Chapman believes
'There is a hope,' and it's found in God
"Where is the hope? I meet millions who tell me that they feel demoralized by
the decay around us. Where is the hope? The hope that each of us have is not in who
governs us, or what laws are passed, or what great things that we do as a nation. Our hope
is in the power of God working through the hearts of people, and that’s where our
hope is in this country; that’s where our hope is in life."
Chuck Colson, prologue to
"Heaven in the Real World,"
Steven Curtis Chapman
By Frank "Buzz" Trexler
for The (Maryville, TN) Daily Times,
August 26, 1994
It’s a haunting lead-in for the title cut to Steven Curtis Chapman’s
"Heaven in the Real World": News reports of gangs, drugs, violence and war,
overlapped with Chuck Colson intoning "Where is the hope?"
Haunting, but fitting in that the selling of Jesus Christ’s message of hope as an
answer to society’s problems is where the 31-year-old Chapman seems to be in his
spiritual and musical journey. In fact, that’s Chapman’s vision of the church
and individual Christian’s role in society today.
"I think it was Saint Francis that said ‘preach Christ to all men; use words
if necessary,'" said Chapman, whose lyrics challenge listeners to live out their
faith, but also reflect the struggles of someone who doesn’t have it "all
figured out." Still, it’s not just mere words that Chapman hopes to convey to
listeners. At a time when everyone from the president, to Congress, to clergy are
searching for answers, this No. 1 Contemporary Christian songwriter is pushing himself and
others to "put some hands and feet" to the Gospel.
"I think that our call as Christians in the culture right now is to really live
our lives in a way that defends the truth of the Gospel; that says there is truth and
it’s had an impact in my life – such a profound impact that it affects
everything about the way I live my life," he said in a recent interview from
"L.A. ’94," a Youth for Christ convention in Los Angeles.
"That hope is found in my personal relationship with God and with Jesus Christ and
that’s where the rubber meets the road."
Chapman is a three-time Grammy winner and has also won an incredible 20 Dove Awards.
This year, he took home a Grammy for Best Pop Gospel Album ("The Live
Adventure") and three Dove Awards, including Songwriter of the Year, Contemporary
Recorded Song of the Year ("Go There With You") and Long-Form Video of the Year
("The Live Adventure").
The "Heaven in the Real World" tour will travel to 70 U.S. markets and 30
other cities around the world.
While the tour is not scheduled to open until Sept. 8, Chapman apparently has been on
the road quite a bit – and not just as a performer. For as he talks about his album,
the anecdotes of how various songs came about are sprinkled with references to encounters
with inmates and visiting prisons with Colson.
From those dungeons of hopelessness, Chapman has emerged as a champions of the message
that "there is a hope, there is a peace, that will make this life complete." But
how can that message flow into a world that so desperately needs to hear of such a hope?
He harkens to a song on his latest album called "The Heartbeat of Heaven" in
which the singer encounters a man on a street corner.
Chapman appears to be walking his talk. The lyrics on his recent album reveal a great
deal of influence from Colson’s Prison Fellowship Ministries (PFM). In fact, his
"Heaven in the Real World" tour is sponsored by PFM, a link that Creative
Artist’s Agency’s John Huie told Amusement Business was something of a spiritual
rather than financial asset.
"Is this going to bring more people in?" asks Huie. "No. it’s going
to give a broader awareness of some of the problems we face in our society and hopefully
get people thinking about coming up with some solutions.
From Chapman’s way of thinking, those solutions have less to do with building more
prisons than with individual involvement. In cooperation with Sparrow Records and Parable
Group Inc., a chain of Christian bookstores, Chapman and PFM plan to make available
hundreds of thousands of copies of "Heaven in the Real World" free to children
of incarcerated parents. Chapman says Angel Tree is one way to respond to the
culture’s growing concern about crime.
"You look at some of the statistics that show how the prison population is
increasing and yet the crime rate continues to skyrocket," Chapman says, explaining
that programs such as Angel Tree give Christians a positive way to respond by putting
"some hands and feet on this message" that they believe is so important.
Christians, he says, can "get involved in the lives of the families, realizing
that the children who grow up with a parent in prison are six times more likely to end up
there themselves and realizing that 80 percent of crime … is committed by those
who’ve been incarcerated."
His premise is this: "If you can actually go into those prisons – in a place
where it’s incredibly hopeless – and say ‘there’s hope for you and
it’s in the power of the love of God that will reach into your life and give you
hope’; if we can have an impact there, then I believe we can really have an impact on
crime in our culture, in our world."
Chapman extends this premise outside of the prison walls to include the everyday chains
that bind people’s lives. He says that while not everyone is able to get involved in
the mission field, "we can have the heartbeat of heaven beating at us in way that
says, ‘Today, the way I treat the person behind the grocery counter, the way I treat
my family, the people I go to school with, I want them to see in my life that there is a
hope that motivates me through the course of this day, and that hope is my relationship
with God and his love in my life."
Chapman said hs is always looking for some way to communicate the Gospel and what it
means in his life to the person who may be exposed to his music by chance and get caught
up in the story – stories in songs such as "Burn the Shops," which likens
Spanish adventurer Hernando Cortez’s burning of a fleet of ships in 1519 to the
decision not to turn back once a commitment is made to Christ.
"It’s almost a parable, and Christ used that so effectively to his
audiences," Chapman says. "I think it’s just an effective way to not just
preach at somebody and yet still communicate the powerful truth of the Gospel."
The Rev. Frank "Buzz" Trexler is managing editor at The
Daily Times and pastor of Green Meadow United Methodist Church, www.themeadow.org.
You can e-mail him at PastorBuzz@nxs.net.
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