SEVEN PROMISE KEEPERS CANADA
MEN / GOD / LIFE
MAKE SOME
Noise TEDASHII TAKES CENTRE STAGE
TRAVELLING TROUBADOUR SHARES THOUGHTS FROM THE JOURNEY STEVE BELL TALKS MUSIC, FAMILY, AND THE ROAD AHEAD
SILLY IN THE SACRED THE LIGHTER SIDE OF CHRISTIAN MUSIC
JUL / AUG 2015 ISSUE 43 NEWSSTAND PRICE CDN $4.95
2 SEVEN JULY / AUGUST 2015
CONTENTS
14
COLUMNS 6 // PK Podium No Season for Slowing Down 31 // The Single Life Music to My Years 32 // Sports Scene Tebow Ready for Next Shot
FEATURES 14 DRUDGING THROUGH DARKNESS, POINTING TO PARADISE Christian hip-hopper Tedashii has been making a name for himself in recent years, but it’s his most recent work that’s been causing the biggest buzz. Coming from the darkest of places, it’s led to something heart-wrenchingly honest and powerful for those who’ve heard it.
20 A BAND TOGETHER: THE CITY HARMONIC While differences of theology can be a stumbling block for some, for one band, it’s encouraged an unparalleled commitment to unity. Robert White reports on The City Harmonic’s focus on overcoming obstacles on the way to being one of Canada’s freshest Christian voices.
20 24
34 // Out of My Depth Soul Music
DEPARTMENTS 8 // The Pulse Bits. Blips. Beats. Blurbs. 12 // Music Reviews For Your Next Mix Tape… 35 // Power Play Toys. Tools. Technology.
24 THOUGHTS FROM THE JOURNEY Steve Bell is no stranger to storytelling; anyone who’s been to one of his shows will know full well—the man loves to talk. We sit down with Canada’s favourite travelling troubadour and chat about life, music, and what lies ahead after 25 years in music.
28 BRING YOUR OWN TAMBOURINE Author and speaker Jon Acuff shares a bit of the wilder moments in his worshipping experience in this lighthearted interview with Promise Keepers Canada president Kirk Giles.
JULY / AUGUST 2015 SEVEN 3
ON THE COVER
SEVEN is a Christian magazine for Canadian men that exists to help men lead more fulfilling lives and leave enduring legacies.
MAKE SOME NOISE
Music. We’re surrounded by it, entertained by it, inspired by it, moved by it. But what lies beneath can often be equally as compelling as the sounds themselves. This month, we tune in to some of the stories behind the songs, and what drives the dedication of some of Canada’s best Christian voices.
The name reflects the seven promises that form the basis of the Promise Keepers organization, which works with churches to minister to men across Canada. 1 // A promise keeper is committed to honouring Jesus Christ through worship, prayer, and obedience to God’s Word in the power of the Spirit. 2 // A promise keeper is committed to pursuing Christ-centred friendships with a few other men, connecting regularly, understanding that he needs brothers to help him keep his promises. 3 // A promise keeper is committed to practicing biblical integrity: spiritually, morally, ethically and sexually. 4 // A promise keeper is committed to strengthening families and marriages through love, honour, protection, and biblical values. 5 // A promise keeper is committed to supporting the mission of his church by honouring and praying for his pastor, and by actively giving his time and resources. 6 // A promise keeper is committed to reaching beyond racial, social, economic, generational, and denominational barriers to demonstrate that power of biblical unity. 7 // A promise keeper is committed to influencing the world by his fervent love for God while loving his neighbour, seeking justice for the poor and oppressed, and making disciples of Jesus Christ.
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EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD
EDITORIAL
PROMISE KEEPERS CANADA
Editorial Director JEFF STEARNS
KIRK GILES
Questions and comments
Box 20099 RPO Brant Hills
Managing Editor ROB HORSLEY
Promise Keepers Canada
regarding editorial can be sent
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to rhorsley@promisekeepers.ca,
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address changes to:
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Promise Keepers Canada
The PK Canada logo features a maple leaf, indicating our dedication to serve the men of Canada. An arrow breaks into the maple leaf symbolizing the impact we believe God wants to see Promise Keepers and men making in our nation. A special thank-you to all the pastors who continually encourage us to communicate God’s truth with grace and love.
4 SEVEN JULY / AUGUST 2015
podcasts It’s now easier than ever to listen to the latest messages from Promise Keepers Canada! With just a few clicks, you can listen wherever you are. Get exclusive access to interviews and inspiring messages with:
Max Lucado John and Sam Eldredge Gary Thomas The Skit Guys Donald Miller and many others! promisekeepers.ca/podcasts
JULY / AUGUST 2015 SEVEN 5
PK PODIUM
NO SEASON FOR SLOWING DOWN A BEHIND-THE-SCENES LOOK AT THE SUMMERTIME WORK OF PROMISE KEEPERS BY KIRK GILES
S
ummer is often a time when people think ministry comes to a stop, and I know that I’ve had many people ask me what our team does in the summer months. This month, I thought I’d give you a behind the scenes look at Promise Keepers Canada in the summer. The good news for our staff and their families is that summer is not a time with much travelling. Over the last twelve months, our team has run 12 conferences, 33 workshops, 13 Fatherless Project training events, and four leadership training events. That’s a lot of travelling and does not include the trips made ahead of these events to work with local teams, talk to local churches, or meet with donors. This means that for us, summer is the prime time for a well-earned vacation for our staff and their families. Still, there are many ministry activities that still keep us busy in the summer months. Our PK@Home team is busy developing future editions of SEVEN, recording podcast interviews with various special guests, and developing the next edition of This Is Me TV. These resources will equip tens of thousands of men, and they are critical in our commitment to walk with men all year long. Our conference team has planned the journey men will experience in the next series of conferences. In addition, contact is being made with hundreds of local churches to connect them with conferences happening in cities near them. Our conference team also focuses on designing, printing, and mailing the promotional materials for the next set of conferences while producing new promotional videos. Our church relations team invests their time in connecting churches with opportunities to partner together in the discipleship of men. Summer is also a time where we review and adjust the content for the various workshops we provide to local churches, and prepare for a busy set of leadership training events that will take place in several cities in September. We will also be spending the summer recording a variety of videos that will be used to support and encourage local churches. I tell you these stories for two reasons. First, while the work may change in different seasons, the ministry never ends for our team. I am deeply grateful for the passion and commitment this team shows to reach the men of Canada. We humbly ask you to pray for our staff in all of this. Second, summer is a slow time for us financially and I would ask you to pray for God to provide for our needs during the summer months. We pray that you will enjoy your summer, and we are grateful for the privilege you give to us in supporting you all year long to be the man God has designed you to be.
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KIRK GILES is the president of Promise Keepers Canada. However, his most important roles as a man are husband to Shannon and father to Carter, Joshua, Sydney and Samuel.
we’re passionate about what we do.
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beasponsor@promisekeepers.ca JULY / AUGUST 2015 SEVEN 7
THE PULSE
BITS / BLIPS / BEATS / BLURBS A Work in Progress
FROM THE EDITOR
BY ROB HORSLEY
8 SEVEN JULY / AUGUST 2015
EDITOR’S DESK / Ask anyone who’s tried to write a song before; sometimes the words just won’t come. Sometimes you can have all the right chords, a perfect melody, and a bumping rhythm section to go along with it. But for whatever reason, it’s just impossible to put those pesky words on paper. That was the case for me this month, as I sat at my desk, thinking about how to kick off this editorial for our music issue. As I tried to come up with something that would capture what this issue would be about, all that came to mind was a plethora of headlines based off of bad music puns. “Hitting all the right notes?” No, no that’s not good. “Making merry melodies? Holy harmonies?” Good grief, those are awful. “Sing a new song, says the Lord?” Well I guess that one’s not inappropriate, but it still seems forced to me. “Pitch per—”. No, you know what, let’s not even go there. After thinking for a while about which was the least offensive headline I could stomach putting my name under, I started thinking more about how a work of art can come together in different ways for different artists. There’s a great story that gets passed around comparing the creative processes of Mozart and Beethoven, two of the most celebrated classical composers of all
time. As the legend goes, once Mozart wrote something down he never changed it. If it was good enough to write down, it wasn’t worth coming back to. Beethoven, by contrast, would spend hours upon hours revisiting and tweaking his work, scribbling new edits and making new additions until he had it just right—and even then, he might still change something he didn’t like. That story is probably embellished a fair bit for the sake of dramatic effect, but it’s a good illustration for how the creative process sometimes unfolds for us at SEVEN. On our good days, we’re like Mozart: a collection of great story ideas that practically writes itself and can’t be captured fast enough. Other times, the process is much more Beethoven-esque, wherein we struggle to figure out just what the story is going to be, and what we end up with might be a totally different picture of what we started from. The point is this: at SEVEN, we’re a work in progress. Writers come and go from
ODDS AND ENDS DAYCARE WORKER ‘HATES BEING AROUND KIDS,’ GETS CANNED AFTER ONE DAY
month to month, and we play with formats hoping that one day we’ll be satisfied with the ideas we continue to kick around. As I wrote a couple months back, we’ve been journeying through a number of changes recently and while it’s been a bit of a learning curve for us, we’re overall really proud of what’s been taking place in our pages. We hope you’ve enjoyed it as well. Music is and always has been one of most effective ways for humans to share the stories that inspire them. This month, we’re bringing you some of the stories behind the stories, a series of up-close looks at some of the things that inspire the work of some of today’s most talented artists. Like any welltold story, context is everything, and so we hope you enjoy reading about the journeys that have brought these artists to where they’re at, and how their journeys have and continue to shape the fruit of their creativity. Happy reading, folks.
