Larry and Frances Jones have been fighting a war against poverty for more than 20 years. Many of the children they help are in the United States.
Larry Jones can’t say exactly how many times he has visited the world’s most impoverished slums. Since co-founding Feed the Children with his wife, Frances in 1979, he has directly overseen the distribution of food to hundreds of thousands of people in more than 180 countries.

But every time he escorts someone new to these places, Jones sees the devastation of poverty and hunger through a fresh set of eyes. Take for instance his trip with actress Melanie Griffith to Nashville. Yes, that Nashville—the one in Tennessee known for country music, Southern hospitality and a church on every corner.

Since its inception, Feed the Children has become known for its massive international relief efforts. Yet right there, in the middle of an American city known for its economic stability and significant contributions to culture, Jones showed Griffith some of the worst examples of social destitution and human despair.

“I took her to a duplex,” Jones recalls. “A woman who lived there had cut a hole in the wall because they had cut her electricity off and the people who lived next door let her borrow electricity from them because she had a small baby and it was cold.”

“Then we took her to a trailer. These two women only had half of a trailer. One was a waitress at White Castle, and she worked nights. The other was a maid. They had six children between them. The mattress was propped up against the wall because they didn’t have room. At night, they would lay the mattress down to sleep. They both cared for the other’s children as they took turns working.

“When you see this right in the middle of Nashville, Tennessee, you’re going, ‘I don’t believe it!’ Melanie was crying.”

For Griffith, it was a defining moment—one that left a deep impression on her and also influenced her husband, actor Antonio Banderas. The two have since used their collective voices to raise awareness about hunger in America and have personally funded and privately hosted food drops in some of the poorest neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

“You think that it’s not in your neighborhood—you don’t see it in your neighborhood,” Griffith said shortly following her experience. “But just hear the statistics—one in every four children in America is starving. That’s scary. And this is America. It’s not supposed to be here.”

“It is atrocious,” Jones adds. “Most people do not realize you’ve got 12 million [American] children who sometime during the month go hungry. That’s [the government’s] best guesstimation. I don’t know how they came to that conclusion. I like to put a face to the statistic and tell you a story about a hungry child as opposed to giving you some enormous number. As the saying goes, ‘Statistics have no tears.'”

A 20-Cent Investment

To understand Larry Jones’ passion for feeding America’s hungry, one must first vicariously experience his 68-year journey. Jones was born in Scottsville, Kentucky, and grew up in Bowling Green. His mother was a Methodist. His father was a Baptist. The family spent equal time supporting both denominations, and his mother was especially active as a church planter and director of her own prison ministry.

Jones was involved as well. He spoke to prisoners and visited nursing homes with his pastor’s wife. Still, Jones admits that basketball was his god, and until he broke his wrist in a game during his senior year, he had only hoop dreams on his mind.

The injury sent Jones to his knees, where he rededicated his life to Christ. He also gave up an opportunity to enter the Air Force Academy and instead became a starter for legendary coach Abe Lemons at Oklahoma City University, where he played basketball for three years. Jones also met his wife, Frances, there; the two celebrated their 45th wedding anniversary in March of this year.

When Jones graduated in 1962, he became a pastor while simultaneously attending Phillips Theological Seminary in Enid, Oklahoma, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in divinity. In 1967, he became a full-time evangelist. That role allowed him to visit Haiti in the late 1970s for a ministry conference.

As he returned to his hotel one evening, a young boy stopped him and asked him for a nickel to buy a piece of bread. After Jones gave him the nickel, the boy then asked for three pennies to get butter for the bread. Jones complied and then gave the boy an additional 12 cents for a Coke. The grand sum for this “meal” was a whopping 20 cents.

At the time, Jones had no idea that God was setting him up for his future work. Self-described as “clueless,” Jones says it never occurred to him how great a return that 20-cent investment into the kingdom would bring. The revelation was anything but immediate, and it took Jones a full year of Bible study to truly understand his newly discovered purpose in life.

“When I reread the whole Bible, it jumped off the page about feeding the hungry, caring for the widow and taking care of the fatherless—the orphan,” Jones says. “You find all through the Scriptures that this is there, but there’s seemingly been a separation within the church world between what you call the social gospel versus the evangelical gospel. There’s no separation in the Bible. Man has made that separation.”

Jones also began to realize that traditional evangelism was not nearly as effective as the Western church once believed. Having held international crusades, he learned the hard way that the massive numbers of salvation experiences were being tainted by an unforeseen dynamic.

“When the Muslims get ready to go into a community, they don’t have the big crusade,” Jones says. “They go into a poor area, and usually the first thing they’ll open is a medical clinic. Then they’ll open the school. Then they’ll open the mosque. Well, who’s gonna go [to the mosque]? So it’s back to, ‘We don’t care what you know until we know that you care.’

“That’s when I discovered that we as Christians were going to have to do more than just preach. I was blind to this portion of the gospel, and now I see.”

Throughout the process, Jones made a very practical discovery. Oklahoma farmers were storing tons of surplus grain every year, and in many cases the unused grain was rotting. While making a television appearance, Jones suggested that the U.S. should export its surplus wheat in an effort to assist both needy countries and the American farming community.

The Oklahoma farmers immediately picked up on the concept and according to Jones, “the phones rang off the wall.”

“Within two months, I had 50 truckloads of wheat,” he says.

When Jones and his wife officially co-founded Feed the Children, they set up the organization’s first office in their kitchen. Neither was prepared for the madness that was about to ensue. “We couldn’t keep up,” Jones says.

“We were hiring people. Phones were going off the wall. After about 10 years of this, my wife and I sat down and said, ‘Why would God choose us?’ And then we figured it out. He chose us because, No. 1, we really didn’t know what we were doing. When you don’t know what you’re doing, you’ve got to walk on your knees. You have to depend on Him.”

In the last 28 years, Feed the Children has grown exponentially and is now the nation’s sixth-largest feeding ministry, not to mention one of the most efficiently run charities. In 2006 alone, the organization distributed 183 million pounds of food and other essentials to children and families accounting for more than 1.4 million meals every day.

Feed the Children has influenced lives in more than 118 countries and turned around more than $746 million worth of charitable donations in the form of food, clothing, hygiene products, educational materials, medical supplies, toys, blankets and infant care items. Jones’ work has rallied an eclectic mix of support. Feed the Children has been backed by some of the nation’s largest ministries, including those led by Bishop T.D. Jakes, Joel Osteen, Kenneth C. Ulmer and Benny Hinn.

Feed the Children has also inspired involvement from a wide array of entertainers from both the mainstream and Christian industries, as well as politicians from both sides of the aisle. Tim McGraw, Sen. Hillary Clinton, Jars of Clay, J.C. Watts, Naomi Judd and the late President Ronald Reagan are just a few notable names that can be found on Feed the Children’s growing list of backers.

A few of Jones’ affiliations have raised some eyebrows, including his recent partnerships with a few “bad boy” athletes, such as Ron Artest of the NBA and Chad Johnson of the NFL. But by virtue of their time spent with Jones, these men and many others have not only added significant amounts of cash to the cause but also have been influenced by a firsthand display of the gospel in action.

Homeland Insecurity

Just as Jones was unaware of the global hunger problem before his first visit to Haiti, he was equally oblivious to the growing hunger problem here at home. “I would like to say that I was brilliant and said: ‘Oh, we’ve got a hunger problem in America. Let’s address it,'” Jones candidly says. “I wasn’t. The people who organized Hands Across America came and knocked on my door in 1986.

“That’s when people came to us and said, ‘OK, you’re going to Africa, you’re going to Central America, you’re going to the Philippines, you’re going all over the world, but you’re not doing anything here in America.’ Now we take food to all 50 states.”

In fact, more than half of Feed the Children’s funding is now used to feed people in the United States. This is not due to a philosophical shift, but to the high cost of shipping food and care items from one international location to another. Jones says, for instance, that it costs roughly $4 million to send 10,000 tons of rice from Taiwan to Kenya.

It’s not exactly cheap to transport food across the continental U.S. these days either. Rising gas prices alone caused a $665,000 increase in fuel expenses from 2005 to 2006. But Jones understands better than anyone the importance of keeping up the fight no matter what challenges might arise. He has seen too much to turn back now.

And the battle he wages isn’t just against hunger. Jones says he also finds himself daily in an all-out war against complacency in the church. Even though some of his greatest allies are from the Christian community, he says most believers fall short in their outreach efforts.

“If the church was doing its job, there would be no Feed the Children,” Jones says. “Why are we here? It’s sure not for two hymns, a choir special, three points, a poem and a prayer. There’s got to be more to it.

“When you see [the poverty and hunger], you’re going: ‘This is America! I can’t believe it!’ But see, it’s hidden. Why? I call it rabid Christianity.

“We get in the car, get on the freeway, run to church, run to Ryan’s or Golden Corral and have dinner and then run back home and watch an NFL game. I’m not against Golden Corral or a football game. I’m just saying we live too fast today.”
Though Jones spends much of his time in the field, domestically and internationally, he does take the opportunity to speak in churches, and when he does he often quotes Proverbs 19:17: “He who has pity on the poor lends to the Lord, and He will pay back what he has given” (NKJV).

“You can make a loan to God, and He’s going to pay you back—not so you can have more but so you can do more,” Jones says. “That is the principle of this ministry. That’s it. I make loans to God. I loaned God 20 cents—20 cents! Now you look at our annual report. You see how God pays back.”

Jones believes that every church should be involved in meeting the physical needs of its local community. If a church is located in an affluent neighborhood, he suggests looking elsewhere for opportunities to serve. Jones says being confronted with the reality of hunger changed his life, so he encourages fellow Christians to escape the confines of the church walls and start living life in the real world.

“Do more than just write a check,” Jones implores. “Get involved somewhere. We should be about ministry regardless of who you are. I was touched when I was in Haiti by a 9-year-old boy. You could have told me a story, and it wouldn’t have done anything to me. I was there. So the Word has to become flesh and blood among the people. You have to be there to rub elbows with them.”

‘Fingerprint Somebody for Jesus’

In 2002 Jones wrote Life’s Interruptions, God’s Opportunities, a book of short inspirational stories that describe personal experiences he has had during his 28 years with Feed the Children. But behind each narrative is a running theme that ties into Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, a passage that has profoundly affected him in recent years.

“You’ll notice the Good Samaritan never called 911,” Jones says. “Thank God he didn’t have a cell phone, or he would have called somebody else. He just did it. At the end of the day, the Good Samaritan had helped one.”

And in the process, the man whose life he saved that day was forever changed. That’s the message that Larry Jones wants the church to understand. It’s a message that he considers to be the single best reflection of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

“I like to say that every Christian is fingerprinted,” Jones says. “On this boy right here is a mom and dad that loved God and tithed and believed the Word and taught me the Word.

“Their fingerprints are on me. There’s a Sunday school teacher that had a tremendous impression on me.

“There’s a pastor’s wife that took me to sing at the nursing home and the hospital. All we did was stuff for others. Her fingerprint’s on me.

“When the Good Samaritan went to sleep that night, his fingerprint was on a man who was in a ditch. When I give out a food box, the fingerprint of a volunteer is on it.

“Fingerprint somebody for Jesus,” Jones concludes. “That is so, so important.”

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Chad Bonham is a journalist based in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, where he produces The ProFILES, a sports TV show.

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The Tragic Reality of Poverty in America

Millions of families live in a state of insecurity about how they will get their next meal.

The figures may vary from one study to the next, but the consensus remains the same: Hunger in America is a nagging problem that refuses to go away.

According to the Department of Agriculture’s 2005 report on Household Food Security in the United States, 11 percent of households (12.6 million families) were “food insecure” at least some time during the year and 3.9 percent of American households (4.4 million households) had “very low food security” at least some time during the year.

The report defines “food security” as “access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life.”

On the flip side, being “food insecure” means the household was “uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food for all household members.” Having “very low food security” means the household was “food insecure to the extent that eating patterns of one or more household members were disrupted and their food intake was reduced, at least some time during the year, because they couldn’t afford enough food.”

The Household Food Security report was co-authored by Mark Nord, a sociologist in the Food Economics Division of the agriculture department’s Economic Research Service. Nord has little problem identifying the primary causes of food insecurity.

“It’s kind of the usual suspects,” he says. “Of course low income is a problem. Low education plays into it. Household structure matters a lot. Single mothers with children have unusually high rates of food insecurity. Disability is a much larger factor than I think anybody knew before we had the capability to do this research.”

In fact, Nord says that roughly 25 percent of households described as food insecure have no adult in the labor force and at least one person not employed because of disability. He also says state-level factors such as high housing costs, high unemployment rates, low average wages and high tax burdens also affect food security.

Nord’s assessment lines up with the belief of Feed the Children founder Larry Jones, who contends that Americans generally have a negative view of low-income families. “Many people think that the hunger in America is because people won’t work,” he says.

“They don’t realize that you can have a two-income family today making minimum wage, and they’re working less than 30 hours [a week], and they have no benefits. There’s no way you can make it. The working poor is growing, and they’re falling through the middle-class cracks.”

Although Nord’s research backs up the fact that 12 million children live in food insecure homes, he estimates a little more than 600,000 children are high-risk cases. “Children are affected [by hunger], but they’re … largely protected from the more severe manifestations of food insecurity,” he says.

Nord and Jones agree that government and private organizations working together can help combat the problem. And Jones believes a solution will be found much faster when the church reclaims its rightful responsibility as the nation’s primary source of charitable outreach.

“What did Jesus do? He met people at the point of their need. He entered that circle of suffering,” Jones says. “This is what we’ve got to do. We have to do it because while there’s television preaching and a church on every corner, you’ve still got to go and knock on that door.”

Hope for the Holidays

How you can help a hungry family this Christmas

Although the United States is one of the wealthiest nations in the world, there are millions of needy families in cities across the country. To respond to the poverty right here at home, Charisma magazine is partnering with Feed the Children this holiday season to raise money to help feed hungry families.

As part of its Hope for the Holidays campaign, Charisma is encouraging readers to donate $40, which is roughly the cost of a Christmas meal for a family of four. One hundred percent of the contributions will be sent to Feed the Children through Charisma’s nonprofit partner, Christian Life Missions, in time for their Christmas outreach.

“In the past, Charisma readers have given generously to help victims of war in Sudan and the tsunami in Asia,” says J. Lee Grady, editor of Charisma. “This year we felt we needed to focus on poverty right here at home. I know many needy families are going to experience God’s love in a tangible way because of our partnership with Feed the Children.”

Since it was founded in 1979, Feed the Children has delivered food, medicine, clothes and other items to children and families around the world. Last year alone, the Oklahoma City-based ministry shipped 129 million pounds of food to more than 40 nations and all 50 states. This year its goal is to send 175 trucks across the U.S. before Christmas to provide 70,000 families with food, toys and personal supplies.

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To help Charisma and Feed the Children bring hope to U.S. families this Christmas season, send a tax-deductible gift to Christian Life Missions. Contributions can be made online at or mailed to P.O. Box 952248, Lake Mary, FL 32795-2248.

Brian Welch, one of America’s most popular hard-rock artists, traded in his wild ways when he discovered real faith.
For 10 years the phrase “sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll” was more than just a tired cliché for musician Brian Welch. It was his life. As the lead guitarist for multiplatinum-selling hard-rock band Korn, Welch consumed everything the realm of fame and fortune served up. And at times, it tasted pretty good.

But that was before Welch met Jesus and had his world turned upside down. Since his miraculous salvation experience two and a half years ago, the once insatiable rocker has developed an appetite for a much different menu.

“To be quite honest, you could put me in a room full of drugs, booze and hookers for a year, and I wouldn’t touch any of them,” Welch says. “I’m just so in tune and so close with God.”

That might be a hard pill to swallow for the millions of Korn fans across the globe who remember Welch’s past existence as one of the hardest partying rock stars on the touring circuit. Though some have shown a certain level of respect for his decision to leave the band to pursue a relationship with God, others have made fun of Welch via Internet message boards and even obscene T-shirts that mock his faith.

With the publication in July of his autobiography Save Me From Myself, which
debuted at No. 20 on the New York Times best-sellers list, and a solo CD in the works, Welch says he’s prepared for the worst—but he’s still hoping and praying for the best.

“I’m kind of used to [being ridiculed],” he says. “So I’m ready for it. The good thing is, I just want to get my story out there. These people can take it for what it is.

“I just want them to know what I went through in my life that got me to the point where I could give up everything to follow Christ and how He took my shattered life and changed it so quickly. Whether they accept it or not, who knows?”

To Hell and Back

Even though Welch’s autobiography discloses personal information about his childhood and teenage years, the bulk of his story starts in 1994 when the music world met Korn, a new kind of rock band that combined elements of rap, metal, hardcore and electronica. The band’s self-titled debut sold more than 2 million copies in the U.S.

Korn found themselves on the road with the likes of Marilyn Manson, Ozzy Osbourne and Megadeth. They were more than just rising stars. They had risen straight to the top.

It didn’t take long before fame quit filling the void Welch felt in his soul. Even though he had accepted Christ at the age of 13, he never took the relationship further. So instead of relying on faith he developed a strong dependency on alcohol, drugs, sex and pornography.

After the birth of his daughter, Jennea, in 1998 Welch tried to clean up his act, realizing his actions someday might have severe consequences for both of them. He now believes the Holy Spirit was using that circumstance to encourage him to be a good father—but to no avail.

“I still tried to make it work,” Welch says. “I brought her out on the road, and she was watching her dad pound beer every night, and she saw all the craziness on stage. And every time, that was convicting me. Every time I was like, ‘How can I let this little girl watch me on stage?'”

