Life audio. Hi from the Salvation Army, and you're listening to Words of Life. These are the words, these are the words, these are the words of life. These are the words, these are the words, these are the words of life. Welcome back to Words of Life.
Last week we started a three-part conversation with our guest, Lieutenant Colonel Eddie Hopgood. He's joined us to share his testimony, as well as in this episode, we talk about some of the projects that he's been involved with over the years. And I want to remind you that you can watch these episodes on our YouTube channel. Find us on YouTube at sawordsoflife, or just check out our website wordsoflifepodcast.org, and we'll have a link to our YouTube channel there as well. I know that we would be doing a disservice to your story if we don't sort of go through that officership career because.
We take the music aspect of your early life and the ministry aspect of the calling that you've accepted and then the opportunities that you have been given, literally. I know because we've worked together on several of these things, but you've written full-blown musical theater shows, productions. You have one-man shows. You've got multiple people's shows. It's just incredible.
So give us the, I don't even want to say the reader's digest version, but just tell us a little bit more about the things that you've been able to do. Yeah, well, you know, as far back as I can remember, I've loved the arts. I remember as a third grader, every third grader in the city got to go to the university, East Carolina University, and see their production of Oliver. Wow. It's the first musical I ever saw.
And it was, I mean, I can still, as though I'm sitting there watching, I can still see staging, the music, the singing, the acting was just, I mean, Broadway quality. Yeah. That was when I think the bug really hit me. And I really, really, really wanted to be involved in theater.
So in high school, You know, I was in musicals at high school with the Army. You know, obviously, back in the day, every youth council, there was a musical. I had the privilege to be in several of those. Our corps, the corps I grew up in, was a very artsy corps. They really promoted the arts, all kinds of arts.
And matter of fact, the first play I ever wrote was a Christmas play. Called Sleep in Heavenly Peace. It was awful. It was like everybody dies. It was horrible.
It was horrible. And friends who were in it and remember it make fun of me all the time when they say that it always comes up in the conversation. It was horrible. But, My core supported it, and they supported me, and as bizarre as it was. It was the Christmas musical that year.
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Visit myfico.com slash free today to get your FICO score for free. MyFICO makes it easy to understand your credit with FICO scores, credit reports, and alerts. Visit myfico.com slash free or download the MyFICO app and discover the score lenders use most. When we decided that, yeah, we're going to go to training. I did say to myself, you know, this love, this passion I have for the arts, I'm probably going to have to put that on the shelf.
Not fully understanding how the Army, you know, and because I was in a small community, not understanding how. far spread and flung arts is i in the army at that time. I didn't.
So we go to training. And then, of course, you know, we're in a brigade where there's music and you do a musical when you're going campaigns. And then at commissioning, every year back then, we did a musical. And so, you know, Blood of the Lamb was the first one that we did. And then the second one was Hosea.
And, you know, and I got to play the lead part, which was pretty amazing. And so we get commissioned. We go to our Corps. We had three Corps appointments first before we went to headquarters. But in a couple of those Corps, we had some amazing young people, teenagers, young adults, and had phenomenal contemporary singing groups.
And we also got asked to direct the youth council's musicals.
So I was very involved in all of that. Then we go and become DYSs, and we're able to take all those things that we had learned and we had experienced and put that into our youth ministry.
So every year that we were DYS, seven of those years, we were DYSs, we did musicals at youth councils. One year we did two musicals. We had so many kids that wanted to be in them.
So music, the arts, became a really important part of our ministry.
So this desire, this longing that I had was being fulfilled in ways that I never imagined it could be or would be as an officer. When I was a DYS in Florida, when you say DYS, you're Discord. That's our divisional youth secretary. Gotcha, a person who oversees the youth work for a Salvation Army division. For us, we had two divisions.
Kentucky, Tennessee was one division, our first division, and then the Division of Florida was our second division. While in Florida, I got an assignment to portray a Salvation Army officer named Joe the Turk. Back in 1992, Salvation Army had a national advisory organizations conference in Washington, D.C. It was hosted by the Southern Territory. And one of the things that was happening was a living walkthrough history museum.
And it took 15 minutes to go through the museum. And so while people were going through the museum, the crowd that was waiting outside needed to be entertained.
