I have a bit of a
different perspective on Mylon and Broken Heart.
I was one of the youth ministers at Mount
Paran Church of God in Atlanta when Mylon made Jesus
his Lord back in 1980.
I was also the staff member responsible for
the Family Life Center there.
So when Dr. Walker gave Mylon a job as a
janitor at the Family Life Center so he could hang
out there during the day instead of hanging with
some of his old crowd I was actually his boss.
I know that Mylon loves to tell the story
about his time as a janitor, but if the truth were
told he wasn’t a very good janitor…..lol.
It was there that Mylon met Dean Harrington, who had
been my roommate for a number of years, and who was
playing with The Gathering Ground Band for our youth
meetings there.
Mylon started jamming with those guys, and
they eventually became Mylon’s first Christian rock
band.
There was Dean, Mike Milsaps, Kim Klaudt, Don
Woods, and Mike Adams.
Back then they were known as Air Born and
they played every Monday night in the gym.
Clay Burdette and I were actually the ones
who hung all of the big parachutes in the gym to cut
down on the reverberation of Mylon’s music.
I remember Mylon’s first live in the gym
after he left secular rock and roll.
The place was packed with a lot of people
from the Atlanta music scene who wanted to see what
Mylon was doing.
For that first concert Mylon and all of the
band members came out in these really spacey
astronaut outfits.
When they started playing every Monday at the
gym, honing their act before they hit the big time,
I got to do the “Countdown to Blastoff” before every
concert, and I can even say that I was a member of
Mylon’s first Christian rock band.
There was a song they did…..”Gonna be there,
gonna meet Him in the air and be Air Born!”……that
had an air raid siren solo in the middle of it.
For 15 seconds I jumped up on stage and
cranked up the air raid siren!
I remember when Mylon was ready to release Brand New
Start and start to tour again.
He ran into a problem because the name Air
Born was licensed to a competitor at the time to UPS
and FedEx, and it would cost too much to buy them
out for the name.
We used to have a Bible study with Mylon and
the band and the youth staff at Mount Paran each
week.
About that time Mylon came in excited about
something new in the Word he had found that he
thought was just “killer”.
It was the verse where it says that God will
not despise a broken and humble heart.
I believe that was the seed that God planted
in Mylon’s heart that grew into the ministry of
Broken Heart.
During those first few years as Mylon’s mind and
body were being renewed from the years of drugs and
the rock and roll lifestyle he had lived he was
still on what we used to call MST, or Mylon Standard
Time.
He was used to staying up all night and
sleeping most of the day.
During that time I would sometimes drive to
Mylon’s house around midnight because I knew he
would be up and might want to have someone to hang
out with.
I remember one night we were just hanging out
and Mylon went into a lot of detail telling me about
his life growing up, how he got into rock and roll,
and what those years had been like.
I had known bits and pieces of his testimony,
but this time I got the whole picture.
What surprised me was how much I related to
the feelings and struggles he was sharing with me,
even though my life had been nothing like his on the
surface.
I left Mylon’s house about 3 in the morning and was
driving home on the interstate thinking about
everything he had shared with me…..what it had been
like for him all those years.
Out of nowhere a thought came to me……and then
another one.
They were thoughts about what he had just
shared with me, and I knew I had to write them down
and share them with him.
I knew that if I didn’t write them down right
then I might not remember them, so I pulled off on
the side of the interstate, found a pen and an old
Wendy’s paper bag (Don’t ask me why it was still in
the car!), and wrote the two thoughts down that
seemed to capture what Mylon had felt all those
years.
“My
mind has been a battlefield where many wars were
fought.
My soul has been a marketplace where others
sold and bought.”
When I got home the rest of the two verses
just flowed out.
They were literally written as fast as I
could write…..they were just there.
The next time I saw Mylon I gave him the two
verses.
I didn’t think of them as a song.
They were just a poem about Mylon and what
the Lord had done in his life.
You can imagine my surprise a few week later
when Mylon told me I was now a
songwriter and he was recording my song on the
“More” album.
So, I was there at the beginning and have followed
Mylon’s life ever since.
I even had Mylon’s daughter, Summer, in my
middle school discipleship group – The White Horse
Riders.
Through it all I can say that Mylon is
without a doubt one of the most uniquely called
servants of God that I have ever known or seen.
It has been truly awesome to watch God’s good
and perfect plan for his life unfold, first through
his rock and roll ministry and then through his
ministry as an anointed minister of the Word of God.
I had the opportunity to see and hear Mylon
for the first time in 7 years last week at a church
north of Atlanta, and he just continues to grow in
the Lord.
I thought his rock and roll ministry was
powerful, but those were just lyrics that Mylon
wrote about what God had done and was doing in his
life back then.
Now
I was hearing Mylon talking about the very words of
God Himself and how alive they were today, and his
message was more powerful than the most rocking song
that Mylon and Broken Heart ever played.
His stage is bigger now.
God has continued to call Mylon to the
special plans that He began in him back in 1980, and
the plans just keep getting bigger.
I marveled at the ministry of Broken Heart in
the 80s and early 90s.
I am in awe of Mylon’s ministry of the Word
of God now.
I used to say, “Rock on, Mylon!”
Now I have to say, “Preach it, Brother!”
Your brother and friend…..forever…..in Christ!
Bill Morris
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