Welch started making his daughter leave the stage for certain songs but discovered that it didn’t help him clean up his act. “I sunk lower and lower. I got more addicted. I got crazier. I got so obsessed with pornography. I was just a mess.”

By the end of 2004 he was divorced and raising then 6-year-old Jennea alone. His ex-wife, also a drug addict, had bailed out of the marriage five years before. In desperation, he reached out to a Christian friend in the real estate business. Before Welch knew it he was making his first visit to church in nearly 20 years.

He admits being high on speed when he walked into Valley Bible Fellowship (VBF) in Bakersfield, California, but says the supernatural working of the Holy Spirit penetrated his hallucinated state and nudged him down to the altar where pastor Ron Vietti led him in a prayer of repentance.

“The pain in my life and the trials and the storms just got worse and worse and worse as the years went by, until I couldn’t take it no more,” Welch says. “I’m thankful for everything that I went through. I’m not proud of all the drugs that I did and the abuse of other people and myself, but I’m glad that I went through it.”

Welch quit Korn and went public with his faith during the first weeks of 2005. His aggressive, in-your-face approach to his newfound freedom in Christ was uncomfortable for Korn enthusiasts who didn’t know what to make of the radical, 180-degree change.

But it was at times just as difficult for the observant Christian community that was also watching his zealous faith unfold. Some Christians thought, after all, of the many times before when other radical celebrity conversions had ended badly.

In Welch’s case, it all had become very public after news hit the Internet that he was quitting Korn and would be giving his Christian testimony at VBF. Some 13,000 people as well as media outlets CNN and MTV showed up to hear him.

The day after he gave his testimony Welch left for a trip through Israel with a group from the church. He had agreed to a request by MTV to send a camera crew along to film him touring the country.

While there, he battled some personal issues, primarily depression. His ensuing moments of frustration and anger were captured on MTV’s cameras.

Welch now sees how he might have made the church a little nervous at the time with so much publicity. But he by no means regrets his decision to throw caution to the wind and allow his new relationship with Jesus to be an open book for anyone to see.

“I was so on fire for the Lord,” Welch says. “I was so touched by God—and the supernatural was opened up to me—that nothing else mattered.

“I didn’t care if I was saying wrong things. All I knew was that God loved me and He saved me and I walked away from everything and I wanted to shout it to the world. I probably said a couple of things that were kind of wacky and stuff, but it was all out of zeal and love for the Lord.”

Welch had no intention of slowing down his quest to share the gospel. He propelled himself into the Christian media circuit at warp speed. He also did what he could to reach back into the mainstream world with his story.

But eventually things started to slow down and open doors began to close—leaving a confused Welch asking God some serious questions.

“[God] started telling me, ‘Look, you’ve got to relax,'” he recalls. “‘You’ve got to go into seclusion and get away from all of that stuff, and I’m going to start training you. I’ll build you up. I’ll build your ministry up.'”

The Raw Truth

Welch and his daughter moved from California to Arizona, where Welch says God slowed him down long enough to allow the Holy Spirit to do some serious work. He dealt with some deep issues that had plagued him since his teenage years and had followed him through his commercial success in the recording business.

It was a process that put Welch on his knees and eventually left him emotionally and spiritually spent.

“Since I became a Christian, I just started praying and I haven’t even stopped,” Welch says. “Like all day throughout the day I just pray. That’s what I did.

“I went into seclusion, and I just pressed in. I hungered for the Lord and I said: ‘Change me. Do Your will for my life. Just take the junk out of me.’

“And then I went through tons of pain for two years—just brokenness. I didn’t cry for 15 years so I’ve just been crying for the past two years.”

As Welch went through the painful process, he started to understand more about the Holy Spirit. Not only did he enjoy a newfound comfort and peace, but he says he also learned that God wanted to be with him through His Spirit—a revelation that “floored” him. All these changes took place amid times of doubt, severe anger and a recurring bout with depression.

“I’ve been going through so much healing and deliverance and all that stuff for these two years,” Welch says. “And no matter how I acted or no matter what I threw back at God, the Spirit was just doing its work.

“I had some hard times. I had so much pain with the deliverance and the changing and the process that was going on. I would find myself cussing out God and then I’d feel guilty afterwards. I had zero control. I don’t know what went on, but now I just love the Holy Spirit.”

Welch wrote his autobiography while he was going through the painful process, which helped him to endure it and resulted in a more deeply authentic account, he says.

“That book is real. I poured my heart out,” he says. “I was going through the tears and the pain and the anger and the happiness—all of it at one time. I was crying when I was typing these chapters.”

Nearing completion of his book, Welch faced a peculiar dilemma. Parts of the story included profanity-laden conversations. As a young Christian, he wanted to reflect his desire for holiness, but he felt led by God to leave some of the coarse language and brutally honest depictions in the text.

“The religious part of me was like: ‘How can God be telling me to do that? How can the Lord be telling me to say that stuff?'” Welch says. “I could’ve reworded it, and it would’ve been close, but I really felt led to be real and raw. I wanted the darkness to be real and accurate and I wanted the light to come shining through bright.

“There might be some people that might say I went a little too far with the realness and rawness, but all I can say is that it’s a real and accurate book and I can’t apologize for that.”

On the opposite extreme, Welch also wrestled with whether or not to include a chapter titled “Tongues,” which explains what he says is the “huge part” speaking in tongues has played in his spiritual growth.

“I pray in the Spirit a lot at home, and it really has helped me be delivered, and it’s opened my spiritual eyes to understanding,” Welch says. “But I didn’t want to freak people out. I knew it was going to be weird to some people that don’t know the Lord, and even some Christians think it’s weird.

“Then I felt the Lord ask me, ‘Are you ashamed of the Holy Spirit?’ And there’s no way I’m ashamed of the Holy Spirit. I had to be real.”

The First of Millions

Now that Welch’s sabbatical has ended, he finds that he is no less gung-ho than when he first experienced the miraculous power of God’s grace. In fact, he has since wholeheartedly embraced the work that prophecy plays in his life—a spiritual gift that Welch says not only guided the words of his book but also provided him with the songs for his solo project.

One thing Welch doesn’t want the book to do is simply come off as a feel-good story about how religion helped a rock star overcome his addictions. Instead, he desperately hopes that his testimony will challenge people to draw closer to the Creator of the universe and experience the fullness of His love.

“I want people to see how God revealed Himself to me and that God is so real and that He wants to come as close to every human as they want Him to,” Welch says. “I just want a burning desire to be placed into the hearts of every reader, whether that’s a Christian or a non-Christian, because we should always be growing and getting hungrier for the Lord because there’s always more. There’s always more that He wants to reveal to us.”

That type of spiritual wisdom is a far cry from the state of hopelessness that Welch himself knew less than three years ago. It’s the kind of thinking that reminds him daily of the fact that he has many friends still trapped by the deceptive glamor of the “sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll” life.

Now that he has been delivered from those addictions, Welch is driven by a sense of urgency that is fueled by his compassion for the lost.

“I feel like I need to do everything and anything that the Bible says that I can do to get these people saved like me,” Welch says. “I just pray constantly that He will open the hearts of those people and open the minds and the spiritual eyes so they can see Him. All they need is a glimpse of His love, like I had. I was forever changed.

“I’ve just pleaded with Him that He would do that for this generation. I pray that I’ll be a prophetic example of what He’s going to do for all of those people that are living the way I did. I pray that I’m the first of millions that are going to be coming.”

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Chad Bonham is a journalist based in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. To learn more about Brian Welch’s music and ministry, visit . To read an excerpt from Brian Welch’s book, log on at

The British worship band Delirious is taking their high-octane praise to the nations.
It’s about 45 minutes into the concert at First Church of the Nazarene in Bethany, Oklahoma, and British rock band Delirious have already taken the crowd of a few hundred on a roller-coaster ride—physically, emotionally and, perhaps most importantly, spiritually.

But as the ethereal guitar tone—deliberately paced by a pulsating drum rhythm and understated piano strokes—introduces the intimate worship song “Take Off My Shoes,” lead singer Martin Smith removes his and neatly places them by his side. His powerful tenor voice suddenly becomes reverently tender and emotive as he sings.

“I’ll take off my shoes, I’m coming in / Untie this rope, I’m staying with Him / Love of my life, I’ll live and die / Just for the moments for my King and I.”

Smith’s reference to the Old Testament’s holy of holies lays the foundation for even more personal revelations. The song’s chorus speaks of the sin nature of every person in the building and everyone who has ever heard the song. “Hold me, blow all the pride from my bones / With Your fire / Hold me, breathe on this heart made of stone / Keep it pure.”

Those words look good on paper. They sound even better when heard through the vehicle of song. But Smith himself knows that the battle against pride and the flesh is especially tricky when the world is literally your stage.

“It’s hard because being in a band, you immediately enter a world of self-promotion whether you want to or not,” Smith candidly admits. “You make your records. You make the cover look great. You always put your best foot forward. You want people to think you’re fantastic and the record’s great.

“So we live in this interesting balance of knowing there’s a lot of marketing going on and self-promotion, and yet on the other hand God is the one that’s raising you up. There’s a bit of both really. But ultimately God has to be the one that gets it going.”

Rock ‘n’ Roll Missionaries

Perhaps because of that perspective, the band in recent years has seen doors open to some of its biggest opportunities yet. In fact, no longer does the band Delirious see itself as a traditional touring rock band but instead as rock ‘n’ roll missionaries who are being sent to every corner of the planet.

“Right now as a band we are very much sensing a greater call from God to the nations,” explains keyboard player and band manager Tim Jupp. “Last year alone we visited 25 countries, and there seems to be a continuing increase in opportunity to go to even more places and do what we do.

“We cannot stay in any one place for an extended period of time as perhaps traditionally the missionaries do, but through the music we do have the ability to gather the crowds, preach the gospel, and I believe, see many thousands won for Christ.”

To that end, Delirious members have found themselves traveling the globe playing for people on every continent. Last year, the band performed at a three-day evangelism event in Hyderabad, India, with Bible teacher Joyce Meyer, where a reported 1.2 million people stood on an old military field.

Earlier this year, Delirious revisited India and were scheduled to perform in Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, South Korea, the Philippines, China, Ukraine and most of Europe. In October, the band will join Meyer again for two nights in Johannesburg, South Africa, and a women’s conference in Toronto.
“From the very beginnings of Delirious we have always felt a sense that the songs we have been carrying would be for the world,” Jupp says. “Now we find ourselves in a season when this call is coming to fruition.

“We are very excited to be in this place, and prophetically also believe that we are here to encourage and see a generation of indigenous worship leaders and musicians raised up in their own nations. Also, we want to help create a path and ways for other musicians to travel and minister in places that perhaps right now they find hard to see a way how this could happen.”

With last October’s CD-DVD release of Now Is the Time: Live at Willow Creek, Delirious solidified their commitment to shake things up in the worship music genre. For most of its 15-year career, in fact, the band from Littlehampton, England, has walked a fine line between traditional vertical worship and a horizontal approach that looks at hard issues and how the church should respond.

In one evening, an audience might be engaged in corporate worship with “I Could Sing of Your Love Forever,” “Deeper” or “Majesty” and then challenged to action with songs such as “Here I Am Send Me,” “History Maker” or “Now Is the Time.”

And sometimes things get really uncomfortable with songs such as “Our God Reigns,” a tale of two realities that references abortion, plastic surgery, social injustice and materialism—all the while recognizing that the Creator is in control of the situation.

For Delirious the bigger issue is a concern that the church lacks a holistic view of what worship is truly all about. Over time, the band’s exposure to the world has changed its approach to ministry. Instead of focusing solely on the Christian community, it has shifted to a broader worldview in an effort to reach the unsaved.

That mentality has afforded Delirious some unusual opportunities, including opening spots with popular rock acts such as Bon Jovi and Bryan Adams, as well as invitations to play major mainstream festivals in places such as the Czech Republic and Ukraine. The band even performed for the pope and a million others at the 2005 World Youth Day in Germany and for world leaders at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece.

Living the Life

Amid what he calls an amazing journey, Jupp says figuring out what it means to be both a rock act and a worship band remains an ongoing process. “The biggest challenge is for ourselves, that we actually start to live out some of the things that we sing about,” Jupp says.

“I think that will be the thing that actually speaks to people more than the songs do. It would be very disappointing if people came to visit us in our town and just [saw] us sitting on our backsides in the fruit of selling records because the songs are good.

“I want them to come and see a life of difference and come and see our work through the local church and all of the things that are going on to help people. I think that would be the most profound demonstration of what it is to lead a life of worship.”

Collectively, the members of Delirious agree that this is just the beginning. In April the band released a book about its ministry journey titled I Could Sing of Your Love Forever: Stories, Reflections and Devotions. But the focus on world missions has created a number of challenges that a successful recording artist wouldn’t normally have to face.

Although most bands receive payment for playing concerts—not to mention the money earned from product sales—that is simply not the case when Delirious perform in places such as India or Brazil. “As you can imagine this presents an enormous economic challenge to us,” Jupp admits. “We do not have our own reserves of cash to do these things.

“Also, we are at a time that in the music industry, because of the Internet and other factors, that we can no longer rely on record sales to be the bread and butter of our income. We are then left with a situation where as a band we are now earning a living predominantly from playing live, whilst at the same time feeling God’s call to go to the nations where we can earn very little, if nothing at all, from playing.”

And despite the fact that traveling to developing countries and performing as rock ‘n’ roll missionaries doesn’t bring in the big pay dates that come with stateside touring, Delirious members are firmly committed to doing their best to follow Christ’s example of service.

“The whole essence of the New Testament is about Jesus coming and laying His life down and preferring other people,” Jupp says.

“I think the whole essence of worship is about that. It’s about laying down our lives, about feeding the poor, about reaching out to others, which is the essence of what happened when Jesus came. He fulfilled everything. It meant God could be real to mankind in a personal way and because of that we can understand what it is to worship Him and have a relationship with Him.”

At the end of the day, all the band members agree that it doesn’t matter if they play for a few hundred people or a few hundred thousand. But make no mistake: They are deeply entrenched in the belief that God has a big plan in store—as if He hasn’t already used the band to accomplish some pretty significant tasks.

“I think we envisioned it reaching bigger levels than this,” guitarist Stuart Garrard says. “I don’t think we’re satisfied. It’s brilliant to have traveled the way we do and travel the world, but there’s a whole world out there that needs to hear about hope and faith and hear about God’s love. Our vision is to do that through our music.”

“We feel like things have just started for us,” Smith adds. “We’ve not achieved anything really. I think this is all part of a new beginning.”

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Chad Bonham is a journalist based in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, where he produces The ProFILES, a sports TV show. Readers can follow Delirious’ tour schedule by visiting .
To learn more about Delirious log on at

Worship artist David Crowder is taking Christian music to a whole new level. And he’s doing it from a Baptist church full of college students.
By University Baptist Church standards, it’s a typical Sunday morning worship service. Of course, a normal meeting for the Waco, Texas-based ministry looks little to nothing like most of the country’s congregational gatherings.

Inside the dimly lit sanctuary, housed in a converted Safeway grocery store, about 800 formerly disillusioned students from nearby Baylor University are engaged in worship. Many raise their hands; some dance; others stand quietly in contemplative prayer.

Moments after leading worship, David Crowder exits the platform and enters an adjacent hallway feeling especially good. The song selection seemed to be on target. The congregation responded to his admonitions. And the band that shares his name sounded better than ever.

Still caught up in the emotional euphoria of the worship experience, Crowder is nearly run over by a small, overactive boy. Seconds later, a young woman whisks by, frantically chasing her escaped pupil. The commotion jars Crowder out of his reverie and a curious thought hits him.

“Who’s having the more authentic worship experience this morning?” he wonders aloud. “Is it me and the rest of these people who just got through singing some stuff or is [it] this other gal who gave up spending a morning with her friends to chase some little kid that’s probably driving her up the wall? Whose experience in worship is more valid at that point?”

This is just one of Crowder’s countless epiphanies—those life-altering, paradigm-shifting thoughts that come without any warning. He seems to welcome such thoughts, which challenge his preconceived notions about God, life, worship and the church. And perhaps that’s why the 35-year-old music pastor, recording artist and nationally recognized worship leader is embraced by so many young adults who struggle to connect with the traditional church.

And for a guy whose name has become synonymous with corporate teen and young adult worship, it’s surprising to find that he is reluctant to view worship music as the primary tool for reaching younger generations. “I think we’ve elevated music to a place where it can’t bear the weight of what we’ve asked it do,” Crowder says. “It has wound up being the sum total of what we experience and think of worship as.

“It will fold under the weight. It’s a brilliant, beautiful thing to use music, and I think it’s maybe even why music exists. Yet it can really do damage if that’s the sum of what our understanding of worship is.”

Death of a Salesman

Crowder never set out to be the face of modern worship—a title he quickly passes off to his good friend Chris Tomlin. In fact, he never meant to be in Waco past the four years it takes to get a bachelor’s degree from Baylor University, which is affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

“The last thing I planned, goal-orientedwise, was come to school, graduate, move back home to Texarkana and sell insurance for my dad,” Crowder says. “And obviously I can’t even fathom doing that now. Can you see me on your front steps? ‘Hey, have you thought of your kid’s future?’

“All of this has been a left turn, but looking back you can see all the tools were there waiting.”

Crowder grew up in Texarkana, Texas, where he was immersed in a highly traditional church culture. But his family’s interest in varied worship experiences had him caught between two extremes.