THE COLONY, TX / A children’s daycare near Dallas recently fired a female employee after only one day on the job, after the newlyhired worker posting an anti-kid Facebook status, The Independent reported. Kaitlyn Walls, 27, was relieved of her work duties after publicly posting, “I start my new job today, but I absolutely hate working at daycare,” on her social media profile, which in turn was shared by a community group page. Management informed Walls not to bother coming in the next day after getting wind of the post. As one might expect, Walls received an enormous amount of backlash over the post, but more surprisingly, has also garnered some sympathy. A number of supporters expressed their disgust over the “bunch of suburban busybodies with nothing else to do but hound a woman out of a job she needed,” as stated in the original report. Walls, a single parent, admits that she made a mistake in venting her thoughts in such a public matter and has since stated that she does not in fact “hate kids,” as some have alleged. “I actually cried,” she said in regards to the online abuse she has since received as a result of the gaffe. “It really hurt because I wasn’t trying to offend anybody. “I needed [the job] really badly,” she said. “I’m a single mum… trying to get out on my own.” (The Independent)
/ RH
MARCH / APRIL JULY / AUGUST 2015 SEVEN 9
ODDS AND ENDS MAN SNEEZES OUT TOY DART SUCKER AFTER 44 YEARS SURREY, UK / A man who suffered from a chronically blocked nose recently discovered the source of the problem, after sneezing out the sucker end of a toy dart—that had been lodged in his nostril for 44 years. Initially believed to be the result of hay fever, Steve Easton of Camberley, England is reporting clear sinuses for the first time in more than four decades after a sneezing fit dislodged the toy fragment originally inhaled at age seven, as reported by the Express of the UK. While the discovery of a rubber dart tip no doubt came as a shock to Eastman, 51, his parents Pat and Quentin Eastman recalled taking him to the hospital in 1971 after they initially believed the dart tip was swallowed. “I took him to the hospital and the doctors spent a lot of time looking for it but in the end they said perhaps it was a mistake. “I knew that it wasn’t and it has always worried me and then now it has suddenly shot out. “It was weird. We are all shocked.” (Express)
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I TOOK HIM TO THE HOSPITAL AND THE DOCTORS SPENT A LOT OF TIME LOOKING FOR IT BUT IN THE END THEY SAID PERHAPS IT WAS A MISTAKE
ON POINT
FOR THOSE SEEKING FOR SOMETHING ON THE SILLY SIDE, LOOK NO FURTHER THIS MUSIC STINKS… MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA / Sometimes, the headline says it all. For those seeking for something on the silly side, look no further. For those hoping to cut the kids’ stuff, you might want to skip ahead… As an, *ahem*…expression…of brotherly love, Loz Nanigans, one half of the Melbourne-based Shonky Brothers comedic duo, recently dedicated a classical arrangement for his sibling and partnerin-comedy Jacko, based entirely around a recording of…flatulence, as originally reported by the New York Daily News. While no doubt trivial and unmistakably childish, the slowed-down version of the original recording features an arpeggio of seven tones in the key of B flat, which, when layered with a proper horn and string sections, presumably done so through the use of a computer program, actually sounds remarkably symphonic. And now, back to our regular programming. (New York Daily News)
CANADIAN ROCKERS WANTED FOR CRIMES AGAINST MUSIC IN AUSTRALIA QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA / Despite being one of the highest grossing acts in rock music today, there’s arguably no band more critically despised than Hanna, Alberta’s Nickelback. And now, their ‘crimes against music’ may have finally caught up with them. CBC reports that police in Queensland, Australia are “on the lookout for these men who are believed to be impersonating musicians” according to a Facebook post by the local force. The original post included rough sketches of the band members on a fictionalized ‘Wanted’ poster. This isn’t the first time that detractors have poked fun at the band. Late last year, a London man attempted to block the group from playing a show in his city through the use of a crowdfunding campaign, which managed to raise $339 of its $1,000 goal. As well, a man in Virginia raised money for charity by listening to Nickelback continuously for an entire week. His thoughts after completing the campaign: “I don’t think I could have gone one more minute,” CBC reports. Frontman Chad Kroeger says he hasn’t been deterred by the critics, and in fact credits his band’s longevity to the buzz they continue to attract. “If they had stopped writing all this stuff about us, there would be no controversy left in the band and we probably would have died out years ago,” Kroeger told the CBC in late May. “They don’t know that they’re still responsible for us being around today.” (CBC)
MUSIC REVIEWS
BY STEVEN SUKKAU
PILGRIMAGE
WILDER MIND
OUT OF THE WASTELAND
STEVE BELL (Signpost Music)
MUMFORD AND SONS (Gentlemen of the Road)
LIFEHOUSE (Ironworks)
AFTER 25 years and multiple major music awards, one of Canada’s most celebrated Christian artists, Steve Bell, recently released one of his most ambitious projects to date. Part new and part commemorative, the four-disc Pilgrimage project, bringing together Bell’s latest effort of all-new original music alongside discs of fanchosen re-recordings, instrumental remixes, and a tribute disc featuring cover songs done by some of Bell’s friends and colleagues in the music industry. “The project started out as a single album of new material,” Bell says. “We just thought that given that it coincided with my 25th anniversary [since the release of his 1989 album, Comfort My People], it would be fun to expand the project to be a bit of a celebration.” The collection was funded through Kickstarter, a website where fans and supporters contributed financially to the project, something that Bell says is extra special in celebrating what the last 25 years have meant in terms of building a musical “community.” The project is one that Bell cites as special and in particular, celebratory of a career he feels fortunate to still be in after a quarter century. “Twenty-five years is fun for me, I’m just surprised I’m still here,” he says with a laugh.
DESPITE HAVING found a proven formula for making a hit album, British quintet Mumford and Sons has seemingly felt the need to move forward into new music landscapes with their latest offering, Wilder Mind. Gone are the banjos and country folk tunes. In their place, a bittersweet, icy album more at home in a neon drenched city than a sunny back porch. The album is marked by surging electric guitars, and shimmering piano that some have compared to fellow British band Coldplay. The move may shock some, but the musical evolution matches the band’s spiritual restlessness, not willing to sit still or stagnate, satisfied with easy answers when it comes to life’s biggest questions about purpose and pain. As lead singer Marcus Mumford sings on “Wilder Mind,” “You sleep so sound with your mind made up / Drinking from your cup of broken ends / But I thought we believed in an endless love.” The curiosity leads to some of the most piercing questions, and in the end, the meandering path of the earnest searcher often leads to a journey of deeper faith. Instead, as Mumford sings on “The Wolf,” “I want to learn to love in kind / ‘Cause you were all I ever longed for.”
LIFEHOUSE IS back. After 2012’s Almeria failed to match the success of their five earlier releases, Lifehouse announced they were going on hiatus. The post-grunge darling of the 2000s had made a name for themselves on soaring pop rock with spiritual undertones and lead vocalist Jason Wade’s forceful voice. However, after Almeria’s mixed reviews from fans each member left to pursue their own projects. Two years later the trio has emerged again, and the result is 2015’s Out of the Wasteland. Blending melodic radio-friendly riffs with Wade’s familiar emotional message of hope and faith, without falling to the temptation of preaching, Out of the Wasteland is a welcome return to form. The opening track, “Hurricane” announces their arrival from the storm they weathered on hiatus, “The hurricane couldn’t take you from me / I’m holding on tight and still believe,” Wade belts out. Wade’s vocals move easily from arenastyle rock anthems to dreamy ballads with ease, each anchored in a genuine conviction and emotion. But, as they sing on “Yesterday’s Son,” the band no longer feels constricted by what others think or on the world’s metrics of success:” “I’m not broken, I’m a wide open highway with room to run.” Like the name of their album, Lifehouse has gone through the ‘wasteland’ and seems to be back better than ever.
/ STEVEN SUKKAU works for Golden West Radio and resides in Winkler, Manitoba.
12 SEVEN JULY / AUGUST 2015
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FEATURE
DRUDGING THROUGH DARKNESS, POINTING TO PARADISE PAIN OF LOSS INSPIRES HONEST REFLECTIONS FOR HIP-HOPPER TEDASHII BY AARON EPP
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FEATURE
> WHEN TEDASHII SENT HIS RECORD LABEL THE FIRST BATCH OF SONGS FOR WHAT WOULD BECOME HIS FOURTH ALBUM, BELOW PARADISE, THEY ASKED HIM TO GO BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD. HIS PREVIOUS ALBUM, BLACKLIGHT, HAD REACHED THE TOP OF THE BILLBOARD CHRISTIAN ALBUMS CHART SHORTLY AFTER ITS RELEASE IN MAY 2011 AND EARNED ACCLAIM FROM A VARIETY OF MEDIA OUTLETS.
