"A Christmas Gift of Music to Chattanooga" is what First Presbyterian Church is calling their Christmas concert with noted singer/songwriter Michael Card.
"The Promise" a Christmas musical will have an over 40 voice choir and orchestra and will perform at Memorial Auditorium with teacher-singer-song writer Michael Card. Free tickets can be picked up at all Realty Center-GMAC locations for the 6 p.m. Dec. 11 performance.
Dr. Michael Milton, pastor says, "we wanted to get at the real reason for Christmas... and that's Christ coming as a baby, born in poverty, laid in an animal trough but living a perfect life for us. He demonstrated the life that we were intended to live and then made a way for us to have a relationship with God through his sacrificial sacrifice."
Mr. Card's gift of combining sound theology, simple sing-along lyrics, a worshipful attitude, and music is evident listening to "The Promise." Every song is an original piece and not one of them slips into the more sappy trimmings of the season because they are all squarely focused on the Christ Child, Jesus, said officials.
Thematically, this concert celebrates Jesus coming as the fulfillment of long hoped for Biblical prophecy as God's gentle lamb, and as the title track states succinctly,
The Promise was love
The Promise was life
The Promise meant light to the world
Living proof that Yahweh saves
For the name of the Promise is Jesus.
Four of these celebrations take the form of witness testimonies provided by Mary the Mother of God, her husband Joseph, and those rustic shepherds surprised on the hill by a host of dazzling angels. Mary's song, "What Her Heart Remembered," lifts up Jesus as both mundanely human and transcendentally divine, in what has become one of Michael Card's trademark song themes.
Like a good
Mother would
She learned His cries
If He'd awake
With a bellyache
From hunger or fright
But now and then
Sometimes when
The dark would descend
He would weep
A dark so deep
For all her love
She couldn't comprehend...
Can they understand?
That this Baby she's given him (Joseph)
Is theirs for a time
In truth came to give Himself
The Treasure and the Ransom of mankind.
"Joseph's Song" is the same sweet song Michael Card wrote as part of his collection "The Life," which chronicled Jesus' birth, ministry, death, and glorification. Actually, it is just one of the highlights worth repeating among a total of three culled from that earlier project.
The last of the four witness testimonies is "We Will Find Him," which serves both as the Wise Men's travelogue and our response to God's saving grace. "We have found Him! We have seen the light!"
The Promise celebrates the only thing really and truly worth celebrating, with music that is grand, accessible, and aimed at glorifying God. Best of all, Michael Card's music encourages the listener to worship the human baby bearing undiminished deity of his parting message and our proud proclamation:
Immanuel
Our God with us
And if God is with us
Who could stand against us?
Our God is with us
Immanuel!
Michael Card, born April 11, 1957 in Madison, Tenn., is a Contemporary Christian music (CCM) artist who couples folk-style melodies and instrumentation with lyrics that stem from intensive study of the Bible.
Since his debut in 1981, he has sold more than four million albums and has written 19 number one singles. He lives with his wife, Susan, and their four children in Franklin, Tenn.
Mr. Card received Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Religious Studies from Western Kentucky University. His studies in physics and astronomy allowed him to support himself while a student by working for six years at a planetarium. As of 2005, he is working on a Ph.D. in Classical Literature.
Musician Michael Card never intended to be a professional musician. He got his start when his mentor, Dr. William Lane, asked him to write some music to accompany weekly sermons at their church. His friend, musician Randy Scruggs, then asked him to record a demo tape so Mr. Scruggs could get a job as a producer. The record label agreed to hire Mr. Scruggs as long as his first project was to produce an album featuring Mr. Card. Since then Mr. Card has released nineteen original albums and at least six compilation albums.
Each of Mr. Card's albums is structured around a unifying theme. For example, the songs from The Beginning are all based on the Pentateuch. The individual songs have subjects such as Genesis, Leviticus, Abraham, Isaac and Moses.
Despite his success in music, Mr. Card has always maintained that his music career is secondary to his calling as a Bible teacher. He has at times distanced himself from the CCM industry by criticizing the promotion of personalities over musical content and the shifting emphasis away from God in order to sell more albums.
