I Can Only Imagine Part 1 with Bart Millard of Mercy Me


You don’t have to listen to Christian radio to hear this man’s music. In fact, he’s got one song that’s on a lot of charts. I’m Charles Morris and welcome to Haven Today where in the next few minutes we’ll be broadcasting from Greenville, Texas with Bart Millard, the founder of Mercy Me and the writer of the song, “I Can Only Imagine”.

Song: I Can Only Imagine
Performed by: Mercy Me

This is Haven Today and we are in a living room in East Texas, just off interstate 30 in Greenville. With me here in this house is Bart Millard, who if you don’t know that name you probably know the name Mercy Me. Bart, welcome to Haven Today.

BM: Thank you Charles, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

CM: You and I have a good mutual friend and he’s been telling me for a year that I needed to drive over with him to Greenville, Texas when you weren’t on the road somewhere and have you on this program. And that song that we just opened with a minute ago is probably what people know you by even if they don’t know Bart Millard.

BM: Well, that’s, it’s not a bad thing. I’d rather have them know the song than know me, so it’s OK.

CM: I don’t know, I’ve heard other people in Greenville say you’re not such a bad character after all.
BM: Small town, they don’t get out much.
CM: How did you write this song, which is probably – it’s already platinum – but how did you write a song that started slow but just has kept on growing and now people want to sing it on country and western stations and all different kinds of radio stations?
BM: I guess it originally came from, I was 19 years old and my father passed away with cancer and that was in ’91. I used to always write the phrase down, “I can only imagine” on anything I could get my hands on which would set me off just thinking about where he was and being in a better place. and it wasn’t until ’99 that we were working on an independent record and we needed one more song and so I went back to a journal trying to find a clean page to start writing on and everything I came across had the phrase written across the middle of it, “I can only imagine” so I kind of got the hint that I was, I needed to finish that song, so –
CM: You’re one of those that’s always looking for the hand of the Lord
BM: I guess so.
CM: The Lord in something, right? OK.
BM: Yeah, and so we finished it and put it on as a “B side”, never really played it live for quite some time and then somebody asked us to do it during a show and we did and we had no idea – we knew it was special, but we had no idea the impact it was going to have.
CM: And it’s still having impact today.
BM: It’s been a roller coaster ever since.
CM: What do you think the message is that the Lord was giving you out of that song to share with other people?
BM: That’s a good question. I know for me when the song came about you know, my dad and I were best friends, so for years I really struggled with getting past that whole thing. So even coming almost 9 years later the song ministered to me in a huge way. And maybe that’s why I didn’t sing it for a while because I just, it was therapeutic for me just to hear it and just to go through it personally. And for me it took my mind off the grieving process and just made me think of him being in a better place. And I kind of busied myself with thinking, “God when I am in your presence, how in the world am I going to respond?” and if you think about that long enough it definitely kind of takes the hurt away a little bit because it is a better place that we’re hoping for and waiting for. And it was special to me to go through that, but you know I just all of a sudden the email just started pouring in of people going through the same thing and how the song ministered to them, and it’s not really a funeral song, like singing about a guy, a person you miss or whatever, it’s just talking about what is Heaven going to be like?
CM: Although it’s really, it’s been used, in fact our mutual friend, Kent Stainbeck, you sang it at his father’s funeral just a couple of years ago, and other people use it at funerals today too, don’t they?
