After all these years of reading old testament stories of famines and pestilence, I only now get a small hint about what might have been going on in biblical Egypt. We don’t like to talk about the down side of anything in Christian Music in a post new testament America now. Except to point out what we’ve been delivered from. But sometimes that “Valley of the shadow of death” drags right along. All the while we’re circling the desert as believers thinking maybe the pillar of cloud by day is only an apparition. Or possibly the vapor left over from a career that’s gone up in smoke.

 To say there’s a down turn in the economy is an understatement, mumbled in low voice by some, because maybe, it’ll send a wave of panic through the stock market. Or in a smaller world, you’re afraid you might “confess” something and give it more power! Personally I think you can’t address a problem if you’re not talking about it.

I’m not gonna launch into some diatribe about what the President ought to being doing, or the government. And I’m not gonna start pointing fingers at the selfishness of corporate CEO’s. We are where we are. And I’m sure for more reasons than we can ‘appoint’.

 Bottom line is, most likely, your seeing a smaller bottom line this year. Or maybe you’ve stopped reaching a bottom line all together except that one at the unemployment office. But in the case of at least one “Self Employed” singer songwriter, honestly, I’ve never experienced anything like this. My mom says she survived the Great Depression. “I only have weekly ones so far, that I go through weakly” I told her.

 What I do know is that there are some great things about lean times. Number one, it sharpens your focus. It also has an incredible impact upon your motivations. Humility too becomes more necessary. I find myself looking for ways to get things done by offering more services! I’m now willing to do a concert AND pass out flyers at the door! I’ll even clean up the sanctuary when we’re done and lock up.

 You have to be aware that your promoter friends and outreach ministry personnel are experiencing a backlog of undone work. They’re probably doing the jobs of people they had to let go to stay afloat themselves. Sometimes what they need most is some outside encouragement even on the phone when they’re telling you “Maybe next year”. Don’t get too near sighted in all this. Pursue whatever you might contribute with encouragement and conviction.

 Here’s a chance to see God work a miracle. The one where your prayer life gets really sincere! In the last two years I’ve learned the first and last names of everyone I work with across the Globe. My conversations with “co laborers” are longer than they’ve ever been. I’m seeing a true relationship where you actually know what a ministry is doing and how much that is costing. You might even know who the volunteers are. In fact YOU may have to be one.

”A famine in the land” can also produce a famine of encouragement. The one thing that has to happen before changes come is to see the goal beyond the obstacles. Attitude may be the only thing to keep your circumstances from overwhelming you. The best way to maintain a good attitude is to apply encouragement to others even in your own dilemmas. Kind of like sharing the gospel with a tooth ache!  Here’s where you find out for real if your faith is real! Can you believe that God has your back? Can you believe that his process for all of us is exactly on schedule, that there are no coincidences? Easy sometimes to sing about Trusting God, but God forbid we should actually have to do it.

 In hardship we get to strengthen our song material before it’s written. “if I didn’t have a problem, I wouldn’t know that God could solve them” sings Andre Crouch. I personally don’t think that was his last problem he was singing about either. Success is mostly guided by a supply and demand mentality. Maybe we could apply that now to “encouragement” as a real product. It might be in shorter supply than quality musicianship at this point. An attitude of encouragement is like singing or writing music. You don’t need a budget to do that part!

 Here’s what else you can do with absolutely no money: make your prayers real. Look to encourage others before the contract is signed. Make relationships that are based on common ground. Find people you “resonate” with. Look for ways to be authentic! And lead by example. And trust others with your life! It’s not just God that will get you through. He uses relationships!  You can’t turn the sail boat if it’s dead in the water. And without God’s unseen power, like the wind, we will reach no destination worth arriving at.

 Purification is not a fun process. But the end result is more valuable. Gold and Silver is what we use to purchase what we really want. But it’s not the prize itself! You have the prize when you find your focus in pursuit of your passion. Christ will redeem your hardships! See that! Believe that. And watch it come true.

A Twitter’s Worth @bryan_duncan

 I thought building a fan base on line was the new way to validate my career until I saw a 13 year old girl’s twitter page the other day. She had 20,000 followers! And she doesn’t sing or play an instrument. They tell me if you can amass 1000 followers you can make money! I wouldn’t know that for sure. I can only talk to maybe a hundred people a day even limiting myself to 140 characters. That’s also the number of “characters” that follow me should the truth be known. Granted that’s a larger audience than Ali Baba had with the 40 thieves. But eliminate the social media experts, real estate agents and positive affirmation gurus. Then see how many followers are junk twitters with pretty face twit pics attached to make you think yer talking to some hot young thing. You then discover yer true followers start to round off closer the numbers you might find at a Tupperware party.

