A week ago, Congressman Mark Souder spoke for about ten minutes at Anchor. He goes to the Emmanuel Community Church, which is sort of the parent church for Anchor, so there was a connection. A member of Anchor found himself sitting next to the Congressman on an airplane recently, and that led to his appearance at Anchor.

Mark Souder is the real deal. He doesn’t need to don a Christian persona. He’s a genuine, highly committed Christian. I’ve also found him to be remarkably approachable. When I attended Emmanuel, one Sunday I went up to him and asked him a question about something happening in Washington. He didn’t even know me, but immediately opened up with some very frank responses, more frank than I expected from a politician. He was the same way at Anchor two Sundays ago. He stayed around for a long time talking to people, and was amazingly honest about things, regardless of how they reflected on his party, the Republican party. He is extremely refreshing to listen to. And he has your full attention. With some “important” (or self-important) people, they’re half listening to you, but also looking over your shoulder to see who else they’d like to talk to. Not Mark.

And his wife, Diane, is a gem. Turns out they live in the addition across the street from us. Good people,they are.

Their son, Mark, is a very good guitarist. One of my strongest memories from Emmanuel involves him. We were doing the song Blind Man, kind of a stretch for Emmanuel, but it seemed like it would be okay. I was on the piano, Glenn Flint was leading, Nate was on the electric guitar, Wes on acoustic. The song starts out moderately, but then kicks into high gear. And Nate was responsible for changing the gear by switching to a high-distortion setting. I don’t think we’d ever used guitar distortion at Emmanuel until Nate broke the barrier in spades. I thought the song was great fun, and I got an energy rush out of it. But the comment cards were overwhelmingly negative. It didn’t quite go over well.

Oh well. We can get away with anything at Anchor. So when Glenn Flint became music pastor at Anchor, we “redeemed” Blind Man. We did it several times, in fact, and it always went over well. Even with two electric guitars and drums louder than Emmanuel ever played them. And me pounding on the electric keyboard. I think Nate would have enjoyed it.