Tuesday was a day off for me. After a breakfast reunion in San Francisco with an old friend from Nashville who was visiting the Bay Area, I spent the afternoon at my favorite theological library in the country: GTU Library in Berkeley. I’m already doing research for my third and fourth books (!) and I happily got lost in the stacks, culling books and articles that will help ground the stories I want to tell. Can’t say much more on those projects yet, but more on GTU in the next blog.
On Wednesday night I had a concert event with my buddy Jesse Manibusan at Holy Spirit Church in Fremont. Jesse is a true Catholic evangelist road warrior, bringing the Good News to parishes and communities all over the country and the world. But he rarely gigs at home in the Bay Area, so this was an opportunity for his local friends and large extended family to come and see him in action. They packed the church on a weeknight on the first week of school!
A group of seminarians came from St. Patrick Seminary in Menlo Park and it was great to meet them. I also had a reunion with Amanda, a friend from St. Monica Parish who remembered me from when she was a child. She is now involved in music ministry herself. God is good!
I have been performing with Jesse on and off since the 1990s, when we lived right down the street from each other in Alameda, California. We used to have a liturgy band that traveled to various Catholic high schools a couple of times a month to lead the students in their monthly school Mass. That was fun! We also did various youth ministry events for the Diocese of Oakland, but we really didn’t compose music together until he moved to Texas and I moved to Portland, oddly enough. After OCP released our Love Never Fails album in 2003, it seems like we spent a significant portion of that year sharing songs like “Fly Like a Bird” and “MC God” all over the country.
It has been a delightful pleasure to collaborate with Jesse and watch him in action at events large and small. He has this unique way of engaging audiences across all generations but especially with young people as he calls them into deeper relationship with Jesus Christ through laughter, music and personal witness. Powerful!
At Fremont, Jesse and I did our Fish With Me concert set from when we toured together last year in support of our new album of the same name. For tonight’s show, he invited me to share a bit of my From Mountains High book presentation, and the crowd had a good time singing the songs of Ray Repp and the St. Louis Jesuits. Jesse’s cousin Rich filled out our sound with his skillful percussion.
All in all, our Holy Spirit concert was indeed Spirit-filled. It’s always great to do music ministry with my brother Jesse, and I truly enjoyed meeting his relatives and circle of friends. Afterward, a group of us went out for sushi – of course!
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