If you don’t follow The Resurgence Blog, you need to. Great posts from a variety of writers like Mark Driscoll, Tim Smith, Matt Johnson, Bob Thune and others.

Anyways, Matt Johnson has written a series of posts called Thoughts on Music for the Media-Gorged and while they’ve all been great, part 5 really spoke to me. One point Johnson made was especially relevant to me, and that is how many Christians take a hardline approach to music and claim that you should only listen to Christian music and that listening to secular music pollutes your mind and soul (can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the “garbage in – garbage out” explanation). Which of course Johnson rebukes by showing how, “if Paul hadn’t “polluted” his mind with pagan poetry, he wouldn’t have had sermon material to work with when he spoke on Mars Hill in Acts 17.”

Johnson also points out that scripture does not give us freedom for freedom’s sake, but that “mature Christians in step with the Spirit can cautiously engage thematically raw music, while not allowing a blank check mentality for sin.”

But that’s just a taste of what Matt Johnson wrote about. Check out part 5 and also the complete series.

This past weekend me and some friends went on a little road trip to Dallas, Texas. Our original plan was to go to the All Hope Is Gone World Tour show featuring Slipknot, Coheed and Cambria and Trivium. Of course, being that close to Fellowship Church, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to visit and when I found out they have a Saturday night service, I had to go.

Awesome service. Dex and the band did four songs (including Forever, my favorite off the new CD), then Christine Caine shared a powerful message about allowing God to fulfill his promises in and through our lives. Of course, Ed was there, and it was cool to see him in person. Must say, I’m still cracking up every time I think about what he said in reference to churches/pastors that talk trash about other churches because they’re too big, too loud or too progressive They can’t say anything bad about the message being preached but they sure can find fault in the presentation. As Ed put it, “Big steeple, few people.”

Also at Fellowship we hooked up with an old friend of mine, Lance Philips. He moved to the DFW metroplex in 2007 and has been attending Fellowship Church for the last several months. It was great getting to catch up with him. Definitely have to go back now as I know someone in the area other than my relatives.

Anyways, onto Sunday. We stayed at my aunt’s house, so it was cool to catch up with her and my uncle as I haven’t seen them in at least two years. Sunday afternoon we went to Grapevine Mills and had lunch at the Rainforest Cafe. They were even kind enough to make me a Grateful Dead even though they’d never made one before. Luckily, I had my iPhone so I could Google the recipe.

After wandering around the Mills for a couple hours (I lost count of how many sword/knife stores there were) we headed to Grand Prairie for the show. The Nokia Theatre is definitely one of the nicest venues I’ve been in. It isn’t too big (seats a little over 6,000) and feels really intimate, even in the balcony, yet it provides enough ceiling height and floor space to accommodate any band. And being a geek, I had to get a pic of the FOH position. Of course, being Slipknot, they were running Meyer Mica line arrays, Meyer MJ212A monitors and Meyer M2D delays for those of us in the balcony. The lighting was awesome as well. There was one truss above the stage with 20 intelligent lights on it which were used for Trivium and Coheed. Slipknot also used it, but I’ll get to that in a bit. After the show I went down and introduced myself to Dave Nicholls (audio director for Slipknot) and chatted for a bit.

The opening band was Trivium. Before Sunday night I wasn’t much of a fan. I mean, the only song I’d even heard was their cover of Metallica’s Master of Puppets. But they definitely put on a good show and I’m going to check their stuff out now. After Trivium we had a quick set change and then Coheed and Cambria took the stage. I felt so bad for Claudio, as he was having problems with his pedal board or guitar. His guitar tech was still working on the pedalboard in the first song (which, for those interested, was Welcome Home). They finally got the problem solved during the second song. Their final song was the best though – they showed why they deserve to be on a metal show, even though they lean more hard rock. Claudio ripped a solo behind his back, then with his teeth, and to top it all off humped a Mesa double stack while soloing.