BM: Oh yeah, it’s definitely, it’s used a ton. And I think it’s an encouraging thing, to be able to sing it at a funeral like our friend’s father’s funeral. I mean there are some songs that make you fall to pieces when you hear them at a funeral, and it’s you know, maybe a song about missing them or wishing they were here or whatever. And this song is so the opposite of that. And it’s, it’s almost kind of puts you in the mood of you know, we’re the ones missing out now, we’re the ones getting the raw end of the deal because we have to wait. And what we can only imagine and wonder about, Kent’s father or my dad or other people that have passed on are already seeing it. And so the song is kind of out of anticipation of what’s going to happen, and man it just makes for a much better funeral for me to be able to think about that than missing whoever’s passed on. So maybe that’s what it is. I really don’t know, I don’t know what the secret is, but it’s, for whatever reason, it’s ministered to a lot of people
CM: People come and they hear your group, that you’re with, Mercy Me and it’s interesting because they come away having had a spiritual experience with the Lord. I think a lot of that may come out of the fact that just you’re a normal everyday person, you live in Greenville, Texas when you’re not travelling, and you really see your role as more than just writing music. For instance, the Lord let you be with your brother-in-law just before his life was taken.
BM: right.
CM: Tell me about that.
BM: Definitely we go through everyday normal things. We go through tragedy like everyone else. We go through difficult times, great times, we’re no different than anyone else. One of the harder times we ever gone through was when my brother-in-law who was 21, his name was Chris and he has been a believer most of his life. And he just kind of hit a rock bottom time in his life, had a bad relationship and was just going through a really difficult time. And the night that he kind of got his heart broken he just showed up at our house in the middle of the night and just said that he just hit rock bottom and needed help and wanted to get his life right and just, you know, wanted to live for the Lord and this stuff. And we talked from about 1until 4 in the morning about how we can kind of make this happen and the steps that need to take place and get him, you know involved with the right people and find a college ministry that can work with him and stuff like that. And so we agreed that the following morning, let’s get some sleep and we’ll go talk to this guy.
CM: OK
BM: And then he left our house at about 4, lives less than 5 minutes away.
CM: Everything is 5 minutes away in Greenville, Texas.
BM: Yeah exactly, exactly that’s right. He could live across town and it’s still a walk, but yeah. But he was going to head home, he said he was tired. But we tried to get him to stay the night, he goes, “No, I’ll make it.” And so I decided to follow him home, but by the time I got dressed to follow him, being the middle of the night he had already gone ahead of me, so I just thought I’d go and check on him. He wasn’t there, but it’s typical for a small town to end up at a friend’s house or, you know, to hit the all night burger joint or whatever first, and he’s, you know, everybody does it so I didn’t think anything of it. And then it was about 8 in the morning that my father-in-law called and said that he had fallen asleep at the wheel and was thrown from the car and passed away. And it was probably the most difficult thing I’d ever gone through at that time. You know you hear stories about that kind of stuff about trying to minister to them and then something happens. And you know those are the stories preachers say from the pulpit to try to scare you to Jesus.
CM: Sure, sure, just before the invitation, yes.
BM: Exactly, yes. “You know you may get hit by a train tonight, you never know.
CM: But it really is true,
BM: Yeah, right. Right.
CM: the last thing you got to talk to Chris about was your Savior, and he talked about his Savior too. Praise God for that.
BM: Yeah. At his funeral we wrote a song called, “Homesick” for his funeral. And had a chance to share the Gospel with about 1500 people that came. And had several of his friends come to know Christ during that, so the whole thing was very surreal and something that, as much as God was glorified, I pray that I don’t have to go through again, but it was a pretty crazy time.