“I really had this schizophrenic Christian upbringing,” Crowder remembers. “My parents were really devout in their faith. We would spend a typical Sunday morning with the Southern Baptist, East Texas thing going on.

“But Sunday nights we would go to whatever charismatic movement was happening. Wherever the Spirit of God had landed in town, that was where we were on Sunday nights.”

Although watching his parents being pulled “between those two polar opposites” was often confusing, he says now he can appreciate the experience as it has helped him feel comfortable in virtually any church environment. But as a teenager and young adult, Crowder distanced himself from the trappings of church life.

When Crowder flew the coop to study music at Baylor, he found that he wasn’t alone. In fact, he quickly discovered that of the 14,000 students who called Waco their temporary home, more than half were not regularly attending a church of any kind.

Hoping to do something about the problem, Crowder and fellow student Chris Seay decided to start a progressive church that would appeal to younger generations. Seay, whose father was a Baptist preacher, would serve as the teaching pastor, and Crowder, who was studying music at Baylor and had played in his youth group band, would lead worship.

Because they shared the same church background, Crowder and Seay—now pastor of the cutting-edge Ecclesia church in Houston—did the sensible thing: They went to the Southern Baptist state mission board for funding. Crowder admits he wasn’t crazy about the idea. He assumed the powers that be would consist of “a bunch of old folks with gray hair.”

“In my head I had this moment pictured, and it was stereotypically Baptist,” he admits. “We were going to the Baptist state mission board, and these guys are the ones that hold the moneybags so to speak. Even before I stepped into the room I knew who they were in my head.

“We walked into this room and sure enough it fit the description. I was like: ‘I knew it! I knew it!’ And I was looking at Chris like, ‘This is so not going to fly.’ Here’s a bunch of young college punks going: ‘Hey, give us money. We want to start a church.’ I thought it was the most ridiculous thing ever. There was no way they were going to go for it.”

But as soon as they started to share their vision with the men, something remarkable happened. The board members became engrossed in the concept and immediately jumped at the opportunity to help the young, would-be campus pastors. Some were even moved to tears.

That moment changed Crowder, who then began to appreciate his heritage more than ever before. But in reality, University Baptist Church (UBC) was not going to look or feel like a typical Southern Baptist congregation.

Instead, it would eventually become a haven for young people who had given up on the traditional church. The ministry’s stated goal was to “engage the whole person with all of his/her senses in a balanced experience of God that shields itself from emotionalism or intellectualism.”

Their fresh approach caught on, and the church quickly grew into the hundreds with services on Sunday and Wednesday nights. “Before you’ve heard anything happen from the stage, we want you to know its OK to be who you are, however you’re put together,” Crowder says.

“We want you to be able to express yourself to God in a really authentic way. You don’t have to look a certain way. You don’t have to posture a certain way. We want to create an atmosphere that breeds diversity and encourages diversity so that nobody needs to feel like they need to look like the person next to them or react to moments the same way.”

As the church has grown, so has Crowder. He used to experience fear before he mounted a platform. In preparation for worship services, Crowder would become very intense and focused.

“I would all of the sudden get into a spiritual posture so to speak,” he says. “What that would do is lessen all of the rest of my experience with God. It would turn this moment into something more holy than the one that preceded it. I felt like that was not a really good way to follow Christ. Most of it was fear-driven.

“So what I’ve tried to do and remind myself is that the rest of my day is as important as that moment [of leading worship]. It’s not a more sacred moment, so it shouldn’t look much different. It doesn’t say that I don’t rely on the Holy Spirit’s leading. What it means is I think it’s as important to rely on the Holy Spirit’s leading in those moments preceding and following.

“It makes those moments as important. So what it then does is turn that moment into looking like the rest. Music all of the sudden is an extension of who I was before and who I’ll be after.”

A Passion for Worship

For the first several years, Crowder lived in a virtual vacuum at UBC. He was so caught up in local ministry he never gave thought to how his burgeoning talents as a worship leader and writer might impact the rest of the world. And despite his current status as a national figure in the worship music scene, it’s still something with which he’s not completely comfortable.

“I tend to look at what I’m doing through really small lenses in that I’m at a little church in Waco, Texas, and I’m writing songs to articulate faith to this little group of people,” Crowder says.

“That’s about the extent of what I allow myself to feel. I’m aware that, granted, these songs will leak out and get elsewhere and be in a lot of people’s mouths, but I don’t know those people. I know these people [at UBC].”

But from the early days of UBC, the music Crowder was creating with fellow Baylor students Jack Parker, Jeremy Bush, Mike Dodson and Mike Hogan resonated with a largely untapped group of worshipers in churches and on college campuses well beyond Waco. With their rock-influenced sound and reflective lyrics that probed difficult spiritual questions, the David Crowder Band (DCB) were unwittingly revolutionizing modern worship.

“David’s music was finding a place in the body of Christ that no one else’s music was filling,” says Louie Giglio, founder of the Passion conferences and a former campus pastor at Baylor. “I could see that, and it finally came down to David saying he didn’t think anyone was that interested [in his music], and my role was to say to him that these weren’t his songs.

“That’s an important hurdle for every worship leader to get over. These songs are coming from God. They may come through you, but they’re coming from God.”

Giglio, founder of Sixsteps Records, helped the band fund its first professional recording and added them to the Passion lineup in 1999. The following year they headlined the event where 40,000 students gathered for corporate worship.

In 2002, the release of Can You Hear Us marked Crowder’s official leap into the Christian music industry as a bona fide national recording artist, although the band had already appeared on a pair of Passion projects. That was followed by the 2003 release of Illuminate and 2005’s highly acclaimed concept record A Collision.

In the last five years, DCB has been responsible for a slew of popular worship anthems, including “Here Is Our King,” “No One Like You,” “Our Love Is Loud,” “Wholly Yours” and “Only You.”

Known for his experimental approach to writing, producing and recording, Crowder showed his range and surprising appreciation for traditional music with last year’s B Collision: The Eschatology of Bluegrass. In fact, concertgoers shouldn’t be surprised to hear the band break into a modern-day hoedown at any given moment.

“David is a genius,” Giglio says. “There’s no doubt about that. I don’t say this with any bias at all, but I think David Crowder Band is the best band around.

“I’d stack them up with anybody—period. People say they’re the best Christian band there is. I was at the Grammys and I heard some pretty good bands, and I think the David Crowder Band is as good as any band there is in America.

“I don’t mean that in a sense to puff Crowder up, but he’s got a real unique sensibility about music. He’s a far more advanced musician than anybody out there. The stuff that goes through his head is on a different plane than most people.”

And people outside the Christian music industry agree. While Crowder is a big fan of Christian bands such as Switchfoot and ., who have made massive inroads into mainstream music circles, his own band’s popularity within the secular marketplace has steadily grown. Crowder has befriended such interested onlookers as Spin journalist Andrew Beaujon, author of Body Piercing Saved My Life, and Jimmy Eat World drummer Zach Lind.

A perennial critic’s favorite, DCB has received media coverage from the New York Times, Fox News and CNN. And the Dove Award-winning band ended 2006 by claiming the title of MSN’s Artist of the Year—beating out nominees such as Prince, Christina Aguilera, Kenny Chesney and INXS. MSN commented that “[David Crowder Band has] single-handedly redefined what contemporary Christian music should sound like.”

“That’s huge for us because that’s so much of what we’re trying to do,” Crowder says. “We can see it visibly here when you’re living life with these people and you know these songs fit into their lives. But to have people that don’t have any connection to us or a relationship with us say the same thing is huge.

“It makes it worth all the effort, worth all the difficulty in finding our feet in two different streams. It makes us feel like things can change. We can make a small impact here.”

It’s Just Music

With the band’s latest project, Remedy, set to release this fall, Crowder has come a long way since his early days when he had no desire to appeal to audiences beyond a five-mile radius of Waco. It’s still a struggle keeping the balance between being a worship pastor and having a national platform as a recording artist for a new generation.

The band rarely misses a Sunday service despite a hectic touring schedule and has taken many red-eye flights back to Waco to ensure it stays that way. But even amid the hype that surrounds the music scene, Crowder understands that worship is bigger than his band or the group’s songs.

“It’s just music,” Crowder says. “We’re just … putting some words to it and singing to God for a little bit. Yes, there have probably been some moments when, for me personally, that experience has been life-changing and altering. But for the most part, it’s just music.”

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Chad Bonham is a journalist based in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. He is executive producer of The ProFILES, a sports TV show.

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Raising a Fist at Death

How God used David Crowder’s music to help his church heal after a tragedy.

In October 2005, as David Crowder Band was touring the country in support of its heralded album A Collision, the group received tragic news. University Baptist Church’s pastor, Kyle Lake, had been electrocuted by audio equipment while
baptizing a church member. He was 33.

For several months, Crowder withdrew from the public eye as his pastor and close friend’s death made headlines. “Everyone wanted to talk about it, and most of it had to do with the spectacle rather than concern,” Crowder recalls.

The two had attended school together and were the same age. But even more ironic is the fact that Lake’s teachings played a major role in the writing and production of A Collision—and that the concept record tackled the dubious topic of death.

Crowder says that unique reality didn’t make Lake’s sudden passing any easier to deal with. But he believes God used the pastor’s messages, which were laced throughout the songs, to help comfort the University Baptist Church family.

“We were supporting this record about death, singing these songs and then our pastor dies,” Crowder says. “We needed those songs more than anybody did.”

To produce A Collision, Crowder followed a 20-page script—written in part by Lake. The album wasn’t supposed to be a commercial success due to its subject matter and unconventional song layout. But the album resonated with Crowder’s fans and won over a substantial new group of listeners as well.

Crowder was as surprised as anyone by the project’s appeal. “We were trying to discuss death and our mortal position here on earth in light of our Christian faith,” Crowder says. “By the end of the record, we finally wind up raising our fists to the air and wind up saying that our belief is that death doesn’t win.”

Let Every Generation Praise Him

Dozens of new worship artists are taking Christian music to a new level of passion and intimacy.

Their music is loud. Their message is bold. But these young worship leaders aren’t just trying to make a statement. They want to lead their generation into a fresh experience with God—and as a result they are writing the soundtrack for a move of the Holy Spirit that is touching hearts around the globe. Here are some of the many leaders in this youth-led worship movement.

Charlie Hall

For the last 15 years, Charlie Hall has given the church some of its favorite modern worship choruses, including “Salvation,” “Freedom Song” and “Give Us Clean Hands.”

Hall’s early lyrical offerings made him a mouthpiece for the popular, college-driven Passion movement. His last two albums—On the Road to Beautiful and Flying Into Daybreak—found the Oklahoma City native experimenting more than ever before.

“Music in [and] of itself is a sacrament,” Hall says. “It’s powerful and symbolizes so much of spirituality. It gets inside your soul. It’s more than just sticking God lyrics into a rock song.

“One of my biggest desires is that when we play and don’t even sing that people would feel their heart rise up and worship God.”

And though newer, more artistically innovative songs such as “Micah 6:8” and “Song of the Redeemed” may not appeal to every church, Hall believes God has a broad purpose for his music.

“I’m realizing over time that yes, God takes me through stuff for me, but He uses it so much for other people,” Hall says. “I know He’s trying to speak things to me and to other people through me.

“God gets glory from our pain, our failures, our misunderstandings and our confusion. With my music, I want it to capture people musically as well as spiritually and emotionally.”

Desperation Band

On the surface, Jared Anderson’s successful foray into modern worship might have seemed like a foregone conclusion. After growing up in New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the young worship leader attended Oral Roberts University, where he recorded a pair of independent records in his spare time.

But even he admits that it took some time before the idea of diving into full-time ministry started to make sense. “I battled with that for a while,” Anderson says. “I thought being a worship leader was everyone’s plan B—that going back to the church was kind of settling.”

Anderson finally caved in to his calling and formed Desperation Band, an electric-driven pop-rock group whose music is quickly becoming a nationwide phenomenon. Songs such as “Amazed,” “Rescue” and “Hear Us From Heaven” are just a few of the modern standards that Anderson originally penned for his church.

“There’s a philosophy of freedom at the church and the leadership that empowers people into whatever comes out naturally, letting people do what’s in them to do,” Anderson says. “That’s created an environment of innovation.”

Anderson is especially concerned about how his music can impact even the hardest of hearts. “The big ideas have to translate all the way through to the secular world if it’s going to last,” he says.

Lisa McClendon

Lisa McClendon broke new ground when in 2003 she debuted on Integrity Music’s label with her worship project, Soul Music. But the 29-year-old preacher’s kid from Florida says she doesn’t want her jazz and soul-influenced music to overshadow the message in her songs.

“It’s not really about the sound. It is about the message,” she says. “The sound is my personality, but the message is all Christ.”

With songs such as “Stuck,” which tackles the challenges of marriage, and “Grace, Grace, Grace,” McClendon says she seeks to be transparent. And although vulnerabilty can be challenging, she says it’s worth the effort when listeners say her songs helped save their marriages or change their lives. “It’s all worth my transparency,” she says. “It’s all worth me putting it out there on an album as the Lord would allow me to.”

Now living in Nashville, Tennessee, McClendon leads a busy life as a songwriter, producer, owner of Diamond Girl Music, wife and mother of two. She says she couldn’t find balance without keeping focused on Christ.

“I have to spend time with God,” she says. “I get up every morning at 5:30. … I go in my studio, and I just play worship [music], and I just sit for 30 minutes. Then I start reading [the Bible] and letting the Lord minister to me. But if I don’t do that I can feel it. I can feel everything being unbalanced.”

Leeland

While most high school and college students are figuring out what they want to do with their lives, the young members of the alternative-rock worship band Leeland have already mapped out a long-term future together. And it’s not the allure of fame and fortune that drives them.

“We want to sell a lot of albums,” keyboard player and background vocalist Jack Mooring says. “We want to play in front of thousands of people. But if we do all of those things and haven’t won anyone to Jesus, I would hate to stand before the throne of God with some gold records in my hand and no souls behind me.”

Mooring’s younger brother Leeland, the band’s namesake, first caught the attention of Christian music insiders as a 15-year old prodigious songwriter from Baytown, Texas. He signed a writing contract with EMI and two years later parlayed his success into a record contract for the band. Leeland’s first national release, Sound of Melodies, has brought the band critical acclaim and a sizeable fan base.

But clinging to its Assemblies of God roots, Leeland has a goal in mind that is bigger than writing hit songs. “We’re young, and we’re flowing in the Holy Ghost, and we want to tell other kids that they can do that too,” Leeland Mooring says.
“Our mission is to see kids who are spiritually dead to be revived and feel God’s presence again and actually seek after God.”

Rojo

Emmanuel Espinosa was an elementary school student watching his parents minister in the church they led in Ures, Mexico, when he realized music had the power to change lives. “I saw what music would do to people. And I saw what God would do through music,” he says.

“So when I was around 10 or 11, I said: ‘I’m going to serve God, and I’m going to do it through music, and I’m going to do it around the world.'”

It was another 13 years, including six years of touring with worship leader Marcos Witt, before Espinosa set off on his own and released a CD with Rojo, the Texas-based band he had formed. “For the first year, we wouldn’t sell one CD, and they wouldn’t invite us anywhere,” says the 31-year-old bassist, singer and songwriter.

“And all of a sudden, it just exploded, and we sold 100,000 copies, and we started traveling all over Latin America and the U.S. and Spain and Japan. … For us, it’s very clear that it’s not us. It’s God.”

Since then the Spanish-language rock-influenced worship band has released four albums, the most recent being Con el Corazón en la Mano (Rey Vol Records), and was nominated for a Latin Grammy Award in 2004. But more than receiving critical acclaim, Espinosa says the band wants to help their young listeners experience true worship.

“Worship is giving yourself completely to God,” he says. “God is not looking for perfect people or talented people; He’s looking for entregada—people who give themselves to God.

“We can be entregados and not be perfect. And we can be entregados even if we have doubts and we have issues. And that’s the kind of people God is looking for.”

Tree63

In late 1996, Tree63 was formed on what seemed at the time to be nothing more than a whim. After a few jam sessions among newly converted believers and a 30-minute slot at a Christian beach festival, the band’s earliest foundations were laid.

And as the South African pop-rock worship band wraps up its first decade together, lead singer John Ellis is continually amazed at how differently this unplanned journey has unfolded.

“As really new Christians, we had virtually no idea about Christian music, much less that it was subdivided into categories like modern worship,” Ellis says. “That was really disappointing for us to discover.”

Since those early days, the trio has enjoyed international acclaim. Employing a musical style that has drawn flattering comparisons to European rockers such as U2, Coldplay, Delirious and Big Country, Tree63 is known for hit songs such as “Treasure,” “Joy” and “Look What You’ve Done.” But unlike their secular counterparts, these guys offer an unusual depth of spirituality.

Ellis admits that he still struggles with the whole entertainment vs. worship debate, but one thing he is sure of is the need for more prophetic ministry within Christian music.

“We’re all about the prophetic,” Ellis says.

“There’s hardly enough space for that dynamic to work in the confines of a three-minute pop song, but on stage we’re always waiting for the Holy Spirit to take over. The songs are merely the form, and God can use them to either speak or entertain or edify or prophecy—whatever He chooses.”

Reuben Morgan

When people think of Hillsong, nine times out of 10 the name Darlene Zschech comes to mind. But in the last few years one of Zschech’s protégés—fellow Australian Reuben Morgan—has effortlessly come into his own with a sound that reflects an innovative mix of traditional and nontraditional influences.

