issue42

QUENTIN TARANTINO | MATISYAHU | BAT FOR LASHES | SUFJAN STEVENS

GOD. LIFE. PROGRESSIVE CULTURE.

WHY

SW SWITCH W O OT FOOT STOPPED

TRYING TO CHANGE THE WORLD THE FACE OF HOMELESSNESS IS CHANGING

(And it looks a lot like you) p. 64

CHRISTIANS & DRINKING p. 42 DOING THE HOLIDAYS DIFFERENTLY p. 74

ALWAYS NOW PRINTED PRINTED ON ON RECYCLED PAPER

CONSCIENTIOUS GIFT GUIDE p. 84 1 2 7

2527 4 63696

9

ISSUE 42 | NOVEMBER_DECEMBER 2009 | $4.95

“The amazing and true story of how the Guinness family used its wealth and influence to touch millions is an absolute inspiration.” – Eric Metaxas, New York Times best-selling author

More than juÌ a pint.

In the late 1700s, Christians like Arthur Guinness—as well as monks and even evangelical churches—brewed beer that provided a healthier alternative to the poisonous waters and liquors of the times. Now, 246 years and 150 countries later, Guinness is a global brand and one of the most consumed beverages in the world.

The tale that unfolds during those two-and-a-half centuries is one of business adventure, industrial and social reforms, deep-felt faith, and the beer itself.

Available Wherever Books Are Sold

CONTENTS 8 First Word 10 Letters 14 Slices 22 Worldview: Can’t We All Just Get Along?

24 Deeper Walk: When God is Silent 26 Reject Apathy: Africa is Not That Sexy 28 Reject Apathy Frontliner & Spotlight

32 The Drop fun., Shad, Los Campesinos!

38 Matisyahu 42 So, Is Drinking OK? 46 2010: Ten ways the new year will melt your face* *And the ice caps

50 Is God an Illusion?

60 Church Mutiny Are young adult ministries killing the Church?

64 The New Face of Homelessness 72 Bat for Lashes 74 Merry Consumerism 80 Stealing Christmas

COVER STORY:

84 Conscientious Christmas Gifts 88 Recommends

SWITCHFOOT

THIS CHRISTMAS, GIVE RELEVANT

GIVE YOUR FIRST SUBSCRIPTION OF RELEVANT FOR $1495 GET MORE GIFTS FOR JUST $750 EACH! ORDER ONLINE RELEVANTMAGAZINE.COM/CHRISTMAS *RATE VALID IN THE U.S. ONLY. OFFER ENDS DECEMBER 31, 2009.

GIFT SUBSCRIPTIONS WILL START WITH THE JAN/FEB 2010 ISSUE WHEN POSSIBLE. PLEASE ALLOW 6-8 WEEKS FOR DELIVERY.

GOD. LIFE. PROGRESSIVE CULTURE. RELEVANT magazine November/December 2009, Issue 42 We apologize in advance.

EDITOR, PUBLISHER & CEO

TO SUBSCRIBE

Cameron Strang > cameron@relevantmediagroup.com

www.RELEVANTmagazine.com/subscribe Phone: (Toll-free) 877-538-4417 Rates: 1 year (6 issues) U.S. $14.95, Canada $24.95, International $30.95

EDITORIAL Roxanne Wieman | Editorial Director > roxanne@relevantmediagroup.com Ashley Emert | Associate Editor > ashley@relevantmediagroup.com Ryan Hamm | Associate Editor > ryan@relevantmediagroup.com EDITORIAL INTERNS: Brendan Case, Alyce Gilligan, Christopher Rule, Ashley Severson Contributing Writers: Jason Boyett, John Brandon, Jesse Carey, Kate Cremisino, A.J. Gregory, Robert Ham, Morgan Hansow, David Johnson, Carl Kozlowski, Mark Lore, Josh Loveless, Brett McCracken, Jonathan Merritt, Jessica Misener, Amy Orr-Ewing, John Pattison, Chad Pendleton, Travis Persaud, Adam Smith, Margot Starbuck, Sara Sterley

