Rich Mullins Interview
20 - The Countdown Magazine
A Communion Communications production
Originally aired September 14 & 15, 1996
Transcribed and reprinted with permission
The host of 20 The Countdown Magazine is Jon Rivers of KLTY-FM 94.1 in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas.
Jon Rivers:
As 20 The Countdown Magazine celebrates ten years of musical memories, one artist who's been there all along has been a man who's given us more than just great music. He's given us music to make us think. Rich Mullins is a poet, a philosopher, a fisher of men, a Ragamuffin - you name it, over the years, he's manage to pull all those titles into that of songwriter. And one of those songs that has made a strong impact on our culture is the one you probably sang in church maybe last week - "Awesome God."
Rich:
Well, I think for me - what you, as a writer, eventually have to come to acknowledge is that your responsibility is to say as clearly as you can what you have to say, and what people do with that, you have no say over. So if someone wants to think of God as being awesome in the California sense of the word - that He's really cool - there's nothing I can do about that. I'm sorry that people sometimes have forgotten that God, who is awesome, is a God, who not only do we love, and a God who loves us very deeply, but also a God who we really do owe reverence and fear to. I think when I was younger I used to think I was responsible for a lot of stuff that I'm realizing now I'm not really responsible for. In so many interviews I've been asked to talk about how I wrote "Awesome God", and after I wrote it I was real nervous about even talking about it, because I was kinda going, 'Wow, everybody thinks that it was some real spiritually heavy moment.' It's so dissapointing when you find out that I wrote the song 'cause I was trying to stay awake while I was driving.
I think that especially Evangelical Christians here at the end of the 20th century really thrive on the sensational, and they think that something is spiritually vital if it's earth shaking, and if the hair raises on the back of your arm - that sort of thing. That's one reason I'm so thankful for my parents, because my parents pretty much believed that all work was holy, and that all love was holy, and that your life was either lived in a God-word direction or it was lived in a direction facing away from God, and that there are no big and little miracles - that life itself is a terrific miracle. So if you're just doing your job, you're not just doing your job, you're doing something holy, and you're doing something that is part of what makes you a human being, and I think God's greatest will for us is that we should be human beings. Because I think humans are the image of God, and when we live a fully human life, I think God looks at us and sees Himself, and says, 'Wow, I did do a good job.'
Jon:
One man. And when he speaks, I listen. Rich Mullins, never at a loss for words, and never at a loss for powerful words. Another classic Rich Mullins song makes it's home at number three this week. God did a good job through His servant Mr. Mullins, don't you think? "Sing Your Praise To The Lord", from the guy who brung it - on 20 The Countdown Magazine.
[play track "Sing Your Praise To The Lord" from Songs]