We want to give them the experience of going to a Broadway play and getting the Gospel message in the comfort of their own home… Mindset is another word for “worldview.” This is a son concerned for his mother’s and father’s salvation. If we could do anything right in this world, let’s get ready for the next one! So we create theatre in drama, music, and sound. They come to the site and it is like coming to The Imperial Theater on Broadway. They are handed the Playbill and are treated to a logo. But then we go a step further—it’s interactive, it’s all about Him and you! How do we create a quintessential theatrical, epic story out of a telephone conversation?   

The words and delivery is the answer. The sounds and the songs create the mindset. The message creates an aroma that smells like great coffee being brewed, a black tie usher seats them, and the curtain rises. I go back a few months ago to my return to Broadway and Les Miserables and how the music hung in my mind. My teenaged daughter and I walked over 50 New York City blocks shortly after attending Brooklyn Tabernacle’s morning service. 

The plan was to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge, and Melanie asked if we could see Ground Zero. On the way, we saw throngs heading through the doors to St. Paul’s, one of the oldest churches in New York. The church had been a triage through the Revolution, a place of prayer through the Civil War, The Great Depression, and was saved by falling debris from a Sycamore Tree planted in its graveyard on 9-11-01. It was a triage for the rescue workers the months after the terrorist attack, and photos and the posters with pictures of the victims lined the church walls in between the family pews of George Washington and that of New York’s first Governor Clinton. The story of the Sycamore Tree that saved the church building on that day and a sculpture of the tree's trunk are in the courtyard.

Melanie and I didn’t say a word as we walked slowly down the stairs and across the street where the Twin Towers stood. She asked me if we had time to walk up to the theatre, and we did. We walked through my old stomping grounds of Wall Street, Greenwich Village, and So Ho. We dodged the street merchants and others as we walked across China Town. We continued up Broadway and past Penn Station, and then came to Times Square, which happily didn’t look like the Times Square I remember. It is squeaky clean now! When we arrived at The Imperial Theatre, we handed in our tickets and a woman wearing a black bow tie and red vest showed us to our seats. The curtain rose with the Les Miz logo at the center, and the play began.

Phillip Yancey writes in his book “What’s so Amazing About Grace” about Victor Hugo’s classic story of Jean Valjean, a French prisoner who is transformed by grace.

“Hugo’s novel stands as a two edged parable of forgiveness. A detective named Javert, who knows no law but justice, stalks Valjean mercilessly over the next two decades. As Valjean saves  Javert’s life—the prey showing grace to the pursuer—the detective senses his black and white world beginning to crumble. Unable to cope  with a grace that goes against all instinct, and finding himself no corresponding forgiveness, Javert jumps off a bridge into the Seine River.”

The story that we watched in music and lyric made me think about our day. We heard the Brooklyn Tabernacle’s Pastor talk about waiting for The Holy Spirit to move and for God to show up in a big way. We walked across a bridge that has seen triumph and tragedy, and prayed for the victims and the rescuers of our nation’s worst attack on our shores. My own past, present, and future were snapshots running through my brain as we traveled uptown. It was like a Mass of Forgiveness that I asked for and whom I needed to forgive as we entered the theatre. I was embarrassed at the tears that fell from my face, only to look away and see everyone in the audience weeping. It was on this trip that I was inspired to write “Same Time, Same Number.” I realized that it is God who holds the greatest stories of grace and forgiveness. Showing forgiveness is more for the giver than the receiver. The receiver, at times, refuses the gift, like Javert, who would rather die than to receive the gift of Grace.