Resurrection

This thought has been on mind for years now.  I can remember it first starting when I was still a little shaver in Jr. High, and I was just being introduced to the "heavy" music scene (in particular, Christian).  Music has always been one of my passions.  I remember the first "heavy" concert that I went to was a Pillar concert back in '06 (?) in Philly.  At the time, their new CD was the cutting edge Christian hard rock, and I was all for it.  In fact, I later declared them my favorite band after I had bought their album, "Where Do We Go From Here", and had almost worn it out from playing it so many times.  It was there that I found a deeper worship.  Something that wasn't happening in churches.  See, in my experience, churches are always too afraid to offend someone.  Please the masses and find something suitable that everyone can agree with.  Discovering this in my "rebellious" years couldn't have been at a more convenient time as I quickly found out that the heavy music refuge that I was creating for myself and retreating in to was soon to be taking the place and becoming my worship.  The worship that no one else would understand because it's "loud" and "heavy".  "It has too many beats!"; "You can't understand the words!"; "The devil's music, that is!"
Really?
Seriously?
...
Really?
One of my favorite songs on aforementioned album was called, "Simply".  The chorus ("You simply love / despite all the stupid things I've done...") and the heartfelt verses would seize my heart every...single...time.  Not the, "Wow, that's really cool", seize, but the, "God...what have I done with myself?  I don't deserve this love." flat out grateful on the floor seize.  As my musical tastes developed and I steered my ears away from the CCM artists on the local radio station like Third Day, Casting Crowns, and Steven Curtis Chapman, I dived deeper and deeper into this "murky" world of heavy music to which so many people found offense in.  My tastes got heavier and heavier, and within a year or two I was listening to anything from Swedish death metal to hardcore.  And as my tastes became greater, so did the concern of my parents.  A huge stepping stone was my first official "metal" concert--Demon Hunter, Living Sacrifice, Becoming the Archetype, Zao, and August Burns Red on the cusp of popularity.  I bought a few of Demon Hunter's records because I was really into it and brought them home.  I have to admit, now that I look back on the moment, I was scared.  What would my parents think?  Say?  Do?  Sure enough, my fears were justified as they both expressed concern.  "If you can't understand what they're saying, how is it God-honoring?"  Again...
...really?
See, here's my biggest beef, and I couldn't care less who I offend with this next statement because I believe it wholeheartedly, but the church is blind and wandering on dead-end roads.  Hymns are dead.  The songs you used to sing at your Grandma's church when you visited her are gone, and if you still sing them, I'm sorry, but you're old-fashioned and not doing anything to help the current image of Christianity.  In high school, I did a report on the book, "unChristian", by Gabe Lyons.  In it, he chronicles the top stereotypes of Christians and why they are that way.  I have to admit, it wasn't a fun book to read, but the stereotypes are forever burned in my mind--old-fashioned being one of the most prominent.  Who would want to join and outdated religion?  

"If we are to reach the current unsaved population, we need to modernize.  Plain and simple."--Ben Geib

Now, I'll admit, there are some churches in America that have worship (if we are to define worship as singing and praise Sunday mornings) correct.  I can think of several off the top of my head right now, and if I was to think hard, I could think of more.  But the majority of the church population wastes itself away in the olden days.  This was where I was, caught in a place where I needed worship that I could connect with, something with meaning and passion, and facing a dead church that sang songs that I could not connect with.  In need for passion, I went heavier and heavier.  Listening to bands tearing their throats out screaming, "Great Councilor, take what's left of me!" was something that I could connect with.  "Rock of ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee", was not.

And that's where I'm at now.  Is the music offensive?  Yes.  To some.  But to tell you the straight up truth, I've seen more passion and more worship happening at hardcore concerts in the mosh pits and on the stage than I have at almost every church I've been at.  So you tell me, why do we ostracize something so strange and so foreign and dangerous if it has power and the potential to connect with a dying world and yet cling to the thing that separates us from them?  One of my friends told me a story of being in a small, seedy bar in the middle of Harrisburg watching a Celtic punk band rock out the tiny stage.  Who knows who was there that night?  In a bar, one can only guess.  As they rip through their set, they end with one, final song--a punk rendition of Amazing Grace.  As the popular ballad soars through the small, rough crowd my friend tells me with water starting to well up in his eyes, "I saw more worship there, in that little seedy bar than I have at church."  And I recall the picture that one of my friends took of a kid, gauges and all kneeling in the middle of a mosh pit and Purple Door with hands upraised to the sky simply worshiping.

So I close and I plead the church to modernize.  Obviously, screaming Oh, Sleeper and The Chariot on Sunday mornings would turn most off and away, but seriously consider the job you have and the stance with which you condemn heavy music.  I fully believe that it helped save my life, and if mine, why not others?

Rock on.
SIbrokenDE