> JULY / AUGUST 2015 SEVEN 15
“I didn’t want to run from that. I wanted to be honest about what happened.”
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T
he people at Tedashii’s label weren’t feeling the first half-dozen songs he wrote for its follow-up, though. The Texas-born hip-hop artist wrote and recorded five more songs, sent them to the label and got the same response. “It sounds like this isn’t really you,” he recalls his label telling him. They were right. Tedashii wasn’t delving into what was really on his heart: the death of his one-year-old son in March 2013. After the second round of rejected songs, Tedashii came up with two more, including “Dark Days, Darker Nights,” which would become the fourth track on Below Paradise. “My days be long, nights seem long / Calling on help and nobody is home,” Tedashii raps over staccato snare beats and wailing guitars. “All by myself and I feel so alone / Cold world, yeah, and I know it’s for show / Worst day of my life and it’s just getting badder / Asking Him why and looking for answers.”
Tedashii sent the song to his label. They liked what they heard and asked him if he was comfortable mining the depths of his pain on the rest of the album. “I said yes, I’m going to keep writing this way,” the 38-year-old told SEVEN during an interview via Skype this past May. “I didn’t want to run from that. I wanted to be honest about what happened.” Tedashii didn’t mince words in the news release his label put out when Below Paradise hit stores in May 2014. He described the loss of his son as the worst day of his life and an event that changed him forever. “The comfort of life with no pain was gone and I saw the world in an entirely new way,” Tedashii wrote. “I felt forsaken, alone and in a place of darkness that has been kept masked by a focus on only the good side of this life. The reality of being a Christian and suffering so harsh a thing was hard for me to grasp.”
“The reality of being a Christian and suffering so harsh a thing was hard for me to grasp.”
He added that Below Paradise is his journal, detailing the difficult journey of working to understand everything he felt, experienced and believed. “I am human, I am hurt, I am His,” Tedashii wrote. “By his grace, I am what I am. I pray this will be an album all can feel, even if you can’t relate, and be moved to true emotions about the reality of life in a harsh world with a loving God, Below Paradise.” A year later, Tedashii has no regrets about his candour on the album. “I want to make music [about] who I am and where I come from,” he says. “It’s the overflow of who I am—that’s really what music [is] for me. In the true sense of that call, I made Below Paradise in the same way, and... I’m glad I did.”
> Being honest and sharing what’s on his heart has been Tedashii’s modus operandi ever since he got started in
hip-hop. He dedicated his life to Christ and started writing raps during his first year studying communications at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Born Tedashii Anderson in March 1977, he grew up in an area of Texas where people were religious but did not necessarily practice their faith. Tedashii attended church with his mother and younger sister, but mostly for two reasons: to meet girls and because occasionally, he would experience moments of happiness with his family at church that he didn’t see in their day-to-day life. Tedashii arrived at Baylor with a partial academic scholarship and had dreams of becoming the big man on campus. Student politics, joining the track team, making a lot of friends and having a great time were all part of the plan. Shortly after he got to the university, a student approached him and started challenging him about where he was in life and telling him about God. Tedashii
JULY / AUGUST 2015 SEVEN 17
was not receptive, pushing the man to the ground. Later that month, the same student approached Tedashii. Although things had not gone well during their first encounter, he asked Tedashii if they could speak again. In the two weeks since their first meeting, Tedashii had encountered a handful of hardships, including injuring himself in the university’s weight room, which dashed his hopes of playing sports. In his current state, he was more open to listening. “That was the first time I heard someone communicate who Jesus was,” Tedashii says.
room with friends, listening to hip hop and coming up with his own rhymes. It was the friend who led him to Christ that encouraged Tedashii to write his first hip-hop song, and to use it to glorify God. “That was always the linchpin for him, was trying to communicate the gospel,” Tedashii says. “I just saw him share the gospel and I thought, we should all be doing this.” Tedashii wrote his first rap song and performed it at a talent show on campus. In retrospect, he says, it was probably the worst song he’s ever written. His friend encouraged him to keep at it though, and that talent show appearance led to conversations about the gospel
“I found out throughout this process I’m way more flawed than I realized, I’m way more prone to sin than I realized [and] I need to be as gracious as God is to me.”
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with all kinds of people on campus. “I was in a lot of social circles,” Tedashii says. “Not too long after that, people began to call me: ‘Hey, you’re that Christian guy.’ Initially, that bothered me, but then I started saying, ‘Yes, I am. Let’s talk about it.’”
>
He committed his life to Christ and became inseparable from the student who shared the gospel. “I gained this respect for him, this love for him, so for the following few years, I was with him every day almost,” Tedashii says, describing his friend as a mature man of faith who was wired from a young age to be responsible and care about the things in life that are really important. “There was never a moment where we didn’t try to hang out and get with one another. Those times were really edifying and fruitful… They were maturing.” Tedashii would often sit in his dorm
Some time later, Tedashii was introduced to acclaimed hip-hop artist Lecrae. Lecrae released Tedashii’s debut album, Kingdom People, in 2006 on his label, Reach Records. Reach also put out Tedashii’s
“Overall as a person, as an artist, as a husband and father—all those different things—I’ve just seen myself go further with the Lord. I saw myself grow in faith.” sophomore effort, Identity Crisis, in 2009, as well as Blacklight and Below Paradise. Along with a handful of other likeminded rappers, Tedashii and Lecrae are part the 116 Clique, a hip-hop collective that takes its name from Romans 1:16. The verse reads in part, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes.” Tedashii says that some of the highest praise he received for Below Paradise came from Lecrae, who called it “a miracle album.” “I don’t know how this album sounds this good when I saw how bad you were hurting when you were making it,” Tedashii recalls Lecrae saying. The public responded to Tedashii’s bravery: Below Paradise sold more than 13,000 copies in its first week, good enough to land the album at the top of Billboard’s Gospel Albums chart. For Tedashii, the process of grieving his son’s death, making an album about it and then performing those songs live over the past 13 months has reminded him that God is always with him. He also learned to be less judgmental of others. “I found out throughout this process I’m way more flawed than I realized, I’m way more prone to sin than I realized [and] I need to be as gracious as God is to me,” he says. Tedashii and his family recently moved from Dallas to Atlanta, Georgia, and he is currently at work on the followup to Below Paradise. The lyrical content on Below Paradise dictated a certain musical sound, and Tedashii says the follow-up will be a return to his roots: heavy and southern, with 808 drum machine beats mixed in with the various musical flavours Tedashii grew up with—soul, country and the blues.
The lyrical content will focus on his life since Below Paradise and, as always, Tedashii hopes it will be an encouragement to those who hear it. The circumstances that led to the creation of Below Paradise matured him, and he’s excited for people to hear his new material. “Overall as a person, as an artist, as a husband and father—all those different things—I’ve just seen myself go further with the Lord. I saw myself grow in faith,” he says. “We pressed through the tunnel of chaos, we pressed through the hardship and crisis, and we see the Lord still with us... He is always with us in it. Always.”
/ AARON EPP is an aspiring music writer, a “Young Voices” co-editor for Canadian Mennonite magazine, and a columnist for the Winnipeg Free Press. He lives in Winnipeg.
To see a special interview with Tedashii visit www.thisismetv.com.