“I get inspired by so much other music and so much other art,” Morgan says. “The church is getting better at—and needs to keep getting better at—releasing people into what they really feel God’s given them to do and not trying to control it.

“We’re diverse. Everybody’s different and everybody has a different calling.”

Now focusing on his ministry as a lead worshiper away from Hillsong, Morgan is also involved in efforts to plant churches all over the world. As a result of his extensive travels, he believes the atmosphere of true worship among believers is thickening every day.

“People are more passionate than ever,” Morgan says. “I think God’s stirring the church. For the most part, churches are singing the same songs no matter where you go, which is pretty incredible. Even in countries that don’t speak English, they’re still singing the same songs.”

Morgan, who has penned such congregational favorites as “I Give You My Heart,” “My Redeemer Lives,” “Hear Our Praises” and “Every Day,” says the purpose of worship is to get real before God. “I’m really not one for anything but what’s authentic,” Morgan says.

“People need to know why they’re worshiping. We need to be speaking about Christ so people can respond appropriately to Him. I think it helps when people can kind of let go.”

Vicky Beeching

Vicky Beeching is not interested in being a music celebrity. And this singer-songwriter takes her role as a worship leader seriously.

“I’ve always really loved the phrase ‘lead worshiper,'” she says. “I think it’s definitely not being a music leader; it’s definitely not being someone who just sings through a microphone. You really have to set the standard in your own heart and life of worship. Other people hopefully see that as infectious and catch hold of it.”

Beeching, 28, was born in Canterbury, England. As a young teen she began leading worship for her youth group and at other venues around town. Sensing a call to worship ministry, she earned a degree in theology from Oxford in order to better fulfill her destiny.

Now in the U.S., Beeching is leading a whole new audience in worship and has released two albums, Yesterday, Today and Forever and Painting the Invisible. Her piano- and guitar-based melodies have a hint of rock, and Beeching’s high energy ushers listeners into full praise and worship.

She says God deserves wholehearted worship purely because of who He is.

“It’s completely unrelated to what He’s done for us or hasn’t done for us or how we do or don’t feel,” she says. “It’s not in any way dependent upon changeable things. … He is who He is, and He will always be deserving of complete worship.”

Through her music Beeching hopes to create “a safe atmosphere where people could experience more of God, where they can be vulnerable, they can really unveil all their heart and just be really who they are and allow God to step close.”

J. Moss

When J. Moss burst onto the gospel music scene in 2003 with The J. Moss Project, he and his production partners Paul “PDA” Allen and Walter Kearney (collectively known as PAJAM) quickly became the genre’s next big thing.

But Moss is hardly a rookie. He grew up on the music of his aunt, Mattie Moss Clark, and his father, Bill Moss Sr., who fronted the popular 1970s group The Celestials. Then in the 1990s, he began making a name for himself through PAJAM, which has produced hit songs for the likes of Pattie Labelle, Trin-i-tee 5:7 and N-Sync.

Although his solo project tackled such themes as sexual purity and worship as a lifestyle, Moss is not usually thought of as a worship leader or worship artist. Yet in January he and his crew released the innovative project PAJAM Presents Sing to the Lord—a collection of popular modern worship choruses tailored to appeal to fans of urban contemporary music.

Moss says the worship project challenged him to re-examine his spiritual life. “I spend more quality time talking to God and more study time in the books so that everything I say is backed up in the Word or testimony,” Moss says.

And with the recent release of Moss’ second solo record, V2, the award-winning artist has learned a lot about adversity, patience and doing business God’s way. “My faith assures me that God does things in His own time,” Moss says. “The beauty of God taking you through things is there’s always a lesson. It’s not about the victory party or the symbolism of what you go through. It’s the lesson.

“So I’ve been doing everything in my power to make the whole being of J. Moss the absolute best possible presenter and carrier of the gospel.”

Hector Sotelo Band

Héctor Sotelo grew up singing and listening to music. But when the Mexico native was 14, he received a prophetic word during a church service that took his interest in music to a whole new level. “In that prophecy [God] said, ‘I have placed the love of music inside of you … and don’t ever forget, I am the music,'” he recalls.

Sotelo says that experience caused him to view music ministry as his calling. And today the 27-year-old hopes to inspire other young people to find their purpose in Christ. “Everywhere I go, pretty much our message is living for God, doing something for God,” he says. “We want to tell this generation they actually have a purpose for being here on this earth. And you actually need to do something for God, not just sit in church.”

Now living in Houston, Sotelo describes his music as “British rock with a Latin influence.” His song “La Viña,” on his 2003 debut release, El Lugar, was widely played on Christian and secular radio across Latin America. “I never intended for [the album] to be played on secular stations. I never thought that it would,” he says. “Then I would get these e-mails from people … saying because of the album they came to church and received Christ.”

Sotelo released his sophomore project, Una Vez Más, in October through Integrity Music Latin. He says his music, drawn from his own experiences with God, is encouraging his young listeners to give Christ their all. To Sotelo, that’s what worship is all about. “Anything you do can be an act of worship,” he says. “Even if you wash dishes for your mom, if you do it with the right attitude it can become an act of worship. Whatever you do, if you’re trying to glorify God through it, that is an act of worship.”

Shane & Shane

The modern worship team of Shane & Shane have more in common than their first names. Truth is, this Duncanville, Texas-based duo share a keen understanding of where their critically acclaimed vocals and unique acoustic guitar instrumentation comes from.

“Everything we see here on the earth is just a fringe on the garment of God, a tiny peek at who He is,” Shane Barnard says. “I consider that everything, not just the normal things we think of—trees, creation, etc.—but everything that has been created, whether it’s a laptop, a guitar amplifier, you name it, everything is a reflection of God’s amazing creativity.”

With a pop-driven sound that occasionally invokes folk music, Barnard and his longtime friend Shane Everett have inspired a sizeable audience that tends to be made up of young adults looking for a fresh approach to worship music. The duo made waves as an independent artist before signing to a label and producing such top-selling albums as Carry Away, Upstairs and their latest project, Clean.

Shane & Shane has done so by recording an unusual mix of songs that might include a Twila Paris remake (“He Is Exalted”) or the compelling original “Fringes,” which was inspired by the 26th chapter of Job. According to Barnard, the duo doesn’t select songs because of how old or new they are. They make choices based on how those songs stand up to the ultimate standard—God’s truth.

“No matter how we feel, the truths are absolute,” Everett adds. “When I sing a wrong note, it’s distracting, but it doesn’t change the truth of the message.

“We’re called to do this. We’re called to proclaim the greatness of God.”

Tye Tribbett

For Tye Tribbett, there’s only one way to sum up what he and the group he founded, Greater Anointing, are all about. “It’s kingdom music,” he says. “It is not directed toward one race of people or one genre. It’s universal. We represent the kingdom.”

The young singer-songwriter-producer from Camden, New Jersey, has broken down walls like no one in the gospel music industry since Kirk Franklin emerged in 1993 with massive crossover success. Tribbett and Greater Anointing have toured with country singer Faith Hill and gained the respect of everyone from Usher and Will Smith to Jill Scott and Mary J. Blige—all the while promoting straight-up
worship and an uncompromising gospel message.

“This is basically about spiritual warfare,” Tribbett says. “And the way we fight is not against flesh and blood, but principalities. We fight with our praise. This is an all-out attack against the enemy with praise and worship.”

And on Tribbett’s latest album, Victory, he uses hip-hop, gospel, rock and just about everything in between as a weapon to take back what Satan has stolen from the church, as referenced in the popular track “I Want It All Back.”

“I’m stepping toward the enemy,” Tribbett says. “Some church folk are scared to fight these things. But I feel like we come in the spirit of David—this young boy who knew how to praise and worship.

“The Bible says David ran to meet the Philistine. He ran to Goliath. We’re saying, ‘Devil, we’re not scared of you.'”

To hear music samples from these artists, visit charismamag .com/worship.

Many people in this country have never heard of T.L. Osborn yet he has preached to untold millions in other countries. Today this humble evangelist is leaving us a legacy of faith.
In an age dominated by mass media, lightning-quick computer technology and society’s unquenchable need for information, it’s unfathomable that hundreds of thousands of people could gather in a single location without attracting international attention.

But that’s exactly what has happened for 53 years when evangelist T.L. Osborn and his wife, Daisy, who died in 1995, held open-field crusades in developing countries, drawing an estimated 250,000 to 500,000 people to each event. All told, millions of lives have been directly changed by Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Osborn International in the last 58 years.

Besides preaching at the crusades, Osborn prays for the masses—without laying hands on anyone—and subsequently sees countless miracles take place. Some of the more astounding occurrences have included the instantaneous healing of leprosy, blindness and crippled legs, and deliverance from demon possession. On more than one occasion, the Osborns witnessed uneven limbs growing out to the proper length.

Osborn is also one of the first charismatic ministers to distribute bulk amounts of translated evangelical literature. The most common practice has been to give a set of six Osborn-penned books to all crusade attendees who will accept the gift. As many as 70,000 copies of each title have been printed per outreach event, and one instance required an astonishing 56 tons to be shipped.

Osborn and his family have conducted their ministry with no fanfare, no attempt to conform to the personality-driven culture of the American church, and little regard for their own personal safety or comfort.

“That’s where we’ve chosen to seed our lives and I’m happy about it,” Osborn says during a rare interview granted to Charisma. “I live happy. I live happy to go again, help them again.

“Travel is awful, but when I think it’s awful, I think of Paul. Paul did it. Paul rode on a donkey or on a camel or on a boat, and he didn’t gripe. I won’t gripe. I just keep going.”

How It All Began

Randomly ask 100 native Oklahomans where the town of Skedee is, and at least 99 of them say they never heard of the place. In fact, it’s conceivable that only the 100 or so people who live there and a few census takers actually know that the small landmass in Pawnee County exists.

But in 1923, this nondescript farming community produced a child who would quite literally change the world. Tommy Lee Osborn was the seventh and youngest son in a family of 13 kids. Ironically, his father was also a seventh son.

“That’s supposed to mean something,” he jokes.

Turns out, it did mean something.

Osborn’s father was a nonpracticing traditional Baptist, but T.L. attended a Pentecostal church, where he played piano and accordion. A neighboring evangelist heard him play and asked if he would join him in his national travels. At that time, Osborn’s brothers all had left home and he was the only son still there to help his 60-year-old father on the potato farm.

Osborn admits that he was reluctant, even a little scared, to ask his father for permission to leave Skedee and hit the road. That fateful day while sorting potatoes in the cellar, he was greatly surprised when his father said yes.

About two years into his travels, Osborn found himself at a revival in California. By the time the event ended, he knew he wouldn’t be going back to the farm. He had caught a glimpse of the evangelist’s daughter, and it was love at first sight.

A year later, in 1942, the teenagers were married—T.L. was 18 and Daisy 17. Not long after, they took on the pastorate in Portland, Oregon, for the Pentecostal Church of God of America. But after hearing a female missionary from India speak at their church, they immediately felt a tug toward international outreach.

The pull was so strong that the Osborns devised a five-year plan to evangelize India. Their church organization helped them raise the sponsorship money to go, but just 10 months in, they ran into an unexpected wall.

“We couldn’t convince the Hindus and the Muslims about Jesus, about the Bible,” Osborn says. “But they were very kind to us and the Indians love to talk about religion.”

T.L. and Daisy were unfamiliar with the competing philosophies and had no convincing arguments that could sway the people. In fact, on many occasions those they attempted to evangelize tried to convert the Osborns to their faiths. This apparent failure left the couple “brokenhearted and ashamed” on their return to the United States.

“I said, ‘I’ve got to go back to where people believe in the Bible,'” Osborn recalls telling himself. “‘You can’t do anything with people who don’t believe in the Bible.’ I didn’t know that [the Bible] could be proven because I didn’t know about miracles.”

Eight Hours With the King

Not long after coming home, the Osborns became aware of the miracle-working evangelists ministering in the U.S. at the time. Although Aimee Semple McPherson had passed away in 1944, her reputation greatly influenced their desire to see miracles in their own services.

“That was the big thing that happened to us in India,” Osborn says. “We realized that without the miraculous, we couldn’t prove what we believed. I hadn’t thought of that before India. So we were going to find somebody that performed miracles.”

The search started in 1947 with Smith Wigglesworth, but as they planned to go to one of his meetings, the legendary preacher died. Later that year, they attempted to meet with Charles Price, but before they had a chance to attend a tent revival, he also passed away.

The distraught couple then learned that Price’s post had been handed to Hattie Hammond, known at the time as the greatest female preacher in the Assemblies of God. She was also known for the remarkable miracles that took place in her meetings. It was the Osborns’ meeting with Hammond that marked a significant turning point in their ministry.

Hammond encouraged them to look at their trip to India not as a failure but as their first glimpse into the massive harvest of souls that God had called them to reach. She also left T.L. with this curious admonition: “If you ever see Jesus, you’ll never be the same.”

It didn’t take long for him to understand what her words meant.

“The next morning at 6 o’clock, Jesus Christ walked in our room,” Osborn vividly remembers. “I saw Him like I see you. He didn’t walk on the floor. He walked on the air. I’ll never forget it.

“And I laid there. It was like I was dead. I couldn’t move a finger or a toe. I finally laid on my face on the floor until 2 o’clock in the afternoon. It changed my life. I was totally, totally bathed in a new life. That’s the best way to describe it.”

For Osborn, it was his first of four distinct revelations of Christ. The second came when he encountered the ministry of Gordon Lindsay, a Kentucky native who founded Christ for the Nations.

“I was dumbfounded when I saw him preach in a simple way, and when he made an invitation to accept Christ, lots of people came,” Osborn says. “Then, when he prayed for the sick, they were instantly healed.

“It shocked me. It profoundly affected me, and it seemed to me like a thousand voices swirled over my head saying: ‘You can do that. That’s what Jesus did. That’s the way Peter did it. That’s the way Paul did it. That proves the Bible is true today. You can do that.'”

Osborn’s third revelation came after he followed what he believed to be a divinely inspired unction to read the Gospels as if he had never read them before. Both he and Daisy poured through the Scriptures and began to see Jesus in His Word.

“This is the pledge we made,” Osborn says. “Whatever Jesus said He would do, we would expect Him to do it. Whatever He told us to do, we would do it.”

After making this commitment, the Osborns decided to host a healing service. They put ads in the paper and promoted the event on radio broadcasts.

That night the church in Portland was packed. Many were saved, and people began lining up to receive healing.

“It worked,” Osborn says. “We prayed for them and they were healed, and I had the fourth vision. I discovered Jesus in me. When that happened, Daisy and I said: ‘Now we can go back to India. Now we can convince them.'”

But this time, they couldn’t get funding from the church organization. They had to mortgage their car, sell some furniture and go only as far as their money would take them. The first stop was Jamaica, where in 13 weeks they saw 135 deaf-mutes healed, 90 blind people receive their sight and hundreds of crippled people walk away on their own two legs.

From Jamaica, they traveled to South America and then to Java and Japan. Ultimately, they landed back in India. Since those days, Osborn or others in his family have traveled to more than 90 countries.

Sowing Good Seed

When Daisy passed away in 1995, it seemed fitting to engrave this defining phrase on her tombstone: “The seed is the Word of God. The field is the world.”

That’s because sowing the Word has been foundational in the Osborns’ ministry—both orally and through evangelical literature. Sam Osborn, T.L.’s nephew and the ministry’s international general manager, helps oversee many of the programs that facilitate translation, printing and distribution of the Osborns’ books.

“The printed word is very important to [T.L.],” he says. “You can tickle people’s ears with the spoken word for a little while, but it doesn’t have the staying power it does when it goes through the eye gate as well. To preach and deliver the Word and then leave books for them to study has made a lasting impact.”

Ask someone at Osborn International what that impact looks like in raw numbers, and even an educated guess will be hard to come by. What they can tell you is that T.L., Daisy and their daughter, LaDonna, have collectively had their books translated into more languages than most evangelical organizations have.

“The real engine that generates our will to go—[my will] at my age to keep going—is our faith in the seed of the Word of God,” T.L. says. “That sounds so ho-hum in America, but that is the touchstone of everything about a successful gospel ministry. … And that’s the reason for the books.”

LaDonna Osborn, vice president and CEO of her father’s ministry, says that one of the unseen results of the sowing is the way it influences indigenous missionaries and preachers. She once traveled to the remote region of India known as Mizoram, where the preacher who extended the invitation got his start in the ministry after reading T.L.’s testimony 40 years before.

People in Russia, Poland and other astern European countries sometimes show the Osborns handwritten copies of their books that they use to minister to the lost. T.L. has never directly mentored other would-be world evangelists.

Yet throughout his years in ministerial service countless pastors, teachers, missionaries and even major world evangelists have been birthed from his far-reaching influence—men such as David Yonggi Cho, Reinhard Bonnke, R.W. Schambach and Sunday Adelaja.

“These are like the grandchildren [of his ministry],” LaDonna says.

The Final Frontier

When T.L. was born in 1923, commercial radio was in its fledgling stages, full-scale network television broadcasting in the U.S. was still 23 years off in the future, and the personal computer was more than 50 years away from mass production.

Though widely available today, these modes of communication have seldom been used in the Osborns’ ministry. Daisy briefly hosted a radio program, and the couple once published a magazine that has long since been replaced by a newsletter used to communicate with financial partners. T.L. makes token television appearances but has never produced his own program.

