Blog by Justin Brock

My wife Christina and I went to New Orleans with some friends. Here’s evidence.

I’ve just written a new song. I also have a number of ruined hymns I haven’t played in a while. Help me decide, please.

We’ve had a Bible study at our house ever other Wednesday night this year, and last night was the last one. I was tuning my guitar before we got started and had this idea. Not much, but it’s a beginning. I called myself on the phone and left a message so as not to forget it.

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Scott Simon, of NPR’s Weekend Edition, was onto something in 2005 when he interviewed The Innocence Mission [Karen Peris, Don Peris, Mike Bitts] about their album, Now the Day Is Over. My kids fall asleep to it almost every night. I’ll sing the songs to them often, too. I even heard my son singing “Stay Awake” last night without accompaniment … pretty much on key!

Their music is lovely and mystical. I recommend it to you.

The Innocence Mission

I’ve set Map of Humanity as my desktop background at work for a while. I reminds me to ask myself, “Where do you want to live today, Brock?” I tend to pine for the top left.

After my Christian, Choctaw, Missional talk, I wound up playing two Rich Mullins covers at the small Choctaw Baptist Church in Philadelphia, Mississippi. The two Rich Mullins songs are “Calling Out Your Name” and “The Howling”. I totally butchered them. Sorry Rich.

The song played at the end – “How You Love Me” – is one of my own. I wrote it my freshman year at Belhaven College when I was 18.

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I had the distinct honor of speaking with members of a Choctaw Baptist church in Philadelphia, Mississippi, about creativity and songwriting. The title of the talk is “Christian, Choctaw, Missional – Pursuing Redeemed Cultural Creativity”. I was incredibly honored to address members of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. They are wonderful, hospitable people with a sad but lovely history.

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I hope to posts the notes in separate blog posts if I ever get the chance to transcribe them. The basic gist of the talk was this:

1. Be Christian. Every nation and tribe will ultimately come under the obedient submission of a Jewish man, Jesus of Nazareth. So be Christian means to follow Him now.
2. Be Choctaw. Choctaw Christians do not need to abandon their cultural distinctions as they become more Christian. They don’t need to try to become like white Christians. In fact, bringing their Choctaw culture under submission to Christ is the only way to preserve its distinctions. The prediction in Revelations that every tribe and tongue will be worshiping Christ is my basis for that claim. So in the meantime, I wanted to encourage my brothers to pursue again the Choctaw arts to the glory of Christ.
3. Be Missional. If they will revisit the Choctaw art forms and create in them as faithful Christians, it will take them out of the sphere of their tribe to all the tribes of the earth.

I came across these two images at separate times awhile back – one of Johnny Cash and the other of soon-to-be-Pope Ratzinger. Thought the photos had a certain resonance. Cash and Ratzinger have a similar nose and brow. They both look like year-worn men.

What do you think?