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Coming Soon!
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New EP in the works
Those of you who follow the adoption blog my wife and I started early this year may have read a few posts referring to some new songs I’ve been writing with the goal of recording those songs and using them as a fundraiser for our adoption. Well, we’re finally moving forward with the recording process! The songs are written (7 songs that I’m really proud of and can’t wait for you to hear!) we’ve done some pre-production work with them, and we’re ready to get in the studio and start recording! The songs are all about orphans, injustice, hope and the kingdom of God. The goal is to have the project finished by the end of October; so stay tuned for updates on how to buy the EP once it’s released.
In the mean time, here’s a little taste of one of the songs that will be on the recording. This was recorded at an acoustic show I did last week (the EP will be full-band versions of the songs) hope you enjoy!
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Big News!
Big news over at our adoption blog!! ourethiopianjourney.wordpress.com
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Chapters
So today I’m acting as a guest blogger for myself on the blog. I know, sounds weird to me too but hang with me here. Lindsay (my wife) and I have begun the process of adopting a child from Ethiopia. We’ve started a blog dedicated to telling the story of that journey; you can follow our story and subscribe to that blog here: ourethiopianjourney.wordpress.com. The following post is one I actually posted to that blog yesterday. I won’t update this blog with duplicate posts every time the other is updated (if you’d like to follow the story of our adoption journey you can subscribe to that blog), but I wanted to make the connection between the two blogs in case some of you would like to follow the story.
Chapters
Last year I read a book by Donald Miller called A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. If you haven’t read it yet you should put it atop your reading list. I won’t give away the book but Don talks about living a good story and gives some great examples to illustrate his point.
I feel like my story to this point has been anything but “typical.” I’m the oldest of 8 kids. My parents are still married – a rarity these days. Mom homeschooled us with a patience that made Mother Theresa look like Navy drill sergeant. For my entire childhood dad was a cop and a pastor (I never got away with anything!) I grew up breathing music. Played music in our church, went to college for music, and now make a [decent] living playing music. I married a girl I met in choir in college (whoever said you can’t meet hot chicks in choir?!). I have very fond memories of all those chapters in my life and, I think, they’ve made for a pretty good story so far. But I think the next one is going to be the chapter that makes the book worth reading. It’s the chapter in the book that starts after a two-page break and a header that reads “PART TWO.”
This month we started writing that new chapter. So far we’re only a few words in and already it feels like a Dickens novel – rich with the colorful texture of beautiful language you don’t hear every day. Lindsay and I are adopting a child from a country we’ve never been to halfway around the world. We’re jumping feet first into a culture we so far know almost nothing about. We have no idea where the money for this [expensive] process is going to come from but that was never even a factor in our decision. We’ve started rearranging some of the rooms in our house in preparation for this new life that will soon become part of our family (sometimes I wonder if this whole adoption thing isn’t just part of Lindsay’s greater scheme to get my power tools out of the house and into the shed in the backyard!). In the coming weeks and months this exciting chapter in our story will become even more clear. We don’t know exactly how it’s going to look when it’s all written, but it should make for an exciting read! We’re grateful for people in our life who’ve written their own, similar, chapters on international adoption. We’re fortunate to have friends with a wealth of experience and wisdom to draw from as we set out on this journey.
We’d love for you to share in this story with us. We’ll be updating this blog regularly as things progress, details fall into place, and – ultimately – as we bring our child home.
Until next time, live a good story!
-Ben
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All Things New
The past several weeks we’ve been on this journey at my church, New Covenant, talking about the incredible, extravagant, reckless, mercy of God. Our pastor just finished a six (or so) week series called “the Prodigal God” in which he borrowed some thoughts from Tim Keller’s book by the same name. [if you haven't read Keller's book, you should put it atop your reading list!] This past Sunday the sermon text was centered on the “rich young ruler” (Mark 10) and the way in which Jesus called him – and by example, us – to give up the things we’re hanging on to white-knuckled. Around the same time the sermon series began one of the other great people I work with showed me an old communion liturgy from the Methodist hymnal that would [later] sort of sum up, for me, the sermons I was about to hear over the next several weeks. With all of that stuff rolling around inside my head – the story of a prodigal God who recklessly loves not only those who’ve been eating with pigs and hanging out with hookers, but also the ones who are quite impressed with their own “righteousness” and good deeds, the young man whom Jesus asked to give away the things standing in the way of Jesus having his heart, and the communion liturgy which so eloquently and boldly stated the reality of our human condition and the enormity of God’s grace and mercy – a song began to emerge. So these are some words that express where my heart and head have been for several weeks and I hope that they might connect with a few others as well.
All Things New – Mp3 please excuse my sloppy drum programming 
All Things New
You welcome us by grace, through faith;
a people called to bear your name
Your kingdom is inside our hearts
teaching us a better way
We are not worthy to come to your table;
but you have invited us to feast with you
You make all things new, your mercy knows no end
You make all things new
We will trust in you, Father, Savior, Friend
You make all things new!
