Remembering Rich

In 1990 I spent a week at a youth conference in NC where I was the music/worship leader.  The speaker that week was a guy named Rich Mullins. The influence he had on my life and my ministry was tremendous.  Along with Mike Yaconelli, Rich was one of the two guys I was ever around who just oozed Jesus.  I find myself thinking quite often lately about what Rich would have to say to the Church here in 2012, because as with most everything Rich said, I think it would be so close to the words of Christ.  Listen to this quote from one of his final concerts: 

"Jesus said whatever you do to the least of these my brothers you’ve done it to me. And this is what I’ve come to think. That if I want to identify fully with Jesus Christ, who I claim to be my savior and Lord, the best way that I can do that is to identify with the poor. This I know will go against the teachings of all the popular evangelical preachers. But they’re just wrong. They’re not bad, they’re just wrong. Christianity is not about building an absolutely secure little niche in the world where you can live with your perfect little wife and your perfect little children in a beautiful little house where you have no gays or minority groups anywhere near you. Christianity is about learning to love like Jesus loved and Jesus loved the poor and Jesus loved the broken..." 


Rich didn't just say those words, he lived them. He moved from the music scene in Nashville to Wichita, Kansas in 1991, where he attended Friends University and received a B.A. in music education.  He and fellow Ragamuffin Mitch McVicker (the Ragamuffins were the band he had formed in 1993) moved to a Navajo reservation in New Mexico in 1995 to live among the Native Americans and teach music.  For Rich, "What Would Jesus Do?" was not a bracelet- it was the driving question of his life.  And because I knew that, his music was a moving force and a comfort in my own spiritual journey.  At times when I struggled with my faith his song Creed reminded me "I believe what I believe is what makes me what I am."  At the lowest points of my life, when I had let down everyone who loved me and everyone who believed in me, his words reminded me that "There's bound to come some trouble to your life, just reach out to Jesus and hold on tight..." As I lost so many of the things that had been important to me, I found myself praying his words daily:  "Hold me, Jesus, 'cause I'm shaking like a leaf.  You have been King of my glory, won't you be my Prince of Peace?"  So many of his words showed me the light of Jesus in my darkest times.  No matter how bad it seemed, I knew I was still in"the reckless, raging fury that we call the love of God..."  Even his final project, The Jesus Record (see picture at top), promised me that "our Deliverer is coming..."

Rich was killed in a car accident on September 19, 1997.  I cried, but Rich himself had already written about going to be with Jesus in his early classic Elijah- "When I leave I want to go out like Elijah, with a whirlwind to fuel my chariot of fire.  And when I look back on the stars, it'll be like a candlelight in Central Park- and it won't break my heart to say goodbye..."  He left such a legacy in my life.  I am proud to call myself a Ragamuffin, a bum who is only important because of the love of Jesus.  And I know that my task is to share that love with our world.  Thanks, Rich- for so many things.  But especially for the music.  What is your favorite Rich Mullins song?  May his music move each of us to let our lives speak to this world about "the reckless, raging fury that we call the love of God..."  


Because of Jesus,