DESIGN Amy Duty | Print Design Manager Tim Dikun | Digital Manager Chad Michael Snavely | Audio/Video Producer Jesse Penico | Senior Marketing Designer Justin Mezzell | Junior Designer design INTERNs: Raychel Mendez, Jared Wells Contributing Photographers: Andy Barron, Jon Bergman, Justin Broadbent, Eric Byington, Che Kothari, Ray Mason, Raychel Mendez, Brooke Nipar, Andy Olson, Heather Petrey

ADVERTISING Philip Self | Director of Business Development > philip@relevantmediagroup.com Michael Romero | Account Manager > michael@relevantmediagroup.com John Scalise | General Market Account Manager > john@relevantmediagroup.com

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Distribution If you are a retailer and would like to carry RELEVANT, please contact: Ben Woosley | Rider Circulation Services > ben@rcsmagazines.com > 323-344-1200 x247

The Post Office makes us print this once a year.

We’re not sure why: STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT AND CIRCULATION

RELEVANT magazine (Publication Number: 1543-317X) is published bi-monthly

by RELEVANT Media Group. Filing date: 9-30-09. Number of issues published annually: 6. Annual subscription price: $14.95. The complete mailing address and General Business Offices of the Publisher are located at 1220 Alden Road, Orlando, FL 32803. The names and addresses of the Publisher, Editor and Managing Editor are: Publisher, Cameron Strang; Editor, Cameron Strang; Managing Editor, Roxanne Wieman; 1220 Alden Road, Orlando, FL 32803.

The owners are: Cameron Strang, 1220 Alden Road, Orlando, FL 32803; Stephen

Strang, 600 Rinehart Road, Lake Mary, FL 32746. There are no known bondholders, mortgagees and other security holders owning or holding 1 percent or more of total amount of bonds, mortgages or other securities. The tax status, the purpose, function and nonprofit status of this organization and the exempt status for federal income purposes have not changed during the preceding 12 months.

Issue date for circulation data: July/August 2009. Extent and Nature of

Circulation are as follows. Total number of copies (net press run): average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months, 57,667; number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date, 52,500. Mailed outside-county paid subscriptions stated on PS Form 3541: average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months, 30,473; number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date, 28,293. Mailed in-county paid subscriptions stated on PS Form 3541: average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months, 0; number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date, 0. Paid distribution outside the mails including sales through dealers and carriers, street vendors, counter sales, and other paid distribution outside USPS: average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months, 14,217; number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date, 14,470. Paid distribution by other classes of mail through the USPS:

MARKETING

average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months, 4,358; number of

Hemarie Vazquez | Senior Marketing Manager > hemarie@relevantmediagroup.com Sarahbeth Wesley | Field Coordinator > sarahbeth@relevantmediagroup.com Richard Butcher | Marketing Assistant

average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months, 49,049; number

CORPORATE Josh Babyar | Chief Operations Officer > josh@relevantmediagroup.com Joanne Garcia | Sales & Finance Manager > joanne@relevantmediagroup.com Theresa Dobritch | Exec. Assistant/Project Manager Josh Strohm | Systems Administrator Rachel Gittens | Fulfillment Manager Maya Strang | Payroll Manager

copies of single issue published nearest to filing date, 3,450. Total paid distribution: of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date, 46,213. Free or nominal rate outside-county copies included on PS Form 3541: average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months, 403; number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date, 434. Free or nominal rate in-county copies included on PS Form 3541: average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months, 0; number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date, 0. Free or nominal rate copies mailed at other classes through the USPS: average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months, 0; number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date, 0. Free or nominal rate distribution outside the mail: average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months, 3,565; number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date, 640. Total free or nominal rate distribution: average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months, 3,968; number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date, 1,074. Total distribution: average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months, 53,017; number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date, 47,287. Copies not distributed: average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months, 4,650; number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date, 5,213. Total: average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months, 57,667; number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date, 52,500. Percent paid: average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months, 92.5%; number of copies of single issue published

FOR ADVERTISING INQUIRIES, PLEASE CONTACT Michael Romero (407) 660-1411

nearest to filing date, 70.6%.

Annual publication of this statement is required. Published November/

December 2009.

—Cameron Strang, RELEVANT magazine

want to write for us?

Our writers’ guidelines for the magazine and website are at RELEVANTmagazine.com/editorial. But please, only if you’re good.

