Conversations With Dead People: What Rich Mullins Taught Me About Faith
I know that sounds a little strange. Bear with me.
I find it helpful, from time to time, to have conversations with dead people. Not a seance. Nothing like that. I'm talking about sitting down with the words of authors, poets, and musicians who are no longer with us — reading their writing, listening to their music, and letting their thoughts provoke my own. Almost like a dialogue across time.
There's a proverb that says it well. Proverbs 27:17 tells us that "as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another." We usually think of that in terms of face-to-face conversation, and that's right — there's something irreplaceable about a good, honest dialogue with a friend. You bounce ideas off each other, challenge each other's assumptions, and walk away a little sharper than when you sat down.
But I'd argue that reading — really reading — can do something even deeper. When you write something, you have to slow down. You have to clarify your thoughts, nail them down on the page, and commit to them in a way that casual conversation doesn't require. And when you read something, you're forced to slow down too. You're not sharpening your own ideas so much as you're listening — really listening — to someone else's. You can go back over it word for word. You can sit with it. You can let it unsettle you.
That's why I keep coming back to certain writers and musicians. And lately, I've been thinking a lot about one in particular — a man who is, by far, the most modern of the dead people I converse with on any kind of regular basis.
His name is Rich Mullins.
Who Was Rich Mullins?
If you grew up in the Christian music world in the 1980s and 90s, you almost certainly know his name. Rich Mullins was a Christian musician, a teacher, a missionary, and a poet. He was born in October of 1955 in Indiana — right near the Ohio border, which we appreciate here in Hudson. He died tragically in a car accident in September of 1997.
Some of his best-known songs include Awesome God, Step by Step, and Sing Your Praise to the Lord — that last one got some mainstream attention when Amy Grant recorded it. But if you've only heard those radio staples, you've only scratched the surface of what Mullins was about.
I've never met him, of course. I only know him through his music and his poetry. But that's exactly what I mean when I talk about conversations with dead people. Through what he wrote and performed, Mullins has spoken into my life in ways that are genuine and lasting. His words have challenged me, convicted me, and pointed me back to Jesus more times than I can count.
A Spirituality That Defied Easy Categories
One of the things that draws me to Mullins is how hard he is to put in a box. His Christian spirituality was, to use the best word I can think of, eclectic — and I mean that in the best possible way.
His roots were Quaker. That heritage ran deep in him, and it shaped a genuine commitment to justice and peace that showed up not just in his lyrics but in the way he actually lived. His upbringing was a fairly general evangelical Christianity — church every Sunday, that sort of thing. But as he grew and learned, he moved through different traditions. He worked in the United Methodist Church. He spent time in the Evangelical Free Church. Those are not the same thing, and that's kind of the point — he was picking up different flavors, different emphases, different ways of thinking about the faith.
By the end of his life, he was deeply drawn to Catholicism — and in particular to the example of Saint Francis of Assisi. That influence moved him toward radical generosity. He became deeply involved with Compassion International, supporting poor children around the world. He even wrote a song about it called The Other Side of the World that is well worth finding.
But perhaps the most striking expression of his commitment to simplicity was this: even though he was wildly successful as a Christian musician and was making real money, he insisted on living on only the equivalent of a blue-collar worker's salary. Whatever came in above that, he gave away. He didn't need the trappings of success. He was trying to live something out.
And at one point, he actually stepped away from touring altogether in order to teach music on a Navajo reservation in New Mexico. He wanted to be with the poor. He wanted to serve. He went off the grid, in a sense, because his faith demanded something of him that fame and comfort couldn't satisfy.
That kind of life makes you pay attention to what a person has to say.
The Themes That Run Through His Music
When I listen to Mullins, there are a few recurring themes that I keep coming back to. They aren't unique to him, but the way he expresses them is.
Wonder at God's Creation
Mullins had an almost childlike sense of awe at the world God made. There's a reverence in his music for the natural world, for the bigness of things, for the fact that we are small creatures living in an enormous and beautiful creation. That wonder never felt performative in him. It felt like something he genuinely couldn't help but express.
The Disturbed Spirit That Longs for Holiness
This is one of the things I find most compelling about his work. Mullins didn't write like someone who had it all figured out. He wrote like a man who was profoundly aware of the gap between who he was and who he wanted to be — who God was calling him to be. There's a restlessness in his music, a holy dissatisfaction. He longed for holiness and kept falling short, and he was honest about that in ways that a lot of Christian artists aren't.