The Internet, on the other hand, is one technological advance the Osborns have fully embraced. Supporters can keep track of the ministry at , where they can also download a series of e-books. This has given the ministry access into countries such as China.

Osborn remains hopeful that he will one day be able to take advantage of opportunities to minister in these difficult places.

“I would like to go to the Muslim countries,” he says. “I would like to go to Arabia and talk to the governments. And this is what I would like to say to them: ‘Gentlemen, can you explain to me why you believe so much in Jesus?’

“And they would say, ‘No, we don’t.’ And I would say: ‘You do and I’ll prove it. You know if you would give us freedom to preach Jesus you would have no Muslims left. You believe Jesus is greater than Muhammad.

‘You use your laws, your parliament, your guns and your tanks to keep Jesus out. Is He that great?’ I’d like to go to China and say the same thing.”

At 83 years old, Osborn laughs at the idea of retirement. He admits that his body will eventually keep him from traveling extensively, but at that point he plans to tackle a significant writing project. Osborn has already compiled a thick stack of notes based on what he deems are the most important elements of a successful ministry.

Like the rest of his life’s work, the time-tested concepts he writes about may not be embraced by the American church. Osborn has never felt fully comfortable sharing his message in his own homeland due to a disconnect between modernized, Western culture and developing Third World nations.

He can only pray that his fellow citizens will—in some shape or form—follow the example he has inconspicuously set for nearly six decades.

“I want American Christians to share what they have with other people and with the world,” he says, “because the world is really poor, really hurting, really neglected, really in trouble—and we have the answer.”

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Chad Bonham is the contributing editor for New Man. He is also a freelance writer and independent television producer based in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.

Carrying the Torch

Today, T.L. Osborn’s daughter, LaDonna, continues her father’s evangelistic legacy.

LaDonna Osborn can’t remember for sure how old she was. She thinks she was 11 or 12. But what she does recall is praying a very specific prayer—a prayer in which she asked God to allow her to see her parents, T.L. and Daisy Osborn, the same way that God saw them.

“I can’t explain why a kid would have such a thought, but my entire life I have been so grateful for that perspective,” she says. “I’ve been thankful to be able to see them with spiritual eyes.”

Osborn, who was raised on the mission field from the age of 9 months, says she accepted Christ when she was 7 and first felt called into the ministry as a 9-year-old. She preached her first sermon in Ghana when she was only 10. But her work as a traveling world evangelist didn’t come until much later.

When Pat Lovern joined the staff at Osborn International more than 40 years ago, Osborn was 17 years old, married and expecting her first child. Lovern recalls watching her work in every facet of the ministry, mostly on the administrative side, for nearly two decades.

But Lovern says that back then Osborn was very timid and avoided public speaking.

“To see her today stand before crowds of thousands of people is a miracle,” she says. “God really did a miracle in her.”

Lovern wasn’t the only one shocked to see such a radical change in the Osborns’ daughter.

“[My father] was as surprised as anyone,” LaDonna says. “Neither of my parents put pressure on me. They never presumed what God’s full plan was for my life.”

Osborn worked in her parents’ ministry offices until she was 39. That’s when “a distinct encounter with the Lord” thrust her into a more public ministry. She now travels separately from her father for the most part and has made groundbreaking trips to such places as Mizoram, a remote region in India populated by the “untouchables”; Kenya, where she made history by ordaining 100 native women into the ministry; and China, where she has held underground meetings.

In addition to traveling, Osborn serves as the vice president and CEO for Osborn International. She founded International Gospel Center Fellowship of Churches and Ministries (IGCFCM), for which she oversees 61 ministries and more than 600 churches in 20 countries. She is also the founder and president of Women’s International Network (WIN).

At the same time that Osborn is a part of her father’s legacy, she is also creating one of her own. Her older son, Tommy O’Dell, and his wife, Elisabeth, are the founders of Frontier Evangelism and have spent the last 25 years ministering in more than 50 nations. Tommy’s sons, Tommy Lee and Jesse, act as full-time evangelists with their father.

Osborn’s younger son, Donald O’Dell, and his wife, Carina, have spent 15 years traveling internationally through World Harvest. Her older daughter, LaVona Thomas, is involved in local church ministry, and her younger daughter, Danessa Dolan, serves as her administrative assistant. Osborn’s husband, Cory Nickerson, serves as the finance manager for Osborn International.

With 14 of her 16 grandchildren still working on their educations, there’s no telling what impact the Osborn family will ultimately have on the global stage. But LaDonna is too busy doing God’s work to keep track of how many family members are carrying the torch.

“I don’t know that you plan a legacy,” she says. “You just look back and see, ‘Oh, there is one.’ I see it and then look forward.”

Kevin Turner is no ordinary missionary. He takes his message of compassion to the world’s war zones.
Missionary Kevin Turner seems unstoppable. He has distributed humanitarian aid in a war zone while bombs were still dropping. He has had a gun pointed to his head. He has even preached before a crowd of armed Islamic fundamentalists.
But as he sits behind his desk, the 38-year-old founder of Strategic World Impact (SWI) is unsuccessfully fighting back tears. Large drops roll from beneath his glasses and down his face before splashing onto some paper he’s holding in his trembling, clasped hands.

“I have been on the verge of snapping,” Turner says. “I say that very truthfully. I have seen some things that I wish I had never seen.”

He wipes his eyes with his sleeve and pauses for a moment. “I guess what breaks my heart is, I see or imagine what it must be like for God to look down on that, to see what’s happening to those children, to see what’s happening to innocence,” he says.

“I’ve just sat and wondered how He even lets it go on. And I can tell you that I’ve been at the end of myself with righteous indignation, anger, despair.

“Justice is an interesting thing,” he continues. “Justice in a world that is consumed by sin—well, we don’t often find it. But as Christians we’re supposed to give it and labor in the light of Genesis 18:25 that says the judge of all the earth will do right.”

If you listen to Turner, who founded SWI in 1998, you might get an image of Chuck Norris taking on the Viet Cong or Indiana Jones tracking down the ark of the covenant. But there’s nothing glamorous about anything SWI does.

It’s tiresome, challenging and very precarious work. Yet for the better part of 15 years, Turner has been going into the most dangerous regions to provide aid and comfort to victims of war, disaster and persecution.

“The economy that I see and what we try to stand for is about radical self-denial,” Turner says. “When all hell is breaking loose, it’s our job to bring a little piece of heaven back in.

“That’s what puts us in Bosnia. That’s what put us in Kosovo. That’s what puts us in Chechnya, Pakistan, Afghanistan or Iraq during the war.”

Running to the Battle

Going into its eighth year of operation, SWI () is firmly committed to the call to which it first responded. Unlike many other humanitarian organizations, Turner’s group rarely gets into long-term development projects such as building bridges or putting in roads—although SWI did build a school in Pakistan in 2005. Instead, Turner describes it as a “lightweight organization that’s capable of rapid, mobile response.”

SWI focuses primarily on disaster relief, war zones and Christian persecution. “It’s not so much that we work in those three areas,” Turner says. “It’s when we work in those three areas and how or where.

“Our whole focus is tip-of-the-spear stuff. I’ve been shelled. I’ve been shot at. I’ve run for my life through the deserts. I’ve had AK-47s on my temple while I was being pushed down a road.

“We want to be the tip of the spear in the midst of a disaster, in the midst of a war or persecution. So much so that we’re willing to lay our lives down for what we believe.”

For Turner, it hasn’t come to that yet, but he’s seen his fair share of death and destruction. SWI was the first relief organization to go into Indonesia after the 2004 tsunami.

Turner’s group was also in Afghanistan when U.S. planes were still dropping bombs on the mountains of Tora Bora. He has personally found himself in the middle of many dangerous conflicts in such hostile lands as Bosnia, Eritrea and Chechnya, a place he describes as “without a doubt one of the worst places” he’s ever been in the world.

One of Turner’s most surreal—if not most hazardous—moments came on a trip deep into northeastern Sudan when he infiltrated an Islamic training center where SWI provided humanitarian aid to Muslim extremists. While there, Turner asked if he could show the people a film. They agreed. And when he let them know it was the Jesus film, the Muslims stood firm on their approval.

Turner and his confidants used the wall of a nearby home that ironically once served as the residence for Osama bin Laden for their movie screen. “We hung the sheet right off the roof of his house, draped down the wall and showed the Jesus film right there,” he says. “The next day, we had eight Muslims who came to us secretly [saying they] wanted to pray to receive Christ.”

Turner was also able to speak to a large group of Muslims at the training camp. His translator was reluctant to use the name of Jesus, fearing it could trigger a violent response from the crowd.

Turner insisted that his translator not water down the message with the word “Lord,” despite his own misgivings.

“I stood there and preached the gospel in front of 300 fundamentalists with machine guns and swords,” Turner says. “I literally said to the Lord, ‘Well, I guess this is as good a place to die as any,’ before I started preaching, fully aware that not only could I, but I probably would die.”

Still alive to tell the amazing story, Turner believes the Holy Spirit prepared the hearts of many Muslims long before he arrived. This led to even more conversions, and eventually a church was built with stones taken from bin Laden’s compound.

“Our purpose wasn’t to go in there and upset them,” Turner says. “It was to tell them the truth. But since that time, we’ve had incredible access. We’ve been able to go back again and again, and continue to show the Jesus film and continue to reach out to people.”

At the Feet of Jesus

Turner hasn’t always taken such a radical approach to life. In January 1989, the Michigan native was newly married and working the night shift in a computer control room. At the time, he was addicted to drugs and alcohol. But on Super Bowl Sunday, everything changed.

To this day, Turner still can’t remember who was playing in the big game, much less who won it. A series of personal events that day culminated with Turner lying face down in his living room the next morning.

He looked up to see a pair of bloody feet in front of him. Turner raised his head some more and saw a man standing there, bloodied and beaten.

As the man turned and walked away, Turner saw his flesh-torn back with muscle fully exposed. He was carrying a wooden beam over his shoulder.

At that time, Turner had little to no experience in church and knew nothing of the story of Jesus and the crucifixion. There in his home, he says, Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice of love was revealed to him with a voice audibly spoken to confirm it.

Turner prayed a lengthy prayer of forgiveness and dumped out all the junk that had been stockpiled inside his heart.

“I came up with no evangelist there,” Turner says. “Nobody told me to check a box. I came up off that floor a new creature in Christ Jesus. I knew I was born again.”

Soon after, Turner went on a 40-day fast in an effort to get a clearer direction from God. After 27 days, Turner says, God called him to preach and simultaneously birthed the entire vision for “assisting the church in a strategic response for a strategic harvest.”

Turner, whose journey to SWI included stints with New Frontiers and The Voice of the Martyrs, migrated southward and is now based in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. His mission has always been crystal clear. Perhaps that’s why he is so disappointed in many other Christian ministries that perform similar work.

“We never do humanitarian relief without proclaiming the gospel,” Turner says. “We won’t do it. We’re solidly evangelical, committed to a proclamation of the gospel.

“I see so many Christian humanitarian organizations that won’t share the gospel. I’m incredulous. Why go?”

He jokingly ponders how a Muslim in Indonesia knows the difference between meals distributed by the United Nations or the Red Cross and free food handed out by a group of believers. “Maybe the Christians give out bigger portions,” he chuckles.

“By the fact that we’re showing love and concern, it gives us the platform to share why. I actually think it’s exploitative to tell Christians that they are helping support the gospel by helping do this humanitarian outreach, yet these organizations aren’t sharing the gospel.”

Sounding the Alarm

Turner’s open-ended honesty doesn’t end there. For years he has been very concerned about the mind-set the church has toward missions and evangelistic outreach. “There’s a doctrine that’s infected the church, especially in America,” Turner says. “I call it the doctrine of expendability.

“We’re no longer expendable for the kingdom of God. You do something. You go out and you achieve some notoriety or success and then you’re too important to the kingdom of God to actually die for it. I reject that lie wholeheartedly.

“The Christianity that we promote doesn’t demand loss,” he explains. “It doesn’t demand sacrifice. It’s a bloodless cross. It’s not really about capacity for pain, capacity for suffering.”

Turner, who was discipled by the late revivalist Leonard Ravenhill, sees SWI as a parachurch organization that functions for two primary purposes: education and facilitation. “The church is God’s chosen instrument,” Turner says. “As messed up as she is at some times, as foul as she is, as broken and all of that other stuff, the church is Jesus’ bride. The church is His vessel for the world.

“The only reason we exist is because the church does not do what it should do, or isn’t willing to take the risks necessary. We exist for the church. We come alongside of her, assist her to go out and fulfill the Great Commission when all hell is breaking loose.”

When Turner isn’t overseas or preparing for his next international venture, he’s usually traveling throughout the United States in an effort to educate the Christian community about what SWI does and how the church can get more involved. He has also testified before Congress and worked with various government agencies to inform the public of the atrocities taking place across the globe.

SWI organizes Disaster Assistance Response Teams, or DARTs, made up of volunteers who go as teams into war-torn areas and conduct disaster assessments while searching for ways to get the gospel to the people in a “culturally appropriate way.” They go through basic military training to learn about hazards they could face, such as improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and terrorism, and are trained in disaster medicine and the codes of proper cultural conduct.

Ultimately, Turner puts his trust in God based on Isaiah 9:6, which states that “the government will be upon His shoulder” (NKJV). In the meantime, Turner continues to implore the church to do what it has always been called to do.

“I think as Christians, we should walk with the love of justice and a desire to see it fulfilled in people’s lives,” Turner says. “God is just and because God is just, we need to emulate the character of God.”

Turner lives out that precept in more ways than one. His family is intimately involved with SWI, and many times they have traveled alongside him into some dangerous regions. Emily, 15, is the oldest of Turner’s three children. She has traveled to Eritrea and Sudan with her father.

Other times, Turner has been on a satellite phone telling his wife goodbye, knowing that it might be the last time they speak. At those times, Turner has been at the end of himself.

That’s what happens to those who have been to the ends of the earth, exposed to the most unspeakable of atrocities ever committed against mankind. But even in moments of significant doubt, he has been reminded of the truth he encountered 17 years ago when he received Christ.

“If you’re wondering about the benevolence and the love of God, you only need to look to the cross,” Turner says. “What happened is, at that moment in time, it was settled forever as a demonstration of God’s love for us. For me, that question has been answered for eternity.”

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Chad Bonham is a journalist based in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. He is a contributing editor for New Man magazine and executive producer of The ProFILES, a sports TV show.

He has the unenviable task of following in the tracks of a NASCAR legend-chasing records that may never be broken. But make no mistake, Kyle Petty is his own man … fueled by a desire to leave his mark on the racing world and to carry on the work of the son he lost five years ago.

For a moment, the ground is still. The toxic smell of burnt rubber and 110-octane leaded gasoline has yet to be released into the air. On this warm August day in Michigan, 43 drivers climb into race cars riddled with corporate logos, eagerly anticipating the famous call to start their engines.

The skies are clear, so comparing the pre-race atmosphere to the cliché “calm before the storm” doesn’t exactly work out. In fact, once the speedway goes “hot,” it will feel a lot more like an earthquake than any meteorological phenomenon.

As crews make final preparations in pit road and the sold-out crowd of over 137,000 waits in anticipation, Tim Griffin takes a deliberate walk down the starting grid. As one of chaplains for Motor Racing Outreach (MRO), he has the unique privilege of praying with each driver individually.

Griffin doesn’t ask God for any particular result. Tony Stewart, for instance, gets the same prayer as his championship rival Jimmie Johnson. Instead, it’s a simple petition for safety and protection.

When Griffin hits the 35th position, he finds an especially friendly face in Kyle Petty. A long-time supporter of MRO, Petty strikes up a conversation with Griffin about the ministry.

It’s not really surprising that a NASCAR driver is actually in touch with his spiritual side. After all, NASCAR is the only major professional sports body left that bucks political correctness in exchange for open displays of faith. Part of every race day’s opening ceremonies includes a public invocation. But there’s something that stands out about Petty that goes way beyond the trademark ponytail and matching goatee that he sports or the fact that he runs marathons and spends as much time on a motorcycle as he does in a race car.

“As somebody standing up front speaking to people, you’ll make eye contact with people in your audience,” Griffin explains. “Kyle is one of those individuals who will reflect that ‘racer’s face,’ that racer’s concentration, in chapel.

“When you’re speaking, he’s riveted. He’s like, ‘Give me what I came for, what I need to hear from God today.’ That’s not always true for everybody that sits in chapel service. They drift. They’re thinking about the race. But Kyle’s one of those guys that tends to sit right in the center and maybe three or four or five rows from the front, and he’s right there. He’s locked in to what you have to say and what you’re trying to communicate.”

Petty has been serious about his faith in Jesus Christ for as long as he can remember. It only seems fitting that he became an icon in a sport that likewise embraces Christian values.

“[Faith] has an important place in this sport,” Petty tells New Man. “Even though the demographics continue to change, this is still a grassroots, blue-collar sport. America is still basically a blue-collar nation and a grassroots working man’s nation. And when you go there and you talk to those people, what’s the center of their life? The center of their life is Wednesday night prayer meeting and Sunday morning church service and Sunday School. Then they’ll go watch a race or watch football. But they’ve got to go do that first.”

NASCAR’S ‘FIRST FAMILY’

By early October, the warm summer air has been replaced by cool breezes and milder temperatures. It’s Friday in Kansas City, Kan., and while the Banquet 400 doesn’t take place for two more days, the Kansas Motor Speedway is already buzzing with activity.