JULY / AUGUST 2015 SEVEN 19
A BAND TOGETHER:
THE CITY HARMONIC MULTI-BACKGROUND GROUP ENCOURAGES UNITY THROUGH SONG AND DEED BY ROBERT WHITE
20 SEVEN JULY / AUGUST 2015
FEATURE
M
embers of The City Harmonic don’t just sing about the unity of the church. They live it. The band, which has been compared to mainstream bands like Arcade Fire, Coldplay and The Beatles, comprises Elias Dummer (vocals/piano/songwriter), Eric Fusilier (bass), Aaron Powell (guitar) and Josh Vanderlaan (drums). The band grew from the TrueCity movement in their hometown of Hamilton, Ontario. The multidenominational group of churches, which ministered mainly in the city’s economically-depressed downtown, decided to get youth involved. “An event called CrossCulture connected students of different denominations who served all day and gathered for worship at night. We formed a house band and out of that came The City Harmonic,” says Dummer. The band “runs the gamut” of denominations from Presbyterian (Vanderlaan), Baptist (Fusilier), Anabaptist (Powell) and Methodist (Dummer, who now lives in Nashville). The City Harmonic’s name and debut single speak to the influence of the TrueCity movement. “We wrote most of our initial EP, Introducing The City Harmonic, before we named ourselves, working backwards from what we actually thought was happening with the music,” says Dummer. The four considered “philharmonic,” which wouldn’t work. After playing around with the word, they came up with The City Harmonic because it had a double meaning: a play on the word “philharmonic” and the idea of a harmonious city. The City Harmonic’s call for unity manifested itself in the band’s debut single, “Manifesto.” The song begins with “We believe in the one true God” and ends with a modern rendition of the Lord’s Prayer, making the song a call to believers of all stripes. The song quickly rose up the charts, remaining on Billboard Magazine’s Christian & Gospel Music Albums category for 15 weeks in early 2011. While success came early, with “Manifesto” winning two Covenant awards and being nominated for a third, the band was busy putting unity into practice. “There was a lot of learning how to disagree,” says Vanderlaan. “People who are committed to their traditions often have more in common than people for whom traditions don’t matter,” says Dummer. “There’s a greater commonality with a passionate Catholic or Calvinist than someone who is nominal.” Following the release of the band’s first full-length release, I Have A Dream (It Feels Like Home), “life hit them square on” says The City Harmonic website (http://thecityharmonic.com/): “They went from working day jobs to recording and touring full time. (Powell) had his first child. (Vanderlaan) got married. (Dummer) had his fourth child. And on top of all the usual struggles that might accompany such huge life changes, (Fusilier) was diagnosed with [leukemia].” Fusilier, who’s now in remission, talks about his battle with cancer on website. “I remember this one particular day I had been taking these
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DISCOGRAPHY > Introducing The City Harmonic 2010, Kingsway Music > I Have A Dream (It Feels Like Home), 2011, Kingsway Music > Heart, 2013, Integrity Music > We Are, September 2015, Integrity Music
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“It struck me for the first time that I was suffering, but I wasn’t suffering alone… And in that moment I was experiencing a perfect picture of the Church.” invasive painful tests all day. I was just shutting down.” His father, who was at the hospital with him, reminded Fusilier about Jesus’ healing of a crippled man. And that it was the faith of his friends, who had lowered him through the roof of a house to be healed, that had been integral to the crippled man’s healing. “It struck me for the first time that I was suffering, but I wasn’t suffering alone… And in that moment I was experiencing a perfect picture of the Church. This is exactly what the Church is called to be, to gather around the hopeless and act on
our belief that there is a world better than the broken one we know.” Added to the band’s stress was the pressure brought on by its quick rise to fame. “We probably put more pressure on ourselves than anyone else,” says Dummer while recognizing there were still commercial realities the band had to deal with. “We’ve managed to build a platform to speak from and will continue to do so, for the right reasons.” We don’t know for how long we’ve been given this ministry, adds Vanderlaan.
“But we want to do it well.” The City Harmonic’s next CD, Heart, reflected the stresses and tensions band members faced during Fusilier’s illness and from their early fame. Dummer refers to the two years between CDs as an “awkward teenage stage.” “We had to figure out why we were staying together. Sometimes it was out of necessity, sometimes out of desire and sometimes out of a sense of calling,” he says. “We fought through things, from being like a dysfunctional family into a season of equilibrium.” “To a degree we’re still dealing with that stuff,” adds Vanderlaan. “But we know the story we’ve been given to tell: to try and encourage people to be unified among disagreements.” Vanderlaan says the band has learned to hold on to their individual beliefs strongly because “there’s still a way we can work together and have a conversation about those disagreements.”
Work on The City Harmonic’s newest CD, We Are being released in September, demonstrates a practical example of that working together in spite of disagreements. “We’ve all been on a journey theologically digging, learning and hungering for a rootedness that captures the essence of styles of worship through the ages,” says Dummer. Vanderlaan adds, “we’ve drawn inspiration from a whole host of areas: the TrueCity story, figuring out how to unify people and different theological beliefs.” “We’ve seen first-hand how powerful it is when the Church works in unity,” says Dummer on the band’s website, citing what’s been happening in Hamilton. “There are now Christians actively working at every level of commerce, artists, business-people, these innovative not-for-profit cafes, all popping up in traditionally poor neighborhoods, and somehow much of the Church has learned to support this and live in the tension, humbly holding our core creedal beliefs together with sleeves rolled and hands dirtied with the real work of worship, discipleship, and mission. “It’s this thing that brought us together. This is our story. And if we can somehow inspire the Church around the world to do the same—if God can somehow use the hymns and spiritual songs of a band of church guys from small churches in a steel-town to do that—well, that’s more than we could ever have hoped or imagined.”
/ ROBERT WHITE is an Ontario-based freelance journalist who has been writing about men’s ministries since the mid 1980s. He also blogs about the intersection of faith, the arts and Canadian culture at www.rdaleleslie.wordpress.com.
KUDOS GMA Covenant Awards > 2011—Won: New Artist of the Year, Modern Worship Song of the Year (“Manifesto”), Recorded Song of the Year (“Manifesto”). Nominated: Praise and Worship Song of the Year (“My God”), Song of the Year (“Manifesto”) > 2012—Won: Praise and Worship Song of the Year (“I Have a Dream (It Feels Like Home)”). Nominated: CD Artwork Design of the Year (“I Have a Dream (It Feels Like Home)”), Recorded Song of the Year (“I Have a Dream (It Feels Like Home)”), Song of the Year (“I Have a Dream (It Feels Like Home)”), Video of the Year (“I Have a Dream (It Feels Like Home)”), Modern Worship Song of the Year (“Mountaintop”) > 2013—Won: Group of the Year, Praise and Worship Song of the Year (“Holy (Wedding Day)”). Nominated: Artist of the Year, Music Video of the Year (“Holy (Wedding Day)”) JUNO Awards > 2013—Won: Contemporary Christian and Gospel Album of the Year > 2014—Nominated: Contemporary Christian and Gospel Album of the Year Dove Awards > 2012—Nominated: New Artist of the Year
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FEATURE
Thoughts From the Journey UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL WITH STEVE BELL BY ROB HORSLEY
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Over the past 25-plus years, Steve Bell has been one of Canadian Christian music’s best-kept secrets. Burning Ember, a recent documentary from filmmaker Andrew Wall showcases just how relatively unknown Bell has been throughout the course of his longstanding career. And while being so criminally underappreciated might be seen as discouraging to some, Bell himself has taken it all in stride, and this past September celebrated a quarter century in music through the release of Pilgrimage, a part-new, part-commemorative four-disc set. For those who’ve been lucky enough to see Steve Bell in concert, it’s no secret that sharing stories is integral to what makes him so captivating. But for those unfamiliar with Bell, or even those who’ve only heard his music, getting to know the man behind the voice is at the core of the experience. It’s for that reason that we decided to sit down with the travelling troubadour himself to talk music, family, and what might be ahead in the years to come.
WHAT HAS RECEPTION BEEN LIKE FOR THE PILGRIMAGE PROJECT? The response to the new project has been very enthusiastic and several people have said they believe it to be my best work, which is nice considering I’m getting old in this business and not many of us get to stay in it into our later years. What I’ve enjoyed is that I now have listeners who’ve been tracking with me for decades, and many have become dear friends that feel very much like fellow pilgrims on the way. More and more I’m looking out, from my vantage on stage, at people who are a little weathered like me, and who listen to my current music with a deep connection to my previous work. It feels very much like “we” have been on a significant journey together. WHAT HAVE SOME OF THE HIGHLIGHTS BEEN FROM THE RECENT STRING OF TOUR DATES? Since Pilgrimage came out last fall, I’ve been hitting the same major cities I’ve been playing for years. So, it’s been mostly familiar towns and familiar crowds. What’s different is that this is the first new-album tour I’ve performed solo in over a decade. Usually, we celebrate a new project by putting a band together for the major cities. This time, however, the songs seemed more personal, and with themes more theologically introspective and nuanced than past projects (largely the influence of co-
writer [and renowned poet] Malcolm Guite). This album also includes a couple finger-style instrumentals, which I haven’t done for some time. It just felt like I should do the tour alone, and surprisingly, I’ve rather enjoyed it. GIVEN THE SOMEWHAT RETROSPECTIVE NATURE OF THE PROJECT, HAS THIS TOUR DIFFERED IN ANY PERSONAL OR MEANINGFUL WAYS FROM PREVIOUS TOURS? Usually, with a new album tour, I’ll pull four or five new songs for the concert and then fill out the evening with songs folks are more familiar with. I still frequently perform songs from my first albums. But this time I’ve opened the concerts with only one or two favourites, and then performed most of the new album. Initially I wondered if it would be too much of a stretch for an audience to hear so much new music, but folks have been incredibly hospitable to the fresh material. So, ironically, in a tour that was meant to be a celebration of 25 years of work, I’m doing more new material than ever. It’s been fun. AFTER A CAREER THAT’S SPANNED AS MANY YEARS AS YOURS HAS, DO YOU EVER HAVE DIFFICULTY FINDING THE INSPIRATION TO START NEW PROJECTS? Surprisingly, not really. I’ve already got most of my next album written and ready to record even though
my last album, Pilgrimage, is still a new release. Having said that, I have had long (years-long) spells of writer’s block, but I’ve always enjoyed putting my own spin on other peoples work, so there’s never been a shortage of songs and projects to record. A keen observer might notice that in the years between 2005 and 2011 I didn’t write or record a single new Steve Bell song, yet I put out several albums during that time: Solace in 2005, My Dinner With Bruce in 2006, Story and Song in 2006, Symphony Sessions in 2007, and Devotion in 2008. When Kindness came out in 2011 it had the first new Steve Bell songs that had been written in years. The albums in the meantime were projects that recast older songs (like Symphony Sessions) or that were cover albums like My Dinner with Bruce, which was entirely Bruce Cockburn songs, and Devotion, which was mostly Gord Johnson songs. So, as horrible as seasons of writer’s block are, and they really are desolate times, I’ve always managed to find something worthy to do while I await whatever it may take to unleash the next flood of songs. More recently, a writing friendship has developed between myself and Malcolm Guite, which has been the distinctive mark of my last two albums. Malcolm’s gifting is truly remarkable, and his impact on me has been immeasurable.
