By Jeff Brumley
For two decades, career pastor and two-time interim Mike Queen dreamed about getting a bunch of guys together to discuss and listen to their favorite music.
Now fully retired and living in Wilmington, N.C., Queen finally pulled it off Feb. 5 when 16 men descended on his house, cherished music in hand.
But what happened in the three-hour session that unfolded, while satisfying Queen’s 20-year itch, surprised him, too, both in the variety of music shared and in what turned out to be, for him at least, a spiritual experience.
“For me, anytime we come together like that, it is important,” Queen said. “We didn’t try to make it some super-spiritual event, but we didn’t run away from that, either.”
‘The most ecclectic playlist’
That the retired pastor would find a way to mix fellowship and love-of-music doesn’t surprise those who know him best.
“That is quintessentially who he is,” said Jayne Davis, minister of spiritual formation at First Baptist Church in Wilmington, where Queen served as pastor for 25 years before retiring.in 2011.
Even a local newspaper story about his retirement led with artists included on Queen’s iPod playlist (they included Bruce Springsteen, B.B. King, Lynyrd Synyrd and Alabama).
“He has the most eclectic playlist,” Davis said. “You’d probably have to Google half the songs if he showed it to you.”
Music played a huge role in Queen’s career and preaching. Davis said she once asked him when and how during services he managed to worship when he had so many responsibilities.
“He didn’t have to think about it,” she said. “He went straight to the music. He said it was during the music that the was able to worship most.”
He incorporated that into his preaching, too.
“He would often throw in a lyric to underscore the point he was trying to make,” Davis said.
One of Queen’s ministerial gifts was an ability to blend his interests with those of others — and then to find what those in a group have in common.
It’s what makes Queen a good congregational coach as co-coordinator for the Carolinas with the Center for Healthy Churches, a role he shares with Davis.
“I think he has a deep and natural understanding of what we share in common, and he always looks for that,” she said.
The evening of music at Queen’s house may not have been planned as a specifically spiritual night, Davis said, but it’s likely he and some of the group would have experienced it as one.
“I think he can’t help but tease that out of the conversation because of who he is,” she said.
“It speaks a lot to how we can use the things that we share in common to talk about things that are difficult,” Davis added. “The barriers drop and we are reminded that we share a lot on this journey.”
‘Really weird, in a way’
There certainly were some apparent barriers to be overcome at Queen’s house that Thursday evening.
One was the group of 16 men.
“I had put together a list, not of my best buddies, but men who at some point … had talked to me about music and expressed their love of music in general,” Queen said.
Although all connected to First Baptist in Wilmington, many of them didn’t know each other. Some do not regularly attend.
They were different in many ways, including age: the youngest is 20 and the oldest — Queen — is 69.
Their connections to music also varied widely. Three are DJs, three or four play guitar and a couple play keyboards. Some are on the church praise team and some simply like music.
“It was really weird, in a way,” Queen said.
‘Literally all over the place’
The music each man brought with him was more unusual still.
The rule that night was that all would bring a recording of one song to share with the group. It didn’t have to be their favorite song, necessarily, just one that spoke to them or moved them in some way.
“We were literally all over the place,” he said.
There were Christian songs, ballads, beach music and blues.
“There was country, rock and the Indigo Girls,” Queen said. “It was as eclectic as it could have possibly been — every kind of genre.”
It’s why the evening was so rewarding, as each man briefly explained to the group why he had chosen the song he did.
“There was richness to the experience of being surprised by the music we brought,” he said.
Queen said it’s why he invited 18 to the gathering (two were out of town and could not attend).
“I could have controlled things a bit more if I had picked five or six guys who like music that I like,” he said. “But I … intentionally didn’t do that — 10 or so of them I had no idea what their musical taste was.”
‘The angst and the pathos’
But while music was the universal connector, it was in the surprising variety and selections that the spiritual experiences were to be had.
The retired pastor had his own surprise for the group in sharing a song by Guy Clark titled Dublin Blues. It’s about a man spurned by his true love and whose life descends into smoking and heavy drinking.
Queen said he has never experienced those things, but was moved by the tragedy that beset the man speaking through the song.
“The lyrics of that song communicate the angst and pathos and pure sadness of loving someone who doesn’t love you back,” he said. “That’s a spiritual thing that goes on in that song.”
Another participant brought in a song by Rush, the Canadian rock trio known for the intensity of their jams and the depth of their lyrics.
“You could tell the words touched him very deeply.”
Another shared Gordon Lightfoot’s 1970s ballad Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
Queen said he heard the religious yearnings in the song, including the line that asks, “Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?”
A Harry Chapin song, though more upbeat, still conveyed spiritual meaning. “It was about the continuity of life, and I think we experienced that,” Queen said.
“Three hours we sat there, playing this music.”
Queen said impact of the evening would not have been the same had a CD been passed around with those same songs on it. It took being together.
“The group experience is what we’ll remember,” he said.