And then the curtain lowered. There was no curtain for the Trivium/Coheed set change, so we knew something was up. That something turned out to be a beast of a stage set, six additional lighting trusses, multiple stationary LED’s that were about six feet tall each and two Meyer line arrays used for side fills. And their performance: unbelievable. Slipknot definitely lived up to the hype, as they are consistently voted one of the best live shows year after year.

Slipknot set list (Runnin’ With the Devil was played over the FOH system to warm up the crowd, Iowa and 742617000027 were played over FOH as Slipknot’s intro and ‘Til We Die was played over FOH at the end as Slipknot threw pic, drumheads and drumsticks into the crowd.)

To view some professional photos taken at the concert click here.

So, yeah, it’s been more than a few days.

Okay; more like a month.

No excuses. So here goes.

**DISCLAIMER**
I used a little language in this post. If you don’t like it, that’s okay. I’m sure you’ll get over it.

First, thanks to everyone who posted a reply to the original Sacred vs. Secular post. I had some great discussions with people because of their comments, and even a few who didn’t comment, but read the post and comments.

As for my beliefs (again, MINE, doesn’t mean you have to agree), while the Bible tells us to use our talents for God’s glory, it doesn’t tell us how. I love that, at the end of Rob Bell’s Everything Is Spiritual DVD he points out that for the Jews in the first century A.D., there was no disctinction between the spiritual and non-spiritual. He goes on to say, “If you could travel back in time and ask Jesus how his spirit-man is, he would look at you as if you were crazy.”. And he’s right! To the ancient Jews and early Christians, everything was spiritual; they sought to glorify God in everything. Does that mean that every stanza of poetry, every verse of song, every chapter in a book that an early Christian was about Jesus? NO! What it meant was that in all you do, do it for God.

So, the first topic I addressed was that of Christian artists who branch out into the mainstream. I’ve heard the opinions of several artists and even managed to talk to a few and there are two things they all share in common: first, the desire to get outside the Christian subculture and reach an audience that, had they stayed in “the church”, would never have heard them. Second, they all get labeled by Christians as everything from “not Christian enough”, to sell-outs, to heretical. All because they wrote a song or two dedicated to their wives and performed on the Warped Tour instead of CreationFest.

There’s a reason I still listen to secular music – it’s real. Not to make a generalization about Christian artists, but too many of them seem fake. Maybe their albums are overproduced, maybe the songs are written for them, but I’ve heard too many contemporary Christian songs that are just, well, full of shit. As in the same way that pop music is (by pop, I mean Britney Spears, etc.). There’s no emotion. It’s just some American Idol wannabe with a decent producer and lyrics that mean nothing to them. When I listen to Metallica, I can hear the emotion in James’ voice. He knows what he is singing about because he lived it. But this is also why I like Christian artists like Anberlin. And that is why I get angry when someone attacks Anberlin (or another Christian group that crosses over to mainstream) simply because of the venues they play, or the bands they share billing with, or because they don’t have the word “God” in every song.

How does all that affect music in church? The first issue is the music used in church worship services. I and a friend used to have a joke between us at our old church that went something like this: “Why should I watch American Idol when I get to see it in church every Sunday morning?”. All too often we saw people who would sing songs that they really didn’t understand. The songs themselves weren’t bad; the lyrics were powerful and true, but for whatever reasons, the person/people singing didn’t comprehend the weight of those lyrics and just went through the motions. Most often, it happened with the hymns. The elderly in that church were feeling disconnected from worship because it seemed as if we were doing new songs every week and they couldn’t keep up. So the pastor and worship leader decided to begin services each week with a hymn so that the elderly would have at least one song to sing that they knew. Do you see the problem? It became a chore, not only to the music department, but to the congregation – even the group of people it was supposed to reach. Why? Because they weren’t singing the hymn to glorify God, they were singing it to appease a group of people. And don’t even get me started on the people who got up to perform, I mean sing a solo. Some understood what they were doing; it isn’t about them, it’s about God. Others looked like they were auditioning for American Idol.

