Even the Darkness Will Not be Dark to You

Well, we made it to Waco and back. It was, for me, an amaz­ing jour­ney. I’ve been try­ing to describe the week­end to folks and I’m hav­ing a hard time sum­ming it up or accu­rately cap­tur­ing the beauty of the trip. I’ve tried describ­ing it like this…25 years ago I was a fresh­man at Bay­lor Uni­ver­sity. Dur­ing Wel­come Week I sat on the right side of Waco Hall watch­ing as Michael W. Smith debuted a song called Rock­e­town. That same year a guy named Louie Giglio started a bible study called Choice at a friend of mine’s apart­ment. I never made it to that bible study, but over the 4 years I was at Bay­lor it grew to be a wor­ship gath­er­ing of over 2,000 stu­dents every Mon­day night. My wife (girl­friend at the time) Laura and I had a spir­i­tual awak­en­ing dur­ing the last cou­ple of years she was there. We started attend­ing Choice. The Lord spoke many truths thru Louie into our lives. These were things we’d heard before, but had never con­nected with on a heart-level. This is where we really began to grow in Christ for the first time. Dur­ing my 4 & 1/2 years there, I lived with a guy from my home­town named Todd Bran­den­burger. We also lived with another guy from Eagle Lake, Texas — Mike Sib­ley. Our house was near 10th & Speight, just up the street from Vitek’s BBQ — home of the “Gut Pack” & right around the cor­ner from the ghetto HEB (our gro­cery store). I played in a rock band called The Spin that had a sig­nif­i­cant fol­low­ing on the Bay­lor cam­pus there in the late-80’s/early-90’s.

All of that is just some set up for where I was this week­end. Most of our time this past week­end was spent in Waco Hall, just up Speight Street from our old house. On the way down from Kansas City, we stopped at my mom’s house in Lewisville . Most of the band ended up stay­ing with Todd and Sharon Bran­den­burger, who live just around the cor­ner from my mom. As a side note, Todd & Sharon sup­ported me finan­cially when I first started at Jacob’s Well and his dad, Jack, gave a large con­tri­bu­tion to the build­ing of the stu­dio, where we have recorded our albums. Being with them reminded me of God’s pro­vi­sion and His hand in the music we make and the com­mu­nity that’s built up around all this music.

From mom’s, we headed on down to Waco and went straight to Vitek’s for some BBQ. The Gut Pack was just as I remem­bered it…Fritos, Chilli, Cheese, Spicy Sausage, Chopped Beef, Onions, Pick­les, Jalapenos…completely deli­cious! We went by our old house and then to the Dr. Pep­per museum. We then went over to Waco Hall and met my friend Jim Cocke. Jim was another friend dur­ing my Bay­lor days that basi­cally got the band I was play­ing in at the time our first shows in Dal­las. He also played on most of our records and played in a band with me called Builder for a while. Jim now works at Crys­tal Clear CDs, the com­pany that prints and pack­ages our CDs. He was there with boxes of the new CD in hand. They look beau­ti­ful btw…

That night was the first ses­sion. As the Wel­come Wagon started play­ing I got really nervous…“oh my gosh, we’re going to play down there on that stage…” Fran­cis Chan got up to speak and one of the first things he said was, “we should be singing songs like they were singing in Exo­dus 15, why aren’t we singing songs like this?” He went on to teach thru Exo­dus 15 — which is the first exam­ple of cor­po­rate wor­ship in the Old Tes­ta­ment. It just so hap­pens that our song Horse and Rider was the first song on our set list. Horse and Rider is pretty much just us singing Exo­dus 15. At that moment I breathed in and rec­og­nized that God had us there in Waco for a rea­son and that He was with us.

The 2nd day was great too…Bifrost Arts opened up the morn­ing with some beau­ti­ful litur­gi­cal wor­ship. Then Rob Bell spoke about the kinds of words we use in wor­ship. I really was res­onat­ing with him and felt like he was chal­leng­ing us to be more thought­ful in the imagery we are using in wor­ship music. I felt, again, like he was affirm­ing what we are try­ing to do with our music and lyrics at Jacob’s Well. I was still super ner­vous though…

Fri­day after­noon, Laura and I went with Cole and Macyann to visit Baylor’s Art Build­ing. This was where Laura spent most of her time as an Intaglio major. It was a per­fect time for us to visit, as two of her pro­fes­sors were there. We got to talk for a long time to Mr. Kling­man — the print­mak­ing professor…It was so cool, he still had one of Laura’s prints up on dis­play as an exam­ple to cur­rent stu­dents of “good” work. It was a full size print of me…funny…We then went down the hall to where Mr. McCoy (Laura’s ceram­ics pro­fes­sor) was teach­ing a draw­ing class. He came to the door and said, “may I help you?” I said, “Mr. McCoy, I don’t know if you’ll remem­ber me, my name is Mike Craw­ford and I used to play in a band called The Spin…” His eyes got huge and he shouts out, “oh my gosh, you guys were KICK ASS!” My kids (and his stu­dents) all looked over at us like “what the heck is going on???” It was a huge bless­ing to see them both.

