozens of opportunities to help the
disaster in Louisiana and Mississippi, so allow me to be one of the
first.
Our next door neighbors in our building, MAXX TECHNOLOGY, has had this
devastation hit close to home. They manage an artist on Integrity
named Jason Morant. Jason and his wife have lost their home in the
floods in New Orleans, but that’s not the issue. The issue is Jason’s
sister, who also lost her home, is trying to establish a refugee
housing center for 200 people in her church in Slidell. Literally
100’s of people are arriving on foot with no food, water or shelter.
These forward thinking folks have ALREADY had a semi donated to them,
our goal here at 2035 Mallory Ln is to pack that truck to head out with
supplies to Slidell by noon FRIDAY.
The most obvious needs are:
Non Perishable Food (Cans)
Water
Blankets
Pillows
air mattresses
cots
toilet paper and other paper goods
baby food and baby wipes
teddy bears
batteries
Please donate something to put on this truck. Drop it off here at
Rocketown (2035 Mallory Ln in cool springs).
Obviously MAXX is fronting all of the cash for this so CASH is really
needed as well. In the 60 Minutes since they started this initiative
they’ve received $9,800 worth of donations PRAISE GOD. Maxx is really
scrambling to get this together but they have committed to each donor
to show an accurate accounting and receipts for this endeavor.
If you have further questions about this Slidell Truck. Please call
the MAXX office at 615-236-1000. Anyone there can help you.
God Bless you, and sorry to do this in group form, but I invite you to
include me on any needs you see come up as well. I figured you may be
looking for a place to plug in. This is a good one.
Don
Don Donahue
President
Rocketown Records
I just spoke with a friend of mine, Jay Hall, over at Maxx Technologies in Franklin, TN and he made me aware of a situation in Louisiana that could use your help. Jason Morant’s sister attends Joy Fellowship in Slidell Louisiana. The church is one of the only, if not the only, church remaining in the city after hurricane Katrina. They would like to house, feed, clothe and care for 200 people in their small building but currently lack supplies. So Jay, owner of a production company, has wrangled a deal from a transportation company in Nashville, for a semi. The truck will leave tomorrow for Slidell with supplies for Joy Fellowship.
Gas prices are high and gas stations are in short supply past Meridian, Mississippi so a gas truck from Texas will more than likely have to meet the relief truck in Slidell and fill it up for the return trip. This is costly. The supplies on the truck won’t be cheap either. Food, equipment to cook food, blankets etc will have to be purchased.
If you’d like to make a donation of supplies or money to the church directly you can do so knowing that it will go to aiding the people of Louisiana. Note n the check that it is for relief efforts. Here is the church’s address:
Joy Fellowship
1510 W. Lindberg
Slidell, LA 70458
If you would like to help with Maxx Tech’s costs you can donate to them directly by mail as well. Note on the check that it is for the Slidell Relief Truck and make checks to Maxx Tech. Send to:
Maxx Tech
Attn: Slidell Relief Truck
PO Box 707
Franklin, TN 37065
This is the Church being the Church. Pray. Help if you can. Updates to come.
SG
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More from the trip to El Salvador - The last stuff about day one I promise…
ROBERTO AND CHINESE FOOD IN CENTRAL AMERICA:
We’re staying in a nice hotel in San Salvador. Just beyond these thick walls wired for internet access and cable TV is poverty and crime. This bothered me when we checked in. How not immersive. How pampered we are even here.
It bothered Brian too. So he asked Suzie, one of the coordinators from Compassion in charge of this trip’s logistics, about the cushy treatment of us artist and speaker types. She explained that this is not a mission trip we’re on. It’s about observation. She went on to tell him that some artists, some Americans in general, shut down when they see what we’ll be seeing - this kind of sadness and depravity. So, to lessen culture shock and depression and freaking out of all kinds, especially on the part of some of the very young who’ve never been outside their hometown, we get cushy. We get American cuisine. A bus. A hot shower. Air-conditioning. And Chinese food.
That’s right. Chinese food.
We went to the Compassion headquarters for El Salvador this morning. We joined the staff’s regular devotion and prayer time. They asked us to share some music with them and then we took a tour of their offices.
And then we walked together, Roberto and our group, to Roy Lee’s - a Chinese Restaurant down the street. Chinese food in El Salvador. It was actually very good. Not very Chinese tasting but very good.
Over lunch I learned that Roberto is among the few, one out of a thousand, who has attended University here. He studied marketing and has another degree as well. He’s very young, somewhere in his late twenties and he’s engaged. He’s decided to devote is life to Compassion International instead of the corporation he once slaved for because the marketing world “had a different definition of ‘integrity’” than he did.
This move is even more strange seeing as how his mother is the secretary for the President of El Salvador. He’s grown up in politics. He could run for office himself. He has the relationships and the charisma and the brains for it. So I asked why he’s pursuing change through Compassion instead of the government. In such a small country, the size of Massachusetts, surely a godly man in the right office could bring about a revolution of the most benevolent kind or at least curb the poverty that marks this place.
He once thought so too. He explained though that when Christians get help from the government in their efforts to do good in the name of Christ, those Christians always have to compromise, at least in El Salvador. He claims that in his country parts of the bible would be off limits, parts of God would have to be avoided, in everything Christians did to help people if that help was funded or fueled at all by the government. The conversation with the least of these is thus limited before it even begins - if the government is along for the ride, or driving. He says this is what he’s seen in his country’s history. The Church then, he said, is the only institution capable of bringing all of God to the people of El Salvador. And that’s what Compassion does. It doesn’t just feed and educate and heal but it also brings any part of God and His character and Word to people that they need. And it does so through local people in local churches around the world.