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YOU’RE OBVIOUSLY A PRETTY REFLECTIVE GUY, AND GOD HAS ALWAYS BEEN A BIG PART OF WHAT YOU WRITE ABOUT: THIS IS PROBABLY A HUGE QUESTION BUT IF YOU CAN, DESCRIBE YOUR PROCESS OF INFORMING YOUR PICTURE OF WHAT GOD LOOKS LIKE TO YOU AND TRANSCRIBING THAT INTO SONG FORM? Tough question. So much of my understanding of God was vetted through my experience of my parents. My father is a Baptist minister and I grew up on the tail of fundamentalism—which doesn’t really describe my father, but more the religious culture that was the air we breathed. Though my parents were faithful, godly, good people, our life was messy and complicated. Both my parents suffered from mental illness; my mother in particular has suffered crippling bouts of anxiety disorder at various times of her life. I had to make sense of a God who doesn’t reward faithfulness with the absence of suffering. Yet, despite Mom’s suffering, she was capable of great beauty. She was a staggeringly beautiful piano player, and at night I would drift in and out of sleep bathed in melody as my wounded mother would often play well into the evening. Something of the mystery of beauty and suffering together was etched on to me in those days. Then my father eventually became a prison chaplain and pastor to men whose lives were a wreck and yet who carried the image of Christ in so many beautiful ways. I had to make sense of a God who was wholly Good, yet tender, delicate and kind when dealing with imperfection… indeed a profound respecter and champion of the imperfect. When I left home to begin life on my own, I began to play in bars as a young musician. This is something I kept hidden from my dad for quite
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some time because I thought he would be disappointed in me. When Dad eventually found out, his response was to come out to hear me play. And rather than chide and warn, and rather than lobbing thunderous Bible verses at me, Dad chose to bless me. He laid his hands on my shoulders and asked the God who had walked with my grandparents through their life, and with he and Mom through their life, to walk with me too, to protect me from danger, and to make me a blessing to others. That was a moment I can still feel as a permanent imprint to this day. So… these things, and many more beside, formed my early impression of who this God we serve just may be, and these have been the lenses through which I read scriptures and interpret my own direct experiences of God. How that exactly gets transcribed into song is still a mystery to me after all these years. Songs to me (good songs anyway) are like icebergs whose visible splendour is only a third of the actual thing. Melody attached to a text allows the text to say so much more than words are capable of on their own. The older I get, the ratio between what I think I know about God (the visible), and the actual mystery that is God (the invisible) becomes wider and wider, and it is the unique ability of song to convey something of the invisible which gives me the courage to attempt to say anything about God at all. OBVIOUSLY, ANY ARTIST COULDN’T DO WHAT THEY DO WITHOUT THE SUPPORT OF PEOPLE AROUND THEM: WHETHER THAT’S MANAGERS, PRODUCERS, FRIENDS, FAMILY, ETC. HOW DOES FAMILY HELP SUPPORT YOU IN WHAT YOU DO AS AN ARTIST? Let me tell you about my wife Nanci. When I began to wrestle with the idea of going into full-time music
ministry, I went through a lengthy time of agonizing. I was afraid I didn’t have what it might take. I was afraid I was throwing my young family into possible financial ruin. And I wasn’t all that sure I was discerning correctly what I thought might be an actual calling. After several months, Nanci, beginning to weary from my tormenting and indecision, chided me for not seeing what was to her a clear calling. She insisted that she had what it takes to live with the insecurity inherent in this kind of work, and that she, and we, would be fine. Her confidence was rather overwhelming. Since that day, she has complained about me for many reasons, but not once of my vocation and all that it has cost her. It was an extremely wise move on her behalf. Like my wife, I’m sure my kids can give you a lot to complain about their father, and my vocation has definitely cost them, but I’ve never sensed resentment or disapproval for what I do. They’ve been overwhelmingly and lovingly supportive. YOU SPEAK OFTEN ABOUT YOUR FAMILY AT SHOWS, AND WITH THE GENUINE WARMTH THAT AUDIENCES IMMEDIATELY IDENTIFY WITH AND GRAVITATE TOWARDS. WHAT DOES BEING A “FAMILY MAN” LOOK LIKE AT THIS STAGE OF YOUR CAREER? Things have changed so drastically. All our kids are grown and have wonderful adult lives. My daughter Sarah and her husband Steve have two great boys. Our foster daughter, Kendara has three beautiful children. Jesse lives with his wife Lauren in Victoria, and Micah and his wife Diana live just a few doors down from us. It’s a fun time of life for Nanci and me. We’re not quite as stressed and broke as we used to be, so we get to help the kids out from time to time, and dote on the grandkids. All have their unique struggles
play, play, play ‘til either no-one will listen or my body makes me stop.
The older I get, the ratio between what I think I know about God (the visible), and the actual mystery that is God (the invisible) becomes wider and wider, and it is the unique ability of song to convey something of the invisible which gives me the courage to attempt to say anything about God at all. to be sure, but there is real love and respect in the family. What parents want so much for their kids is that they have a reasonable shot at a meaningful life. Nanci and I pray we can be a truly helpful resource for our kids. We love them so much and ache at every hint of their sufferings… but I do trust that God is keen to walk with them as he has with us. I hope we have given adequate witness that God is a true travelling companion. AS BOTH PILGRIMAGE AND THE BURNING EMBER PROJECTS ARE COMMEMORATIVE IN NATURE, THERE’S NO DOUBT BEEN A LOT OF “LOOKING BACK” ASSOCIATED WITH THESE WORKS. AT THE SAME TIME HOWEVER, I WONDER IF THERE’S BEEN ANY “LOOKING AHEAD” TO WHAT MIGHT BE NEXT FOR YOU. CAN YOU GIVE US AN
IDEA OF WHAT WE CAN EXPECT NEXT FROM STEVE BELL? I see myself primarily as a songwriter and I hope to continue in that as long as I am capable. Performing is a joy. I will be devastated when I can no longer do it. But I have to admit… my audiences are getting greyer, and my own body, recent injuries considered, is sending me signals that I’m not a young’un anymore. I’m beginning to do a lot more prose writing these days. It started with blogging and then in the last couple years I’ve been writing a collection of multi-media e-books on the spirituality of the Church calendar year (see PilgrimYear.com). More and more I’m being called upon to teach in colleges and conferences and I suspect there may be a book or two in me somewhere. But having said that, I will sing, sing, sing, and
YOU’VE MENTIONED IN PAST CONVERSATIONS THAT AS YOU GET OLDER, YOU’VE SOMETIMES THOUGHT ABOUT WHAT IT MIGHT LOOK LIKE WHEN YOU BEGIN TO WIND DOWN AS AN ARTIST: WHERE ARE YOU AT WITH THAT THESE DAYS? Getting older is a weird thing. When I was younger I couldn’t imagine it. It was so very distant; now… not so much. Watching one’s parents struggle with aging makes it so much more real as well. I hope I can enter this next stage with as much anticipation of God’s presence and goodness as any other. I hope I can accept the inevitable losses that aging brings. And I hope I can receive with joy its gifts. In the end, I hope to live meaningfully, and hopefully as a blessing to others as long as I’m given to live. I pray that when the time comes, I will die well and leave behind a life that gives witness to the unfathomable goodness of God despite any “evidence” to the contrary. Because, I’ve come to see the goodness of God as a relentless thing bursting with freshness from some of the darkest of soils. AFTER ALL THESE YEARS, WHAT’S THE BEST (OR YOUR PERSONAL FAVOURITE) PART OF WHAT YOU GET TO DO IN YOUR WORK? Reading. I love to read. Fortunately for me, I need to read to write, and so I can justify long indulgences, and consider it work.
/ PILGRIMAGE is available through Signpost Music (signpostmusic.com) and on iTunes. Check out Burning Ember: The Steve Bell Journey, a full-length documentary, at stevebell.com/burningember-documentary.
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N W O R U O Y E G N N I I R R B BOU RI S T I A N MU SIC H C M N I TA ND CURIOSITIES F E AT U
RE
A S K R I QU
Q&A WITH JON ACUFF In early June, Promise Keepers Canada president Kirk Giles sat down with writer and speaker Jon Acuff, author of such popular titles as Stuff Christians Like and Everything You Need to Get Unstuck at Work. While much of their conversation centered on the topic of work and purpose, we also had a chance to ask him for some opinions on funny topics pertaining to Christians and music, including some of the stranger incidents he’s ever witnessed. For the full conversation, visit PromiseKeepers.ca/av/ or check out the PK@Home podcast on iTunes.
