Playing with Philip Yancey

I haven’t reported yet on the evening my kids and I spent with Philip Yancey.  This was an event for Zondervan sales reps about Yancey’s forthcoming book, Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference.  My kids and I were asked to supply music for the event.  Yancey talked a bit about the process he went through writing his book and led the people, about 40 or 50 total, in an exercise of writing in a journal, of leading them in prayer and of meditation.  We supplied the music in the background for these things.  We played about 40 minutes of music total, about ten of which was a solo guitar improvisation while Yancey led in prayer.  

Yancey’s book sounds like another winner.  He seems to hit some of the big questions about prayer head-on.  His talk was fascinating and I enjoyed listening to him.  I especially enjoyed playing music for the group.  We did mostly quiet meditative kinds of music which was a lot of fun – you could really feel that the people were with us while we played.  Bryan has gotten a lot better on guitar then he was before he left for college and Lynnae has never sung better than she did that night.  Meredith knocked their socks off when she sang “Who Am I / Grace Falls Down” (even though I played it a step higher than I was supposed to.)  It was a great night.