Christopher Parkening is a concert guitarist. At age 30, he was at the top of his profession. His concert schedule booked years in advance. His CD's were best sellers. And then it all stopped. For three years he just disappeared. He stopped recording. He stopped performing. He said he was burned out. He did what all of us, I think, have been tempted to do from time to time in our life. He just chucked it all and went away. He had resources sufficient enough to buy a little ranch up in Montana, with a trout stream running through it. He was a champion fly fisherman. He saw himself now solving the problems in his life by fishing. He hoped to find what was missing in his life.

He did, only in a way that was unexpected. In Montana it is nice from May to October. You can fish. But the rest of the time, the other six months, it is a different world up there. You have to stay inside, or you will die. So that is what he did. He read books, and he read the Bible.

One day a neighbor asked him to go to church. The minister on that Sunday preached a sermon on the Christian life, the ways that we find to avoid living it. Parkening said, "That's me!" From that point on, he began to see things differently. He doesn't use the term, "born again." He said he doesn't like it. What he said was that he had a "renewal" of his faith. The effect on him of the renewal of his faith is the effect it has on everybody. He got his sense of mission in his life.

He went back to playing the guitar. He is a different man now. He said he was burned out because there was only one purpose in his life, being famous. "Now," he said, "my music has a purpose. Now I can give voice to what I believe in my music." He has a mission in life now.