The Lord has given me a passion, a call in my life to see the nations come together for praise and worship. I’ve seen just a little bit--You know the Bible talks about the river of fire, the river of water. Some of us have barely put our toes in it. God inhabits the praises of His people. If we come together and we worship the Lord in Spirit and in truth, there’s a blessing. Not that we’re seeking the blessing, but we’re seeking the face of God.
LV: That’s what’s different about you, doing it in song. I’m associating this with stories about the early Christians. They’d celebrate Jewish Sabbath and after the end of the Sabbath they would stay up all night singing and praising God until the sun rose. That reminded them of the Resurrection.
LV: That interesting. If that’s normal, we have a long way to go to ‘normal’ here in America.
LB: We are not normal here in America. The El Shaddai folks are more normal—or closer to normal.
LV: What’s different about you is that you do this with your music and minister as a Christian artist.
LB: I’ve made a transition from being a Christian artist to being
a worship leader. About five years ago I started losing my voice. My last
album, Remember and Return, I barely got that out as a tenor. I had to
say, What’s going on here? Continued page 8.
Lee Behnken met with Archbishop Pilarczyk in Cincinnati on February 14 and left with an autographed copy of the Archbishop’s book, Live Letters, inscribed, the Archbishop pointed out, on the anniversary of two venerable evangelists, saints Cyril and Methodius. Above, the Archbishop stressed, “In the hierarchy of truths of the Catholic faith we’re talking about teachings that are all true, but some are more fundamental than others . . Prayer and praise are rather fundamental to who we Christians are. . . Fifty years ago we couldn’t do this together. Now we can.”