Pursuit of a Legacy

Pursuit of a Legacy

Pursuit of a Legacy

1994 Reunion Records
Produced by Steve Taylor and Ben Pearson.



Pursuit of a Legacy


1. 78 Eatonwood Green (Instrumental - Rich Mullins and Beaker)
2. Here In America (Rich Mullins)
3. The Color Green (Rich Mullins)
4. Hold Me Jesus (Rich Mullins)
5. Creed (Rich Mullins and Beaker)
6. Peace (A Communion Blessing from St. Joseph's Square) (Rich Mullins and Beaker)


Related Links

Video Reviews
Timeline 1994
Discography


Filming Information

Directed by Steve Taylor.
"Creed" Columbia Sequences Directed by Ben Pearson.


Credits

Musicians:

Rich Mullins: vocals, hammered dulcimer, piano
Jimmy Abegg: acoustic guitar, electric guitar, mandolin
Rick Elias: acoustic guitar, electric guitar
Billy Crockett: acoustic guitar
Beaker: dulcimer
Lee Lundgren: keyboards, squeezebox, hooter, organ
Danny O'Lannerty: acoustic bass guitar, electric bass
Chris McHugh: drums
Eric Darken: percussion
Background vocals by Judson Spence, Michael Mellett, Linda Elias, Nicki Lundgren, and Jarrod Brown.



Prior to each video, there is a short interview segment with Rich.

(The following segment appears right before "Here in America")
Rich: "That experience of standing by the side of the road and standing there with your thumb out and thousands and thousands of cars go by, and then one car stops and you get in that car, and suddenly you forget that you've been standing there for an hour. One act of mercy on the part of one guy erases the fact that thousands of people drove by and were completely apathetic. So one act of grace is a very profound thing. The world may be very cruel in very many ways, but that one act of grace that we see in Christ changes everything."

(The following segment appears right before "The Color Green")
Rich: "It started out with this guy who was yelling at this kid for running in the "House of God," because he was running through a church building, and I thought that was funny because I think the Bible was fairly explicit that earth is God's footstool and heaven is His throne - "What kind of house can you build for Me?" I think it's pretty explicit that the Body of Christ is also the House of God - that we are the temple, that it has to do with people, not with buildings. I've often thought, you know, people worry with the Catholic thing of revering Mary, and I've often thought, "Well, maybe it's not that they revere Mary too much. Maybe it's that all of us revere each other too little." And so I was thinking about this old man going to a meeting and realizing on his way that he'd already been in a meeting. It's just he hadn't been in a corporate meeting. He'd already been surrounded by the presence of God. And he looks out, and of course he's a farmer, and has an appreciation for seasons - has an appreciation for that kind of thing. And all of a sudden he realizes that God invented green."

(The following segment appears right before "Hold Me Jesus")
Rich: "When it all came together is when we were all in Amsterdam. I just became really keenly and uncomfortably aware of how you know you think you're getting somewhere - you think you're growing as a Christian, that kind of thing. And all of a sudden you're in a situation where you go, "I am just as susceptible as I was when I was sixteen," to a lot of things. Sometimes we can be really hard on ourselves about that. Well, Beaker and I were talking in a train station about the whole thing - kind of where we were and where we wanted to be - and we'd gotten into some pretty explicit detail about the nature of our temptations and of those struggles. And this guy leans over - and we're in Germany and assuming that nobody would be interested enough in whatever we would have to say to actually bother to translate and listen. But this guy leans over in the train station - the only other guy in there - and says, "Excuse me, but are you Rich Mullins?" So I had to think back over our conversation to see if I was or not. And decided that I must be. Whether or not I like who I am, that is who I am. Once again, it's back to the ragamuffin thing. The realization that people are going to judge you. There are actually people who I think look for excuses to condemn you and look for excuses to say bad things about you. But God doesn't look for those kinds of excuses. I think the conclusion of the matter for me was that I think I would rather live on the verge of falling and let my security be in the all-sufficiency of the grace of God than to live in some pietistic illusion of moral excellence. Not that I don't want to be morally excellent, but my faith isn't in the idea that I'm more moral than anybody else. My faith is in the idea that God and his love are greater than whatever sins any of us commit."

(The following segment appears right before "Creed")
Rich: "I hope I would leave a legacy of joy - a legacy of real compassion. Because I think there is a great joy in real compassion. I don't think that you can know joy apart from caring deeply about people - caring enough about people that you actually do some thing. But I have a feeling, if my life is motivated by my ambition to leave a legacy, what I'll probably leave as a legacy is ambition. But if my life is motivated by the power of the spirit in me - if I live with the awareness of the indwelling Christ, if I allow his presence to guide my actions, to guide my motives, those sorts of things. That's the only time that I think we really leave a great legacy. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. My ambition to be a "good guy" is a fleshly ambition. When Christ calls us to take up our cross and follow Him, a lot of us think that what that means is we're supposed to lay down our vices and we're supposed to cling to virtues. But I think that unless Christ is Lord of our virtues, our virtues become dangerous to us and dangerous to the people around us. I think that when Christ calls us to take up our cross, what He means is you must die not only to whatever vices are in your life - which He will eventually kill out - you must also die to whatever virtues are in your life. Your life is not valuable because you're an articulate speaker. Your life is not valuable because you're a generous person. Your life is not valuable because of any of that. If we empty ourselves of everything, and allow God to be present, then it's no longer us, it's Him. Then it becomes a spiritual thing. And that which is born of the spirit is spirit. That's when I think Christianity really begins to make sense."

(The following segment appears right before the credits)
Rich: "I think that one thing that happens frequently is that we twentieth century American people interpret love when we read it in the Bible, we think of it as being the kind of love that we see in movies and love that we read in dumb novels. The love of God is most expressed in the death of Christ, which was a very violent act on the part of mankind. It was not a pretty sight. But I don't think anything less dramatic could even begin to express the intensity of God's love for us, which is what Brennan talks about in "The Ragamuffin Gospel" - that God loves us with an intense love, that He pursues us. That it's not a "God loves you if you're good." It's not a "God loves you if He's having a good day." It's "God loves you desperately, passionately" It's a hard thing to get a hold of - especially in the twentieth century frame of mind. I think it's time to get past the twentieth century and get into the way things really are."

(The following segment appears right before "Peace")
Rich: "Last spring we went to Bogota, Colombia, and one of the really shocking things we saw in Bogota were the street kids. These are kids that come from the area around Bogota and they have no way of making any kind of a living, and they end up running in kind of herds. Their lives are pretty desperate. At the same time we saw that, we saw about three people at the Compassion organization that had been sponsored children. And we saw that these people were able to read, and these people were able to make a living. These people were able to make a contribution in their own country with their own work. The difference between the lives of those people who were sponsored and the lives of kids who have no sponsorship and who really have no bright horizons in their world is amazing. Seeing that firms up my belief that we can make a difference in someone's life and that their lives can make a difference in our own. Compassion is not a matter so much of our merely giving as it is an opportunity for us to be a part of making God's love visible in places where we may never get to go ourselves."

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