JON, THANKS SO MUCH FOR JOINING US ON THE PODCAST, REALLY APPRECIATE HAVING YOU. Yeah, thanks for having me on, Kirk. JON, MANY OF OUR LISTENERS ARE GOING TO RECOGNIZE YOU FROM YOUR BLOG, WHICH ALSO BECAME YOUR FIRST BOOK, “STUFF CHRISTIANS LIKE.” HOW DID YOU TRANSITION FROM WRITING ABOUT CRAZY THINGS IN THE CHRISTIAN SUB-CULTURE TO WRITING A BOOK ABOUT CAREERS AND WORK? Well, I had a lot of career and work experience. I’m probably like a lot of your listeners; it kills me right now that there are 22-year-old life
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coaches on the Internet. If you’re 22 and you write a marriage book, and I can still smell sunscreen on you from your honeymoon, I don’t want to read your thoughts on marriage. I honestly don’t—you are not an expert. And so what happened is that, I spent 16 years in corporate America, working at big jobs, small jobs, medium-sized jobs and along the way I got really fascinated with the purpose side of work. You’re going to spend 40 to 50 years working and it’s 40 to 60 hours of your week. And so I really started to think about, “How does it become meaningful? How does it matter? How do you do something that you’re engaged in?”
And so that’s how it happened. And I had a great experience where I got to work at a dream job and so I wrote a book about, “How do you not quit the wrong way?” and it was called Quitter. And that was my first kind of foray. But really, it was a fascination and a curiosity with “How do you enjoy what you’re doing and do it well?” SO, WHEN DECIDE TO MAKE A JUMP TO WRITING FULL-TIME LIKE THAT, IT’S OBVIOUSLY EXCITING, MAYBE A LITTLE BIT RISKY AND SCARY…HOW DID YOU KNOW THAT THAT WAS THE RIGHT THING TO DO? THAT IT WAS THE RIGHT TIME AND THE RIGHT ROLE AND THE RIGHT PURPOSE FOR YOU IN
MAKING THAT KIND OF A CHANGE IN YOUR LIFE? Well I’ve only done it full-time for about…close to two years, maybe 22 months at this point. And so part of it was, again, I spent a decade and a half learning how to write. I think that’s part of the myth of the Internet, is that you feel like, overnight success is possible, but really probable— like, “This should happen.” I live in Nashville; you sometimes see that with musicians where they move to town and think, “Okay, I’ve been here an hour, give me a new record deal. Put my song on Grey’s Anatomy. I’m ready!” And that’s just not how life works, and so for me it was a process of taking time of working at a lot of jobs. Again, that’s why I write books about work, it’s because it’s what I’ve done the longest. And so, I realized that I felt like I had a big enough platform, I’d had some financial commitments that I’d taken care of, I worked really hard to pay off a lot of debt, and so my wife and I both felt like, “You know what, this is a great time to try it.” But I think it’s never fun to hear the backstory of “How did I become a writer? Well, I went to college for four years, and then I [wrote] full time for corporations…for 17 [years].” So my overnight success has taken 21 years and I’m a long way from done. IN YOUR BOOK YOU TALK ABOUT SOME OF THE LIGHTER SIDES OF MUSIC AND MY CO-WORKERS WANT ME TO ASK YOU A QUESTION ABOUT A [BLOG] POST THAT YOU HAD CALLED, “BOOTY, GOD, BOOTY.” NOW, I’M NOT SPEAKING HERESY HERE WHEN I SAY THAT, AM I? No, not at all. That’s actually in the book, it’s in the blog. WHAT’S THE STORY? It’s about hip-hop. I was in Atlanta at the time, and Atlanta’s kind of a hip-hop capital and there was a
radio station there that would play pretty hardcore hip-hop music. Every morning at 6:30 though, they’d take a break and they’d play what they called their ‘Inspirational Vitamin.’ So it would be this moment where they’d read a Bible verse, or a clip from a local minister or play a hymn, and it was really uplifting, but it was sandwiched between really raunchy hip-hop. So you’d go from, at 6:25, a song like, “I’m in love with a stripper,” then to the ‘Inspirational Vitamin’ at 6:30, the God moment, and then back to Little Wayne, “Lollipop” at 6:35, and I thought, “That’s a really weird way to run a radio station.” From a content perspective, you just went, ‘Booty, God, Booty.’ And I started to make fun of that, until I realized that’s how a lot of my own life goes. Like, how often is Saturday all about me? ‘You know, you can find me in the club, bottles full of bub, it’s my birthday.’ Sunday I’m back with God—we’re BFF, we’re praising, like, “What an hour!” And then Monday it’s back to Jon time—God’s in the car with my Bible, quiet time is over. And I just realized that there’s situations in my life where I went, ‘Booty, God, Booty,’ with a relationship or conversation. It became this catchphrase that my friends and I started to say. And so I put it in the book, and part of why I still tell that story is that the way the brain works is that it’s constantly trying to filter out new ideas. Your brain hates new ideas, because they’re exhausting. The brain has to physically rewire, there’s new synaptic relationships that have to happen. So as soon as you hear a new idea, you try to relate it to an old one. So when you go to a new Mexican restaurant you say, “Oh, this reminds me of Tito’s back home.” You bucket it. Because once the brain has bucketed something, it doesn’t have to think about it anymore.
So I love to use ‘Booty, God, Booty’ to talk to teenagers especially because if I stood up and said, “Tonight I want to talk about the ways we fracture our lives for Christ, and we don’t live a consistent life,” they go, “Oh yeah, I’ve heard this story before. My pastor talks about it, my youth pastor, my parents…” and they bucket it and they wouldn’t be able to hear anything else I said. But if I stand up and say, “Tonight I want to talk about Booty, God, Booty,” no one can grab that. No one goes, “Ugh, booty again? Billy Graham did 40 years of the ‘Booty Crusades.’” And so, I use it for two reasons: one, I think it’s a true story about the ways that we fracture our lives, and two, I think it reflects my communication style of trying to be deliberate about how I communicate. ON THE OTHER SIDE, AND THERE’S THAT MOMENT WHEN YOU’RE LISTENING TO THE SONG, YOU’RE LISTENING TO THE WORDS, AND YOU THINK, “MAN, I WONDER IF THIS IS REALLY A CHRISTIAN SONG.” Yeah, I kind of call it, ‘God or girlfriend.’ Mumford and Sons is a great example. Where you’re listening to Mumford and Sons’ “I will wait.” Is that on a girl? Is that on Jesus? We love playing the secret Christian band[s]. I mean U2 kind of invented that genre. There are definitely some songs like that. But I was at a church once and they were playing a song that I knew was not a Christian song, but it sounded nice and full of longing. The second verse said, “I miss your purple hair,” and I said, “Well that’s not about Jesus.” We just jumped it right there. (LAUGHS) UNLESS… JESUS ACTUALLY…YOU KNOW WHAT, NEVER MIND. HE DIDN’T REALLY… He might have! I mean, I know he looked differently than what we put in our Bibles, but I don’t know that he had purple hair, that’s debatable.
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WORSHIP MUSIC IN CHURCH HAS ALWAYS HAD SOME STRANGE MOMENTS FOR SOME, LIKE THERE’S SONGS THAT NEVER SEEM TO END, OR THERE’S THE ‘CLAP-OFFERING’ KIND OF SONGS. Yeah, there’s songs that never end because they have repeatable verses. Like, I remember growing up, one of our songs that we sang was “In our church, Lord be glorified.” And then
where she didn’t feel welcome.” And I thought, “Ugh, you’re right. Way to deflate that.” (CHUCKLES) THAT’S SO CHRISTIAN OF HER. Exactly! And she was honest. There are Christians that use that as a shame point but that’s just her heart. I just thought it was hilarious, the idea that someone would bring
I just realized that there’s situations in my life where I went, ‘Booty, God, Booty,’ with a relationship or conversation. we’d just switch out the noun. So it’d be, “In our home, be glorified, in our schools, in our heart, in our gas station…” Like, that song you could just sing for a year and a half. That song is still being sung. But then even modern songs, like Hillsong United’s “Oceans,” that has 92 choruses. We are crossing the entire ocean. That is a Transatlantic adventure when you step out of that boat. YOU TALK IN THE BOOK ABOUT ‘BYOT,’ WHICH IS ‘BRING YOUR OWN TAMBOURINE.’ NOW, TELL ME YOU’VE NEVER SEEN THAT HAPPEN. I have! Honestly, it was in Nashville and I spoke at the church where it happened later, and I couldn’t tell that story even though it’s one of my favourite stories. Yeah, a woman two or three people away from me brought her own tambourine to play—it was a premeditated tambourine. She deliberately thought, “You know what this church needs more of? Tambourine.” It was fantastic. And I wrote a really funny blog post about it. My wife is a much better human, and she said, “I’d rather attend a church where that’s okay than one
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their own tambourine. And I started to tell that joke to people and they’ll tell their stories of what other people brought. A friend of mine said he was at a Christian concert and someone brought their own chauffer horn. Like a ram’s horn, to play. And I said, “Well, did they play it at the right parts of the song?” And he said, “Jon, what modern worship song do you know that’s currently being written that has a ram’s horn part?” I was like, “Fair enough, fair enough.” Somebody else told me that he went on a men’s retreat, and men’s retreats are already awkward. Like, a bunch of dudes singing together? Let’s just be honest, it feels awkward at first. But he was on a men’s retreat and somebody brought their own f lute to play. My question there was, “Is that dude married? Is there any way that that dude has a wife? Like did some wife tell him, “You know what guys love? Flutes. You should bring one.” THAT’S RIGHT. BRING THE FLUTE. NOTHING SPELLS A MEN’S RETREAT LIKE A FLUTE. Yeah, we love it.
