Think Out Of The Box With BridgeHeart Entertainment...

Welcome to BridgeHeart...

Written by Administrator Tuesday, 02 February 2010 06:52

Welcome to BridgeHeart...

I am so grateful for good friends, both old and new, and especially now that God has brought our lives together.  As we enter into the first half of 2010, never has there been such a pivotal point in history to experience!  Fast-paced lives in the family, shake-downs on the job and a political arena that seems out of control, all signify that human-kind is desperately in need of purpose and direction now more than ever.  

Who holds the answer to purpose and direction?  Who can make sense out of a chaotic world?  Well, we know it is Jesus.  But isn't it our responsibility to mentor and help people see this truth - not only for their personal lives, but for their heart's desires and dreams?

For every dream that God gives a man or woman, there comes a day and an hour when the dream is birthed into the realm of tangible reality.  Nineteen ninety-eight (1998) is that moment for the vision that God gave to me.  

When I was twelve years of age, I was awakened one night with a strong sense of the presence of the Lord in my room.  For nearly an hour, I felt as if the Lord were speaking to me.  The vision He poured into my young heart during that time has both inspired and empowered me these many years.  Although there was much my mind did not understand, I never doubted the promises the Lord gave me that night.  My doubts were only about me; would I or could I obey Him.  

For years I tried to implement the vision, using the techniques available to me in the music business. Neither the techniques nor my own level of commitment to Christ was sufficient.  I learned the reality that we all must discover: we cannot mingle our peculiar message with even the best of the world's system. What we are as a people, and what we say in our message must stand apart from what the world is saying.  We have to be different.  A different people.  A different message.   A different product.  Stunningly different!

Have you noticed that the world never compromises its message?  Yet, in order to gain their attention and approval we often abandon our methods in preference to accommodating their tastes. 

As you allow me to explain the vision that I am walking out with the Lord, please remember one very important thing...when we wish to plant something of eternal value, we have to channel our resources into something immortal.  The only institution on the planet that is immortal and eternal is the Church, Christ's own Body.  To help those who are called to build up the Church is to do your own part in building that which is eternal.  In the background information and the plan to follow, I will explain to you how BridgeHeart is about equipping the Church to reach its potential of artistic worship and praise, bridging with excellence the heart of man to the heart of God.

Over thirty years ago I began my ministry in Christian music as a church choir director/minister of music.  God blessed the various choir programs and they grew to be great in number.  In 1975, I had a wonderful invitation for employment with Word Records as an assistant to Kurt Kaiser.  After having become Vice President of A&R and Music Publishing at Word Inc., I had the opportunity to open up an entirely new division for CBS Records.  I happily accepted this challenge and thusly, CBS/Priority Records came into being.  I was stepping in taller cotton that I could ever have imagined possible.  Surely working for the largest record company in the world would grant me the perfect platform from which to launch the vision I had received as a boy of twelve.

However, it was not to be!  My adventurous rise to the top was a rather short-lived thing.  In spite of the fact that Priority Records was doing well and making wonderful strides into the general market arena, the powers-that-be at CBS aborted Priority Records.  My demise was humiliating as well as devastating.  I grieved for my own losses as well as the losses of those who had joined the company as artists, producers, writers and staff.  In a few short years, I lost everything for which I had worked years.  The sense of failure seemed to smother not only the dreamer in me, but the man in me as well.  I found myself stripped naked and alone...and prostrate before God, (thankfully) having discovered that no man can ever use the methods of the world to do the plan of God.  One cannot serve two masters, nor can he survive for long with a divided heart.  In time, all divided houses do fall.

However, I found that it was God's mercy that allowed such devastation.  Laughingly, I have told friends that someday I will write a book called "How Losing My Shirt Saved My Neck".  For it was in losing all that I discovered that a few steps taken in the wrong direction would inevitably lead you to the wrong destination.  The road back from the wrong destination to God's perfect will often takes one right into (and ultimately through) the desert. 

It is in the desert that God offers us as much time as we need to allow Him to rebuild our faulty foundations so that they rest solely on His precepts.  Isaiah 54 as well as Isaiah 61 presents a great picture of this.  Read it.  It will bless you.  It was in this desert that I began to remember who I was born to be, and what I was born to do. 

As I submitted to Jesus, He began to shatter the false image of what I had become.  (I call this the "Ishmael Image").  The true imprimatur of the Holy Spirit upon my soul began to emerge.  I would like to stop right here and encourage those of you who are at this moment in a similar crucible of God to stand strong.  For it is His love that allows the fires of adversity to destroy all that is in our lives that is not of His plan and purpose. That which mimics the true work of God, yet is not, must be allowed to burn.  Embrace the refiner's fire for in it you will discover your destiny.  As we let God move us and move in us, we soon find that we are in "The Move of God". 