So I was assigned to write a 15-minute monologue with music to entertain the crowd as Joe the Turk. And so that's kind of how my association with Joe the Turk came about.
So I had the chance to perform that, share that 50 times, over 50 times that one weekend. And then when I came home, people started asking me to come to their Corps and do it.
So, when we became the territorial youth secretaries overseeing all the youth work of the Army in the southern United States, I was given the opportunity to expand that 15-minute monologue into a 50-minute presentation with music and more. I hate to interrupt you, but like in 1992. That's when my wife and I got married, and we came straight back to Washington, D.C. for that advisory organizations conference. And I saw that show.
I didn't even realize that, Eddie. That's the first time I would have seen Joe the Turk. We pray that you're enjoying and being blessed by this conversation. We're going to take one more ad break and we'll be right back. The North Carolina Department of Transportation is hosting a meeting 4 to 7 p.m.
August 12th at Faulkner Elementary School, 3931 Naco Road, Greensboro, on its plan to improve passenger and freight rail operations along the Piedmont Corridor. Visit ncdot.gov. I had the privilege to create this one-man show about this incredible salvationist. And as the territorial youth secretary, I got to travel around all of the various youth councils and present that as my keynote. Nice.
We had a territorial commander, Commissioner Max Fiener, who was attending one of the youth councils, and he saw it. And I guess a couple of years later, I had moved on. I was the general secretary in Florida at the time. And my boss, my divisional commander, comes into my office and says, the territorial commander would like you to write a musical for an upcoming Congress. About Samuel Logan Bringle.
And I'm like, I can't do that. I've never written a musical before. And Samuel Logan Bringle is what we often consider the Salvation Army's Holiness Ambassador. Yep. I call him the prophet.
If we had prophets, but we're a nonprofit organization. But if we had prophets, Samuel Logan Bringle would be our prophet of holiness. Yeah. Absolutely.
So I said, you know, I don't have that capacity. I've never done that. And so after a meeting, a face-to-face meeting with the Commissioner, it was decided I would write a musical. About Commissioner Bringle, which absolutely was a phenomenal experience. You know, I studied up, I watched as many musicals as I could, that sort of thing.
And we were able to present that at the Territorial Congress in 2008 using all of the cadets. And we brought in some outside casts and other salvationists, a cast of over 100. And so, from that, a couple years later, I received another assignment. Uh asking if I would write another musical. And I felt very led at that time to write one about William and Catherine Booth.
The founders of the Salvation Army and the founding of the Salvation Army, and it was called Our People. Our people, yeah. That was another incredible experience because we got to record the soundtrack with an orchestra up in Washington, D.C. And again, we used the cadets and some outside Salvationists to make up the cast and do that and present that. And just another great highlight of my life.
Yeah. From that, there was an officer sitting in the audience, a special guest from international headquarters. Commissioner Kenneth Hodder, who was the international legal secretary at the time. And from that, he saw the musical. And there had been some rumors floating around that there was going to be an international congress in London to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Salvation Army.
And Commissioner Hodder goes back and speaks to General Linda Bond and says, I think I know someone that we can bring over to help organize this Congress. And so in January of 2012, we get a phone call. from Commissioner Barry Swanson, the International Chief of the Staff, saying that we've been appointed, my wife Kathy and I have been appointed to international headquarters to coordinate and execute the 150th anniversary of the Salvation Army. Which, you know, like in many churches, have big congresses or big special weeks to celebrate the life of the church or the work that God's doing through them. That was the Salvation Armies.
Yeah, we had 16,000 people convened from over 70, 80 countries for that five-day period. And we were online. We had more than 2 million views. Matter of fact, on the second day of Congress, which is Founders Day, July the 2nd, we had more social media views than Wembley. Which was going on at the very same time.
We trended higher than Wembley did on that day.
So, yeah.
So, you know, from this little kid from the wrong side of the tracks. seen a production of Oliver in the third grade to the biggest concert venue practically in Europe, the O two Arena, to execute the International Congress of the Salvish Army. Flows my mind to think that the circumstances surrounding my birth, that God would deem me worthy. To be involved in something significant in his kingdom. Yeah.
But days I cannot see Have all been planned for me Mm. His way. It's bad. You see. I'm in his hands.
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