A new blogger afoot…
June 9, 2009
Hello out there in cyberspace. It’s your friendly neighborhood music minister (or, as some would have it, “chief musician”), having now been approved to begin blogging here on the FCC website (or maybe just not prevented from blogging!). I hope to post weekly, brief articles covering a range of topics, most of which will be at least tangentially related to either our corporate worship, music in general, culture in general, or our church life as a whole. Occasionally I will pass on a link I find helpful, or an interesting or provocative quote, or just something I have enjoyed and believe you will too.
I thought I would begin with just a little bit about myself, for those of you whom I’ve not yet come to know. It’s been a bit of a whirlwind the last month or so, and so I’ve only just begun to settle into my role here at FCC. I just finished my master of music degree at the UMKC conservatory, where I majored in piano performance. That degree is what brought Kimberly and me to Kansas City; we planned on staying until I graduated and then getting out of here (hopefully to somewhere with much warmer winters)! Obviously, the Lord had other plans for us, plans in which we now rejoice.
Before moving to Kansas City, I lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, where I completed a bachelor of music degree, also in piano performance, from the University of Cincinnati conservatory. For just under two years while I was there, I served as music minister at Ryker’s Ridge Baptist Church in the beautiful river town of Madison, Indiana, and it was there, under the leadership of two very solid and gifted pastors, that I came to more fully understand and embrace a Biblical picture of God’s sovereignty over salvation, as well as a more Biblical picture of doing church.
Also while I was in school at Cincinnati, through the clever (and underhanded!) work of some friends, I met the woman of God who would become my wife. Kimberly lived in South Carolina at the time, where she was completing a degree in early childhood education at Presbyterian College (no, she wasn’t a Presbyterian—in fact, her father is a Baptist pastor in the town, which is what led her to that school). Our correspondence grew into a full-blown courtship, I proposed April 6, 2007, and we were married December 29 of that year, following which she joined me in Kansas City.
Before Cincinnati, I had lived all but the first two years of my life in Eastman, Georgia, a town of around 6,000 people. My parents were solid believers, both having come from believing households themselves. They were diligent to see that my brother and I were raised in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, for which I am eternally grateful. My own depravity, however, turned this discipline and instruction into a life of self-centered, man-pleasing legalism (the kind that allows one to be a baptized, faithful church member, a leader in the youth group, in fact). My freshman year of high school was when, by the work of regeneration by the Holy Spirit, I first truly repented and believed the Gospel.
As I mentioned, Kimberly also grew up in a believing household, the daughter of a pastor. Her story is very similar to mine, in having come to realize, and repent of, her unbelieving legalism in her teenage years. She had known for years that she wanted to teach elementary-school-age children, and after doing so in the public school for a year, she was blessed with the opportunity to teach from a Biblical, Christ-centered perspective at FCA.
Just as we all can say, it is by the grace of God that Kimberly and I are who we are, and where we are. And as I said before, we rejoice in where the Lord has led us, and we look forward to serving in this body for as long as He would have us do so.
Thanks for reading,
Andrew