Kyle’s father, NASCAR legend Richard Petty, is standing outside his enormous motor coach having an intense conversation with a member of the Petty Racing team. His travel vehicle is one of dozens parked side by side in a special section of the speedway’s infield reserved for Nextel Cup participants.

It’s hard not to be a little intimidated by a man who’s often referred to as “The King” rather than his given name. He dons his trademark black cowboy hat and pitch-dark sunglasses. The mid-morning chill has forced him to break out a full-length, black coat that blends seamlessly into his black cowboy boots.

For Kyle Petty, it certainly doesn’t hurt to have the King around for moral support and guidance. Richard travels to nearly every race to promote the Richard Petty Driving Experience, a traveling school that gives average Joes the chance to get behind the wheel of a real-life race car. He also hangs around to keep tabs on Kyle and the Petty Racing teams.

“It’s good [to have him around],” Kyle says. “Experience counts for a lot. Exuberance and youth count for a lot, too, but experience counts for a lot. And it’s hard sometimes to know where you’re going unless you know where you’ve been.”

The Petty legacy didn’t start with Richard, but with his father, Lee Petty. In 1949, Lee set NASCAR’s proverbial wheels into motion and became one of the true pioneers of auto racing by winning 54 races and three championships in just 15 years of competition. Lee Petty also took home the inaugural Daytona 500 title in 1959 and was named one of NASCAR’s 50 Greatest Drivers. He passed away in April of 2000 at the age of 86.

If Lee Petty got the wheels to turn, then Richard Petty, 68, set the tires ablaze. The King’s storied career lasted 33 years (1959-1992) and included a record 200 victories and seven NASCAR championships (matched only by the late Dale Earnhardt). In 1971, he became the first driver to win $1 million, and in the year of his retirement, he received the Medal of Freedom-the highest honor paid to a U.S. civilian.

Kyle Petty was born in June of 1960, right in the middle of Richard’s busy racing schedule. He’s been caught up in the sport ever since. Kyle has spent most of his 45 years either working on or driving in a race car.

Part of the Petty lifestyle includes team ownership. Through the end of the 2005 race season, Petty Enterprises was running two teams: the No. 45 car driven by Kyle and the No. 43 car driven by Jeff Green (they will continue to run two cars in 2006 with Kyle in No. 45 and Bobby Labonte in No. 43). Not only does Kyle drive for his team, he also drives the entire operation.

And NASCAR is a big business. How big? For starters, it is now the second most popular professional spectator sport in terms of television ratings inside the United States, ranking behind only the National Football League. It also holds 17 of the top 20 attended sporting events in the United States and has 75 million fans who purchase over $2 billion in annual licensed product sales. These fans are considered the most brand-loyal in all of sports, and as a result, Fortune 500 companies sponsor NASCAR more than any other sport.

Those sponsorships don’t come cheap. An associate sponsorship on a race car (a company logo on the lower rear quarter panel) costs anywhere from $50,000 to $500,000. Big business, indeed. Big pressures, too.

In fact, Kyle Petty is one of the few driver/managers in the sport today. Busch Series driver Jason Keller used to relate to Petty’s crazy life. That is, until he couldn’t handle it anymore.

“I don’t see how he does it,” Keller says. “I owned my own team in the mid-90s when I first came into the sport. When my son was born, I realized that I couldn’t do it all. I couldn’t drive, own a car and be a dad, so I chose to sell my family-owned team and go a different route. I commend him. I don’t see how he has enough time in a day.”

While Kyle Petty is years away from his father’s accomplishments on the track, the younger Petty can take solace in the fact that most everyone else is in the same position-chasing records that may never be broken.

That’s not to say that Kyle Petty hasn’t left his own set of fresh tracks on the racing world. Since 1979, he has forged a respectable career that includes eight Nextel Cup (formerly Winston Cup) victories, 51 top-five finishes and 170 top-10 finishes.

Petty hasn’t won a race since taking the checkered flag at Dover in 1995, but that hasn’t stopped his competitive juices from flowing. In 2005, he managed two top-10 finishes, including an eighth-place run at the Food City 500 in Bristol, Tenn.

Some wonder if the Petty name has been a blessing or a curse. The expectations have certainly been high, but according to Tim Griffin, Kyle Petty has been fearless in his pursuit of excellence both on and off the track: “He’s taken that sense of responsibility of being the son of the most famous driver in NASCAR and has obviously not let that intimidate him. Kyle is his own man. He doesn’t try to be his dad, which is hard to do, no doubt. He’s been his own man. He’s been his own person. He’s made his own decisions and not for his own benefit but for the family name and how that would contribute to other people.”

ADAM’S WAY

By 2000, the Pettys had become NASCAR’s first four-generation racing family thanks to the emergence of Adam Petty, Kyle’s oldest son. At the age of 20, he was learning the ropes in the Busch Series and was preparing for a move to NASCAR’s top level.

But before Adam’s career could truly take off, his life ended tragically when he crashed into the wall during a practice round at the New Hampshire International Speedway. The entire NASCAR community mourned. Adam had been hanging around the garages since he was a young boy, and according to Richard, many of the drivers had “sort of adopted him.”

During his life, Adam had shown interest in charity work, focusing his energies on children’s organizations. Even before Adam’s death, the family had talked about building a camp for children living with chronic illnesses. But after he died, it became their main focus, Petty says. Kyle and his wife, Patty, dove headlong into the work of establishing Victory Junction Gang Camp. Richard donated 72 acres of land in Randleman, N.C., and according to Kyle, “everything just started falling in place.”

Dale Jarrett donated $50,000 to get things moving. Bobby Labonte donated a car that was auctioned off for the camp. Tony Stewart and the Busch brothers got involved with their charity groups. Michael Waltrip raised money by running a marathon, and Kevin Harvick’s fan club collected over $50,000.

In 2002, the camp became the first official charity of NASCAR. Then, race team sponsors got involved-Bass Pro Shops, Tyvek, Georgia Pacific and Pizza Hut, just to name a few. And the Pettys needed all the support they could get. The camp cost roughly $28 million to complete and requires $3 million a year for operation and maintenance.

“[The camp is] free to all campers, so we constantly have to raise funds,” Petty says. “We can’t rest. You’ll never get to that point where you say, ‘Oh, we’ve got enough money.’ Because there’s constantly more kids coming. There’s more things going on.”

Petty is most amazed at the random support he gets from the thousands of NASCAR fans all across the country. “You have people come up to you and just give you checks,” Petty says as he reaches in his pocket. “Here’s a check for $250 from somebody from Kentucky, when I was testing there the other day. They’ll just come to the racetrack and give you a check or they’ll give you cash. That’s been a big part.”

True to its name, Victory Junction has the look and feel of a racetrack. Appropriately located at 4500 Adam’s Way, the camp includes a building that looks like Adam Petty’s car. Other amenities include The Goody’s Body Shop, which serves as the on-site hospital, and the Fuel Stop, a cafeteria sponsored by Hendricks Motor Sports that is topped by cars that once belonged to Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson. Bass Pro Shops sponsored the unique “Catch, Kiss and Release” fishing program, and the Chick-fil-A Charity Ride sponsored an elaborate swimming area that features a play area and water slide built in the shape of a 20-foot motorcycle.

Victory Junction operates weeklong camps during the summer and weekend retreats throughout the remainder of the year. This past summer, the camp opened its facility to 950 kids in just its second full season of operation.

In many ways, Petty’s passion for racing has been displaced by his passion for helping kids. His dedication to worthy causes has made him a fan favorite. Petty has the admiration of other drivers as well.

“The camp is probably as high on his list as racing is, or it might be higher,” Jeff Green says. “Anytime you can reach out and touch kids and touch other people in the world, people look up to that. I think Kyle races so he can do the camp and do charity things like that. All that stuff means a lot when you step out of racing and do things for other people.”

Petty deflects his own popularity and shines the spotlight back on his son. He also points to the generosity of the racing community.

“When something like [Adam’s death] happens, it doesn’t only happen to your family, it happens to the entire community,” he explains. “This is a community.”

Jason Keller raced against Adam Petty and considered him to be a friend. Keller agrees that the young driver’s untimely death has created a rallying point for drivers and sponsors.

“It was a huge loss,” Keller says. “I have kids myself. I don’t how in the world you can handle something like that. [The Pettys have] turned such a negative into a positive. You can’t help but get excited about helping those guys.”

THE DRIVING FORCE

Judging by his popularity with fans, you wouldn’t know that Kyle Petty hasn’t won a race in 10 years. Toward the end of the 2005 season, Petty Racing proved it hadn’t lost its competitive edge by announcing that Robbie Loomis-former crew chief for Jeff Gordon-would be joining the team as executive vice president.

In a sense, Loomis is going home. He worked with Kyle in 1988 and a year later, started an 11-year run with Petty Racing that included nine years as a crew chief. “I believe in the people there,” Loomis says. “I believe in Richard and now Kyle has taken over a lot of the running of the company. Kyle is one of the sharpest guys out there, and they do a lot of things for the right reasons. There’s going to be a lot of rewards in life for doing the right thing.”

Loomis, a devoted Christian, brings back with him six years of experience at the highly successful Hendrick Motor Sports. In 2001, he served as crew chief for Gordon’s most recent championship. Loomis believes that he can get Petty Racing back to Victory Lane.

“We’ll work toward building a championship by doing the right things along the way,” he says. “We’re going to try to bring in as much funding as we can to get funding like the top teams have. Once we do that, then we’ll listen to the drivers’ feedback and try to put the right people in the right places. Winning will take care of itself.”

After 267 laps and 400 miles at Kansas Motor Speedway, Kyle Petty crosses the finish line in 29th place. It’s not a great finish, but it’s a finish nonetheless. A week earlier, Petty barely finished after wrecking on the last lap. His determination to cross that line at all costs serves as a metaphor for the way he lives his life.

“Racing people are funny people,” Petty says. “You’ll go out here Sunday and race. And if you wreck, the first thought you have is, ‘How can I get this thing back to the garage area and fix it and get back out there.’ It’s just that mentality that you just don’t stop.

“You go until it’s over. You go until they throw the checkered flag. And in life, the checkered flag is the day that they put you in the grave. That’s it. You go until then.”

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Chad Bonham is contributing editor to New Man. His name returns an astounding 1,030 hits on , a mere 1,248,970 behind Kyle Petty. For more information on Kyle Petty’s racing career, visit . To learn more about his summer camp for kids, visit .

Sticker Shock

Have you wondered how much it costs to get a corporate logo plastered across the hood of a race car? What about all those little stickers that cover every inch available, short of the front and rear windows? And why do these cars need so many sponsors anyway? We set out to find the answers to these burning questions and discovered some mind-boggling statistics:

Primary Sponsorship
Logo on hood and rear quarter panels, uniforms and equipment.
Cost: $12 million to $20 million

Major Associate Sponsorship
Logo on rear deck lid or rear quarter panels, plus prominent logo on uniform.
Cost: $2 million to $4 million

Associate Sponsorship
Logo on B or C post or lower rear quarter panels.
Cost: $50,000 to $500,000

In-House Engine Program
Cost: $3.5 million

Team Salaries
Cost: $2.5 million to $3.5 million

Driver Salaries
Cost: Rookies get a base salary of $400,000, but top drivers can earn millions, with performance-based incentives.

Travel
Cost: $1 million

Tires
Cost: $1 million

Cars
Cost: $1 million to $3 million. Tearing up the track at 190 mph … priceless.

The King and I

NASCAR is not a monarchy. It’s a business. But when Richard Petty takes a stroll through the Nextel Cup garage, you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference. With 200 career racing wins and seven championships, Petty remains the sport’s most iconic figure. New Man had the chance to sit down with “The King” to talk a little shop.

NM: How do you feel when people refer to you as “The King of NASCAR?”
RP: I don’t pay any attention to it. My name’s Richard. I’ve done my thing. But it’s better to be known as that than some of the stuff people would really like to call you. They’re always calling somebody something.
NM: What’s the biggest change you’ve seen take place in auto racing?
RP: The biggest change in the whole world has been technology. The technology has driven us, and we’ve driven technology. You used to have three or four guys that worked on the whole car: built the motors, took it to the racetrack, pitted and all that. Now you’ve got specialists for everything. All businesses do the same thing. We’re no different.
NM: What motivates you to stay so closely tied to NASCAR?
RP: Circumstances dictate a lot of what we do. We’re racing, and we have an opportunity to do the (Richard Petty) Driving Experience. It fits right into our world. We’re working now on the national sprint car league. That just fits right with this. We don’t have to go into something that’s completely different. Our little world is racing.
NM: What kind of legacy do you hope to leave behind?
RP: I haven’t really ever gone there. We’re doing our thing in our time under our circumstances. Hopefully, you leave a good taste in everybody’s mouth and they remember the good. If something happened to us right now and we’re not here anymore, we would hope that you would forget about the racing part and go to the (Victory Junction Gang) camp, the things that we have left that will enrich other people’s lives later down the road where racing won’t.
NM: What drives your life?
RP: When you get up in the morning (you ask yourself), “Can I do a little better than I did yesterday? Can we make our business a little bit better? Can we help somebody today that we didn’t help yesterday?” It’s just life.

The Petty Legacy

No single racing family can match up to the huge numbers collectively posted by the Pettys. Take a look at what they have accomplished over 50 years on the track (through October 30, 2005):

LEE PETTY (1949 – 1964)
Races started: 427
Wins: 54
Career winnings: $210,570

RICHARD PETTY (1959 – 1992)
Races started: 1,185
Wins: 200
Championships: 7
Career winnings: $6,811,482

KYLE PETTY (1979 – present)
Races started: 800
Wins: 8
Career winnings: $22,573,388

This article originally appeared in New Man magazine in 2006.

Although she’s performed for world leaders, gospel vocalist NICOLE C. MULLEN knows how to keep it real. This daughter of Pentecostal preachers hasn’t forgotten her humble roots.
Nicole C. Mullen is tired. At least that’s what she’s saying. But despite the claim, she maintains a conversational pace that the most hyperactive human might find difficult to match.

Truth be told, Mullen really is worn down. She hasn’t had a significant vacation in almost three years. But for her, the word “tired” means she has only five times the energy of the average person rather than the usual tenfold.

Mullen is a striking woman who keeps herself in good shape. She denies taking part in any formal weight lifting program, attributing her healthy physique to dancing and lifting her children. While we talk, she takes an occasional drink from a water bottle that contains a liquid she refers to as “lemonade.”

It is later revealed that the concoction includes paprika, cayenne pepper and other mystery substances that are being used in a 10-day cleansing fast. As she swishes the juice around, the Gospel Music Association’s reigning Female Vocalist of the Year offers up one of the day’s countless gold nuggets of wisdom.

“I’m learning that a lot of times God’s will is not always the easiest path,” Mullen says. “You will have to cry sometimes. You have to take a step back to learn to go four steps forward. I’m learning not to buck God’s will.”

Early Foundations

Mullen’s lifelong learning process began in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she was born and raised. Going to church was as much a part of life as eating and sleeping. Both her grandfathers pastored Pentecostal churches, and her father, Napoleon Coleman Jr., was (and still is) a deacon at New Life Temple. She sang for the first time in church when she was 2 years old, and as a teenager, she sang with her older sisters, Marie and Teresa, in the youth choir their dad led.

Mullen was surrounded by an atmosphere of love and compassion for other children who didn’t have a healthy home environment. Some of her aunts and uncles were adopted, and her own parents adopted both a boy, Steven, and a girl, Sandra. Mullen later adopted a child of her own, 8-year-old Max, the middle of three kids.

Not only did her extended family participate in adoption, they routinely took people in as guests and worked with foster children. Their kindness often extended to those in their church as well.

“We always had people staying in our house,” Mullen says. “We’d go out on Friday nights after church to Burger King or whatever. We’d take some single moms with their kids. My dad would feed them too. It’s been a tangible legacy that’s been passed on from both sides of the family.”

Thanks to her parents’ example and strategic lifestyle management, Mullen also developed a deep love and respect for various cultures, races and backgrounds. She and her two older sisters attended a predominately white school, worshiped at a predominately black church and grew up in a racially integrated neighborhood.

“Our world was always like that,” Mullen says. “We learned people are valuable regardless of the shade of their skin. We learned that we didn’t have to ignore the shade of our skin. We talk about that often from the stage.

“You don’t have to be colorblind. You don’t have to act like you don’t see what you see. You’re supposed to see it. You don’t look at the rainbow and see gray and white. You see the rainbow and enjoy it.”

The topic of racial unity in the church and in the world is one that surfaces often in Mullen’s music. Her song “Color” is just one example of how she tries to put a positive spin on what can often be a divisive or simply ignored issue.

Race and color are very personal issues for Mullen. Her husband, David, is white, and they have two biracial children: daughter Jasmine, who is 11, and son Josiah, 2. Their adopted son, Max, is black.

Mullen’s life wasn’t always as picture-perfect as it is now. After graduating from New Life Academy, she headed to Rockwall, Texas, to study at Christ for the Nations. She joined a vocal group called Living Praise and began pursuing a music career.

Mullen landed a deal with Frontline Records and released the 1991 project Don’t Let Me Go. It was produced by Tim Miner and blended elements of dance, R&B and pop.

But the big smile on her album cover quickly became a front for the pain she was experiencing in her first marriage. Mary Jane Coleman, Mullen’s mother, says there was always a doubt in her mind that the union was going to work.

She even considered not attending the wedding in protest. After Mullen’s first record released, the abusive nature of her relationship with her spouse became known.

