Page 125 - Cityview Magazine - July/August 2017

I first experienced
Chris Blue when he was 11 or 12.
You could see the light then. He was the lead singer of the family singing group The Blue Brothers. Many called them the gospel Jackson 5. He was their “Michael.”
I knew they had something special. Any- one with eyes and ears did. But they were always “almost” famous. The group never really got their shot.
Chris moved back home to give it one more try. The plan didn’t gel perfectly, but Chris couldn’t and wouldn’t give up. When Chris called me wanting to move back to Knoxville, I knew if he could be connected to the right people and experiences he could move in the direction of his destiny.
Under the tutelage of Paul Jones at Cokes- bury and Travis Wyrick at Lakeside studios, Chris began to flourish.
One day we decided to dream even bigger. We went to Lakeshore Park to dream big on paper. As we sat near a chapel on the prop- erty, I drew a box and put everything he was currently doing in the box. I then asked him to dream without limits. We dreamed all over that legal pad and most of the dreams were too big for the box.
I asked him if God could use him outside the box. It was an emotional moment.
What is amazing about this one part of Chris’ story is that when we returned with Cityview magazine a year later to do a photo shoot, the park had removed two exterior walls of the chapel to turn it into a useable public structure. The metaphor of the absent walls as a visual for living outside of a box stunned us both.
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