Billboard Magazine - Higher Ground
by: by Deborah Evans Price
IN MEMORY: It's never easy to lose a friend, especially one who could always be counted on to make those around him
think and smile. That was Rich Mullins. The Christian music community lost one of its best loved members when he
died in a car accident Sept. 19 in Illinois (Billboard, Oct. 4).
That same weekend, those in Southern gospel circles were mourning the death of Shirley Nelon, wife of Rex Nelon and
mother of Kelly Nelon Thompson of the Nelons. Nelon was the matriarch of one of Southern gospel's best -loved clans, a woman well known for her ready smile and warm personality. Like many people, Billboard's Wade Jessen and I had recently spoken with her at the National Quartet Convention. We were extremely saddened to hear she had passed away. Our condolences go out to her family.
"She was real instrumental to their family ministry," Ed Harper of Harper & Associates says of Nelon. "She kept the home fires burning. I know that not only the family but the entire industry will miss her very much."
Shortly after receiving the news about Nelon, I heard about Mullins. I knew Mullins mostly through his work, which moved me and countless others. "I used to get his albums, and I would open them up and read the lyrics," says Steven Curtis Chapman. "I wouldn't even have to listen to it. I remember making the comment to my wife that just opening it up and reading the lyrics, I got 10 times my money's worth. The way he could create a picture and com- municate so much truth in a creative way just made him one of the greatest songwriters."
Mullins was known not only for his creativity, but also for his contribution to such causes as Compassion International and for his work on behalf of American Indians. Mullins was a man who made a difference, not only with his art but with the way he lived his life.
"I will always remember Rich as being a great humanitarian, someone who was generous in the important things," says Margaret Becker. "He loved giving himself. He was never really one who was impressed with the whole bit of being successful in the music business. He always looked at that as being secondary and dismissible ... I loved that he never accepted anyone's answers. He sought his own answers and sought them under the umbrella of Christ. And
he always came up, I believe, with very interesting conclusions which were challenging."
"He was the real deal," says former Reunion Records president Terry Hemmings. "I'm really not sure I could have continued to be in Christian music at times if I
didn't have Rich to go back to and be reminded that there's a real relationship available that means something beyond
what we kind of paste up there on the wall ... He really wrestled with issues and God, but he understood what
Christlikeness was more than anybody I ever met."
At a memorial service to honor Muffins, Amy Grant performed "Somewhere Down The Road" from her new "Behind The Eyes" album. It's a song that asks the question everyone has been asking -"Why, why, why ?"
I think a fax I received from Steve Taylor might best help people deal with that query: 'Anyone who knew Rich Mullins knew he had a patron saint, Saint Francis of Assisi. When I awoke this morning to the news that a powerful earthquake in Assisi today [Sept. 26] had destroyed parts of the cathedral where St. Francis is buried, killing four people inside, the irony seemed acute in light of Rich's death. From Italy to Illinois, some acts of God can't help but strike those of us still on earth as peculiarly counterproductive.
"But Rich Mullins yielded long ago to the truth that God is too immense to figure out. More than anyone I ever knew,
he reveled in God's mystery, as well as His majesty. And how he must be reveling in it now. You taught us well, Rich. Our
God is an awesome God, indeed."