“We kept the door open by me going to the wedding when I was not as comfortable and confident about the situation,” Coleman says. “My advice to her was that divorce was not the unpardonable sin. It’s a bad thing-divorce is. It’s a tearing. But I’d rather have a daughter who’s alive and divorced than one that might be dead.”

Mullen continued pursuing her music career and traveled to Nashville, Tennessee, to promote her second album. There she met David Mullen, and the two struck up a professional relationship. Things were looking up for her ministry and career, but emotionally and spiritually, she was spent.

“It was probably one of the low points in my life,” Mullen says. “I knew at that point that if anything was on trial in my life it was my faith.

“It was like: ‘OK, what are you going to believe now? You grew up in church. You grew up saved, sanctified, filled with the Holy Ghost, the whole nine yards. So what are you going to do now? All the trippin’ you just saw happened in the church. What are you going to believe now?’”

On the Road to Success

Healing came slowly. In the meantime, Mullen relocated to Nashville and became more active in the Christian music scene. She toured as a background vocalist and choreographer for David’s solo tour and eventually landed supporting roles on the road with Amy Grant, the Newsboys and Michael W. Smith.

Mullen, who had experimented with songwriting when she was just 12 years old, continued to hone her talent with David. The two began writing together and eventually penned several songs for her second album. They also wrote some tunes for Carman’s Yo Kidz series.

By the time the songwriting team had tied the knot three years after first meeting, a workable scenario had fallen into place. But Mullen admits that being married to a co-writer can be a precarious arrangement.

“We learned early on that we do better if we write together but not in the same room,” Mullen says. “David is a very quick writer, and it takes me a little bit longer.
“I chew on it, and sometimes I’m trying to get to the point and it may not be exactly where I’m trying to go. But he’s so fast. He already has a perfect song written.”

The two often squabble over lyrics but usually one will eventually help the other finish a project. In fact, Mullen’s first major songwriting breakthrough was a collaboration with her husband and Michael Oakes. “On My Knees,” sung by Jaci Velasquez, went to the top of the charts and earned Mullen the first of many Dove Awards.

“I would not be half the writer I am without David,” Mullen says. “David has stretched me. He still does.

“I’ll write a song and I’ll understand it because I wrote it. But unless you’ve
conveyed it completely to the person reading it or listening to it, you’ve got to go back to the drawing board.”

There’s no doubt that to date, Mullen’s biggest songwriting success has come in the form of the inspirational classic “Redeemer.” As part of her 2000 debut with Word Records, the song helped relaunch her solo career and established her as one of the most sought-after writers in the business. Strangely, the song doesn’t reflect her greatest musical influences, yet somehow it has become synonymous with her career.

“I’ve been surprised and excited to see what God’s done,” she says. “A lot of people have praise reports about it. I know it’s not me. That’s not my doing. That’s the Lord’s doing. That’s the Holy Spirit’s doing. I’m not very smart, but I know enough to stay out of His way and not to take the credit for something that I didn’t do.”

But Mullen quickly learned that a successful radio hit can be just as difficult to deal with as a song that completely flops.

“It is a blessing on one hand,” she says. “But on the other hand it’s something that people will define you by without really knowing who you are.

“It’s like saying: ‘The only part of you that I like is your eyes. So when you come next time, only bring your eyes. I don’t want to see anything else of you. I just want to see your eyes.’

“But that’s not me. Because to me, ‘Redeemer,’ ‘Call on Jesus,’ ‘On My Knees’ are a part of a puzzle. They’re part of a journey.”

Mullen gets especially frustrated when she feels as if concert promoters, churches and event coordinators want her for just one or two hits songs instead of her entire presentation, which includes energetic music, dancing and a healthy dose of God’s Word.

“Don’t waste my time,” Mullen candidly says. “If you just want ‘Redeemer,’ hire the best singer in your church. I will send you my personal sound track.”

On the other hand, she says, “If you want what we really bring, great, let’s do it. Bring it on.”

While not wanting to be defined by only one song, Mullen sees the unique benefit of having a singular song that the masses gravitate toward.

“This is one of God’s little jokes,” Mullen says. “’Redeemer’ affords us the opportunity to talk about the issues that we as believers need to deal with, from racism to how to treat people socially. How do we take the same gospel of Jesus Christ and make it applicable to life? Because it is.”

Beyond Worship

Mullen doesn’t just preach about getting down and dirty with real life. She lives it out. One prime example is the Baby Girls Club. Mullen has been working with young girls from all backgrounds for years now, but about three years ago her daughter suggested something more consistent and structured.

The name came from an earlier Mullen song titled “Baby Girl,” but the inspiration took hold years earlier when she herself was a “baby girl.”

“No matter how many times your parents tell you that you’re beautiful, you don’t really believe them until somebody you look up to tells you,” Mullen says. “This lady in my church named Cecilia did it for me.

“She was a great singer and she was beautiful. She was just the bomb. All the girls in the church wanted to be her.

“And she used to take me to her house and help me with my hair and help me with my singing. She just encouraged me. And I thought if it was ever my turn to give back to some other girls, I want to do for them what she did for me.”

Through the Baby Girls Club, Mullen is doing exactly that. Once a week, several girls gather to hang out with her and some other women who spend time talking, praying and having fun with them. They teach the girls dance, drama, sewing, cooking and writing.

“Some of them have moms at home and some of them don’t,” Mullen says. “Some of my girls have got moms who do crack and sell it. Some of the stories break my heart. I’m their other mommy. I’m their auntie. I’m their big sister, friend, confidante, their teacher, tutor, just whatever; their parole officer.

“They’re my girls. They’re my babies. Some of them call me all the time.”
Mullen says that when the girls give praise reports, they are sometimes on the comical side. She recalls one girl who took her advice and dealt with a conflict at school by talking it out instead of fighting. Others have seen improvements in their grades. In fact, one of her former Baby Girls recently earned a master’s degree and another has returned to help Mullen with the ministry.

“This is reality,” Mullen says. “Those little bitty milestones are worth more than any plaque that I put on my wall.”

For all of Mullen’s growing pains, she has been blessed with a measure of success that few have experienced. Her achievements include more than 20 combined Grammy and Dove nominations and multiple radio hits. The platform these have afforded her allows her to speak out against international problems such as hunger (through Compassion International) and slavery (through International Needs Network in Ghana).

Whatever causes she chooses to align with, Mullen is ultimately driven by a desire to worship God, see souls saved and encourage the church to be real and resist the temptation to fake its way through life on Earth.

“I don’t want to play it safe,” Mullen says. “It’s easy to get caught up with Christian jargon. We know how to get each other excited.

“But I’m not interested in giving each other goose bumps. I don’t want to worship worship. I don’t to be a worship leader for people who want to worship worship.
“If you want to worship Jesus Christ, let’s get it on. If you want to make other people hungry for the Jesus we say we serve, let’s get it on. Let’s bring it on. If we’re just going to have a ‘bless me’ club, I’d rather stay at home.”

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Chad Bonham is a journalist based in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. He is a contributing editor for New Man magazine and executive producer of The ProFILES, a sports TV show.

A Song for Brianna

Nicole C. Mullen’s friendship with an 8-year-old blind girl taught the singer an amazing lesson about God’s love.

When it comes to personable, down-to-earth national recording artists, you’d be hard pressed to find someone who can stand toe-to-toe with Nicole C. Mullen. She routinely spends hours after a show meeting with fans and taking time to learn each and every person’s name. But even for this magnanimous Christian pop star, one particular encounter stands out.

In 2002 at Unity Festival in Michigan, Mullen met an 8-year-old blind girl named Brianna Nelson. Danelle, Brianna’s mother, remembers it as if it had just happened.

“She got down on her knees and just talked to Brianna,” Nelson recalls. “She signed her T-shirt, gave her a CD and hugged her. It was a one-on-one conversation. She was very good with Brianna.”

Mullen also took Brianna’s hands and let her feel her face so she could create an image in her mind of what her hero might look like. The moment was clearly special to the girl and her mother-and Mullen was impacted as well.

“I see a lot of faces and I hear a lot of names,” Mullen says. “Sometimes I remember the face but not the name. Sometimes it’s the other way around. This time, I remembered the face and the name because when Jasmine and I left, we spoke about her. I remember praying for her in the van on the way out of the parking lot.”

Mullen continued to pray for Brianna during the next few weeks but had no further contact with the family until she received a letter the following summer. A young lady from her staff brought it to her when she was preparing for a concert. The letter told of Brianna’s tragic drowning death at a camp for blind children.

“I read it, and I remember just putting my jacket over my head and bawling,” Mullen says. “It was just like a knife in the heart.”

Later that year, Mullen reunited with Nelson at another concert in Grand Rapids. The two cried together and shared their memories of Brianna. Mullen was so moved by the story that she decided to write a song about it. The result was “Bye Bye Brianna,” which landed on the latest project Everyday People.

“We have this hope in Christ that I wanted to remind us of,” Mullen says. “I wanted to remind us in a story of a girl that I had met. … The people may not have ever met Brianna, but they have people in their own lives they hope to see again. ”

Since then, the Mullen family has stayed in touch with the Nelsons. For the July 4th holiday, the Nelsons drove from Michigan to Nashville so they could see Mullen in concert and spend some time with the family. More than anything, Nelson is happy to see her daughter’s life memorialized in a way that can reach so many people.

“When she died, it was such a shock,” Nelson says. “I asked God why. She could have done much more. … And now I look at the way she’s touching people’s lives, and one of those ways is through Nicole with the song.”

Scott Stapp, former lead singer of the band Creed, was raised in a Pentecostal church but rebelled as a teenager. Today, he’s slowly coming home.
Before Scott Stapp became the lead singer for one of rock music’s biggest bands of the last decade, he got a crash course in rock ‘n’ roll politics from an unlikely source.

“The perfect preparation for fame was to be involved in the church that I grew up in. It was full of gossip and backstabbing and jealousy and people who tore other people down,” Stapp says. “I don’t want to say that it was the whole church, but it just seemed like that’s what I was being exposed to.”

If Stapp’s name doesn’t ring a bell, his former band’s moniker–Creed–probably will. During the late ’90s, Creed helped resurrect the rock-music scene and sold 30 million copies of its three albums in the process. Despite an onslaught of attacks by music critics, Creed delivered songs–such as radio hits “With Arms Wide Open” and “Higher”–that elevated the group to stardom.

But long before Stapp’s brooding, posturing onstage style captured the hearts of the masses, a series of childhood events had laid the foundation for what would come in the singer’s adult life.

When he was 5 years old, Stapp’s biological father walked out on the family. For the next six years, his mother, Lynda, worked two jobs yet still required welfare assistance to take care of her son and two daughters, Amanda and Amie.

Another defining moment occurred when Scott’s mother remarried, to Steven Stapp, whom she had met at church. Steven was a retired Air Force man and a practicing dentist in Winter Park, Florida, near Orlando. In his younger days he had played baseball and basketball for the University of Alabama and was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Scott, a three-sport athlete at the time his mother married Steven, immediately bonded with his stepfather.

“I just fell in love with this guy,” he says. “He came in and really shaped me spiritually.

“I learned how to write lyrics by being told to write Psalms and Proverbs. I had to write a commentary on each chapter and what they meant to me. And then my father checked them for spelling and grammar, and if there was anything wrong I had to rewrite it.”

Scott’s church experience during his youth also shaped his future in a way that he wouldn’t understand for years to come. His family attended a Pentecostal church where “a lot of people spoke in tongues and did all of these other things,” he says.

“I would always pray as a kid, ‘God let me do that.’ I was kind of asking God to show me a sign,” he explains. “I remember being a 9-year-old kid and lying in bed praying: ‘God, please turn my light off. And if you turn my light off, I’ll be a preacher.’ I was putting God to a test.”

Those youthful feelings of being drawn to God but not understanding how he fit in with His plan became even more self-evident to Stapp, now 31, as he pursued his music. As Creed gained popularity, the mainstream press took bits and pieces of Stapp’s past and proceeded to paint his parents as religious fanatics. The rock star played along at times but now realizes that he was going through the same thing many other church-raised young people have experienced.

“I was running from God,” Stapp says. “I really felt like I was called into the ministry, and I didn’t know what it was and I ran from it.

“I think it’s pretty normal–and maybe I’m wrong, but I’ll say it anyway–for young teenagers to rebel. And I rebelled. I ran as far away as I could from the church and ran right into a rock band, which was about the most evil thing that I could call my dad and tell him I was doing. … I think that was the ultimate form of rebellion for me.”

Steven admits he was greatly concerned by the prospect of his son chasing after rock ‘n’ roll glory. But he also knew there wasn’t much he could do to change his mind. He simply advised Scott to “always honor God, yourself and your family.” Those encouraging words combined with lots of love and prayer were what helped the rock star’s parents keep the peace.

The elder Stapp also was unfazed by the mainstream press and its negative portrayal of his and his wife’s parenting skills. Steven found it amusing that most reporters claimed he was “a minister” when actually he had been a deacon and Sunday school teacher at Calvary Assembly of God in Winter Park. He now attends nondenominational Church in the Son in Orlando.

“The story wouldn’t have been good enough if I was a dentist,” he jokes.
“It was juicier when I was a Pentecostal minister.”

Weathered by Success

Perhaps the most amazing part of Scott Stapp’s story is how his band rose to stardom amid an era of boy bands and teenage-girl pop stars. Creed burst onto the scene with a sound that included grunge and metal references but offered a decidedly different lyrical twist. Stapp’s writing contained the volatile combination of messianic truth and spiritual uncertainty, mostly because he understood much of the Bible but not as much about his own place in the kingdom of God.

With other rock bands such as Marilyn Manson and Rage Against the Machine preaching anti-God and anti-establishment messages, Creed’s questioning yet positive songs separated them from the pack. The band’s first hit, “My Own Prison,” described “a vision of a cross” and “the pain that was given on that sad day of loss.” Stapp was unknowingly reaching out to a massive audience that was likewise searching for spiritual truth.

“I definitely think that it was a very instrumental part in why we connected and why we had so much success,” Stapp says. “Because, to be honest with you, I don’t think the songs are all that amazing–especially when I listen back to the first two records.”

Scott’s father agrees that Creed’s success was not based on the music alone. Before the band took off, Lynda Stapp believed in her heart that Scott would become an evangelist and would reach the masses. It wasn’t long before she and her husband realized how her expectation actually would come to fruition.

“We think that [Creed] was brought to that level because God wanted it to happen,” Steven says. “They’ve ministered to a lot of people and got a lot of people back in church and a lot of people saved through their music.”

According to Steven, he still receives phone calls and letters from Creed fans who want the band to know how much Scott’s music has influenced their lives. But for Scott, the idea of reaching out to the lost and hurting wasn’t something he had initially bargained for.

Beginning early in the band’s career, music journalists labeled Creed a Christian band. Christian music fans started to take notice as well and openly longed for the group to make a public statement of faith. The prospect made Stapp and his band mates uncomfortable and somewhat perturbed.

“For a time, early on in Creed’s career, I was kind of mad about that,” Stapp says. “We weren’t a Christian band. I was a struggling Christian.

“I was never asked once, when I was in Creed, if I was a Christian. I was only asked if the band was.

“They weren’t, and they actually resented me for that label. They didn’t have those beliefs, and they wanted to be in a prototypical rock band. Because of those comments and opinions that people tagged us with, it was affecting their fun.”

By the time Creed released its third album, Weathered (2001), the luster of fame and fortune was wearing off. Stapp and his wife of 16 months, a 19-year-old model, had divorced. He was raising their son, Jagger, by himself.

Stapp knew he wasn’t living right and was dealing with feelings of guilt and condemnation. He tried even harder to separate himself from his Christian faith.

“I didn’t feel like I was worthy of the tag,” Stapp says. “When you’re a Christian and you’re in the public eye, people who don’t believe are looking at you.

“They would’ve seen a double side with me. They would’ve seen a guy who’s this way in faith, and then they would’ve seen that I was just like them.

“I was drinking. And after my divorce, I kind of went a little haywire with women. Nothing crazy, but stuff I knew I shouldn’t have been doing.

“That was no example. My walk wasn’t right. I know that’s an excuse, but when you’re looked at and analyzed, there’s a bigger responsibility to some degree that you have. I didn’t want to accept it.”

Things only got worse for Stapp. In February 2001, he got into a fight with the operator of a tattoo parlor, and two months later he was incited into a barroom brawl by a man who Stapp claims had been paid $10,000 by a national music magazine to push his buttons. A car accident, a bad case of pneumonia and harmful vocal-cord nodules took his life to a new low.

In hindsight, Stapp says he should have taken more time off before hitting the road again, but external pressure from management along with internal pressure to please everyone drove him to take Prednisone, a steroidlike drug, to help reduce his inflamed vocal cords.

On December 29, 2002, at a concert in Chicago, Stapp was incapacitated by the drug’s powerful side effects and the show was cut short. Some concertgoers sued both the band and the promoter and Creed later apologized for the incident on its Web site. The class-action suit eventually was dismissed.

Steven knew his son was hurting physically and emotionally, so he flew to Philadelphia for the band’s final tour date on New Year’s Eve. The two remained close throughout much of Creed’s existence despite media reports that they had a chilly relationship.

“I went up to the concert and when I saw him, I just hugged him and told him that I loved him and that he was going to do a good job,” Steven says. “Sure enough, he put on one of his best concerts ever.”

By the end of the Weathered tour, Scott had grown weary of the jealousy and gossip surrounding the band. Ultimately, it was his waning desire to travel that caused Creed to take an extended break and eventually call it quits in June 2004.