However, I am no longer that Nashville Music businessman.  God allowed my dreams to die.  My circumstances to be traumatically reversed and my own soul to be shaken to its depths. & amp; nbsp;I have eaten the bread of brokenness and have washed it down with my own tears.  And may God be praised that it was so with me.  The severity of the crushing revealed itself to be the very passion of love that Jesus had for me.  

The mercy of God is such that often with great reversals of our plans we are blessed to catch a glimpse of something far more magnificent...His Plan.  It took me quite some time to allow the anger, hurt and loss to subside.  But, in time, I could honestly and gratefully bow my knees to God's Sovereignty.  It was then that "BridgeHeart" was born within me. 

BridgeHeart Ministries is the direct result in my life of the process I have just described to you.  I want to tell you about what BridgeHeart is; but it is first necessary to lay a foundation of understanding by giving you a brief historical sketch of music within the Church.  

A BRIEF HISTORY

In ancient times, it all happened in the Mosaic Tabernacle, followed by the Great Temple of Jerusalem then later the Church.  Traditionally these three institutions were the seat of the highest artistic praises that man offered to God.

The singers, those who worshipped with dance and with instruments and those who composed were given a place within the functioning structure of the house of God.  Their needs for training, for provision and for service were met within the structure. From the Levitical priesthood of Moses on through to the epic worship pageants of The Temple of David and Solomon; from the first century Christian, singing songs, hymns and spiritual songs all the way to the brilliantly anointed composers of the middle ages...from the simple desert tabernacle to the incomparable stone cathedrals of Bach and Handel's era, the artists of the Lord benefited directly from the strong association with the Church.  The Church provided Roots, Accountability, and Nurture.  Yet in the years following the Renaissance we saw that the artistic ministers were separated out from the pulpit ministries.  While being gradually abandoned by the Church, they went out into 'the world' as they became separated from their primary place of purpose. A new kind of artist was born... The Entertainer.  The "Most Holy Calling" was often laid aside because the artist had by economic necessity to be assimilated into the secular work force.

Fast-forward several centuries if you will, and look at the results of those changes.  The current gospel music industry is made up of a very few artists that have somehow "made it".  For every artist whose name is found in the charts, there are literally thousands of equally gifted persons that have not found the highway that would take them from being a person of potential to becoming one whose gifts have been brought to their full state of maturity and usability.  The need demands that the truly gifted artist within the Church be given an opportunity to become fully functional and productive at the level most suitable for their gifts.  

THE PLAN

I believe that God has given me a plan in order to facilitate this.  It is BridgeHeart Ministries.  I believe that BridgeHeart is to be a gift not only to the Artist but also to the Church.  I believe in days ahead it will be a major factor in helping the gifted among us to "rebuild the ancient ruins...raise up former devastations...and repair the ruined cities, the desolation of many generations".  (Isaiah 61:4)  I believe that it is a plan to institute a contemporary application to the structure we see set forth in the ancient Levitical priesthood.  The actual and exact restoration of the Levitical Priesthood as it functioned in the days of King David is not our primary aim.  Our mandate is the restoration of the centrality of worship of praise to our spiritual experience and subsequently, the encouraging of artists to lead us into those experiences.  Sometimes this is also called "The restoration of the Tabernacle of David."

Now the question is:  What is your part in this move of God?  Has He called you to be one who stands in the gap; to be a restorer of the breach; to be one who builds the walls; to be one who takes his or her place beside us as we go forward to obey and implement this plan?

Of course we need and desire your financial help.  Of course we need and desire your encouragement.  However, we also believe that God will place within you a desire to pray for BridgeHeart as it comes into full operation.  The vision we have is not that BridgeHeart seeks to adjust the current methods of how an artist functions within his world or his church, but to revolutionize what exists until it becomes a tool by which the best artistic wonders that God has poured into us all may be given back to Him in a form of fully realized potential.  In this, the Church will be vastly enriched; we as artists will be transformed and Christ shall have what is rightly His own.

But, no true move of God is sustained or energized without God's people accepting their responsibility of prayer and then obeying the directives that they discover through listening to God's heart.  Historically any true advancement of the Church has happened because she was in the humble posture of kneeling.  This vision of BridgeHeart is way too large for one man to accomplish.  It will take God breathing urgency into an army of prayer warriors until we see played out in tangible form what is the will of God for BridgeHeart on earth as it already is in Heaven.

