LB: The first-ever contemporary Christian music broadcast in China in 2000. Global Television Syndication was going to give away $500,000 plus medical equipment for the Yangtze flood victims on national television. The producer called me and asked if I would sing. It was aired during their big new year’s day and re-aired the next day.

CK: You were singing in English?

LB: I sang from Revelation 2:5. ‘Remember and return to your first love.’

LV: That was a breakthrough, I think, for all Christians in China, a sign of the ways we can help each other in Christian mission. . . .You’ve spoken about involvement with Catholics in the Philippines?

LB: My cousin, Bruce Behnken, is married to a Filipino. They’re both missionaries. To connect with El Shaddai I had to talk to Cardinal Jaime Sin. El Shaddai is a charismatic Catholic congregation, headed by Brother Mike Velarde. He’s under Cardinal Sin. They’re in Manila. One million people meet by the bay every Saturday night. Seven million Filipinos watch it on TV and the West Coast of California watches it.

LV: That’s a Catholic megachurch.

LB: The largest megachurch in the world. After I first did the El Shaddai concert, I stayed around, toured and sang on Filipino national television.

I’ve been back many times since. I don’t just fly in and out. I’ve spent weeks at a time there.

LV: It’s an example of our charisms working together, Catholics and Evangelicals. But not everybody here has had those good experiences, so why should Catholics be interested in the “Evening of Praise and Worship” on March 29?

LB: I’ve been inspired by my experiences with Christians in Asia, especially with Catholics. You know, sometimes it seems like you have to go to the other side of the world to see who you are in the Lord. It’s hard to see it here in our culture.

You go to the other side of the world and you see more clearly that we need each other. We are incomplete without the Filipinos, without the Vietnamese, the Chinese, the Italians. We are the Body of Christ. The nations of the earth and the islands of the sea together are the Body of Christ. We are incomplete without each other. In what’s coming together on March 29 are the nations. We’ve got the African-American family, the Italian-American family, the German-American family, the Vietnamese-American family . . . the nations of the earth here in the Miami Valley. You don’t have to go to the other side of the world to find the foreign missions—you know that. Continued p.7

The vision for March 29, Nutter Center: “An audience of One for a choir of 11,000 plus. The Lord is the audience. . . “