Instruments of Your Peace -- Kirk and Deby Dearman

A couple who’ve been around as much as these two might know a thing or two, because they’ve seen a thing or two (or, so the insurance commercial says!). Kirk and Deby Dearman spent a lot of time abroad prior to the 1990s trying to spread a message through a musical mission in Europe. And, even after they returned to U.S. soil in 1991 (in the Nashville area), they must have felt a calling that took form in one of their songs “Instruments of Your Peace”, allowing them to continue the mission they’d been conducting since their European days. This song’s purpose may be what took a further evolution into a still larger effort to draw people to a peaceful place. Wanna go there?

The Dearmans have had some varied experiences that have no doubt contributed to their development as worship ministry transmitters. Kirk’s musical adventures began as a five-year old with a mother’s wisdom to channel him with piano lessons, a path that blossomed into songwriting and worldwide touring with a musical group by the time he was 20. Meanwhile, Deby too was living all over the world as part of a military family, before meeting Kirk while in college and finding her artistic voice in speech, drama, and stage song and dance. They lived in Dallas, Texas for a while as Kirk ministered at a church as choir director, but it wasn’t long before this married couple and their two daughters went to Europe for seven years. Together with another couple, they formed Creative Arts Europe, a performing arts group that traveled all over the continent. By the early 1990s, Kirk and Deby moved the family back to Nashville from Brussels, where one could speculate they would slow down. This was where Come to the Quiet came to life, their effort to remind Christ-followers of the veneration God deserves. Therein, they combine the arts with contemplative worship in an Anglican service in the Episcopal church. It’s the focus of their website (see link below), as well as their life of encouragement via a joint ministry with some friends in something known as The Journey to Wholeness in Christ, designed to help emotionally troubled people heal. These two have indeed been all over, perhaps giving them a special taste and a need for peace themselves from what, at times, might look like a hectic jaunt from here to there. You might say they have now been living, as well as singing, as instruments of peace.

Hate, hurt, struggle, darkness, and grief – those are the episodes that seemed to have bothered the consciences of the Dearmans around 1993 when they wrote “Instruments…”. Those are the dark emotions they saw, apparently, and chose to not accept. They offer alternatives like these: God’s love, grace, peace, light, and a shoulder for support. It’s all packed into the two verses and chorus they offer, and it hasn’t stopped when Kirk’s fingers pull away from the keyboard, or when they both drop their microphones. They themselves are the instruments. Deby’s artist strokes, Kirk’s pen, and both’s ongoing advice to others in the arts and among the Christian community are tools too. God’s musical gifts are great, but they don’t stop there. Just ask Kirk and Deby.     

The composers’ website is here:

https://www.cometothequiet.com/about-us

We Bring the Sacrifice of Praise – Kirk and Deby Dearman

The Dearmans, Kirk and Deby, gave birth in their car in 1980, but not in the way you’re probably thinking! It was a song “We Bring the Sacrifice of Praise”, and you can read the entire story here at this link, rather than hear me re-tell it: http://www.cometothequiet.com/sacofpraise.cfm

Like it? Wow, it’s really great to hear how a genuine effort to praise God in such a simple way has travelled around the globe. It also seems from the Dearmans story, and from Deby’s contribution of two new verses to the song in 1990, that their understanding, and now ours too, of what it means to offer a sacrifice to praise to Him has grown. I think Kirk and Deby would echo that, if you read their story. And, check out these verses, and think of ways to sacrifice your praise to Him today:

Psalm 50:23; Psalm 54:6; Hebrews 13:15

Update: See the site here for the story, as of October 2017: http://staugustine.com/living/religion/2016-07-08/story-behind-song-we-bring-sacrifice-praise

Above All Else -- Kirk and Deby Dearman

Kirk and Deby Dearman were missionaries in Brussels, Belgium in 1988, during the time that “Above All Else” was written and published. So, they were seeing the world, perhaps as they’d never seen it before. Placing oneself and family in a vocation with a mission for the Lord…can you imagine another profession with more commitment to the cause of Christ? There’s lots of imagery in the song that conjure up mental pictures of warfare, suggesting it was a difficult period for them, whether physical or otherwise. Here’s what they say was going on, writing in their own words (although in the third person), which they shared with me on March 6, 2010.  

Above All Else came spontaneously - at least the first part! - while Kirk & Deby were living as "musicianairies" in Europe. The dollar had dropped suddenly and they had just lost their main source of support in the same month. So they had to move out of their apartment, stay with friends, and store belongings in the friend's garage. Not long after, the garage flooded in a heavy rainstorm and most of their belongings were damaged. Among those belongings was their electric piano. Then the call came to write for a worship project. The only piano they could get to was an old clunky, out of tune relic. Kirk sat down and began to pray for God's heart in the midst of their own turmoil. Deby started praying and then singing, "You are exalted, Lord, above all else. We place You at the highest place, above all else." Kirk said, "Wait! Sing that again!" She did . . . and the rest of the song was quickly written on the spot. Kirk and Deby then began singing the song in outdoor concerts- most notably in the downtown city square of Brussels, Belgium, the capital of Europe, where they lived, as a declaration of God's sovereign lordship over every city and nation, and over their own lives and circumstances.

I have been a foreign missionary just once, for a week. It was exhausting, at least partially from the lack of sleep I got that week. But, it was also a little scary to know I was seen everywhere I went, because of the reputation of the on-site missionaries, as a visiting ‘ambassador for Christ’. A misstep wasn’t really allowed, at least in my mind. To exalt the Lord ‘above all else’, and ‘so the world will know’ who God is – that’s a pretty BIG responsibility. Can I say that every day where I live? Everywhere I stand, and everywhere I go, as the song has me vocalize? Some might say Europe has become darkened and cold to Christendom in the modern age, in contrast to earlier times. Genuine armor is something I’d be looking for, but the Dearmans’ words indicate they held out the Lord as their standard for protection. God comes through for us, the Dearmans’ song reminds me. Nothing can withstand His light and the saving blood of Jesus. In most battles I can think of (the movie ‘Patton’ is on the tube as I write this), more blood is spilled by the losers (like the soldier in the picture), while the victors try to minimize this. Jesus did the opposite. Jesus’ mighty warrior status prevails precisely because He bleeds for me. Now, how can I fail to place Him, the eternal soldier, above all else ?

Biographic information on Kirk and Deby Dearman and their music ministry can be found at the following site: http://www.cometothequiet.com/aboutkirk.cfm