We were on our way home from Nashville. We had just found out our song Something to Hope For was being used in the new American Idol preseason campaign. We pulled over into a McDonalds somewhere near Bowling Green, Kentucky. This was 2010, so none of us had smartphones, and Wifi at restaurants was a relatively new thing. It took about 20 minutes to download, but Jim, Kyle, Brennan and I sat in a booth in the back of the restaurant and watched the commercial that would be played for millions.

One of the things the internet was supposed to do was bring everyone together in sort of a one world scenario, but ironically, the opposite has occurred.  It was so interesting at first to have all of the people over the last 40 years of my life (35 when Facebook really got kicking) together in one place talking about times back in Northwest Ohio in the 80’s, or Pensacola, Florida in the middle 90’s, or from my 20 years here in New England.  Over time, however, we took sides, and our bias created our new world tribes.  This is what people are saying when they say the world is so divisive right now. 

One of the struggles of living in the Christian world is the inability of many Christians to be flexible about their beliefs.  This is due, in no small part, to the enlightenment, coupled with “modernity” and its belief or philosophy that we can know everything as humans.  So science can tell us everything we need to know about the world or the Bible tells us everything we need to know about God. This was of course the response of mankind to the middle or the “dark” ages where only a few special people, whether they were kings or priests, held the keys to knowledge or spirituality.

This morning at a wake someone looked at me and said, “I have no idea what to say, I just stood there and cried and hugged.”  Across the room someone listening in to the conversation replied, “Perfect!  They need your presence right now more than your words.”  I don’t know why Solomon wrote this, but in Ecclesiastes, the king ponders, “A good name is better than fine perfume, and the day of death better than the day of birth.”  It is a stunning declaration that there is something “better” about what happens beyond death than what has happened in life.  This could point to the afterlife but it also could communicate how important the memory and the connection of the loved ones community is the world after that person dies.  When someone you know dies, who can you connect with in their family or friend group that could benefit from your presence.  We live in such an individualistic, my life first, and death opens us up to our mortality, and that we are better together.

The times in our lives where we felt closest to being the New Testament Church were when we had a small group of people at our home. We broke bread, we prayed, we worshipped, we read God’s word together… we reached out and blessed others… we met each other’s needs. We were a church.

We walked into Tom’s office. It was beautiful. It was large and had artwork and memorabilia from Warner artists. There was a black baby grand piano. Tom was confident, and slightly intimidating. Maybe he wasn’t, I was just intimidated by the weight of the meeting. You see, when you hear the term “big wigs”, this guy is who that is referring to. Except, this was the biggest of all the big wigs. The guy with the most power. The guy with all the superstar’s numbers in his phone. The guy who just sold his house for 18 million and is managing Tupac’s estate. This guy could put us in the best position possible to be a huge success, or failure.

I tell this story because that experience reminded me of one essential, fundamental truth about Western religion, something I’ve tried to keep before me in the years since:  Christians can often be the very least reason to consider Christianity.

The church often seems cram-packed full of disproportionately more broken, hypocritical, deceitful, loud-mouthed, ignorant, combative, hateful, and just plain ugly-minded people than one might encounter in almost any other sphere.

And this should come as no surprise. The church attracts the people that know they’re screwed up.  People who think they have their crap together find little reason to turn to God. Thus, it might be considered a legitimate complaint for people to say of the church, “Why do I want any part in that?  Those people are a mess.”

If you want to know what intimidation feels like, try walking into a studio where there are platinum Coldplay records on the wall. Where the walls themselves wreak of music history and legends. Where you run into big stars in the hallways. A place where movies have been filmed, and the best of the best have recorded. Again we felt in over our heads. All of this money spent on us. Could we deliver? Were our songs actually that good? They say art is found in the overlap of complete narcissism and crippling self doubt. Well, both of those emotions hit us hard that week.

When DC Talk finished back in 2000 or 2001, two things were true.  First of all, they were easily the most popular Christian band of all time.  Their last album wasn’t quite as outstanding as their 1995 hit Jesus Freak, but it was a solid album with ear pleasing pop tunes and slightly different influences shown within the album.  When Jesus Freak came out in 1995, it is safe to say that the Christian world had been  overtaken with some of the greatest music it had ever produced up to that point.  DC Talk created an album for us to hold on to as “the best” Christian album most of us ever heard.  Rock, alternative, rap and soul combined, I listened to it over and over and over, just being wowed with its content.  Every play-through on my CD player created a concert like experience in my living room in Tucson, AZ.

The second thing that was true when DC Talk retired was the Christian music world was changing.  Recording labels started to choose safe bets in regards to their music and “safe bets” meant worship music, including Hillsong United and Sonicflood, controlling the airwaves. Newer innovative bands like Switchfoot made a case for excellent “redeeming” music on a popular stage, choosing to avoid the Christian subculture of CCM and over time, the innovation that DC Talk, the Newsboys, and a handful of other bands ushered in crept away while the pop worship tunes of Chris Tomlin and such dominated the new Christian music industry, which had become a shell of its 90’s domination.