You have filled us with your grace today,
grace to do your will
Teach us now to give our lives away
for your kingdom and your name
We are not worthy to come to your table;
but you have invited us to feast with you
You make all things new, your mercy knows no end
You make all things new
We will trust in you, Father, Savior, Friend
You make all things new!
And here’s the communion liturgy:
“We do not presume to come to this thy table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table. But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy. Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to partake of this Sacrament of thy Son Jesus Christ, that we may walk in newness of life, may grow into his likeness, and may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen”
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Prayers, Curtains, and Cats
I’d like to generate some discussion and hear some of your thoughts on this [tricky] subject.
Having been involved with “worship ministry stuff” in some capacity for the past 16 + years, I’ve been in hundreds of churches from many different streams and have seen this happen in way too many instances. It starts out innocently enough, I think. We’ve programmed ourselves to expect slick, seamless transitions. So in an attempt to give the “stage hands” enough time to bring out the pulpit and let the speaker get into place, or the “video guys” time to press buttons on the video switcher and flip the screens from Pro Presenter to the DV deck, somewhere along the way we started using prayer as a gimmick to get people to close their eyes so they couldn’t see what’s happening on the stage or screens. If it’s really that big of a deal why not just draw a curtain across the stage to hide what we’re doing during those transition times. It works on Broadway, right? I’ve never been to a musical but I’m pretty sure Bombalurina from Cats never launched into a prayer while the set was being changed in the background between acts. I differ from some of my peers when it comes to this in the following way: I’m perfectly okay with silence. Most people get restless and uncomfortable when there’s silence in a room full of people. I’m quite good with it. In fact, I like it!
I’ve been asked – and have heard friends of mine be asked – to pray at the end of a “worship set” to cover any multitude of slick-less transition transgressions. Sometimes they’ll even give you an amount of time to pray! Actual words from a youth pastor who shall remain nameless, “So at the end of the set, after this song, can you throw in a filler-prayer there? I need probably 30 – 45 seconds to get the video loaded up and get in place on the stage. So if you could pray for at least 45 seconds, that’d be great. Thanks man!”
I realize I’m asking questions here without offering a solution – and maybe that’s okay. At the same time I’m not pointing fingers. I’ve been guilty of acquiescing to these requests on more than one occasion; all the while my guts are screaming at me that what I’m agreeing to is violating very deep-seated convictions I have about the sacred act of prayer. Prayer is a beautiful, powerful thing and I think we’re stepping off into dangerous territory when we dilute it by saying words we may or may not mean, all with one eye open and looking at the clock. Are we praying to the God we worship or the LED clock god?! There’s a depth of substance that’s lost when prayer becomes “filler”.
I’ll stop there for now. But I’d love to hear your thoughts! What do you think? Is it okay to use prayer to cover transitions? (there’s an argument in there somewhere for everything being done “in order and without causing confusion”) Or is there a better way? Is it okay to let people see we’re not as slick as we’d like them to think we are?
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Hallways, Echoes, Earth, and Eternity
“Brothers, what we do in life… echoes in eternity.” Maximus the Gladiator spoke those words inspiring his men to run headlong into battle without regard for their own lives. Death was certainly awaiting many of them – they were sure of that. Yet, they fought for their families – their wives, their sons and daughters – their fellow citizens… their freedom.
I recently read a book by N.T. Wright called “Surprised by Hope.” There was a sentence in one of the latter chapters in the book that jumped off the page and smacked me square in the mouth (one of many that did so, actually). Wright says, “What you do in the present – by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself – will last into God’s future (eternity).” Most people think of ‘eternity’ as something that happens after you die. Whatever your beliefs on all that might be, you most likely think of eternity as what you’ll experience ‘after death.’ Tom (the ‘T’ in N.T.) reframes the thought on eternity saying, instead, that eternity has already begun. He believes (as do I) that, at the moment of Jesus’ resurrection, God’s Kingdom – His ‘government’ if you will – was inaugurated here on earth. In that moment the prayer, “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done” began to be answered.
If we look at our earth-suit-dwelling years through this lens it begins to change how we function here and now. Suddenly the “little” everyday things aren’t so little; everything I do matters. God’s Kingdom is here (now) and it is also yet to come in its’ entirety (not yet). So what I do today to invest in that ‘now’ and ‘not yet’ government matters.
I’ve got tons of thoughts rolling around in my head about all this, so more to follow along this line later.
In the meantime, what are your thoughts? What is it you’re doing today that’s going to echo in the halls of eternity? I’m not saying I’ve got this all figured out or that I do a great job of it in my daily routine. Just trying to generate some thoughtful introspection and hopefully – out of that – action. God said these words through His prophet Micah and they’re great action words for us to frame our day around today: “act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.”
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Welcome to the newly redesigned benfreemanmusic.com!
My goal is to keep this site regularly updated through a blog that will hopefully generate some thought and interaction.
Since this site is a different format and is hosted differently than the previous site, it will be evolving – a work in progress – over the next few weeks. Check back often for updates!
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