Song: Homesick
Performed by: Mercy Me

The song is “Homesick” and it’s by Bart Millard who is our special guest. This is a special Haven Today because we’re not in a real studio we’re in a home in Greenville, Texas and I don’t know if you’ve heard any dogs barking in the background. It’s quail season as we’re doing this interview.
BM: That’s true.
CM: Bart you travel a lot. You travel all the time. But you came out with an album, a hymns album, which is under your name, not Mercy Me even though you are Mercy Me with your brothers in the Lord. But you talk about your grandmother. And tell us about your grandmother.
BM: Well, my grandmother, her name was Ruby Lindsey.
CM: That’s a good Texas name, isn’t it?
BM: Yeah, it is, it is. And she’s the godliest woman I’ve ever known in my whole life. and my grandfather and my grandmother started a small country church in Greenville long before I was born. And she’s just an amazing woman who’s gone through difficult times in her life and I’ve never heard her say a bad thing about anybody, and just loved the Lord the whole time. To kind of sum up who she was, which will hopefully make you appreciate the record even more, would be when I was born in ’72 my grandfather left her for the church secretary. And so I never really knew him that well. And she continued to remain in the church her entire life and kind of helped keep it going.
CM: Boy, what a hard thing for someone to do!
BM: yeah, and for a Southern Baptist church in East Texas and a being a woman it’s hard too, unfortunately.
CM: Yes, yes.
BM: But she stuck around and tried to keep the church together. And her whole life, she never remarried, she would always say that her prodigal would come home soon. She tried to remain faithful to him even though he didn’t with her. And I remember when Pop Pop passed away in the mid 90’s and I remember having to go to her house with my cousin and tell her. And by this point, she’s confined to a wheelchair, her eyesight was pretty bad. And I remember walking through the door, her back was to us in the wheelchair and soon as we walked in she for whatever reason, knew. She said, “Lloyd passed away didn’t he?” And we said, “Yes ma’am. He did.” And we started crying because we knew that’s all she ever hoped for, was him to come back. And she grabbed hold of our hands and she told us, you know after everything she’s gone through in life and what he had done to her, her only response, and never talked about it again, was she said, “Now you two listen. There’s only two men that I’ve really, really loved in my life, your papa and Jesus,” and she goes, “And I’m much better off the first one leaving me than the second.”
CM: Wow.
BM: That’s all she ever said about it. And so, she passed away in ’99, Christmas day, before, for years, because I had been singing in churches around here since I was 5 years old, and so Mama has always heard me sing. And she always told me that no matter what I do with the band, and she was one of those people, she didn’t understand the words to some of the Mercy Me stuff because it was a little heavier than she liked.
CM: A little heavier music than some of your tracks.
BM: But she knew that we were singing about Jesus, she didn’t care, she was still a fan. And she always told me, she always told me I sang the hymns better than anything. And she goes, “Just whenever you get a chance, I want you just to make a record for me.” And I always told her I would and never got the chance and have never forgotten it since she passed away. And I told my wife I still have to do this, and –
CM: And you did!
BM: Yeah, last year we didn’t have a big release coming out except for a Christmas record at the end of last year and so that was my chance to do the record finally, the hymns record.
CM: Your grandmother finally got her wish, even though she’s in Heaven.
BM: yes, she did, yeah. And that was the big thing about, the basic rule about it was, we had about 50 or 60 hymns to choose from, because gosh, it was, that’s the hardest part, what do you put on a record?
CM: Sure.
BM: We went through arrangements and what sounded cool and stuff and just I was like, you know what? I just went through and started circling the songs that I had the most vivid memory that somehow was related to my grandmother you know, whether it was her singing it in church or us singing it together growing up. And that’s what determined those songs on the album. And also musically we were trying to do it in a way that would make her proud, because in East Texas, you know, whatever song comes out you just wait long enough and the honky-tonk version will follow. And you know, country western southern gospel is huge here, and so -
CM: Yes.
BM: You know especially in a church like that where there’s one piano player for about 20 people in the congregation. It’s everything’s a honky-tonk and swings, so, I wanted to do a record that she’d be proud of as far as musically. And there’s one song that while making the record the label was asking me, “Are you going to write anything?” And I really had no intention of doing it. But somewhere in the course of the record I was telling our producer about one of the memories, “In the Sweet By and By”. I was saying you know I wasn’t allowed to stand in the pews because I’d get them dirty. And so she would sit with me, my parents divorced when I was 3, so I’d go to church with my grandmother just the 2 of us a lot. And I would sit on the 3rd row and when the choir was time to sing she would sit with me, then get up and go sing with the choir then come back down to sit with me again. And so I would always get in trouble tying to stand up and see her sing, which you didn’t need to see her because she had the loudest, most horrific voice you ever heard. She couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, but she said if you, the Bible says to make a joyful noise, it’s fine.
CM: and she sure tried.
BM: Oh man, it was loud. And so all I could do was get on my knees and try to see over everybody standing up. And I was telling Brad, when I hear this song that’s all I think about. It seems like every other week we would sing, “In the Sweet By and By”. That’s all we’d ever sing in that church.
CM: so it had to go on the hymns album.
BM: Oh, yeah, there was no doubt. And Brad was the one that says, “You know, that’s the song, you know. I mean it’s.” And so I started writing the verses of trying to describe that, trying to paint a picture of that moment and the chorus is still, “In the Sweet by and By” and then talking about, the second verse talks about just how she’s passed away since, but just hopefully she’s proud of who I’ve become because of who, the influence she had on my life. And so, it turned out to be, I just love the whole song and am really proud of how it turned out.

Song: In the Sweet By and By
Performed by: Bart Millard

I haven’t heard that song in so long! What a tribute to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! I want to thank Bart for taking time from his day with 2 sick children and spending time with us here from Greenville, Texas on Haven Today. “I Can Only Imagine” is the name of the program, we lead with that hit song and we’ll have Bart again with us on the program tomorrow so I’m sure you’ll want to join us as well. We have for you a special book that Bart has put together called, “I Can Only Imagine”. In the back it includes a CD with that hit song that’s still selling just about as quick as it did when it first came out and we have that for you including stories of people who have been influenced by this book. You can read about it and hear a clip of it on our website, haventoday.org. We’re asking for your gift of support for this ministry, Haven Today, so that we can bring you more programs like the one you just heard with Bart Millard of Mercy Me. So go to haventoday.org or give us a call at 1-800-65-HAVEN, that’s 1-800-65-HAVEN. Tell the person in Plano, Texas that you want, “I Can Only Imagine” the book plus that CD and we’ll also send you a bonus CD of the 2 interviews that we have with Bart Millard. I’m Charles Morris, thank you for joining me from the big state of Texas and come back again tomorrow as we lift up Jesus Christ with the founder of Mercy Me together on Haven Today.