CTI- Servant First Musician Second

"How would you feel if after two weeks of training, you don't play a single note in Guatemala?"

During our training week, my team leader posed this question to us. We have been playing as a team for maybe a week with intense sectional and whole team training. We weren't completely exhausted just yet, but the pressure of putting12 songs together in two weeks was starting to catch up to us. So when she asked this question, many of us were immediately taken back. How would I feel if after two weeks of hardcore training, I don't play a single note? The question that came after that is this: what was the purpose of music for us specifically as CTI?

Music is a vehicle CTI utilizes as a means of bringing the good news of Jesus Christ to people from all over the world. Music is just a tool that we use to bring the greater message of hope and love to people who would otherwise never know. Music is a way of connecting with people and building relationships. So the answer is that music is not why we are going to Guatemala. If we don't play a single note there... then that is okay because that is not the reason why we are there. 

As a musician, this was hard to digest. A musician's worth and value is based on what he or she plays. What would we be then, if we didn't play music? This was an identity question that many of us struggled with. Where did we place our identity? The music we play? The team we were a part of? The instrument that we have? Where was my identity? 

The identity of those who call themselves followers of Christ is in Christ himself. In everything we do and everywhere we go, we are suppose to reflect Christ. Christ did not come with all the glories of a king but rather, he came as a mere man. He left the glories of heaven for the dirt of the world and above all, Christ came to earth as a sacrifice for the world.

Mark 10:45 says, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many."

Likewise, we are servants first and musicians second. We are servants first and everything else second.

I wanted to start off my blog in this mindset because this is the lens that I want to share the rest of my CTI experience. In doing so, I am hoping that my stories will be a way that you as my audience, will see past the physical things that I did and instead see the work that God has been and will continue to be making in the lives of my team and I. I did not travel overseas to play music and rock out with my team. (Although we did that too!) I traveled overseas to share one thing-the Gospel of Christ. 

In His Service, 

Charlie