WHO WOULD BE SOME OF YOUR FAVOURITE ARTISTS TODAY? One of my favourite voices today is this guy Todd Smith. He’s in Selah. Really amazing, amazing voice. And he’s a friend, he lives in our neighbourhood, and so I’ve been fortunate enough to get to know him. Just a great heart, a great person, they’ve sold a ton of albums, really successful but so humble. And then also, [there’s] Needtobreathe. I love Needtobreathe. I think they do a great job of writing really captivating songs that aren’t so heavy-handed. I think they’re not afraid of metaphor and poetry…sometimes Christian music ends up being really heavy-handed. And then I really like Lecrae. I think he’s wildly talented. Growing up, I did not have access to good Christian rappers. There just weren’t any. Our stuff was like, “I love God, grass is called sod, a fish is called cod.” It was just terrible. But I think Lecrae is as good as any rapper on the [secular] market. So I really like him. JON, I REALLY APPRECIATE THE TIME WE’VE HAD TOGETHER. ONE LAST THING: IF PEOPLE WHO HAVEN’T YET READ ANYTHING YOU’VE PUT OUT THERE ONLINE ON YOUR BLOG OR ANYTHING, WHAT’S THE BEST WAY FOR PEOPLE TO SEE SOME OF THE STUFF YOU’VE GOT GOING ON. Yeah, they can find me at Acuff. me. I’m on Twitter a lot @jonacuff. And then Do-Over, my new book, is available anywhere books are sold. It’s on audio, and digital, and hard cover. So that’d probably be the best place to plug in. It’s not a book about hating your job, it’s a book saying, “What if what I did mattered, and how could I actually do it better.” JON, THANKS SO MUCH FOR JOINING US. REALLY APPRECIATE IT, AND HOPE TO TALK WITH YOU AGAIN SOMETIME IN THE FUTURE.
THE SINGLE LIFE
MUSIC TO MY YEARS
STORIES, SONGS, AND SHARING THE SPIRIT BY PAUL H. BOGE
W
hat do you love about music? Like movies, there is an incredible variety of music out there. Everyone seems to have at least one particular style they like, and it’s rare to hear someone say that they don’t like music at all. Music impacts us on a variety of levels. It resonates with us. Encourages us. Inspires us. Music is fun. It’s intelligent. And when it’s done right, it’s a profound spiritual experience. Like other forms of art, music is designed by God. And, like other forms of art, it can be used the way He
“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” And there are fun ways to think about music. For instance—I play in a rock and roll band. I say this loosely because we only perform two, maybe three times a year. We play cover tunes at a local beach. People pull out lawn chairs and sit under the hot sun in
Music has a way of building strong bonds. It connects us with God and with others. designed it, or it can be distorted to represent something other than what He intended. We need to challenge ourselves to ask the question: Is the music I am listening to drawing me closer to Christ or subtly pushing me away? One of the challenges we face in our Christian journey, is that we presume to know what affects us, and by how much it affects us. Media in general, and music in specific is rarely neutral. The Apostle Paul reminds us:
an open air environment. We use themes from popular songs from the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s as a springboard, and share the Gospel through a retelling of the life of a Christian. As an example—in telling the story of Charles Mulli, who was an abandoned Kenya boy who became a multimillionaire and then sold it all to rescue thousands of street children—we play songs like Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sounds of Silence” and share about how the kids on the
street have no one to care for them. Or we’ll sing “Stand By Me” to show God’s steadfast love for Charles Mulli. We also play Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” to show Mulli’s love for street children, and God’s love for all of us to encourage us to come to know Him. Music has a way of building strong bonds. It connects us with God and with others. Timmy was a great friend of mine, who died tragically last year. He too was single and played in the band with us. One of the many great memories I have with him is playing concerts with him where we, in our little way, shared Jesus with people. With each year God gives us, we should be encouraged to make music choices that strengthen our walk with Him. Nothing beats getting up in the morning and singing praises to God. It seems to get us spiritually aligned for the day. “The LORD is my strength and song, and He has become my salvation.” (Exodus 15:1-2).
/ PAUL H. BOGE is the author of Father to the Fatherless: The Charles Mulli Story and is an engineer who works in project management. He’s single and lives in Winnipeg. paulb@boge-boge.com
JULY / AUGUST 2015 SEVEN 31
SPORTS SCENE
TEBOW READY FOR NEXT SHOT
LOVE OF GAME RUNS STRONG AS EVER BY SCOTT TAYLOR
Photo Courtesy of the Philadelphia Eagles
“HAVE I NOT COMMANDED YOU? BE STRONG AND COURAGEOUS. DO NOT BE FRIGHTENED, AND DO NOT BE DISMAYED, FOR THE LORD YOUR GOD IS WITH YOU WHEREVER YOU GO.” (JOSHUA 1:9)
T
hings get in your blood. We all have something we feel we need to do. In the strange and often beautiful case of Tim Tebow, football is something that needs to be done. Tebow is a man who won’t quit. A God-praising, publicly committed Christian athlete who should have been a sought-after NFL quarterback, Tebow could have a wonderful career as a TV star. Many within the American Pentecostal community, believe
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he could have been a successful TV evangelist, but instead he became a football analyst for ESPN (ESPN’s The SEC Network) and a reporter/co-host on ABC’s Good Morning America. He was good at it, too, and the money was sensational, but deep down, somewhere within his soul, that game lingered. He saw himself as a football player. He believed God gave him skills and called him to play football. At the age of 27, he was not
going to be frightened or dismayed.
RE-TAKING THE FIELD Philadelphia Eagles training camp opens July 25. Tim Tebow will be there. On April 22, he signed a oneyear contract with the Eagles, which of course doesn’t really mean a whole lot. NFL contracts aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. It simply means, “You can come to training camp but if you don’t make the team,
Tim Tebow remains a long shot for making the Eagles’ final roster this season, but hasn’t lost his zeal for life, or his love of football.
we can cut you and you get paid nothing.” And it’s very likely he’ll get paid nothing. He’ll go into camp as the No. 4 quarterback behind Sam Bradford, Mark Sanchez and Matt Barkley and slightly ahead of G.J. Kinne, but just like the meaningless contract, that doesn’t bother Tebow at all. Tebow has God on his side and if this entire effort fails miserably, it won’t change his demeanor, his commitment or his love for life. Even though every sports commentator in the world—professional or otherwise—got in his/her 30 seconds of hate, Tebow ignored them all. He went to work this past off-season to correct any glitches in his game and is going to training camp with an open mind and an open heart. “If you’ve spent any time around him whatsoever, you’re pulling for him,” Virginia Tech offensive coordinator Scot Loeffler, Tebow’s former quarterbacks coach at Florida, told USA Today. “He really cares about the game.” Originally a first-round draft choice (25th overall) of the Denver Broncos in 2010, the 6-3, 236-pound Tebow has appeared in only 35 NFL games, including a mere 16 starts, since entering the league. But there is something about those 35 appearances that Eagles head coach Chip Kelly noticed. After all, in 2011, Tebow tied for second among NFL quarterbacks with six game-winning
drives and helped guide the Broncos to an AFC West title and the team’s first playoff berth since 2005. He started his team’s final 11 games, totaling 1,730 passing yards and 12 touchdowns, add-
play anymore... It boggles my mind that he’s still getting tryouts.” But Chip Kelly knows. He knows that Tebow is always upbeat, a leader in the room, an honest competitor and
Tebow has God on his side and if this entire effort fails miserably, it won’t change his demeanor, his commitment or his love for life. ing 660 rushing yards and six TDs. He only lost his job because Peyton Manning was acquired by Denver. After that, he bounced around because a failing coach in New York didn’t like the way he threw and a successful coach in New England already had a guy named Brady. But Kelly knows Tebow can play. More importantly, Kelly knows he can win. He was, after all, the first sophomore to win the Heisman Trophy, set all sorts of college records at Florida and was All-SEC three times. Somewhere, there is a winner inside Tebow that doesn’t exist in the other quarterbacks that Kelly will bring to camp. Sure, a kicker named Jay Feely called Tebow, “the single-worst quarterback I ever saw in my career,” and a commentator on Fox Sports named Petros Papadakis tweeted: “This guy can’t
a proven winner. Tebow spent the offseason with a throwing coach named Tom House, a former major league baseball pitcher who has become a quarterback Svengali, who helped him improve his passing technique. In fact, back in March, before Tebow signed with Philly, House said this: “What amazes me is this young man, with no job prospects, has prepared just as hard as he would if he were the No. 1 quarterback for an NFL team. He’s busted his butt. He spins the ball better than he did and he’s much more accurate than he was. I think he’s ready.” Even if he’s not, he still has God in his corner and there is a lot to be said for that.