The Comfort of Christ's Love and Salvation
And yet — and this is crucial — he never stayed in that restlessness without turning toward the cross. His hope was always, ultimately, in Jesus. The salvation won for us on the cross was the anchor of everything he wrote. He could be honest about his failures precisely because he was so certain of his Savior.
A Few Songs Worth Your Time
Let me point you to a few specific songs that I think capture what I'm talking about.
Creed
Creed is, simply put, one of the most beautiful modern expressions of ancient Christian faith I've ever heard. It's built around the Apostles' Creed — that confession of faith that Christians have been reciting for centuries — and Mullins takes those familiar words and breathes something urgent and alive into them. When you hear it, the Creed doesn't sound like a rote recitation anymore. It sounds like something worth dying for. Worth living for.
One Thing
One Thing is a song I think about often. The idea is simple but cutting: everybody says they need just one thing, but what they really mean is they need one thing more. There's always something else. Always another want, another need, another longing. And Mullins looks at all of that and says — no. The real one thing. The only one thing. Is Jesus. It's a beautiful and uncomfortable piece of work, and the images he uses to get there are striking. If you've never heard it, do yourself a favor and set aside a few minutes to just sit with it.
If I Stand
If I Stand is a prayer — a moving, searching prayer — to be filled with all that God is and all that he has made. What strikes me about it is where it's rooted. It doesn't come from a place of confidence in Mullins himself. It comes from a place of smallness. He's standing before the greatness of the world and the greatness of God, and he knows he has nothing to offer on his own. If I stand, let me stand on the promise that you will bring me through. It's a song of complete dependence, and there's something deeply freeing about that.
A Saint Who Walked With a Limp
I want to be honest about something. When I talk about conversing with dead people, I'm not saying that these people are authorities whose words I just receive and accept wholesale. That's not how I read, and it's not how I'd encourage you to read.
Mullins was not perfect. He was a fellow traveler — someone trying to figure out how to walk in the Christian faith, stumbling along the way, being honest about the stumbling. He was what I'd call a saint who walked with a limp. Marked by grace, yes. Saved completely by the cross of Christ, absolutely. But not someone who had arrived. Not someone without his own struggles and contradictions.
And that's actually part of why I find him so valuable. He doesn't write from a pedestal. He writes from the road. And when you're on the road yourself, it helps to hear from someone else who was on the same road and being honest about what it cost them.
So I don't just listen to Mullins and nod along. Sometimes I push back. Sometimes I sit with discomfort. Sometimes his lyrics land like a conviction — they point at something in my life that needs to change, and I have to sit with that. That's part of what good reading and listening does. It doesn't just affirm you. It sharpens you. It calls you somewhere.
What Mullins Keeps Teaching Me
There are a couple of things in particular that I find myself coming back to again and again when I spend time with his music.
The first is the Philippians idea of walking worthy of the gospel. Paul writes in Philippians about living in a manner that reflects what Christ has done for us. Mullins seems almost obsessed with this. Not in a legalistic way — not as if we earn anything by our behavior — but in the sense that experiencing Jesus' love and forgiveness ought to change the way we live. It ought to show up. And when it doesn't, that bothers him. It costs him something. He doesn't just shrug and move on.
That bothers me too. Or at least it should, and Mullins helps me stay honest about that.
The second thing is simpler, and maybe more important: he keeps pointing me back to Jesus. For all his complexity, for all his eclecticism, for all his restlessness, Mullins never wandered away from the cross as the center of everything. His songs urge us, implore us, to hold on to Jesus. To live the Christian life. To do the right things. But always — always — with Jesus as the hope. Not our own effort. Not our own goodness. Jesus.
He does it in ways that are absolutely beautiful. And beauty has a way of reaching places that argument can't.
An Invitation to Join the Conversation
If you've never spent time with Rich Mullins, I'd genuinely encourage you to do that. Here are a few places to start:
- Awesome God — the song most people know, and for good reason
- Creed — a stunning expression of ancient faith in a modern voice
- One Thing — a piercing look at what we truly need
- If I Stand — a prayer of dependence that I keep coming back to
Pull him up on your favorite streaming service and spend some time there. Let his words do what good words do — slow you down, make you think, and maybe point you somewhere you needed to go.
And if you're already a Mullins fan, I'd love to know — what's your favorite song? Drop it in the comments. And if Mullins isn't your conversation partner, who is? Who are the dead people whose words are still sharpening you?
Iron sharpens iron. Even across the years. Even across death itself. That's one of the remarkable things about words — they outlast the people who write them, and they keep doing their work long after the writer is gone.
God's blessings to you. I'll see you next week.
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