 |
 |
Rich Mullins was a lot of things before he left us--exceptional artist and songwriter, rough-around-the-edges friend, passionate student, generous and kind mentor, gracious and gifted teacher and missionary, devout church reformer. But mostly, in and beyond all of these things, he was a lover of Jesus.
Every song that Rich Mullins sang, every word he spoke, every sentence he wrote, and everything he did followed from his conviction that Jesus was exactly who he claimed to be: Savior, Lord, Deliverer, and (perhaps especially) the one who brought "good news to the poor." Anyone who spent much time with Rich understood that he had grown to believe in a Jesus many Christians rarely consider--the Son of God who abandoned power and brought salvation to the broken, weak, and outcast.
It is only appropriate then, and wonderful too, that the last work Rich left us is The Jesus Record. The most unified, mature collection of his abbreviated career, The Jesus Record represents the culmination of Rich's artistic mission: a group of extraordinary songs, recorded by his best friends and band mates, which together make up a surprisingly subtle extended meditation on the person, message and mission of Christ.
For several years Rich had talked about making an album that would unfold the Jesus that we quickly gloss over on our way to church or Christian concerts. He wanted us to see the raw, rough Jesus who had dirty fingernails and who hung out with all the wrong people and loved them just as they were. It was a record, he said, that was "needed," because for too many of us, Jesus had become domesticated, ordinary, and predictable. And necessary because those who believed Jesus to be otherwise often felt abandoned and alone in their convictions. Such was the nature of Rich's work: he sought to at once challenge and heal, stir and to comfort, agitate and settle.
Rich had settled on ten songs--eight that he had written or co-written; one, "Surely God Is With Us," written by Mark Robertson with Mullins' best friend Beaker; and one, "Man of No Reputation," written by Rick Elias. He gave Myrrh Records vice-president Jim Chaffee a copy of the songs on a cassette that he had crudely recorded on a boombox at his church on the Navajo reservation where he lived. It would be, he said to those gathered, his best record to date.
The tape, in spite of its primitive nature, was extraordinary in and of itself. Mullins performances of the songs are playful and vivid and passionate, and in a very real way, urgent. Even alone, recording demos, Rich could not go through the motions. The demo (which is included in The Jesus Record) is a testimony to Mullins' nature and commitment. |