/ SCOTT TAYLOR is a Winnipeg-based sportswriter and broadcaster.
JULY / AUGUST 2015 SEVEN 33
OUT OF MY DEPTH
SOUL MUSIC
STEREO SOUND, BUT NO HARMONY BY PHIL WAGLER
A
few years ago I contributed my meager skills to a local slopitch team. It was a good way to spend warm summer evenings. One teammate had a young daughter and, this being the early days of mp3 players, we would regularly be serenaded during the game as she sang along to her favourites. Generally this is cute. Little ones struggle to keep up with words and muddle the lyrics fantastically. One night, however, it got awkward. With perfect timing the little darling flawlessly bellowed the words to an overtly sexual tune for all to hear. She was unashamed in her innocence, some grown-ups giggled and winked at the parents, only a few blushed. What are we to do with music these days? Ride a bus, walk the street, sit in a waiting room, go, well, anywhere and you see ear buds firmly implanted. It even happens in our homes. Music used to be communal, now it’s only so in the sense that everyone is united in perpetual private concerts. We have stereo sound, yet little harmony. Sometimes our musical silos are a welcome reprieve, but do you know what your kids are really listening to? I know I don’t. I ask of course, but that doesn’t mean I get the full picture and, strangely, once they’ve passed the early years they’re no longer keen on singing loudly for all to hear. Besides, those who sing with their headphones on are just socially obtuse; they bother the rest of us who wish they’d just keep their music to themselves. Now, music is a wonderful and eclectic gift to the world. It is the echo of heaven, where song is an ever-
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present reality it would seem (Revelation 15:3-4). And, though I am a follower of Jesus determined to fill my mind with things that are pure, commendable, and excellent (Philippians 4:8), I am not opposed to what is not necessarily “Christian” music. In fact, the Holy Spirit has on a number of occasions ministered deeply to my soul through the piercing poetry and rocky riffs of musicians who would not necessarily claim to be crooning in Jesus’ name. The Lord’s song can ring true from anywhere. When I think about music in the Scriptures I’m struck by how eclectic it is. Song of Songs is more than a little suggestive (just try to ask your five year-old to read it and see how you feel). Some Psalms just sound angry (Psalm 139:19-22). Others pine depressingly (Psalm 43) or simply lament and complain as though you stumbled across some ancient country music station (Psalm 88). There are, of course, endless ballads of love (Psalm 18:1), anthems of praise (Psalm 100) and glorious truth (Philippians 2:6-11) about the Lord of Heaven and Earth, but it would be wrong to conclude that it’s all your grandma’s hymns or your hipster’s righteous rockabilly. Scripture songs are wonderfully honest and real. This should be a clue for discerning music and what we do with it. The Apostle Paul turned to the poets of the day to find common ground with the Athenians (Acts 17), so he must have had more than Chris Tomlin on the camel sound system. Music—and the poetry that comes with it—is a
window into our souls and a window for them into another world. Music reveals our longings, cravings, acheings, and dysfunctions and can also call us to higher and holier places. The former are what we could call the old songs of this world, the latter the new songs that we must be called to and trained to sing by the Spirit of God. We need, like law and grace, both it would seem. So, perhaps we need to chat with our kids more about what they’re listening to and why. Their answers may be thoroughly shallow, but at least you’ll see through a soul window. On the other hand, you may also discover that they are much more thoughtful than you are in how they discern what is worthy of the song of their hearts. Which leads to another thought: do your kids know what you’re listening to? Have you retreated into the private concert hall as well? Or, even more disturbing, is their choice of voice simply the echo of what they’re hearing from you? Who was it, after all, who put Brittany Spears on that little girl’s mp3?
/ PHIL WAGLER lives in Surrey, BC. He serves as a pastor and equipper of global workers in God’s Kingdom with MB Mission.
POWER PLAY
TOYS / TOOLS / TECHNOLOGY
CRANK UP THE VOLUME... BY SANDY MCMURRAY
SONOS
// sonos.com
If you want to play your music from different gadgets in different rooms using different speakers, you need something more than a Theatre Box. You need an audio system to tie it all together. Sonos is a smart system that connects your digital music collection together via a network of wireless speakers and audio components. Sonos devices use a dedicated wireless “mesh” network to stream audio without using your home Wi-Fi. This gives you greater range than Bluetooth and ensures that the music won’t stop just because someone is watching Netflix. The entry level Sonos product is a $220 speaker called PLAY:1. If you have a bigger budget, buy a pair of PLAY:1 speakers for music in two rooms or for use as a stereo pair. After that, the sky’s the limit—upgrade to a bigger better speaker for $330 to $450 per speaker or add a $750 soundbar for your TV or a $750 subwoofer for the living room. You can play the same audio in every room or mix and match sources and speakers to play different audio streams in every room. Sonos is flexible, easy to use, integrates into your current system and works with a huge array of services and content providers. It has been around since 2004, and it keeps getting better.
Sonos is flexible, easy to use, integrates into your current system and works with a huge array of services and content providers.
THEATRE BOX SPEAKER
// acemile.net
Theatre Box is an impressive new wireless speaker that delivers big sound in a small package. Unlike multi-speaker systems, which tend to have one sweet spot for their sound, Theatre Box sounds great in all directions thanks to four 2-inch full range drivers and one 3-inch active bass driver. Setup is simple—you just press the power button then press the Bluetooth button to pair with any compatible smartphone, tablet, game console or TV. You don’t need an Internet connection or any special apps. It just works. Theatre Box features 125 watts of maximum power output and enhanced audio transmission using Bluetooth with AptX. The built-in rechargeable LithiumIon battery provides up to 20 hours of playback. Theatre Box is available from the Amazon Exclusive store on Amazon or directly from the Acemile website. Retail price is about $300.
TRANSPARENT SPEAKER
// peopleproducts.co
Transparent Speaker lives up to its name. What you see is what you get. The front panel has audio input plus volume, treble, and bass controls. The rear panel has a power cord and USB charging port. Everything in between is Transparent Speaker. Unlike some speakers that blend into the background, Transparent Speaker wants to be seen and heard. Connect to your favourite audio source, crank up the volume, and enjoy a sound experience that’s clearly better. Transparent Speaker sells for about $850.
YOUTUBE
// youtube.com
The Internet is littered with subscription services that offer music streaming for free or for a monthly fee. CBC Music and thousands of other digital radio stations offer nearly unlimited access to great music for free, provided you have an Internet connection. 8Tracks, Grooveshark, and Songza are free with advertising, and competitors like Google Play Music, Rdio, Deezer, and Slacker offer ad-free music for a fee. In spite of all these audio-only options, many people do most of their music searching and sampling on YouTube.com, where a video of almost any song can be found in seconds, with a simple search.
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LILY CAMERA DRONE
// lily.camera
Flying drones and drone cameras are both exciting and a little scary. As personal drones become more affordable, we’re all going to have a lot more conversations about surveillance, privacy, and safety concerns. Lily is the world’s first “throw-and-shoot” flying camera. Operation could not be easier. To start your video just throw Lily into the air. Lily flies itself and follows you, navigating using GPS and a special tracking device that stays on the ground. Lily is waterproof, ultra-compact, and shoots HD pictures and videos. For about $1,000 you get one camera, one tracking device, a charger with USB cable, and a helpful user’s guide. The makers of the Lily camera plan to ship the first units early in 2016, but you can place a pre-order now for a discounted price. When pre-sales are over, the retail price will be around $1,000.
DART BLASTER
// boom-co.com
Remember the slogan “Nerf or Nothing”? BOOMco begs to differ. In 2014, a new gunslinger dressed in red and blue arrived in toy town. The BOOMco brand from Mattel launched with action-packed names like Railstinger, Mad Slammer, Farshot, and Slamblast. Kids and dads put down their Nerf guns and peeked out of their pillow forts. The battle for foam weapon supremacy began. It’s not enough these days to carry just one foam dart. You need big pockets, or a quiver, or a bandolier of ammunition. The latest blaster from BOOMco is Dartsplosion, a battery-powered tommy gun with two chambers that can hold up to 72 darts. You can fire one at a time or switch to rapid-mode mode and empty both barrels at your target. Dartsplosion appears to take aim at Nerf Rhino-Fire, the previous king of the hill in blaster battles. Dartsplosion is lighter and easier to carry than Rhino-Fire but it holds more ammo thanks to the second chamber. Nerf warriors, beware. There’s a new kid in town.
/ SANDY MCMURRAY writes about games, toys, and gadgets at funspot.ca.
NEXT ISSUE:
Gearing Up Fall is a time of transition, and it’s easy to feel the pull of excessive
busyness. As we say goodbye to the final days of summer, we’re looking back on the past 20 years of Promise Keepers Ministry, as well as what’s next
for our ministry. Plus, just in time for hockey season, a profile of Nashville Predators forward Mike Fisher, and what it means to “be greater.” Until next time, enjoy your summer!
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