Month: September 2005

Keynote Newsbriefs

blackSoil Project (hip-hop) is heading to Jamaica from September 26 to October 2 to work with Jamaica CCC. The shows will be a combination of university campuses, community events, and partnerships with churches.

The recording studio in Tajikistan will soon be a reality! Keynote’s Assoc. Exec. Director Dave Fackler is going there with a recording engineer / friend of Keynote to help finish the project.

Hurricane Katrina disaster relief: several ministries of Campus Crusade are working on relief efforts and Keynote is looking for ways to be involved. For more info on what CCC is doing go to http://www.ccci.org/katrina .

More Links in a Chain

In 1994, a Campus Crusade music team from Singapore named ForeRunner came here to be trained by my teammates and I in music evangelism. In 1998, I went with our team to Singapore to teach them how to be trainers. They now run a summer project like ours, where they train students using Keynote’s materials and to prepare them for a musical missions trip. This year God had several surprises in store for a student named ZhenPeng, who writes this (spellings and abbreviations are his):

The very 1st week, the Forerunner staffs shared with us their aim of this trip. I was suprised to find that the aim is not “playing professionally”, neither was it “save as many souls thru good music”, but it was “enabling an atmosphere of life-changing among us”. I had no idea wot it meant, so what i could do was to bring this aim back home to pray about it. I prayed that God enable me to experience a life changing experience thru this trip, without knowing what entailed….

More unexpected lessons awaited ZhenPeng on tour in Thailand. First, at their first concert:

Our stage occupied half of the church already. I thot to myself: ” No no, I dun travel all the way from Singapore to perform in such a place!!”, but God was gracious to me and enable me to finish the concert. And the best thing was, out of the 50 pple who attended, 11 received Christ. Back at the hotel, i told myself, at least i can still rejoice in the fact that 11 pple recieved Christ.

At their 3rd concert, held in a high school for 600 students:

…When the concert starts, the crowd cheered us so loudly, that it was almost deafening. We were very very excited!!! And to me, i told myself,”yeah man…this is wot i am looking for, the superstar treatment!!!” But hey, i forgotten the fact that the actual superstar of the nite was Jesus!!! This concert was the best and the worst i have ever played in. It was the worst becos we as a band made the most mistakes. We played wrong chords and notes, started songs wrongly, and I did a guitar solo without stepping on my volume pedal ( basically soloing without volume)…Alot of bloppers. Half way thru the concert, i told myself…..”this is it, noone will ever recieve Chirst…..No one…., Becos our music [stinks]!!!” I made a huge mistake by thinking that the power of salvation was in our music and not in Jesus!!! !!!” … After the concert, I was overwhelmed…..totally blown away by the fact that 372 students received Christ!!

And finally at a concert for a transient crowd of roughly 10,000 — an audience so large that most musicians only dream about it — but where they were not allowed to give a message:

I thot i would be excited, but i wasn’t. When i was playing on stage, God was working in me….asking me alot of qns and gave me answers for some of the qns. I drew a conclusion at that point of time. I prayed to God to really allow me to use my gifting in music for God and God alone. I want God to take the rightful place in my heart, and not music!!

You partner with me…I trained ForeRunner…ForeRunner trained ZhenPeng…388 Thais came to Christ, and ZhenPeng’s life was changed…and God continues to forge new links in His rescue chain!

Links in a Chain

I always love to see how God uses our trainees after we send them out. One of our new staff, Chris W., is on his first concert tour after being trained this summer. Here’s a great story of how God used him in a conversation with an audience member after his very first concert:

I had an awesome conversation with a student named Odan who has a Hindu background and happened to hear us and sat down to listen to our music. He thought we were great and enjoyed listening to [Teresa’s] message as well. When I asked him what his spiritual background was, he told me that he was agnostic but that lately “Christ has been sending me signals.” :O Of course, I asked, “what kind of signals has He been sending you?”

He told me that, for instance, today he didn’t know that our band was part of a Crusade event and yet he came here and sat down to listen. He’s also run into Crusade several times and has seen their presence around campus. He said he’s not ready to make a decision yet but that he is seriously considering Jesus Christ. How awesome is that! Please say a quick prayer for Odan’s salvation.

We talked some more about religion and I gave him a copy of Blue Like Jazz and also the booklet “Connecting With God.” He walked over to the Crusade table later and talked with Mark, the staff worker there, who invited him to an investigative bible study that was happening the next evening. How cool is that! Sweet stuff.

If you’re one of my ministry partners, YOU are helping Odan come to Christ. How? You support me, I trained Chris, and Chris shared the gospel with Odan. All links in a chain that God uses to rescue another needy soul. Thank you for being a link in the chain for people like Odan!

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