25th May 2006

In the service of the King
by John Fischer

Heaven just picked up one great piano player. My friend, Clark Gassman, lost his fight with cancer last Sunday night and gained Heaven instead. God got the better deal.

While he was here with us, Clark Gassman was the epitome of a servant who was content to work behind the scenes while others got the glory and the attention. He made so many people look and sound so good that you could call him the wind beneath a hundred wings. It didn’t matter to him; he was never after attention. He was all about doing what he loved to do – what he was gifted to do. I can’t imagine that it’s any different now.

I was listening to one of my first albums that Clark arranged and remembered a part where he directed a studio string section through a legato portion of one of the songs (a section of the song that was totally unrelated to any time sequence). My part had already been recorded, so he had to get eight string players to play along with what was already on the tape. To do this, Clark put my legato part into multiple time changes so he could count it out for the string section, because that is the only way they could play it. He had to re-interpret it to them, and he could do that because he understood both their form and my free form. The end result was flawless and full of the kind of feeling the song required, yet no one would ever know what that took. It’s those kinds of things multiplied many times over that explains something of Clark’s contribution to the music of so many people.

Many of you have the gift of service and you work painstakingly hard behind the scenes to make things happen, and other people end up doing what they do better, because of you. As for you, your name ends up buried in the credits, if at all, but that doesn’t matter, because that’s not why you do it. You do it because it’s your gift and it’s what you love to do. Time for credit will come, just as Clark is enjoying his now.

Today, we are missing Clark, but I don’t think he is missing us. He’s probably jammin’ right now with a bunch of his buddies with names like Bach and Handel.

When you know Christ and you are filled with the hope and knowledge of eternal life, the worst part about death is that it is not your own. You have to stay behind in the void while someone you love moves on to a greater joy. But when you know the secret of your purpose in life, it doesn’t matter. You just keep on serving the King wherever you are.