Reaching Up!

Let me share this letter written to an associate pastor and missionary friend about some awesome changes happening here and in my life personally.

The Lord is again stirring me up in huge ways that are more than scarey, re something big in radio but also with my addicted friend and business partner from several years ago who I haven’t heard from in 5 years though I have been writing him.
 
God has told me to stir things up in big ways which also involve about a dozen people who enabled him and likely still are…and like so many ‘reluctant’ people in the Bible including Moses, David, Nehemiah and so many others, I am asking the Lord to ‘let me out of it’ because I am one guy and it ‘looks’ impossible and I am outnumbered and yet God is saying ‘You’re the one’ and you know the prophesy (made 7 years ago about where your faith would be at today and that Ellery’s would even exceed mine!â€?
 
2 Saturdays ago, I was moved to tears by meeting, seeing perform and interviewing 8 and 9-year old members of the African Childrens Choir in San Francisco….so much hope, faith and love!
 
I have photos with them and am now editing the interviews for broadcast as well as station IDs for Celebrate Radio by the children and their American and Ugandan mentors…
 
Another moving faith ‘experience’ was seeing the touching, sad and yet strangely uplifting documentary at my evening church (with a discussion afterward with the pastor and 60 people), ‘The Life and Death of Lonnie Frisbee,’ the Jesus hippie who in the late 60’s sailed through the then tiny Calvary Chapel and Vineyard  in California and was God’s catalyst for launching 2 huge church movements before being kicked out because he had a gay relationship (and in 1993 died of AIDS).
 
See the trailer at www.lonniefrisbee.com and hopefully you’ll be motivated to get the wonderful CD.(it’s already had one go-around on PBS as well) Even Lonnie Frisbee’s detractors, who first tried to put him in a suit and tie, say that Lonnie had the real ’spirit’ moving through him and so say people like Chuck Smith Jr. as well..
 
The ‘God of the Dance’ is not as portrayed for 30 years by the late right-wing, devisive and holier-than-thou Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson or their left-wing ego-bloated, ‘make up God as you go along’ counterpart, Rabbi Michael Lerner who preaches ‘tikkun’ or healing between hurting people but in real-life writes ‘it’s none of my business’ (about someone addicted and hurting close to him and in his congregation)
 
God challenges us and transforms us, often through great adversity and suffering, but loves all people and forgives much more than we ever could and calls us to love our brothers and sisters in an active way beyond just words.
 
Money is still very scarce and so I haven’t even been to L.A. in 3.5 years..please pray I get there soon as I have all so many people to interview there and the big studio I will be partnering with on the 60’s project is there…but one of the people I want to interview is David DiSabetino, the director/filmmaker of Lonnie Frisbee. He and I have been emailing back and forth…. Craig Taubman, the great Jewish pop music artist and liturgist and a number of others. (hear several as they go up at http://reachingup.podomatic.com) 
 
Two people who have been praying for me for a long time and been a tremendous source of encouragement are Pastor Paul in Accra Ghana  (he and I instant message several times a week and occasionally talk by phone) and my dear friend Raymond McCullough, a blessed pastor, musician and radio program producer in Belfast (he and I talk by onternet phone and work together through phone) on programming Celebrate Radio–he’s one of my 2 European directors, the othe being Alfredo (a Franciscan) in Milan.
 
So Celebrate Radio is programmed by one Jewish guy who believes deeply, 1Catholic and 1 Protestant Christian, as it should be.
 
I’ve met Alfredo from Milan twice when he’s flown here  and 3 weeks ago, Raymond came into SF for the first time and I gave him a whirlwind tour  in 48 hours that ended with us walking along Ocean Beach at midnight, talking to a bunch of college students gathered around a beach bon fire about God and then praying together.
 
My office for a year has been this cafe in Alameda near where I live..doing the most creative work of my life and getting into deep discussions of faith…
 
About a year ago, a Chinese Christian friend of mine from my evening church (I have a morning church too) kept telling me I would be reaching 20 million people on radio. I kept laughing at him and told him that reaching even one person with love and blessing the way God wanted me to would be sufficient….
 
But now, so strangely, I will start (in about 60 days) a short weekly program on 2 shortwave stations reaching ALL of Africa, India, China, Southeast Asia –actually that can be heard by HALF A BILLION PEOPLE and of them, really be listened to by about a staggering 50 million people a month. That of course too will drive far more people to our 24/7 CELEBRATE RADIO (COM) in addition to the people we reach on satellite to 180 million households in the UK, Middle East and Russia.  And we’ll be syndicating two programs to 50-100 U.S. radio stations.
 
We’re about doing social justice, about inclusion, about love.
 
And this summer, as you read, I will be producing at least 3 more Positively Music CD compilations with wonderfully talented and uplifting artists, maybe restarting live concerts in Alameda CA and partnering to produce my classic 60’s interviews on CD too (Jerry Garcia, James Brown, groups from the Summer of Love, Bleecker Street Greenwich Village and the 60’s British Invasion).
 
Financially, I am about where a missionary is on the lower end of the scale,  nd ,
but there is of course a reason the Lord has let me accomplish so much despite that and before the more material goodies return..
 
8 years ago, to put me down (as he was starting his downfall on drugs), my friend Ellery said ‘we need a new CEO.’ Though Ellery didn’t really know why he said that, he of course was right.
 
I have had a new CEO ever since those days and going to Columbine that fateful week of the shootings 8 years ago this past April…
 
and of course my CEO is Jesus and as another Irishman and guest worship leader delivering a sermon last Sunday at my ‘evening church’ said, there are…(even if frightening), much bigger things to think about and do now…and we can’t ever think  as big as God does..
 
Shalom to all of you who read this and join our vision if you want here or at www.celebrateradio.com..
 
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