Cabbie Wisdom for the Artist

It was Friday, May 20, 1994. I can’t remember where I was headed or how much the cab fare was that day in Manhattan, but the pearl of wisdom I received from driver Hoyt Manning is priceless. When he found out I was in the music business he said, “You own the world’s supply of the sound you make.” It’s the simple truths that I find most profound. I said, “Wait! Say that again I need to write that down!” Extremely pleased to oblige he repeated but more emphatically and with space between the words, “You own ... the world’s supply … of the sound … you make.”

The following year Rick Warren, Pastor of Saddleback Church, released “The Purpose Driven Church”. It was required reading by all staff members of the Presbyterian Church of Old Greenwich including PCOG’s music minister – me. (Oddly enough, the book dislodged Catholic notions of “Church” that had lain dormant for many years. But that is another subject.)

Pastor Warren talks about your “S.H.A.P.E. for ministry” which is explained in a course offering at Saddleback’s website:

“You will learn how God can use your Spiritual Gifts, your Heart (passions), your Abilities, your Personality and your Experiences to minister to the needs of others. When you chose to follow Christ, you were given special abilities, known as Spiritual Gifts. God gave you these gifts for you to use to build up His Church. God also gave you passion for particular activities and subject. Having the heart for specific things, people or circumstances is to be used to guide us into a ministry that we really care about.”

The music artist would do well to conduct a serious personal inventory of his/her “S.H.A.P.E. for ministry”. Am I cut out for to minister to youth, the elderly, cross-generationally, in prisons, on the street, Holy Hour, Happy Hour? A friend of mine has been running a pro recording studio for over twenty years, seeing the great, the not-so-hot and everything in between. He is fond of saying, “There will always be greater and lesser.” We do not all have five talents. Some of us have one or two. We are not all endowed like Andrea Bocelli and Celine Dion. But we are to employ what we have in service to the Lord and His Kingdom.

As stewards, we have been entrusted with the world’s supply of the sound we make. It’s up to us to seek clarity from the Holy Spirit-- to understand our S.H.A.P.E. for ministry.