That night, Louie Giglio (see above) spoke…Before he went on, I had a chance to talk with him a lit­tle bit. I told him Laura’s and my story…it was really cool to be able to thank some­one for doing the Lord’s work and being able to tell them what it meant in your life. As I’m stand­ing there telling him all this, he says, “it’s so cool that we are meet­ing here — right across the street from 7th & James Church where we used to meet for Choice”…It was in that moment that I rec­og­nized the sig­nif­i­cance of this trip, the sig­nif­i­cance of being in this place. I felt  like God was telling me some­thing. I felt like He was say­ing, “Mike, I’ve been walk­ing with you for 25 years, work­ing in your life when you couldn’t see it, wait­ing for you when you were doing things on your own, lis­ten­ing to you when you were des­per­ate, cry­ing with you when you were sad (like that time when you had to leave your dad sit­ting in his chair, dying of can­cer — you knew it would be the last time you saw him — when you got to your car and had to turn back around and you walked slowly back to the front door, cry­ing, and you opened the door to find him cry­ing, know­ing that he would prob­a­bly never see you again and you climbed up into his lap as a 21 year old and sobbed uncon­trol­lably as he asked you to take care of your sis­ter and your mother and you told him “I’ll try dad” and then you drove back to Waco, you remem­ber that drive, think­ing that things would never  quite be the same — I was there on that trip back to Waco with you — it seems like so long ago, but it really wasn’t that long ago…). I’ve been set­ting some things up for just this week­end, I want you to know that I like you a lot, a whole lot, and I’m proud of what you are doing with your life.”

Louie went out and spoke about worship…it was an astro­nom­i­cal talk…he spoke about how every­thing wor­ships, how every­thing in the uni­verse is singing, how our “band­width” is pretty lim­ited in what we see and hear, how the uni­verse is res­onat­ing with wor­ship to our Creator.

He showed us a pic­ture of “Glob­u­lar Clus­ter 47 Tuc”  which has 24 rotat­ing pul­sars that vibrate to the point of mak­ing an audi­ble sound that we can pick up with equip­ment from some­thing like 200 bil­lion times 1,000 miles away!

Lis­ten to 47 Tuc
We stuck around that night and lis­tened to John Mark McMil­lan play — it was an amaz­ing set…

The next morn­ing I was sched­uled to give a talk at a work­shop. Again, I was extremely ner­vous. I’m not a pub­lic speaker and don’t have much expe­ri­ence teach­ing. We were pretty much unknown going into the con­fer­ence, so I was think­ing maybe 10 peo­ple would be at the work­shop. I was speak­ing in Roxy Grove Hall — a pipe organ con­cert hall and chapel. About 350 peo­ple showed up — stand­ing room only — I was even more ner­vous then…But as I began to speak I felt like God had me there for a rea­son. I felt like the Lord was actu­ally speak­ing thru me, encour­ag­ing other wor­ship pas­tors through my lived out expe­ri­ence of 10 years at Jacob’s Well. I spoke for about 50 min­utes and when it was done, it seemed like folks responded in a great way.

We walked straight from the work­shop to sound-check…we played our set and, for the most part, I think we did ok. We were pretty rushed in sound-check, so I don’t think any of us were really hear­ing like we needed to. None-the-less, it seemed like peo­ple were blessed. I talked with quite a few folks after­ward who really con­nected with our songs. That was a huge bless­ing to get to talk with those folks…Crowder got up after we played and gave us some big props, talk­ing about our record, basi­cally say­ing we are on the right path, that the church should be mak­ing music like the music we’re mak­ing. It was hum­bling and we felt so hon­oured to play music at the conference…

We loaded up the van and drove back to my mom’s house. My mom and step-dad took us to the gro­cery store and bought steaks, baked pota­toes, a huge salad and lots of wine. We went home and cooked out on the back porch. The evening felt per­fect. The tem­per­a­ture was sort of that “no tem­per­a­ture” tem­per­a­ture. You know, where you can’t feel it on your skin, like 68 or 70 degrees, not hot, not cold, just perfect…There was a fire in the chime­nea and we were sit­ting around wait­ing for the steaks to cook. I looked at my friend, Andy Michael, and said “I feel like I’m in heaven right now, this really is eter­nal life. I’m with my fam­ily and good friends, we’re drink­ing some good wine, we’re sit­ting out­side under a beau­ti­ful autum­nal sky wait­ing for a huge feast. It doesn’t get any bet­ter than this.” I hon­estly don’t know if I’ve ever felt that sense of God being with me as I felt last Sat­ur­day night. I hope this post doesn’t feel like some­one brag­ging about themselves…

I feel like my life was all con­verg­ing in one week­end and my heart was so full of praise and thanks­giv­ing. I’ve never had a week­end that was so intense and I may never have one like that again. I wanted to write it down so that I wouldn’t for­get that God does beau­ti­ful things like this…I’m so thank­ful to David Crow­der for invit­ing us into such a space…