During my four years at Seattle Pacific University I had the amazing experience of spending every summer traveling around the world with the Continental Singers. This organization was started in the 1970s and sent evangelistic musical groups on concert tours. The summer of 1988, after my freshman year, I flew to LAX to prepare for 3 months traveling across the USA and Great Britain, doing 8 concerts a week with 34 other enthusiastic evangelical Christians. This summer was a life-changing experience for me in many ways - but perhaps most importantly because I met a beautiful, friendly, spiritual young woman named Ann that summer who would become my wife three years later.

The pinnacle of the concert every night was “the invitation”, in which the tour director Bryan talked for a few minutes about how to become a follower of Jesus. For anyone who responded by “praying the sinners prayer” there were certain members of the group that would meet with them after the concert one on one. All of us had received training at the rehearsal camp prior to the tour in taking people through an illustration of salvation called “The Bridge”. I didn’t know at the time, but this was built off of “The 4 Spiritual Laws”, created by Bill Bright and Campus Crusade For Christ. It was a way of explaining the core message of the good news with the goal of them responding by praying the prayer and starting a “personal relationship with Jesus”. It goes like this.

1. God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

2. However, sin entered the world and created a break between God and people since God is holy.

3. Jesus paid the penalty of those sins (everyone’s) by dying on the cross, making it possible for the divide between God and people to be crossed.

4. You must make a conscious choice to repent of your sins and confess Jesus is Lord, to receive forgiveness of your sins and eternal salvation. (Would you like to do this now?)

Over the course of 5 summers with the Continental Singers, the first year as a singer, the next two as a singer/assistant director, and the final 2 as a director of the group, I heard or shared this gospel illustration somewhere around 400 times. It was “gospel truth”. 

I had no idea at that time how recent an invention in the history of Christianity this gospel presentation was. Although pieces of it can be found in revivalist preaching going back to the 1700s, the version I learned and shared had been created in the 1960s. It was a very recent development in a religion that had existed for nearly 2000 years. 

Graduating from SPU in 1991, engaged to Ann, I went on a summer tour through French speaking Europe while she stayed in the Seattle area and worked. When I returned in August I found a job as a courier and we prepared for our wedding at the beginning of 1992.  We traveled as director and singer/director’s wife on one more tour with the French Continentals, and then moved that fall to a small town in Oregon where I joined the staff of a Christian Church. This was a firmly evangelical church where I served as the worship pastor, leading all the music programs and worship services.

I had to adjust my methods from how things worked on the Continentals with cream of the crop vocalists and musicians to the reality of “work with who shows up” choir members and musicians. But the evangelical framework of how to use the Bible, explain salvation, and tenets of faith that I brought with me fit right into the culture there. 

These were wonderful years of ministry, learning under the mentorship of kind, loving leaders and developing friendships that have stood the test of time. Yes, I still had some wonderings about some things from my education and time at SPU, but I could easily set those aside as I busied myself creating weekly worship services and musical productions to tell the gospel story and help people make decisions to follow Christ.