funny the way it is...

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...

Welcome back.

Great tune right?  The whole album is awesome.  Naturally I'm a Dave Matthews Band fan but I can't imagine how anyone who loves music could listen to DMG and not dig it.

Here's what's got me blogging.

Listening to the album the other day on my walk I found myself really excited to use some of the tracks as pre and post-service 'beds' for the church I'm getting ready to launch.  I find the songs deeply evocative, moving and spiritually tuned.

And they're profane.

In parts.

And I realized--listening to it--that it's only 'church kids' (people who grew up in the context of 'christian culture') who would have a problem with me using some of the most evocative tracks.  I dealt with this at my last church.  I'd use a song--one that had a huge internal message that connected to what I 'felt' was going to be going on in the service that night--and I'd get some church kid up in my face after the service fixated on the one 'off color' word that happened to be embedded in the bridge.

Yup, they missed all the glory, all the pain, all the beauty and instead fixated on one word that they've been conditioned to believe is a 'bad' word.

Even my kids (9, 7, 5, 2.5) know there's no such thing as a 'bad' word.  There are just words--physical things are spiritually neutral after all--it's how you use them, and the condition of the heart dictating the usage, that really matters.

So frustrating.

But I felt a renewed sense of freedom to be free.  I realized that someone whose christianity is more than skin-deep would recognize the glory and pain and beauty in the song and would understand--if only intuitively--why I chose to include it as part of their Sunday experience.  The other type of person, and the one I really care about, the pre or post-christian person, isn't going to have any sort of negative reaction to my slightly 'off color' choice.  In fact they're probably going to react in quite the opposite manner.  

See, they'll be tense to be 'in church' to begin with.  They'll be worried that we're going to brand them upon entry or something.  They'll be concerned that our lobotomy scars will be showing. Sure, a genuine spiritual hunger will have driven them to come visit us but they'll be pretty nervous about it right?  Heck, I'm nervous when visiting a new church and I'm supposedly someone who should be comfortable in that environment--how much more so someone who's new to the whole gig?

So, for them, to hear some DMB will be a comforting thing.  "Hey, that's 'Dave Matthews Band' they're listening to.  Wow.  He just said he'd rather lick her from her back to her belly.  These folk can't be that bad if they're down with DMB..."

And I realized, again, that my job is not typically christian-culture oriented.  I remembered why I always end up feeling compelled to produce for TV and film AND to preach and pastor and help see people find freedom in Jesus.

I was reminded again of the space in the church planting/media landscape my wife and kids and I are supposed to fill.

Then, Saturday night we had a great night with some new friends.  And they were hilarious and wonderful and uninhibited and awesome.  When we got home Nik said, "See,  church-kids would totally miss out on all that 'cause they'd be so busy being offended that they'd never get past it to the beauty of those people."

She's absolutely right.

And, if you're like me--an ex-church kid--you, like me, need to be in repentance.  You, like me, need to focus on the log in your own eye.  You, like me, need to get busy dancing with the people around you.  You, like me, need to relax and glory in His glory.  You, like me, need to remember that the loveliness on display in DMB's new album ultimately finds its root in Jesus and He came to set us free so that we would be free.

Free to love music and people and life and light and dancing and all the good things God has put into the world around us.

It is for freedom that Christ has made us free.

"Everybody get together, gonna' make love shine.  Do you know how it feels to have the light of love inside you?"

T