Next up is the mission of prodigal band bassist Keith, who, unlike drummer Tom, as well as guitarist Jack and, to a lesser extent, singer Erik, never experienced a day of poverty in his life. Not only did he grow up in a solidly middle-class family, but his kin folks were well known to be heavily involved in the music field. His grandfather was an orchestra conductor, classical music composer, and orchestra bassist and viola musician as well. His father played in a somewhat successful early rock band on electric bass. Both taught Keith on acoustic and electric bass at an early age; he was a child prodigy on bass, and bass was his thing, though he also did backing vocals.
But his other passion was being a local gang member who would also be a leader of sorts. That was why Keith was given the mission of God that he was given, aided by the fact that he was part-Afro on his mother’s side. After all, many street gangs then and now have black members. From Chapter Ten of The Prophesied Band (© 1998 Deborah Lagarde) is the mission given by one of God’s angels, the Tooters, during the final singing note at the local music festival in 2000:
Keith only stood in wonder and listened as Tooter Two spoke to him.
“As always, Keith Mullock, you will listen to and do what your leader Jack says. He will instruct you in His Word. And this is what you will do with it, for you are a true son of the working-classes and gang youth brother. You will use His Inspired Word to bring the blue-collar youth and the youth of the streets into His fold so that the discouraged, the disaffected, and the gang youth of violence will turn their energies into serving their Creator and His Son before it’s too late. And in this way, worker’s son of The Code, you can fulfill your promise to live by it.”
In Chapter Twelve of The Prodigal Band (© 2018 Deborah Lagarde) is a precursor to carrying out his mission; after a series of local gang wars between rival street gangs, the city council of (Keith’s hometown) Walltown, decided to have the bassist preside over a gang leader meeting to end the wars and prevent future gang wars. He was in Walltown at the time on another mission, besides. In his ’revelation’ to band manager Joe Phillips and the rest of the band, who also had revealed why they accepted Christ as Lord and Savior, this is what he told them regarding that city council meeting with various gang leaders, below:
(After the gangs settled down), the city council got wind of it and met and decided they’d get me to organize a meeting of all the gangs involved in the gang wars. Because, after all, even Rowsers are Sound Unltd fans, right? Even they’d listen to the ‘great and glorious’ Keith Mullock! So that’s what happened. I got all the leaders together, told ‘em about how Jack and the rest of us handled everything, when we forayed and when we didn’t and why. There had to be a very good reason to get into a gang fight. There had to be rules. You know, the ‘gang version of the Code’ and all that.”
Drink. “So then there we all were at a conference room at City Hall and some Rowser captain says, ‘You’re the best preacher I ever heard.’ and I said, ‘Preacher? I’m no preacher!’ and then some Rowmen captain says, ‘You kinda sound like Jesus Christ at the Sermon on the Mount’ and I said, ‘Whoa, man! I sound like Jesus Christ? Well, I hope I get the same results, without the crucifixion of course!’ and they all laughed.
An example of Keith’s mission is in Chapter Seventeen of The Prodigal Band where he meets with other ‘ministry youth’ regarding setting up a youth ministry for various youth aid projects based on a previous mission regarding homeless youth in New York City; the meeting took place in a warehouse room owned by former band manager and adaptive father of guitarist Jack and drummer Tom, Billy Prestin, below:
“So what happened was,” Mullock told thirty or so youths, mostly sixteen-to-nineteen-year-olds, sitting in chairs or on crates in the warehouse, “that New York youth minister, Clay, and his buddy, Arnold, set me up to talk to about five hundred homeless and street youths in some hall there in New York City a couple of weeks later when our tour ended. And I was telling these kids what happened and why. You know the drill. And I told these kids that they really had to want to believe. They couldn’t just ‘okay, well believing in Jesus is cool, so I’ll believe,’ because these kids had it rough, eh? So they’ll believe for a bit and then when the next rough times comes they’ll renege on it. ‘Cos for some, when things go right they’ll accept Christ since they think, ‘great, my troubles are over,’ and then the next crisis comes so they go back to their old ways. That is why if you gonna tell someone about Christ and quote the Bible and all, you must let them know that they really have to want to believe and make sure they understand that they cannot go back on this, good or bad. You have to convince them that evil causes them bad times, eh, and that by accepting Christ they now have to tool to resist and overcome evil. ‘Cos evil rules this world, right?”
“So what you’re saying,” a ‘ministry’ youth tried to sum up, “is that only if a kid truly accepts Jesus Christ—and for real, not just for the hell of it—can the kid, even if bad times come again, even if he or she makes a dumb decision, only if he or she truly accepts Christ can he or she deal with evil in a way that they will be able to overcome it.”
“Right, but then we have to go a step further. Because we don’t want to make it easy for evil to strike again, right? And along with accepting Christ, these kids have to see that we will help them out in the world so that they can achieve blessings, if you know what mean. We can’t just preach. We also have to do stuff to help them. You know what it says in the Epistle of James—you show me your faith, and I’ll show you my works. I’m paraphrasing, but that’s basically what it says. You have to provide both. The words and the works have to go together. You can’t have one without the other.”
For instance, setting up housing for homeless kids where they must also learn skills to keep up their housing and provide for themselves. And other projects.
The final ‘mission of God’ post featuring keyboard-synthist Bryan will be posted in two parts, A and B, since he was given two separate missions by the Tooters at the same time the rest of the band were given theirs. These two posts will occur sometime in November.
Use the menu above to read snippet posts of the novels, download the FREE PDF The Prodigal Band as well as the FREE PDF The Murder Rule, and more. Cheers!
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