 I was disappointed to find that two of my followers were actually the same guy with two accounts! And now I’m feeling like Gideon has surrounded me with just 300 of his finest but they all have matching torches. Now if you sit for five minutes in front of the home page where your followers post their incomplete sentences @someoneelse, you get the feeling of watching the river run. There are no ripples when you throw a pebble into a babbling brook.

Twitter mania gives me this visual of a hail storm on a lake. It’s an awesome sight! But then no one is focusing on any one splash. I can still remember being told you weren’t serious about your career if you didn’t have a website! Now my website is just a junk drawer where I post my twitters for those who missed em on Facebook. And with the new tech I can now have my twitters broadcast to any number of web configurations. Have you ever been in a restaurant when suddenly the volume goes up because everyone in the place has decided to start talking at the same time? You can’t hear your own conversation at some point. It’s not long till you find yourself shouting “LETS GO SOMEWHERE QUIETER WHERE I CAN HEAR YOU.”

 Now don’t get me wrong here. The new social media has it’s place. But it’s also the equivalent of the hotel lobby some of you might remember during Gospel Music Association’s week long convention. If you’ve been there you are aware of how many times someone was talking to you and looking over your shoulder to see who else might be worth handing their service card to. Once again we must be reminded of individual relationship and personal attention. Seeing real people and hearing them as well. It’s an age old human defect, where our one mouth outperforms our two ears.

 The first time I listened to a twitter head was when I was looking for advice about how much time to devote to amassing a twitter following. Hop Hopkins of Oklahoma told me he spends maybe ten minutes a day taking an interest in one or two individuals. The one truth that I have seen floating through Twitterville is that everyone is looking for encouragement and motivation. It’s the new recovery group phone call when yer facing relapse. Coined phrases float across every page, words of wisdom and insight and in my case humor! I have real people sorted into group listings to keep up with followers who resonate with one or more passions: Ministry, motorcycles, rehab and recovery, readers and quote-rs, musicians, and business professionals.

 I see social media as a perpetual convention mostly. It beats handing out flyers in the parking lot by a nose. So, yes, meet and greet but don’t forget the eye contact. Work does come from the effort but not before the synergy of resonating with passionate souls. And who knows maybe you’ll find some like minds who don’t fall into your marketing demographic! If there’s one thing that inspires me about “on line fishing” is that every once in a while I’ll have a conversation with someone in Indonesia or Scotland who’s feeling the exact same sense of futility in tryin to talk to too many people at once!

Here’s where I don’t want God’s job, hearing all the prayers and direct messaging the entire worlds population. But I do believe it’s a whole new way of being “in the world” just as long as you’re not “full of it!”  

On Twitter I have only 140 characters before I’m through. Here I get at least 800 words! “OMG” It’s like 3200 tweets with no interjections!

But if you’d rather hear less of me, I’m at twitter.com/bryan_duncan  where you can find me immediately if you feel my take is not that ”GR8”, or just to “LOL”. Here’s a new one “GFAC”..(Go Forth And Conquer)

“Altar-ing” your ego    (Published in Christian Musician May issue 2009)

The mechanics of force feeding yourself a decent attitude

By Bryan Duncan

Losing a bad attitude is like trying to get the cat off the curtains.  And what with the information super highway boring a four lane straight through the middle of your skull, you know there’s gonna be a pile up in the tunnel. With every “purpose driven” pursuit, there comes a stagnant build up in the “pipeline”. Negative thoughts and emotions have a way of creating a sewer in front of the septic tank. Think of it as a hairball in the shower drain.

Motivational Breakdowns are a lot like Mondays. Suddenly the weight of routine seems unbearable. You find yourself annoyed pulling your socks on in the morning, spilling coffee on your shirt for good measure. You just can’t think in a forward direction. Now you’re snapping at the garbage man for making so much noise. You’re dreading the “supposed to be happy” phone conversations that get the steely bolder rolling for another round of pin ball. Loathing and resentments hang like Spanish moss in your head, thinking of all the irritating people you can’t seem to change..