Author Michael Card is the author or co-author of sixteen books. He originally started writing as a way to share the knowledge he accumulated while researching his songs. His studies were so in-depth that he couldn't condense everything he had learned into one short song. The books that resulted from album research bear the same titles as the albums. He then branched out to other subjects not specifically based on his music, such
as the Gospel of John, home schooling, and Christian discipleship and mentoring. As of 2005, he has joined with NavPress to pursue his interest in writing Christian fiction.
In addition to touring and writing, Mr. Card also hosts a weekly radio program. In the Studio with Michael Card is carried by stations in 48 states, Canada, and the Caribbean. The show is an amalgam of talk, musical performances and Bible study.
Discography
First Light (1981)
Legacy (1983)
Known By The Scars (1983)
Scandalon (1985)
The Final Word (1987)
Present Reality (1988)
Sleep Sound in Jesus: Gentle Lullabies (1989)
The Beginning (1989)
The Way of Wisdom (1990)
The Promise: A Celebration of Christ's Birth (1991)
The Word: Recapturing the Imagination (1992)
Come to the Cradle (1993)
Poiema (1996)
Brother to Brother (with John Michael Talbot) (1996)
Close Your Eyes So You Can See (1996)
Unveiled Hope (1997)
Starkindler: A Celtic Conversation Across Time (1998)
Soul Anchor (2000)
Scribbling in the Sand (2002)
A Fragile Stone (2003)
Compilations
The Life (1988) -Contains The Final Word, Scandalon and Known by the Scars in a boxed set
The Early Works (1991)
The Ancient Faith (1993) - Contains The Beginning, The Way of Wisdom and The Word in a boxed set
Joy in the Journey (1994)
The Early Years (1996) - Popular songs from The Life trilogy
Signature Songs (1999) - Popular songs from Legacy and First Light
Books
Sleep Sound in Jesus (1989) (ISBN 0736912193)
Immanuel: Reflections on the Life of Christ (1990) (ISBN 0840774966)
The Promise: A Celebration of Christ's Birth (1991) (ISBN 0917143078)
Come to the Cradle (1993) (ISBN 0917143248)
The Parable of Joy: Reflections on the Wisdom of the Book of John (1995) (ISBN 0785282297)
Close Your Eyes So You Can See: Stories of Children in the Life of Jesus (1996) (ISBN 1565074254)
Joy in the Journey (1996) (ISBN 0793576652)
The Homeschool Journey (with Susan Card) (1997) (ISBN 1565075684)
Unveiled Hope: Eternal Encouragement from the Book of Revelation (with Scotty Smith) (1997) (ISBN 0785272097)
Tell Me Why: Eternal Answers to Life's Timeless Questions (1999) (ISBN 1581340311) Answers to children's questions such as ""Why did God make me?" and "Why do we have to die?"
A Violent Grace (2000) (ISBN 1576736881) - Focuses on the frequently ignored brutality of Jesus's crucifixion.
The Walk: A Moment in Time When Two Lives Intersect (2001) (ISBN 0785277501)
- Chronicles the 20-year relationship between Card and his mentor, Dr. William Lane, until Lane's death.
Scribbling in the Sand: Christ and Creativity (2002) (ISBN 0830823174)
A Fragile Stone: the Emotional Life of Simon Peter (2003) (ISBN 0830823727)
A Sacred Sorrow: Reaching Out to God in The Lost Language of Lament (2005) (ISBN 1576836673) - Reclaiming the ability to cry out to God when we suffer.
A Sacred Sorrow Experience Guide (2005) (ISBN 1576836681) - A 10-week study that helps the reader relate his own painful experiences to those of Biblical personages.
First Presbyterian Church is a historic downtown congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America (a denomination in which Michael Card is ordained as a lay officer). Founded in 1840, the vision of FPCC is to be a ministry of God's grace. The mission of FPCC is to gather, grow and send forth strong disciples of Jesus Christ. Dr. Michael A. Milton is Senior Pastor. The church holds regular services on Sundays at 8:30 and 10:55 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. and Wednesday Family Night Supper, beginning at 5:45 p.m. One may learn more about the faith and life of FPCC by visiting the web site at http://www.1stpresbyterian.com.