The current Gospel Music Industry is made up of these very few that have somehow "made it".  For every artist whose name is found on the charts, there are literally thousands of equally gifted ones that have not found the highway that would take them from being a person of potential to becoming one whose gifts have been brought to their full state of maturity and usability.

BridgeHeart Ministries defines its mission as being a group of seasoned professionals who are building a superhighway for this latter group of individuals.  We at BridgeHeart have had the opportunity to work within the existing music and book publishing industries.  We understand those systems.  We also have worked within the church structures all of our lives.  Simply stated, we know both worlds.  

The obviously visible need is not so much that every church singer, composer, writer, etc., be given the key to the corporate headquarters of Word, Sparrow, Nelson, StarSong or the other existing companies, for that is not always what is desired or appropriate.  The need, however, demands that every truly gifted artist within the Church be given an opportunity to become fully functional and productive at the level most suitable for their gifts...whether that is local, regional or national.  

In order to accomplish this BridgeHeart has developed a comprehensive plan.  The first step of this plan is a series of nationwide seminars and workshops covering every aspect of the "How To's".  These seminars and workshops will have a full range of accompanying educational materials available to the registrant.  Upon completing the seminar, a registrant could easily walk out with enough knowledge and materials to build their own successful careers and ministries.

BridgeHeart, although confident in the effectiveness and success of our seminars, does not plan to stop there.

We have seen artists zoom through the heavens like a bright comet only to flame out and fall to the ground, broken and burned. More often than not, upon examining the causes one sees a lack of accountability and a lack of continual spiritual nurture.  In short, the artist left untethered to a warm, nurturing church body to whom he or she is accountable, is often the artist that makes the tabloids later on down the road.  Accountability is urgent...Nurture is essential...Roots are crucial.

BridgeHeart has a simple "care system" to institute in participating churches that will do much to prevent these losses, while greatly increasing the spiritual, financial and emotional well being of the artists.  

THE POOL OF BLESSING

There are several aspects of BridgeHeart that distinguishes it from the existing record and publishing companies.  Perhaps the most significant difference is that we have been called to collaborate directly with the artist and the church.  Just as the Bible says that a "triple bound cord is not easily broken" we believe that the braiding together of the efforts of these three entities most surely safeguards and promotes the growth and well being of those who are called to spread the gospel through the arts.

Initially, we encourage the Church's participation in the costs of launching the artist.  The Church has long been accustomed to supporting the missionary in the foreign field.  However, the idea of launching a warrior of God out into the realm of worship, praise, and exaltation of Christ through the arts is a privilege of the Church that somehow has been laid aside.  Nevertheless, as the Church seeds into the artist, BridgeHeart then seeds back into the Church ten percent (10%) of all product sales from that artist. We suggest that this Stewardship tithe of (10%) be put into a pool from which other artist within that specific Church could have their ministries launched.

A perpetual circle of blessing and provision would grow from that pool.  Just as God has promised us a ten fold return for that which we give into His hand, I think we should brace ourselves for the avalanche of blessings He returns and gives to the Church for the artists they have sent out in His Name.  Blessings of finances to be sure...But, more importantly, for every communicator we send out should we not expect that He would raise up at least ten (10) more in our midst?

Think of it...Every time a piece of Music, a C.D., or video is sold through our distribution channels, the Church is given 10% of the sale.  This can very quickly grow into a great source of provision for what God desires to do for His Church and His people.  The strength of this plan is that all parties involved end up mightily blessing each other as they serve God.

As you ponder and pray about your involvement in BridgeHeart Ministries you may also think of pastors, music directors, artists or other friends who might be very interested in hearing about what God is doing in our midst.  Please feel free to email their names and addresses to BridgeHeart.com.  

In closing, allow me to repeat a thought I gave you earlier.  If we wish to plant something of eternal value, we have to channel our resources into something immortal.  The only institution on the planet that is immortal and eternal is the Church, Christ's own Body.  To help those who are called to build up the Church is to do your own part in building that, which is eternal.  

Remember...there is no "Music Business Triumphant"... there is only the "Church Triumphant".

Sincerely,

Buddy Huey                                                                                                                                                                         President/Founder                                                                                                                                                                 BridgeHeart Ministries  

BridgeHeart Entertainment is not merely a company...It is a type of revolutionary restoration.  

For centuries, it was the Tabernacle, the Temple and later the Church....(to be continued)