Uncomfortable emotions tend to linger longer than the euphoric. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because I don’t mind feeling good and it never seems to last long enough.

But what often goes unnoticed about my bad attitude is that it is never constructed from a single event! My tendency is to attempt to erase it however with a single thought. It’s like a Hail Mary prayer! Sometimes you have to dismantle the whole drain pipe to get the clog out.

Thinking about something else is what I usually start with in trying to change my dysfunctional position. But that doesn’t really take the sap out of the sycamore either. It’s like that Ginsu knives commercial, “wait there’s more”! Changing the subject is just a flanking maneuver. You still have to have a front line facing the enemy.

Here’s where I begin to think of my deeper strengths.  And then reconsider what I was born to do. (you have to know that first). It’s been a matter of returning to my original passion before the beehive hit the ceiling fan.

My first two attempts at redirection are often a knee jerk reaction and poorly managed by the way. But sitting with encouraging books on a regular basis has been the new Draino for the maintenance of my mental channels. Don’t roll your eyes at me here with your bad attitude. Even Draino takes 15 to thirty minutes to work and maybe a repeat. Discovery leads to insight which leads to better thought processes. But if you’re going to pan for gold you’ll be washing a lot of filth around before you find the flakes.

Sometimes you gotta remind yourself that you are a “prospector”! You just sometimes look like a posthole digger.

Best line of offense though is ironic. It’s other people! Yea, it is sometimes the very ones who put you in a piss poor attitude to begin with. You gotta be talking to more than one person! I’ve discovered the magic number might be six. You need that many to find one who’s objective on any given day. ”In the counsel of many there is safety” .. that’s in the Bible by the way. It moves on rather quickly from there but if we “pan” that for a second we might find that it works like this: If I’m gonna talk to a tax attorney today, I need  to call my investment broker too. O.k. that’s too dignified… I’ve I’m gonna talk to my ex.. I might want to drop in on my counselor later! That’s not to say that every counsel is gonna be fun. I’m just saying that balancing your perspectives through more sets of eyes than your own is priceless.

I make a point to call at least six people outside my daily universe over the week. I have the luxury of getting other writer’s on the phone occasionally, even as I’m reading their books. And I usually hang up euphoric about the possibilities afterward. Choose your six from a wide patch of cultural cloth too, not necessarily someone you always like or even who like you. I love talking to people who actually resent me on some level. They force me to look at myself in a different light. And afterward I’m just excited to see a friend!

Notice that so far I haven’t mentioned “prayer and meditation” specifically. That’s because all of the above is part of my prayer life and devotion to my Supreme Redeemer. Even the word “prayer” constitutes a narrow definition in most of our minds. You know you’d have glazed over if I started with that verbiage. Prayer is the conversation constantly going on with the almighty even when I’m having a conversation with someone else at the same time. Balaam’s donkey comes to mind on occasion. (God, speaking to me through an ass).

Finally, what is it that I can find the courage to change in this moment? Well today, I thought I’d write an article about a bad attitude! Now I can’t remember where I was emotionally when I started this piece. I got caught up in the word possibilities. Passion has returned and now I can put my shoes on.

”THERE SHE IS”…written by Bryan Duncan

Sharon Chiles was my girlfriend’s mother. I met her thirteen months ago. A week later she was diagnosed with cancer. She came to my house on Thanksgiving and I had met her one other time at the home of one of her five kids. By then the chemo had taken her hair.

Yesterday, I watched her life slip by in a slide show.  It was a simple collection of pictures that, when taken years ago, we’re never thought of as a final look back. 30 seconds as a little girl, before fashion statements and make up. 30 seconds, transforming into a woman, and she was gorgeous. 30 seconds of wild times and big smiles.

And by the end of a single song of background music, though still radiant, she was in her fifties. But then the song changed with the opening sound of a penny whistle, reminiscent of the theme music from the movie, “Braveheart”. And there she is, sitting upright in a hospital bed, half of what she was on the outside.

Cancer has a startling way of narrowing who a person truly is. Gone are the trappings of fashion and the Identifying marks of individuality or social distinction. And suddenly the one focus is upon the eyes, from where the light of a true soul seems to come.

I believe Sharon was redeemed. By that I don’t mean the Christian concept of being  “Saved” in the acceptance of a savior and given a redirected sense of purpose. No, Redeemed-To be bought back, like being taken off the pawn shop floor.

