Given my current situation (i.e., recovering from two years of full-time ministry with CTI Music Ministries) I have been trying to intentionally reflect on the things that happened in those two years. I am hoping that a part of this process will include me recognizing the changes that the Lord made in me through these two years and, in that same vein, striving to allow those changes to become permanent.

So what does this mean to you, my faithful readers? I’m hoping that in the next weeks and months I will be posting a series of anecdotes and stories about my time with CTI. They may be funny, emotional, or just plain silly, but they will be real and they are a very real part of me now.

So here’s the first installment:

Setting: Singapore, August 2006, more specifically a school

Characters: The members of my team, the YFC (Youth for Christ) staff, and about 1,000 students.

When my team had arrived in Singapore, we were equipped with 16 or 17 songs, two dramas, and a whole bunch of desire. We were there to share the Gospel with anyone who would listen and we felt that we were very well prepared for the task.

The Singapore YFC staff felt differently.

Allow me to qualify that last statement. Singapore Youth for Christ is one of the most effective and in-touch youth ministries I have ever seen, and they knew that what were equipped with (i.e., our songs and dramas, even our mindset) would not be as effective as some suggestions that they had. So we ceded to their authority and did not regret it for a minute.

Our first priority was to change our song repertoire, which we diligently set out to do. Once we had some new songs under our belt we moved onto the new skit that had been developed just for us by some members of the YFC staff. [The YFC had not only written a wonderful script and developed a soundtrack for us, but they had also spent a lot of resources on putting together some pretty extensive costumes for us.] It is important to note that our initial opinion of the skit (mainly because it involved us making complete fools of ourselves) was much less than our final opinion, the change in opinion was due to the raging success we had with the skit in our perfomances.

My role in the skit was fairly simple. I was to play fire, and when moment was right, I was to destroy the village at the command of the villain who was taking revenge for his unrequited love. Nothing to it.

The climax of the skit involved me chasing the villain of the skit off stage, illustrating the concept that revenge can get out of hand and come back to burn (quite literally in this case) us if we let it. After we did this scene a few times, we started spicing things up a little. We would involve spins and turns and jumps, just to make things slightly more interesting. It usually got quite the reaction from the crowd.

It was a performance like any other. We were playing at a school and there were about 1,000 students in the auditorium that afternoon. We had wowed the crowd with our music, we were going to show them the drama, and then hit them with the meat of our message: the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Sounds like a great plan huh? Then it happened…

Ernest (the villain) started the chase scene as per usual, running down the steps toward the front row of the students, preparing to run out the side door of the auditorium. That day, though, he decided to stop short, cut, and completely change direction. It was a cut that any NFL running back would have been proud of, it would have fooled even the most seasoned defenders…and it definitely fooled me.

Everything happened so quickly, I am not sure exactly what transpired. All I know is that I tried to emulate the cut Ernest had so deftly made and the ground beneath me started to shift. I looked down to realize my worst nightmare had come true. I had chosen shoddy footing for my poor attempt at directional change: a loose square of carpet. Soon I was tumbling downward in a flurry of red and orange cloth (important insertion: my costume was composed of large toga-like pieces of red and orange polyester…it was incredibly flattering). I quickly tried to recover, but my effort was in vain. In fact it made the situation worse, as my feet got tangled in my costume when I tried to stand back up. I crawled for a few feet, dejected and not even wanting to stand back up to make my exit, but I knew that the quicker I got off stage, the sooner the humiliation would be over.

The humiliation was only beginning, though. Once I reached the wings of the stage, I quickly ripped my mask (that’s right, there was a super-heroesque blindfold with eye holes poked in it, I looked like an orange Zorro) off and tried to catch my breath. It was then that a terrifying revelation hit me: I had to go back out there. I was asked earlier that day by the YFC staff to be the one to share the Gospel with the students at the school. I finished extracting myself from my costume, held my chin up high, took the microphone in hand, cleared my throat and started with this statement: “I meant to do that.” The crowd responded by erupting in a cacophony of laughter (maybe even louder than the one following my fall). Though this did a lot to soften the blow to my ego, it did nothing for what I was about to say. The audience was unrecoverable. I can only hope that the Holy Spirit reached those it was trying to that day despite my best efforts at getting in the way.

The only redeeming thing about this whole thing is that most of my team did not actually see me fall, they only heard the laughter. This did not stop them from mercilessly ribbing me for the rest of our trip. Oh well, having the story to tell is worth any amount of ribbing that I had to endure.