The second issue of music in church is the use of secular music. I’m going to keep it simple: there are songs that are appropriate for church and there are songs that are not. The key word is redeem. A perfect example is the song “Free Fallin’” by Tom Petty. It’s a great song, a classic. But is it appropriate for church? Probably not. The lyrics have no relevance to God, Jesus, worship, etc. And the week we did it, no relevance to the message. Like I said, great song, but the only way to redeem this song is to rewrite the lyrics or play an instrumental version. An example of a redeemable song is “Gravity”, by John Mayer. At Four Points, we replaced the word “gravity” with “depravity”. Nothing else needed to change (except for the line “Depravity, stay the hell away from me”; only because our audience is a mix of traditional, contemporary, modern and post-modern, so some would be offended). And it was one of the first songs our congregation really connected with. When I look out across an audience and they’re just standing there, staring at the band, it’s not good. But when I’m mixing the band and start wondering, “Where are those extra voices coming from?” and then realize that’s our audience – they’re actually singing OVER the band! – that’s a good feeling. They get it. It’s not about them, it’s not about the band; it’s about Jesus. So, the question isn’t “Can secular music be played in church?”, the question is “Can this song be redeemed so that the lyrics speak to people?”.

J

I love my church. 

But one reason I love my church is because we’re not so stuck on ourselves that we don’t look to other churches, ministries and leaders for inspiration, advice, guidance, etc.

Which is why I love the other churches in this area. They help each other. They realize that they can’t do it alone; I heard a statistic at Buckhead Church a few weeks ago: there are over 300,000 unchurched people living in the Buckhead Community. Buckhead Church seats 3,000. They can’t reach that community alone, and they know that. In Acworth, where Four Points is located, there are 60,000 homes within an 8 mile radius of our current meeting location. Granted, some of those people know Jesus already and are going to a church. But if the stats are correct then in many of those homes on Sunday morning the last thought is church.

Which brings me to my next point: for too long Christians have taken a certain scripture out of context. 1 John 2:15 ring a bell? “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” (ESV)

I say people should be reminded of a few other scriptures: John 1:10, John 3:17 and my favorite, John 9:5, which states, “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

Now some would argue that the church (i.e. physical building) is the light, but I argue that the church (i.e. all Christians, regardless of where they are or where they gather) is the light. Which is why I love the Buckhead Music Project. Instead of trying to explain it, I’m going to repost a blog that Carlos Whittaker, Service Programming Director at Buckhead Church, wrote.

We are in the middle of an experiment.  It is not grand by any means.  It is simply a test.
A test to see how our church responds to the community and how the community responds to our church.
It is called The Buckhead Music Project.
The premise is simple.
Take the amazing musicians and singer songwriters in our church and unleash them into the bars and clubs of Atlanta.
Most people know more people than not that would never step foot into a church.
Or so I thought.
So.
We’ll go to them.
When we initially announced this idea there was a great buzz.  I could begin to sense that these venues were going to have a line wrapped around the block with no room at the inn.  So I made a call.
Tell our church people that they are not allowed into the venue unless they have a person that would never step foot into our church or any church with them.
This rule accomplished 2 things.
1.  It suddenly cut our attendees by 95% and made lots of room in the bars for the people we actually want there.
2.  It made me realize how many Christians have relationships with zero non Christians.
So we are only half way through our little experiment called the Buckhead Music Project.
Both nights at Vinyl and Andrews Upstairs have been packed.
But they were packed with the right people.
After all the planning and implementation I think the thing I am going to take away from this first phase is that we need to stop spending so much time together.
The church cannot reach the city unless the city knows it is trying to be reached.
And you knew the worst part of it all.
I had to break my own rule.
What steps have you taken to build real relationships with people outside your faith?

Carlos