Last year at this time, I was deeply discouraged. I felt like the music the Lord was inspiring in me was never going to be ‘commercially viable’. There was one part of my heart that was cool with that, but an equal part that couldn’t stomach the rejection.

If you look a little further back in the brief & inconsistent blogs I’ve posted on this site, you’ll see one that I titled “Death to Ambition”. The heartbeat of what I was feeling was rejection & idolatry. God was teaching me not to set up ‘commercial viability’ up on the shelf as the ultimate goal. He was teaching me faithfulness and trust. He was asking me to be me. He was calling me deeper into the identity He had carved out for me. And, it hurt… a lot.

Last week, at GMA’s  final Music in the Rockies at Estes Park, CO, I won ‘Song of the Year’ for Ascend to Heaven. The field was deep. Over 550 songs were submitted. The process was stressful. Nobody who entered into the contest would find out if their song made the semi-final cut of 25 songs until the end of the first night at the conference. This means that 525+ songs were eliminated on the spot. (Based on last year’s experience, we expected our songs to be in the 525 bunch). We submitted 4 songs to the contest:

Be Merciful to Me

Ascend to Heaven

Let All I Do Be Praise

Do You Want to Get Well?

All but ‘Let All I Do Be Praise’ had high enough marks to be eligible for the Top 25, but each writer could only have 2 songs in the top 25. So, ‘Be Merciful’ & ‘Ascend’ were my two highest scores.

The next step was to sit in a room with the writers of the Top 25 songs and 4 judges. The writers were like the audience and the judges sat behind a table in the front of the room listening to the songs in front of us, taking notes and making faces that drove us crazy.

They liked ‘Be Merciful’ a lot. They were very kind and uplifting to me.

They LOVED ‘Ascend to Heaven’… wiping tears away and saying things like, “WOW!!!”, and “You have a real gift, Richie”.

But, I have to tell you about Erik Bledsoe. In life, there are people who can sing, and there are people who can write. Erik Bledsoe, (or as we found ourselves calling him all week… that dad-gum Erik Bledsoe), can do it all… and very, very well. You can find him on the web, and see for yourself. His two songs were really really good, and the talent level on these 25 songs were really quite impressive. I was blown away. I felt good about our chances, but not enough to feel confident that we’d make it to the top 3.

That was Tuesday. We wouldn’t find out who made it to the top 3 until late Wednesday night. I want you to know that the entire time we were there, I was dialoging with Jesus about ambition, pride, and marketability. The conversation was the same as last year, just with a little more perspective and a strange sense of grace and peace from Him.

There was a neat moment when I felt like God spoke to me that He was pleased with me. I think the question I asked him was, “God, do you want me to grow in influence and viability in the Christian Music Industry?” So, He didn’t really answer the question, but He was trying to teach me that my songs are not my identity… and that He loves me.

I needed that. Maybe you do too…

So, we made it to the top 3 with “Ascend to Heaven”. Us, a guy from Canada who wrote this really great bluesy, Maroon-5ish song, and that dad-gum Erik Bledsoe.

The Top 3 songs had to be performed live in front a murderer’s row of judges… names you wouldn’t recognize because they are all sort of Wizards of Oz… the men & women behind the curtain of the Christian Music Industry. 10 of them. They set the chapel up for the competition. Sean, Dana and I were all pretty nervous. The judges were literally at our feet. Front row. Stone-faced. I mean, they didn’t give us any sense of what they were thinking. It was a really intimidating experience… and we had to go first.

I was trying to hype Sean & Dana up… “Good! We want to go first! We get to set the bar for the entire competition. Good luck following us! Those judges won’t know what just happened to them!”

I didn’t mean it. I meant… “Shoot! We’re about to lay the biggest egg in the history of music!”

We performed, and it was tough. The sound system was less than desirable. It was boomy and echoey in there. Sean played a big-old-piano. It was loud and overwhelming. Dana is so used to hearing my guitar as the driver of the song, so she rushed some rhythms and dropped some lyrics. It was a sloppy, but heart-felt performance. And, folks out in the audience were absolutely worshipping. I saw hands in the air and heard voices singing along, mind you, without the help of any sort of powerpoint.

But, we were confident that we had lost.

That dad-gum Erik Bledsoe performed his Nashville produced gem of a song, “a little bit” to a rousing response from the audience. He is a magnetic performer. He really is quite something.

In our unofficial tabulation, we had that dad-gum Erik Bledsoe as the winner, and us as the runner-up, no offense to the Canadian… he did a great job, but the sound system hurt him a little bit.

We were so confident that we had lost that we decided to go get some ice cream and console ourselves. Seriously.

The judges told us that we had to be back into the main auditorium for that night’s concert, because they were going to announce the winners & runners-up. The winners would perform that night, 30 minutes after having been announced. Crazy.

So, we got there, reluctantly and filled with frozen dairy.

When they were about to announce the winner of our category, I was telling Jesus that no matter what, I was honored to have made it this far, and that 2^nd place would be a good stepping stone lesson for me, and that I would not despise him for this experience.

“Runner up for song of the year goes to… Erik Bledsoe.”

Dana said, out loud, “Oh my gosh… we won! How am I gonna sing with all this ice cream in my throat?” She was upset! It was hilarious.

“Winner for song of the year… Richie Fike… Ascend to Heaven”

CRAZY!!!

The host of that night’s concert was our good friends, Shane & Shane. Backstage, after we won, they were jumping and leaping for joy with us. We had a winner’s circle celebration! It was such a surreal moment.

Erik Bledsoe won for a different category, just to prove my point. The other big winner of the night was a really neat girl named Shelly Johnson from Nashville. She’s got real talent, and a great heart for the Lord. I’d like to bring her to Vanguard some day soon…

Anyway, it was amazing, and unexpected. We were humbled and overwhelmed. God is astoundingly creative and unwarrantedly kind.

I’ll keep you up to date with what comes of this. One of the judges told me that in the round of 3, when we thought we had done such a terrible job of performing the song, he was blown away, and that he couldn’t pay attention to the next couple songs because his mind and heart were so impacted by ‘Ascend’. So, my light-hearted pre-game speech came true after all. What a funny God we serve.

And, what a difference a year makes. I don’t think that I’m any different today than I was last year. One more year of faithfulness. One more year of servitude. One more year of not giving up. One more year of trusting God’s call on my life.

Do I wish God moved faster? Yes. But, the pay-off far exceeds the investment.

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