Discovering Life Again

While Stapp was still searching for direction, he received a call from executive producers of The Passion of the Christ: Songs, who wanted him to contribute a song. They flew him to Los Angeles for a preview screening of the movie.

The film was heart-wrenching for him and helped him finish a song he had already started, titled “Relearn Love.” More important, Stapp found himself coming full circle in his spiritual journey.

“The Passion of the Christ was the final nail in the coffin of my old life,” Stapp says. “God had already started working in my life. I know that story [of Jesus] like the back of my hand, from being brought up in church.

“I’ve never told anybody this before, but I preached in my youth group when I was a kid. I thought that was my calling in life for a while there. So I knew that story. I was in such a bad place that I finally turned to God and things started moving from my head to my heart.”

Since the disbanding of Creed, Stapp has enjoyed his time away from the spotlight. He takes great pleasure in being a regular dad. But his music career is far from over. He is working on his debut solo album, releasing on Wind-up Records. Ironically, he is label mates with Alter Bridge, a band formed by the other members of Creed.

On the surface it looks like business as usual, but Stapp says there’s no guarantee how long this newfound career will actually last.

“God may take me in a completely different direction,” he says. “I don’t know. Right now I’m just going day to day and trying to do what’s right and trying to see what God wants me to do with my life. It seems like old doors are closing for good and all these new doors are opening.”

In many ways, Stapp has returned to his former existence. He now yearns for the consistent church life that he once rebelled against. In the meantime, he relies on two former youth pastors, Rick Berlin of Shreveport, Louisiana, and Fred Franks of San Francisco, for spiritual guidance and support.

“I’m getting drawn back into the church,” Stapp says. “It’s so funny–when you start making changes in your life, all of the sudden, you start bumping into all of these Christians. … It seems like God is putting new people in my life and building this good foundation for whatever He’s got in store.”

Stapp also relies heavily on the support of his family, and according to his dad, can also thank fatherhood for helping him see the light.

“He’s still struggling, but he’s getting a little older and a little more mature,” Steven says. “He’s a daddy and he realizes that whatever he does, his son thinks that’s the way to do it. He understands more about how important it is to be a good example for his son.”

And as he continues to share his story with the public, Stapp is doing his best to fight off the occasional bout of spiritual stage fright. It’s something he’s dealt with his entire life, and now the stakes have been raised even higher.

“There’s going to be a lot of expectations of me–and I don’t know that I’m going to do this, but I’m not perfect–so, yes, I’m going to sin,” Stapp says. “I’m not using that as an excuse and I’m not going to do that on purpose. But if I do, which I’m sure I will, how’s the Christian community going to treat me? Are they going to turn into the name-callers? I’m afraid of that stuff.

“But I’ve got to remember [that] God has not given me a spirit of fear but of power, love and a sound mind. So I’ve just got to do what I believe is right whether people understand it or not.”

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Chad Bonham is a freelance journalist based in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. He is the contributing editor for New Man magazine and executive producer of a sports TV show called The ProFILES.

When baseball was on life support, it took an epic home run race to resurrect the enthusiasm of its fans. With some of the game’s biggest hitters implicated in the continuing steroids saga, how should the league, its players and the rest of us respond?

What would you do? Sure, it’s a rhetorical question, but it still needs to be asked.
What would you do if, say, on your job, you could take a magic pill that gave you an edge over your co-workers? What if you could use a special scalp treatment every morning that seeped into your brain, and increased your intelligence and aptitude? It’s safe to assume that the average working man would quickly head to their neighborhood pharmacy to order a lifetime supply.

But wait a minute … what if it was against the law to use those substances and the penalty included a pocket-emptying fine and potentially the loss of your job? And, what if the substances were linked to serious health risks such as heart and liver damage, high cholesterol, strokes, aggressive behavior and sexual dysfunction? Would you do it then?

“No” would be the immediate and proper response. But what if it meant a pay increase to the tune of thousands per year? Would that make a difference?

Perhaps the following story will hit closer to home: A new employee–much younger, more energetic and better educated–has been climbing the ladder at an unnatural pace. You secretly wonder if maybe he’s taking performance enhancers because he can’t be that good. And the bottom line is, it doesn’t matter how he does it. If you don’t do something fast, your career will evaporate, leaving you choking on his dust, standing there vulnerable, expendable and … unemployed.

Would the fear of losing your job cause you to risk it all?

It sounds far-fetched, but professional baseball players face scenarios like this every day. The only difference is, for them, the stakes are higher … astronomically higher. Instead of thousands of dollars of pay increases, we’re talking millions.

You see, for the professional baseball player, taking anabolic steroids, human growth hormones (HGH), precursors, amphetamines or any other performance-enhancing drug available to them can make a huge difference in performance. Steroids might just provide the edge a player needs to set up shop in the big leagues, where he can earn a league minimum of $315,000 a year (the average annual salary is actually close to $2.5 million). Without the drugs, a player could wind up trolling minor league purgatory and scraping by on roughly $1,000 a month over a five- to six-month season. Or, worse yet, they could find themselves out of baseball altogether.

“If it’s something that they believe they will benefit from to help their career, it will be a temptation because that’s the way athletes are wired,” former Major Leaguer Bryan Hickerson says. “They’re looking for any possible way to be better on the field.”

Ironically, some observers claim that performance enhancers may have “saved” America’s pastime as much as they have tarnished its image.

During 1994’s strike-shortened season, the unthinkable happened–the cancellation of the playoffs and the World Series. Baseball was in serious trouble. Attendance took a nose dive, and the game’s cash flow was drying up. Even worse, die-hard fans were getting fed up with millionaires squabbling with billionaires over money. But that was nothing a spectacle of historic proportions couldn’t fix.

Enter Mark McGwire and his home run race with slugger Sammy Sosa. In 1998, McGwire was in his first full season with St. Louis. He flirted with 60 home runs before, and he was noticeably bulkier than when he first entered the league 12 years earlier. But why ask questions when everyone was starting to love baseball again? Gary Smith, a 20-year staff writer at Sports Illustrated (SI), took Major League Baseball (MLB) to task over the whole steroids controversy in a March 28, 2005, cover story. Admittedly, he found himself caught up in “the home run race that saved baseball.”

“Everybody was feeling so good about Sosa and McGwire in ’98 that nobody wanted to stop and bum out too much over the Andro that was in McGwire’s locker,” Smith told New Man. “It was being discussed. There were columns written about it. It was like a buzz kill that no one wanted to dwell on too much that year. He got taken to task a bit for it, but he could always fall back into the safe harbor of the fact that Andro wasn’t on the banned list.”

At the time, Androstendedione (which “acts like a steroid once it is metabolized by the body, and can pose similar kinds of health risks as steroids,” according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration) was perfectly legal, and McGwire had no problem displaying his stash prominently in his locker for the media and the entire world to see.

McGwire did stop using Andro the next season but not before crushing Roger Maris’ 1961 record of 61 home runs with 70. Sosa trailed not far behind with 66. The two were named SI’s “Sportsmen of the Year” in 1998. Smith authored that cover story, retelling every detail of the slugfest.

In 2002, retired player Ken Caminiti told Sports Illustrated that he was taking steroids during his 1996 National League MVP season. His bombshell accusations claimed that at least 50 percent of all players were using the stuff. Tragically, Caminiti died October 10, 2004, of a heart attack at the age of 41.

Things really heated up after the 2003 season when slugger Barry Bonds told a U.S. grand jury that he unknowingly used undetectable steroids known as “the cream” and “the clear,” which he received from personal trainer Greg Anderson during the 2003 season. According to Bonds, the trainer told him the substances were the nutritional supplement flaxseed oil and a pain-relieving balm for the player’s arthritis.

The legitimacy of the historic 2001 season in which Bonds blasted a record-breaking 73 bombs was suddenly called into question. He finished the 2004 season with 703 career homers with just Babe Ruth (714) and Hank Aaron (755) standing between him and baseball immortality.

As records continue to fall, it’s hard to understand why it has taken Major League Baseball so long to catch on. Surely they’ve seen the same signs as the rest of us. Surely Bud Selig, the commissioner of baseball, noticed the sharp increase in home runs and the mind-blowing distances they traveled.

And what about the physical evidence? Exploding arms, necks and thighs don’t develop that quickly or that naturally. And the severe changes in the athletes’ facial structures? Anabolic steroids don’t just build muscle tissue, you know, they build skeletal tissue as well.

Smith gets it. He knows that the game has undoubtedly reaped the benefits of the long ball. “Baseball doesn’t bother reconciling too much,” he says. “They just keep moving on and hoping that everybody will forget.”

Major League Baseball contends that as an organization, it has always been concerned about the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

“The commissioner [Bud Selig] has been clear that he thinks this is an issue on which we need to continue to evolve and improve,” Executive Vice President of Labor Relations & Human Resources Rob Manfred says. “Having said that, I think if you take into account where we were in 2002 and the fact that this is a topic over which we must bargain with the union; we have made tremendous progress on this issue.”

Certainly positive changes in baseball’s drug policy have been made of late. On April 30, 2005, Bud Selig issued a statement to the MLB Players Association asking for a “three strikes and you’re out policy,” by far the strongest language from the MLB office to date.

But Smith and other critics point to the game’s anemic attempts at stopping the problem in its tracks years earlier. While the problem dates back at least two decades, baseball didn’t fully address the issue by banning anabolic steroids and testing for them until just three years ago. HGH, which works just like a steroid, is still untested.

“[Baseball has] been forced at every step,” Smith says. “They’ve not taken a voluntary step or a strong step. They’ve been forced to this point. It’s been a shabby response.”

And while fans were soaking up the home run showers, steroids were allegedly becoming more of a problem in the clubhouse. That is, if you believe Caminiti, Jose Canseco and the handful of other players who have been bold enough (or maybe just plain crazy enough) to air out the locker room’s dirty laundry.

Canseco, known for his boorish behavior, released his tell-all book, Juiced, earlier this year. He confessed his own involvement with steroids and implicated several others including McGwire, a former Oakland teammate. Canseco’s egocentric tirade was enough to stir up a strong, if not nauseating, stink.

Yet, sadly, too many players have become accustomed to the stench. It’s hard to find anyone still active who will speak freely about the health-related and integrity-related dangers of steroids. The clean players are afraid of alienating the users and, in general, most would rather the topic just go away.

“If players are involved, it’s obvious why they don’t want to discuss it,” Manfred says. “For those players who are not involved, you’re talking about teammates and people that you live with for 200 and something days a year. I think that people are reluctant to get into indicting others.”

Smith agrees but still wonders how long the nonusers will remain silent. “It’s a pretty natural response,” Smith says. “But I would think that more and more of the guys who aren’t doing it and never have done it would really want to start to step forward and put pressure in the opposite direction.”

Back in March, the U.S. government decided to force the issue. Canseco, McGwire, Sosa, Curt Schilling, Rafael Palmeiro and Frank Thomas were among several witnesses subpoenaed by the House Government Reform Committee to testify about the presence of steroids in baseball. McGwire, who has been estimated to be 30 to 40 pounds lighter than at the end of his career, appeared on the verge of tears at least twice as he read his opening statement. The first time came as he referred to some of the participants of an earlier panel–the parents of two amateur baseball players whose suicides were attributed to steroid use.

Smith said that the hearings “served a real purpose in stigmatizing behavior. You can squabble about whether Congress should be involved or not, but if you stigmatize the behavior, the better chance you have of beginning to change it.”

Bottom line? Players who use steroids, growth hormones, and so on, are cheaters, plain and simple. They are also abusing their own bodies. The increased muscle mass might bring immediate strength and endurance, but the long-term repercussions include heart problems, mood swings and, perhaps the greatest deterrent of them all, shrunken testicles.

Even worse, players who use steroids are setting horrible examples for the young athletes who look up to them and quite literally want to be them.

“It’s leading young people to that dark corner,” Smith says. “You follow the dream and that’s where you end up with your dream. You’ve got to make that choice whether to give up your dream or ruin yourself physically.”

So, what can baseball do to take care of this problem once and for all? Sports psychologist Dr. David Cook has a few suggestions, the first being a serious attempt to find cheaters through comprehensive testing. “They should test often and everyone,” he says.

One of the arguments against massive testing is the issue of cost. The tests are expensive, and there are 750 Major League players alone. Perhaps fines assessed against players can go back into testing. Talk about your poetic justice. And speaking of fines, Major League Baseball needs to dig deep into the player’s thick, well-stocked wallets.

“The penalty has got to be stiff,” Cook says. “The players union has got to decide to agree with that. The players will have to say, ‘Yeah, steroids is cheating.’ If they don’t, then they’re protecting and they’re the problem.”

Smith supports the idea of fines, but thinks harsh suspensions and, ultimately, lifetime bans are the most effective tools that baseball can use to police itself.

“To me, it should be the first time you’re caught, then you’re out for the year,” he says. “The second time, you’re gone for life.”

And if you really want to hit the players where it hurts the most, aim for the ego. With the strong possibility that steroids have tainted our modern home run records, Smith submits that a simple grammatical tool will suffice.

“I’ve got no problem with asterisks,” Smith says. “I’ve got no problem with not even honoring records. Not only should [steroid users] get much stronger suspensions but [baseball should] make it clear that anyone who gets caught with steroids, their records won’t count.”

But for baseball to truly clean up its act and restore integrity to its hallowed halls, the league, the players and the fans must come together in an act of solidarity.

Unfortunately, Americans don’t have the same moral backbone they once did. In researching for his article in Sports Illustrated, Smith was hard pressed to find anyone who was adamantly against steroid use. Most people were conflicted at best.

“I was kind of surprised, but I had done a little research and read some things that indicated that there are a lot of fans who thought that [steroid use was OK],” Smith explains. “I was aware of it on an intellectual basis, but, still, when you keep hearing it over and over, it’s always troubling.”

But what about us purists­you know the ones that don’t make seven-figure salaries and don’t cheat to get ahead at work­who view baseball as a cherished American institution? How do we justify watching so many boys of summer allegedly sacrifice those last few shreds of innocence at their own personal altars of greed, pride and selfishness? What’s a devoted fan to do?

Is nothing sacred? Sure, it’s a rhetorical question, but it still needs to be asked.

Baseball and Steroids Timeline

November 1988 The sale of anabolic steroids for non-medical purposes is made illegal by the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988

September 1989 The National Football League begins testing for steroids.

November 29, 1990 The Anabolic Steroids Control Act of 1990 makes the sale or possession of anabolic steroids without a prescription illegal.

August 12, 1994 Major League Baseball players go on strike. The remainder of the season is called off, including the playoffs and the World Series.

September 8, 1998 Mark McGwire breaks Roger Maris’ 1961 home run record (61) by hitting his 62nd of the season.

September 27, 1998 McGwire hits his final home run of the baseball season, ending his record-breaking total at 70. His home run derby competitor, Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa, finishes with 66 home runs.

December 21, 1998 McGwire and Sosa grace the cover of Sports Illustrated wearing ancient Greek attire. The two were named 1998’s “Sportsmen of the Year.”

October 5, 2001 Bonds hits his 71st home run of the season, breaking McGwire’s record.

October 7, 2001 Bonds hits his 73rd and final home run of the season, establishing a new single-season record.

May 28, 2002 In an interview with Sports Illustrated, Ken Caminiti admits using steroids during his MVP season. He claims that at least 50 percent of all players also use steroids.

August 30, 2002 Major League Baseball officially bans the use of steroids.

March 2003 Survey testing begins to determine the percentage of players using steroids.

March 2004 Random testing of players begins.

April 12, 2004 The U.S. Food and Drug Administration bans the sale of Andro, the substance McGwire openly used during his 1998 record-breaking season. Major League Baseball follows suit the same day by adding Andro to its list of banned substances.

September 18, 2004 Bonds hits his 700th career home run, becoming only the third player in MLB history (behind Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron) to accomplish the feat. He ends the season at 703.

October 10, 2004 At 41, Caminiti dies of a heart attack.

December 2, 2004 Jason Giambi’s grand jury testimony from the fall of 2003 is released. He testified that he injected himself with human growth hormone in 2003 and used steroids during the 2001-2003 seasons.

December 3, 2004 More testimony from the 2003 grand jury investigation into San Francisco-based drug company BALCO is released. Bonds testified that he unknowingly used substances (given to him by personal trainer Greg Anderson) that he believed were flaxseed oil and arthritis cream.

December 7, 2004 The MLB Players Association gives baseball union head Donald Fehr the authority to negotiate a tougher drug policy.

January 13, 2005 A new collective bargaining agreement is reached. The owners and players agree to include out-of-season testing, discipline for first-time offenders and the public naming of players that test positive for banned substances.

February 14, 2005 Jose Canseco’s tell-all book, Juiced, is released. In it, he confessed his own involvement with steroids and implicated several others including McGwire, a former Oakland teammate.

March 17, 2005 Canseco, McGwire, Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, Frank Thomas and Curt Schilling are among the host of baseball representatives called to testify about steroids before the House Government Reform Committee on Capitol Hill.

April 3, 2005 Tampa Bay outfielder Alex Sanchez is suspended 10 days for violating baseball’s new policy on performance-enhancing drugs, the first player publicly identified under the major league’s tougher rules.

April 4, 2005 38 minor league players test positive and are suspended 10 days, according to Major League Baseball’s Minor League Drug Prevention and Treatment Program.

April 30, 2005 Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig sends a memo to the MLB Players Association suggesting a “three strikes and you’re out” substance-abuse policy.

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Chad Bonham is the contributing editor to New Man magazine. This article was originally published in the July-August 2005 issue of New Man.