Eight years ago today my face hovered over a toilet at the First Baptist Church in Tyler, Texas just moments before smiling for a crowd and cameras as I watched Becky walk down the aisle.
I was suffering from a long night, not second thoughts. It began with a poker game in which my friends purposefully lost hand after hand to me so I’d have some spending money for the honeymoon. And it’s hard to lose to a guy who’s never played. We smoked cigars and enjoyed the stench no woman in any of our futures would ever approve of as my single friends jokingly tried to persuade me a flower-pattern-free house and the freedom to leave the toilet seat up were reasons enough to go brideless for life. These were my last hours without a ring on my hand.
Eventually I would find myself held down, stripped, legs mangily shaved and body graffitied in Sharpie marker. Step by step instructions for the honeymoon scribbled all over me around the drawn on blue bikini outline. Nice. Men say, “I love you” in the oddest ways.
Brian, today my booking agent/road manager/co-pastor, was at the time just my brother-in-law. Our wives are sisters and when he married he was forced by his “friends” to stay up all night playing basketball. So Brian decided this would be a tradition. Marry into the family and you must go without sleep the night before the service. Bad idea.
There are three big rules to keeping me healthy: no red meat, no caffeine, give me sleep. If I break any of these rules I get sick, especially if you add into the mix a little healthy stress like, oh I don’t know, a wedding.
The morning of the service Brian took me to breakfast at McDonalds. I was wiped and starving so I ordered a sausage something (rule one broken), a large Dr.Pepper (there goes rule two) and then hurried home to a harried mother who quickly told me I looked terrible and needed to hurry up and get ready for the service (and there’s the last one).
Drinking a bottle of Pepto Bismol over the few hours before the musicians struck up didn’t seem to do much. But I was eventually able to stand and walk to my position at the front of the church. Becky’s Uncle and Father both presided over the ceremony and I’m told it was beautiful and perfect.
I can’t remember. I took a muscle relaxer that seems to have relaxed my memory as well. I do remember Becky looking incredibly elegant and carefree, beaming as she walked toward me, looking me in the eyes every step of the way as if 800 people weren’t staring at her. So confident. So calming.
And I remember the vows, the to have and to holds. I remember getting choked up at a line about taking her as my wife and best friend forever. There’s something about having a best friend guaranteed for life that makes a guy with shaved legs, lurid drawings on his stomach, shaking knees, a disgruntled large intestine, bagged eyes, crawly skin, no money in the bank and no real job in sight feel good. To know someone would have me and hold me and befriend me even then, not knowing what forever would be made of, shook me up and stood me tall all at once. And still does.
“This ring means I love mommy,” I told my oldest daughter last night at bedtime. “And mommy’s ring means she loves me. That’s why we never take them off. We always love each other and always will. When people get married they promise they’ll always be best friends and take care of each other and love each other no matter what. And tomorrow we’ll have a party because we kept our promise. It’s called an anniversary.”
Happy first eight years of forever to me.
These are the final results of the latest poll on SHLOG.COM. SHLOG readers were asked what Jesus meant when he said we should love our enemies. The poll shows the split among modern Christians in America over what His admonition means for us today. Many (25%) apparently believe individuals and governments, armies etc should love their enemies by not harming them physically. These respondents, it might be fair to say, are pacifists or, the term I prefer, non-violent resistors in the tradition of Martin Luther King Jr. and most early Christians of the first three centuries perhaps.
The largest group of poll participants in the SHLOG.COM poll, however, interprets Jesus’ words on loving enemies as meaning something other than a refusal to physically harm those we despise or those who despise and/or harm us (39%). The poll did not give this largest number of respondents an opportunity to explain what Jesus meant then by “Love your enemy.” So, if you believe Jesus’ call to love those who hate us has nothing to do with how we treat them physically, here’s your chance to explain your view of Christ’s teachings on enemies to the world...or at least to shloggers around the world. We’re reading. Write on.
And check out the new poll about denominational attitudes. You can choose more than one answer this time.
I’ve posted something for each day of Street Week now (July 11-18). Check out the archives for all of the news from the road on Street Week and some pictures too.
-SG
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Thank you to everyone who prayed for us, played the songs, stocked the discs, interviewed me, came to shows and bought White Flag on July 12th. You made it the #1 Christian album in the country. Thank you.
SG
After the Sugarland show the band and crew packed up and headed home to Nashville. I, on the other hand, stayed overnight with my in-laws and took a flight out in the morning to another city. I met up with a program director for a major radio network and one of our radio promoters for a lunch meeting, a chance to get to know each other and, honestly, give our single Bless the Lord a better shot at getting attention.
(NOTE: A radio promoter is a person hired by the label to bug and shmooze stations into playing songs from the label’s artists. Those songs are called “singles.")
I told the network’s programmer that I wasn’t in town to ask him to play my single - that’s the radio promoter’s job. I was there to learn. I love to learn about this business and teach others what I discover because it quells cynicism and angst. Knowledge does that.
If a station doesn’t play my music my human response it disappointment. If they don’t play any music from my label for two years my human response is anger. I’m just immature that way - especially when other artist friends of mine tell me of how their label gives TVs, vacation packages and golf outings to programmers in exchange for radio play. Chaps my hide.
So I can stew and curse and throw an artist tantrum or I can learn why a network like this does what they do and how they do it. I can try to get to the heart of what they want to accomplish, what their, for lack of a less used word, “mission” is.
If I can walk away truly supportive of who they are and what they’re out to do I’m less likely to be angry when I’m not part of what they’re doing. I can honestly say when I hear my new single has been added to rotation, “Well, that makes. That song doesn’t help them meet their goals. It won’t get them what they want.”
So I asked this programmer to explain what he’s doing, how and why and was shocked by his honesty. In a nutshell, and I hope I don’t misrepresent by simplifying more than two hours of conversation this way, his primary goal is to increase his audience size and therefore increase advertising revenue. He used the metaphor of a mountain regularly and this increase in ratings and revenue is the peak for his station and, he believes, every station.
He goes about reaching this peak by testing songs on people already listening to his station and those who sometimes listen. The goal then is to find new music that appeals to both old loyal listeners and potential loyal listeners. The station then sounds, not surprisingly, old. That’s not to say it’s bad. It just plays a great deal of “gold” music - old hits that are familiar to listeners and test well. And then sprinkles in new songs that sound like those old hits. Thing is these “new” songs aren’t often all that new.
He proudly told me, for instance, that his station just added SHOULD I TELL THEM, a song of mine that went #1 three years ago, because it tested well for him.
There’s more to the conversation you’d find interesting but here’s what surprised me the most. After time talking about testing etc I moved beyond business goals and strategy to spiritual matters. I asked him what I want everyone in this business to be asked, regardless of their sector of the industry. Who is your audience? Christians? Non-Christians? Both? And why? What do you dream happens through you for them and in them? What’s the spiritual goal of your station?
The answer floored me. I’ll share that soon. Until then, what do you think you local Christian station’s answers are to those important questions? WHat about your favorite artist or author or label? Have you asked? Maybe you should.
