Sojourners In Michigan: A Literal "Story From The Road" by Bobby Gilles

I write this from a hotel room in Grand Rapids, while Michael Morgan watches TV in bed and Jamie Barnes shuffles off to the bathroom for a shower.  It’s 7:46 a.m. — less than seven hours after we arrived in Grand Rapids for Worship Symposium 2009, hosted by the Calvin Institute for Christian Worship.  Our traveling companions, Mike Cosper and Eddy Morris, are in a room down the hall.

We picked up one more travel buddy before driving out of Louisville yesterday afternoon: Carl “Chip” Stam, professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and director of Southern’s own worship institute.  He’d intended to fly out here but flights were grounded in Louisville due to winter storms.

So how did we make it from Louisville to the Great North in such weather?  The grace of God and the formidable driving prowess of Eddy.  We know that God makes no mistakes.  Eddy only made two:

1. After filling the minivan with gas, he forgot to take the pump out of the tank.  He almost drove off.  Fortunately some eagle-eyed member of our group (I think Mike) alerted him.

2. At a McDonalds drive thru, after we’d placed our order, this exchange occured:

Cashier: Will that be all?

Eddy: No thanks.

Awkward silence ensued, as the cashier no doubt waited for Eddy to continue an order that was, in fact, finished. Eventually, we got the food.

Other points of note from the trip:

1. Professor Stam received a call on his cell from the  hymnwriter Keith Getty (“In Christ Alone,” “O Church Arise,”).  Not sure what all transpired on the call, but at one point Stam said, “You’d make a horrible Elton John, Keith.”

2. Mike Cosper will not do one simple thing for you if you preface your request with “Would you be a doll and _____”.  At least not if you’re a dude.

I mentioned some of the above stories briefly on Twitter (twitter.com/bobbygilles).  I’ll do similar updates throughout the weekend.  For some reason, the Calvin people have asked us Twitterers to end our Tweets by typing #wsymp09.  This will somehow “link up” all the Twittermaniacs at the symposium.  The unfortunate thing for my Facebook friends is that they’re not used to seeing such strange type on Facebook updates.  But my Twitter and Facebook are synced up, so … so there.

I’ll also be live-blogging some of the worship seminars over at sojournmusic.com.  Right now, Jamie is out of the bathroom, and is singing a wakeup song to Michael, who is now getting out of bed.  Mike and Eddy have already called, saying they’re headed to the breakfast room.  This means that I now conclude this blog post.  Food awaits.