OUR NAME.

Brian Doerksen, Father's House -the musical, and Father's House Vineyard Church. by Marty Boller

Back in the spring of 1990, I boarded a plane with my pal, Mark Wilson, for a week-long trip to Anaheim, CA to attend a Vineyard leadership conference. Mark had some good friends in Anaheim and we ended up staying in their lovely home throughout the conference. One evening, we were kicking back in their living room, basking in the powerful presence of God that lingered with us from the evening session when suddenly our host pulls out a plain white cassette tape and asks, "Hey, do you guys wanna hear this pirated worship tape?"

Feeling a bit like drug dealers, we said, "Sure nuff!". Moments later we were swept up into God's presence as we listened to this intimate worship music that literally took our breath away. "Who is this?", I asked. Our host said it was a pirated copy of a worship tape produced by a bunch of Canadians from the Langley, BC Vineyard. Apparently someone from Anaheim had recently visited there and had brought back a copy. Now everyone in Anaheim had to have a copy and I was one of them. 

So within a few days, we were on our way back to Cedar Rapids with our very own pirated copies of 'Changed By Your Glory'. Soon after arriving back to town, I hunted down the Langley Vineyard and ordered my own "legal" copy and that began our introduction and on-going love & appreciation for Brian Doerksen and his music. 

'Your Kingdom Come' & 'Jesus Alone' followed and during that time, while on staff at River of Life in Cedar Rapids, we invited Andy Park and Craig Musseau to bring a worship conference to town. While they were here, they told us about a big worship festival being planned in Langley for later that year. In a road trip our family will never forget, we loaded up our four children, flew cross-country to BC, crammed ourselves into one small motel room, and ate lots of peanut butter sandwiches as we drank in Worship Festival 1992. It was during this soggy week in rainy BC, when we first met Brian Doerksen face to face and as far as my kids go, they've never looked back. I credit that week in Canada as one of the main sparkplugs that propelled our four children into the worship leading they are all doing today. 

If that wasn't enough, two years later in 1994, Brian releases 'Father's House' a "musical of hope for the fatherless". This anointed album dedicated to the power of the Father Heart of God, planted seeds deep in our hearts that would later come to fruition in 1998 when we started our Vineyard church here in Cedar Rapids. When it came to putting a name on the church community Sandy & I envisioned, it was a no-brainer to call it 'Father's House'. Thankfully, Brian gave us his blessing to use the name and the rest is history.

Certainly over the last 25 years, the Vineyard has been blessed with worship leaders who have taken all of us to heights of worship we'd never experienced before, but for some reason when I want to sing a song to Jesus that says exactly what's on my heart, I always come back to Brian Doerksen and one of his songs.

We're so excited that Brian has never let go of the vision of a musical that brings the Father Heart of God to the stage. Over the years, I'm sure it's been more of a burden than a blessing, but Brian, we're with you as you continue your labors toward this project. We want to be there on opening night, so until then, remain in His Love and His faithfulness will make a way.

The Father's House-Musical by Brian Doerksen

 It was several weeks after my first son Benjamin was born that the vision came to me about writing a "musical of hope for the fatherless" called "Father's House." Of course, if I would have known the length and cost of the journey, I may have never embarked on it! Isn't that a lot like parenting or many of life's most rewarding endeavors? And so I began writing songs, and other people from my home church, the Langley Vineyard, began working on scripts for the musical.

About two years later we were ready to begin to present it. The first thing I did was spend the early months of 1994 at Paul Janz's recording studio in Mission, B.C. recording the songs from the musical. The CD came out at our first performances in May 94 in Abbotsford, and that CD went on to sell around 70,000 units before it went out of print, which is not bad considering it wasn't sold through a large distribution company, nor was it given any specific marketing attention.

The musical itself sold out in Abbotsford in May of 94 and then in Burnaby later that same year. There were several Christian professional theatre and media people that came and asked for a meeting after seeing the production. They were very positive about the music and not that crazy about the script. Following their counsel led us down a road of massive script revision, making the piece more of a modern inner-city piece about the fatherless poor. We invested a large amount of money (a total of over one million dollars from several sources) to try and launch the musical professionally in late 96.

To make a long story short, due to lower than expected ticket sales, and higher than expected overhead, Father's House closed in mid-December 96. The impact was felt by many people, the most by the Rademaker family (Darryl & Daphne Rademaker were our partners in the company that was formed to facilitate the musical) and us. We had decided a few months prior that while asking other people to invest in the project, we should also be willing to invest. We had already put in all the resources we had, so we decided to sell our house and put the equity into the musical.

So when the musical closed and the company became insolvent, we had no place to live (other than the RV we had purchased via a loan to tour the musical in) and we were completely broke!!! Talk about learning some of life's lessons about risk and faith!!! Since we had no place to live and it was January, we piled our 5 kids into the RV and headed south for warmer weather (Southern California and Arizona) and for some space and time to pray and think about what we should do next. While we were in Anaheim visiting some friends, John and Carol Wimber invited us to meet them for breakfast.

During that meeting, we shared stories about trying to follow God and what to do when things don't turn out the way we planned (John had just gone through the collapse of a radio ministry others had encouraged him to start which had cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars). At one point in the conversation, John mentioned that he had just been on the phone with John Mumford, who oversees the Vineyard churches in the UK and Ireland and that they were looking for a worship pastor who could also train the songwriters in the movement there. One thing led to another, and within a few months our family was moving to England. We arrived in Southwest London in late April 1997, beginning a wonderful new season of life and ministry there. We were heartbroken over the apparent failure of the musical, yet it was out of the "ashes" of those circumstances that the call to worship was being reawakened in me. I am still amazed to this day by the goodness of God in not "writing us off!!" His grace is so much deeper and higher and wider than our lives' failures and detours!

On May 17, 2005 , we took a huge leap forward with the vision.  We did our first reading of the totally new script based on Luke 15. We had 8 actors, 3 musicians and a small audience of 30 people in my studio beside our house. It was SO ENCOURAGING! I think we have the right creative direction (FINALLY!) The working title of the new piece is RETURN – THE MUSICAL. It’s completely new. I wrote or co-wrote 19 new songs for it and the script dialogue is written by Christopher Greco from Boston.

We are hoping to write draft 2 by the end of June based on what we learned from this reading (the revisions at this stage will be minor as most of it worked great!) Now we are trying to discern what the next step is; either another workshop in the fall or actually waiting and prepping for a proto-type production around spring 06 or a bit later which would likely happen close to here.

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