I don’t know why some people tend to linger at death’s door longer than others. I’ve heard stories before this, of loved ones “being given permission” to let go. And even with that, Sharon lingered for an uncomfortable amount of time. It was as if she were waiting in line, as if there was some kind of back up of souls knocking on heavens door.

Funerals are exhausting for the survivors. Maybe it is because we’re forced to see the end of our own lives coming too quickly. We’re forced to look at how fragile faith in eternity can be. “Visit the dying often” someone quoted to me once. “because it brings an immediacy to our lives”. A lot of phrases float around at funerals. “She’s in a better place” I hear most often. But it is said most often with just a hint of fear that our hope in the scriptures on eternal life and destiny will fall short. Fear of the unknown is exactly that!

I found one  piece of imagery fascinating, given grave side, from a Van Dyke poem on Immortality, of a ship sailing into the distance until it is out of sight. (only as I recall) it went “ Though she slips from our view on the shore, the ship is still strong and under full sail and carrying a full cargo, and coming into view of another world”. “There she is!”  “they exclaim on the other side as she appears on a new horizon”. That is my hope!  The hope that Jesus is right! There’s more to life than this life!.            Trusting in God for what I don’t have a clue about really is what death offers those of us still living. I can still see Sharon in my minds eye, the way I can see heaven and believe it is there! And now, when I see heaven?, I don’t see streets of gold anymore. I see the faces of the people I’ve known!  And I close my eyes and look and say… “There she is”!

“SEXGOD”     By Bryan Duncan   (from Wheels of Grace summer issue)

We have all heard at least one story of the preacher running off with the organ player. “and he claimed to be a Christian” we cluck.. like a Christian doesn’t have the propensity for failure. Look in the Bible. King Solomon, touted as the wisest man in the world and his dad David too, or how about Samson? They’re at the top of the list of God’s favorite men to speak of, all with one thing in common: a fascination with God’s “creation”.

Christian men must struggle with lust. But it remains a pink elephant in religious circles. It is the riskiest of subjects to bring up, putting fear in the minds of women.  And the indictment aimed at men is almost universal unless yer a monk in a monastery. Even then I’m not sure you can escape the thoughts of your own ‘self satisfying” desires, or the truth of being created as a sexual human being.

Denial for Christian men begins with assuming that a spiritual life can exist separately from a sexual life. Sexuality and Spirituality must be addressed in the same equation.“every man who ever walked into a strip club or surfed internet porn sites, is looking for GOD” says Steve White in the book “Eros Defiled”.

We long for what is awe inspiring, captivating our undivided attention, motivating all our senses, leaving behind any self awareness….

Every man’s battle begins because contemplating these attributes of God does not bring the immediate satisfaction of contemplating the attributes of a woman. Who was made in the image of God!  At the heart of a man is the desire to be surrendered to a power greater than him self!  Distracting thoughts of his own inadequacies. It is a desire to be overwhelmed with glory. But alas pornography is the short circuiting of a man’s natural desire to worship God. Lust becomes an addiction!, a sedative for lack of peace in a man’s soul.

Worship of God does not deliver such an instantaneous rush of natural endorphins. Maybe it’s because God sees more value in long term achievement through a real relationship. Sexual failures are cast in a disgusting light, something more immoral than other sins because of the awareness of the collateral damage. But in labeling it with such intensity, solutions are rarely embraced. One must be honest about one’s propensities for desire before that desire can be challenged.

The simple admission of a problem with lust for men usually does not come until the desires have become unmanageable. Because  “the eye is not satisfied with seeing”.  So “the preacher runs off with the organist”! It takes a strong man to admit his weakness before it destroys him. Even then there’s a road to redemption to be followed.

Pornography capitalizes on a God given desire. Adam was pleased with the woman God created, similar to himself but mysteriously different! The Garden was free from a conflict of will in the beginning. No mention of “other women” in that story. But there was the implication of “forbidden fruit”, Implying the one rule, the restricting of our desires.

Even God admitted it was not good for man to be alone, he left the will to choose in a man’s hands. Choice is necessary to true conviction!  “Choose this day whom you will serve”?  I would say that choice comes by the minute on a daily basis.

I like the advice a mountain biker gave me once, about how to traverse treacherous terrain without a devastating crash…“Don’t look where you don’t wanna go” !