Wisdom From Rich Mullins

I just finished reading a “devotional biography” of Rich Mullins, a popular Christian music artist who died suddenly of a heart attack in 1997. The book combines quotes from Rich as well as others’ stories about him. I was interested in the book because just before he died, Mullins was considering converting to Catholicism. He was inspired by the work of St. Francis and even started his own semi-monastic order called “The Kid Brothers of St. Frank.” At the height of fame, he gave up touring, gave himself a $24,000 annual salary, donated the rest of his money to charity, and moved to a Native American reservation to teach music to kids. The book gave me a lot to think about, so I’m copying a few choice selections for you below.

Quotes from Rich Mullins:

I hear people say, “Why do you want to go to church? They are all just hypocrites.” I never understood why going to church made you a hypocrite because nobody goes to church because they’re perfect. If you’ve got it all together, you don’t need to go. You can go jogging with all the other perfect people on Sunday morning.

And this is what liturgy offers that all the razzamatazz of our modern worship can’t touch. You don’t go home from church going, “Oh, I am just moved to tears.” You go home from church going, “Wow, I just took communion, and you know what? If Augustine were alive today he would have had it with me and maybe he is and maybe he did.”

Whatever church you are in you should just stay there. They are all equally messed up.

I am a Christian, not because someone explained the nuts and bolts of Christianity to me, but because there were people willing to be the nuts and bolts.

God did not give Joseph any special information about how to get from being the son of a nomad in Palestine to being Pharoah’s right hand man in Egypt. What he did give Joseph was eleven jealous brothers, the attention of a loose and vengeful woman, the ability to do the service of interpreting dreams and managing people’s affairs, and the grace to do that faithfully wherever he was.

Many people believe that if you give e tithe to the church, then God will make you rich. Why? If you tithe, you get rid of ten percent of the root of all evil! You should be giving ninety percent because God can handle money better than we can.

[Speaking of legalism] I think it would be really easy to say, “I think what would really please God is if I don’t dance, I don’t chew, and I don’t go with girls who do.” It would be easy to say, “Oh gee I think what will really please God is if I become and evangelist and convert a thousand people.” It’s much more difficult I think for me to become who I am and who He created me to be.

Growing up protestant, I always thought of a monastery as a place where cowards went, people who can’t deal with the world. When you really begin to research some of this stuff, you find that these are some of the bravest people. Anyone who decides to face themselves head-on is a very brave person.

[To a group of Christian writers] Stop thinking of what you’re doing as a ministry. Start realizing that your ministry is how much of a tip you leave when you eat in a restaurant; when you leave a hotel room whether you leave it messed up or not; whether you flush your toilet or not. Your ministry is the way you love people. You love people when you call your wife and say, “I’m going to be late for dinner,” instead of letting her burn the meal. You love people when maybe you cook a meal for your wife when you know she’s really tired. If you are a Christian, ministry is just an accident of being alive. I don’t know that you can divide up your life and say, “This is my ministry,” and “This is my other thing,” because the fruits of Christianity affect everybody around us.

Stories about Rich:

One of the most memorable things was Rich’s dedication to spending time with Jesus. One year his Lenten exercise was to stay up one hour after he wanted to go to bed so that he could spend time with Jesus. The disciples, he said, couldn’t stay awake with Jesus when he was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. Rich didn’t do it to be heroic; he just wanted to do something Jesus asked of his friends.

When Rich lived with our family, each morning on his way to school he took a cup of coffee with him. After a month or so, I noticed that there were no mugs in our cupboard. When Rich got home that night, I said that we were missing our mugs. He said, “Oh I think I have some in my truck.” We found at least 20 mugs sitting in the truck. Some were broken, and some were not even ours. For Rich, material possessions were things to be used, not possessed.

[From Rich’s accountant] He said he wanted to live at the average working man’s wage, which at the time was about $24,000 per year. Obviously, his songs were on the radio, and his albums were selling well, so he actually made several times more than that. He told me he did not want to know how much he made because it would make it harder to give away.