Amy, the boys, and I plugged into New Life Church in Columbia in the mid 90’s. We became part of a small home group. Amy connected with other mothers with young children. I developed relationships with the musicians. The congregation was growing. There was diversity in people’s backgrounds. There was an excitement. There was a new building.
Pastor Larry worked very hard during the construction of that facility. It was a plain, multi-function space with lots of room to expand. I was looking forward to not having to haul sound equipment around. Rick Evans and Rick Lee were knowledgeable of installing sound systems and running cables and building speakers. It was so convenient to be able to walk in, plug in, and play. It was also great to be able to rehearse in the same place you will play.
We had good musical chemistry as a worship band. Rick Evans usually led. We utilized a couple different drummers, a couple different bass players, electric guitar players, a variety of singers, percussion, and I would generally play the keyboard.
At Hope Baptist in Nashville, Chuck Bentley was the worship leader. He was a commercial songwriter and a good Baptist, so his songs were tight, catchy, singable, and full of scriptural truths. Rick’s songs, on the other hand were less fleshed out, meandered a bit, were sung from a more emotional place, and lent themselves to be repeated.
Rick Evans did a great job feeding us lots of new music. The Vineyard churches had started their own record label and they released many live recordings of original worship songs several time a year. One of the live recordings was entitled, “Winds of Worship 7-Live from Brownsville.” It was a bit “Pentacostally” for my tastes but I liked the worship leader, Lindell Cooley, and I liked the overall feel. The congregation loved songs like Let the River Flow and I See the Lord. Rick also fed us songs from a British Worship band called Delirious? and their live recordings called The Cutting Edge. They sounded like U2 and our people loved Did You Feel the Mountains Tremble? and I Could Sing of Your Love Forever.
Our congregation loved to sing. They were an emotional bunch. I believe their hearts were stirred and there was a lot of passion for Jesus. Many folks had come from personal and church backgrounds that may have been cold. There were many who had grown up in very performance-based legalistic backgrounds. When they came to New Life they were happy to know that Jesus loved them and accepted them. There was freedom to express yourself. There was an abundance of shouting, weeping, hand raising, kneeling, dancing, banner waving, and “amen-ing.” People would come forward to be prayed for and occasionally someone would collapse to the floor. None of this tripped me up. I knew some of it was from the quasi-Pentecostal culture we were in (we were, after all, down south.) Much of it just had to do with emotional release and joy. It was fun. There was great anticipation for our Saturday and Sunday worship times.
There was a congregation on the north side of Nashville called Belmont Rivers and they had a guest speaker named Charles Carrin coming for a few days. They asked our Worship Band to come lead worship at one of the evening sessions. So we drove up to the converted storefront (previously a Blockbuster Video.)
There were 200-300 people in attendance. It was a typical charismatic crowd. They sang and jumped around and cried. We played for about 30 minutes, then we sat near the back of the room near the sound guy.
A smallish man with dark hair came to the front. He was very soft spoken and had a Bible in his hand. He did a brief, “Hello” before reading two verses; I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong— 12 that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith. Romans 1:11-12. He went on to say, “I would like to do this right now. I would like to impart to you a spiritual gift to make you strong and that we may all be encouraged by what God does in your lives. So if the worship team would come back we’ll begin to pray.” We popped right back up out of our seats and to the instruments. There was no platform or stage. The band was on the floor with the chairs fanned out in front of us. Everyone one stood up and Charles and a couple other gentlemen started praying for people at one end of the room.
We were playing something slow and worshipy when out of the corner of my right eye I see the first person go down. Oh, so this is how it’s gonna go I said to myself. So I started watching. Charles would walk to an individual with his two assistants (from the local congregation) one standing on each side and he would quietly begin to pray. Then, the person’s knees would buckle and the two assistants would catch them and lay them on the floor. Sometimes he would gently touch their shoulder but mostly he just quietly prayed. He prayed for the next person and down they would go; then the next, then the next. He went straight down the line, not asking for volunteers, but to whoever was standing near him.
Normally I would have looked on all this with a measure of cynicism. My take was that folks who were predisposed to hit the floor anyway would come forward, the evangelist would go into some kind of Benny Hinn gyration and WHAM! Down they would go in a flourish of theater.
This was not like that.
Charles Carrin wasn’t asking for “volunteers.” Apparently if you were in the room, you were getting some. It was so quiet. And the bodies quickly started piling up. The “catchers” laid this one young lady right near my keyboard stand. She had this dopy grin on her face and she was out cold. I just stared at her. Something’s going on in there, I thought to myself, but what? After a few minutes she opened her eyes. She had a look of wonder. You could tell she had no idea how she got on the floor. She continued to just lay there.
Charles Carrin laid every person in that room on the floor, including his two catchers and the sound man. There were 200-300 people, lying on the floor. We just kept playing, kind of looking around at each other as if to say, “Now what?”
Rick eventually picked his way through what looked like the most bizarre slumber party ever, to the mixing board and put on a CD. We shuffled around a bit until one of the leaders “came-to” and we felt like someone was on duty. Then we packed up and left with most of the congregation still on the floor.
Now, this was the kind of thing that would have sent me through the roof a few years earlier. But I had flipped my skeptical approach. My new rule was, “Ok. I’ll embrace (weird/unusual) things and risk getting some things wrong rather than automatically rejecting things (that I have no experience with) and missing some things that are right.” SO I said to myself, “God did that,” and embraced it. But even more, I believed it in my heart.
Something was happening, but how much would it affect me personally?
chris
To learn more about Charles Carrin:
To learn more about Vineyard Worship Music:
To learn more about the Delirious?:
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