The Church, Roberto elaborates, is an a more powerful institution than any government. An alternative politic? - I ask. Yes. Exactly - he nods.
Amen.
Why don’t more people see this in my country - I wonder. If only more potential politicians like Roberto went around confessing loudly the inadequacies of politics and endorsing the Church with their life’s work. Maybe then we’d be as faithful as we are political and maybe then we’d see more of Heaven on earth.
I got no fortune cookie today. So I’m making a prediction of my own. I won’t be content singing quiet encouragements wrapped in polite pop songs to the American church anymore. There’s something else I’m supposed to be about now. But what else is there for me? What else does God want from me? I feel propelled to action, inspired by the lessons learned over sesame chicken. But I’m no Roberto.
I spent lunch at the cult de sac with Brian and his family. Our realtor called warning that she was heading our way with a prospective buyer so we quickly mopped, dusted, stuffed stuff under the beds, threw covers over abandoned pajamas and headed out the door.
Of course our house looks great these days, to the naive, and so the woman who perused it wants it if her husband agrees. She’ll be back with him in tow this weekend. Thankfully I’ll be out of town and unable to participate in the mopping, dusting, stuffing of stuff under beds, throwing of covers over abandoned pajamas and heading out the door to eat Sonic in Brian’s front yard again. Too bad.
I say it looks good to the naive because only someone without a clue, or someone extremely optimistic about the living habits of a family of five, would truly believe this place is so meticulously groomed at all times. In reality the Cheeto stains were only recently painstakingly concealed with a fresh coat of paint, covering only the bottom three feet of every wall. The deck was only recently completely stained and before then sat for more than a year only two-thirds washed in the chocolate colored pain-in-the butt stuff. (I hate staining.)
And the coffee tables and end tables, glass of course for making the place look bigger, were added by our realtor. Along with a thin layer of cheap mulch in the flower beds and a few strategically placed scented candles and a cookbook on the kitchen island - opened to some fancy chicken spinach tartar something-or-nother - that says “Me cook fancy meals. We have it together. Move here and you will too.”
She calls it “staging.” Some would call it “lying” or, at best, “faking.”
She also added plants, pillows, throws, lamps, a fountain, books and nick knacks (I asked if we should add any paddy whacks. Not amused. You’d think for this kind of money she could fake a smile too.)
So the place looks amazing. Amazing enough to give me second thoughts about selling it before I left for El Salvador. I came back though and added a few things myself. And started looking for our next home. I’m partial to a place over in Brian’s cult de sac. Got to go in it. Looks great. Smells great. They have two kids but they seem to have it together...and they cook a lot.
Radio stations receive a stack of singles each week. The independent artists are filed in the trash can. The major labels and artists with big names get heard first along with, possibly, any artist from a label who’s given the program director a golf trip or baseball tickets in the recent past (actual examples). But that still leaves a lot of songs to sift through for a hit. So program directors of large stations and networks then, usually, hire a company to test this whittled down batch of songs, then play the best testing songs.
The test group is usually, for AC stations, Christian females 25-44 who listen primarily to Christian radio (BONUS: These folks are called P1’s. P2’s are those who listen but not primarily to CCM radio).
Well, we at Rocketown Records figure if this system works so well for radio types why don’t we use it to choose my next single and save our pals in radio world a little money and time. And I’m just tired of hearing “Your song doesn’t test well for us.” We’ll see about that. We’ve now completed testing on a large group of P1 females nation-wide in hopes of their collective “wisdom” guiding us to the best choice for my next single - a song that we know in advance will test well for radio stations.
But, and this might surprise you all, music, as it turns out, is subjective. Huh. Who knew? So it’s apparently hard for a group of people to reach a consensus about whether a song is good or bad. Go figure. Instead we got what stations get from testing: a big pile of expensive conflicting data. One man’s, I mean woman’s, upbeat and positive is another woman’s play-this-and-I’ll-kill-myself apparently. Enjoy SOME of the slew of real opinions from test subjects asked “WHAT DO YOU LIKE OR DISLIKE ABOUT THE SONG ‘AMEN’?”
Awesome song! Love to hear it on the radio often! I liked the music, the beat, the words!
Classic rock is it? That is at least the feel of this song. Great arrangement and production.
Don’t care for hard rock music
I like the heavier rock sound
Does not sound so much inspired as it sounds made up.
i like it because it seems honest & genuine
Don’t like his voice
i like his voice
I can relate to the song, asking God for mercy. This is a good song.
hard to relate to this kind of music- i’m sure it helps some people. the music is like secular music i hear when flipping the channels and if that is what it is supposed to be like then it fits.
I like it because you know it’s a christian song...Some you never know it is until you hear who the artist is.
I like the words, but the music and how it is sung seems dark instead of christ-like.
I like the words. They seem to be very biblical.
too slow
it’s upbeat
its uplifting
Not very uplifting
It sounds outdated
It’s a new kind of sound - I really like it!
just didnt have a good beat
Love the beat
Matthew West? I have the new CD but haven’t listened to it yet.
not charismatic enough
Sounds like every Christian pop song
Breaks the mold a bit of CCM.
too slow starting, didn’t grab me
This song captured me within the first 10 seconds! Great sound, great vocals!! Would love to know who this is?
Well, there are the results. Testing obviously works like a charm. The verdict is obvious isn’t it? Well, not until we hire a pricey radio consultant to interpret all this for us. Hey, isn’t it consultants who told program directors to test singles in the first place? Wait a minute…