Reprints & permissions Love an article so much you want to pretend like you wrote it, put your name on it and print up copies? You can’t. For what you can do, visit RELEVANTmagazine.com/editorial.

RELEVANT Issue #42 November/December 2009 (ISSN: 1543317X) is published 6 times a year in January, March, May, July, September, November for $14.95 per year by RELEVANT Media Group, Inc., 1220 Alden Road, Orlando, FL 32803. Periodicals postage paid at Orlando, FL, and at additional mailing offices.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to RELEVANT magazine, P.O. Box 11687, St. Paul, MN 55111-9913.

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Our apologies for neglecting to credit Mike Stefanini who made the illustration for “Your Disembodied Digital Mind” (Sept./Oct. 2009).

Media Group 1220 Alden Road, Orlando, FL 32803 Phone: 407-660-1411 Fax: 407-401-9100 www.RELEVANTmediagroup.com

SHERWOOD QU THE ANTICIPATED NEW ALBUM OUT NOW! featuring the singles “You Are” & “Maybe This Time”

Featured Artist - MySpace.com/Introducing

MYSPACE.COM/SHERWOOD SHERWOODMUSIC.NET

fIRST wORD

Waiting on God > CaMeroN STraNG

A

s I write these words, it’s less than two weeks until Maya and I are due to have our first baby. We’re thrilled and nervous, as any new parents would be I guess, but for us this moment is even more significant. It’s the culmination of a hard journey and celebration of a major work God has been doing in our lives.

The truth is, we’ve been trying to have a baby for five years now. That may not sound like a big deal to some—and I’m glad to say we have a happy ending—but the process was so difficult it almost ripped our lives, faith and marriage to shreds.

A couple of years after getting married, we decided it was time to change seasons and have kids. Maya was working at RELEVANT doing project management and finance, and she was ready to shift into another stage of life and become a mom.

After a year went by, we realized it might not be as easy as we thought.

Seeking help from doctors, Maya actually had to undergo surgery. When that didn’t work, we started trying other medical options, which was very hard on her physically and emotionally. Still, nothing.

Over time, we found ourselves in our own warped Groundhog Day, having to go through invasive procedures, getting our hopes up that this time it would work and dealing with the disappointment when it didn’t.

Then getting our game faces on and doing it all over again. For five years.

I kept up a brave front, as husbands usually do—“it’s all in God’s timing; it’s in His hands”—even as the words began to ring hollow in my own heart.

The disappointment, disillusionment and questions began to wear on us.

For Maya, her life’s dream wasn’t working out, and I saw her dying little by little as the years passed. She found herself trapped in a stressful job that was supposed to just be for a season, and, to be honest, depression became a struggle. Helplessly, I didn’t know what to do to fix things.

The harder things got, the more I worked. In hindsight, I was obviously distracting myself with a situation I could control rather than honestly dealing with the stuff I could not. And in the midst of it, our marriage was quietly crumbling. Maya and I were waiting for a day we’d find out we were pregnant, and our lives would radically change for the better. I’d flip a switch and stop immersing myself in work, she would have newfound fulfillment as a mom, and we’d become a Hallmark picture of a perfect, God-loving young family. But since that day never came, we dealt with the hurt in ways that were tearing us apart.

A few issues ago, I wrote about taking a sabbatical earlier this year.

It’s because I found myself at the end of my rope, with broken dreams all around me, and without the strength to push through anymore. I was empty, but through unexpected circumstances in January God radically rescued me. He miraculously captured my heart again, and the same

8 / RElEvaNT_NoV/deC 09

happened with Maya. Hurt was tearing our lives apart, but we fought back.

We ran to God, got into counseling, tangibly made major changes, and have been on a journey of healing and falling in love all over again.

In the midst of that, we found out we were pregnant.

It’s easier to say in hindsight, but I don’t think the timing was coincidental one bit. We were so focused on wanting something we thought would change things for the better, we allowed ourselves to get off track in the meantime. We had blind spots in our lives, and God needed to get our attention. We had to change things for the right reasons—for God, for each other—rather than just for a child.

Fast-forward to today, and we couldn’t be in a more different place. Our commitment to God, to each other and to trusting Him in every area of our lives has never been stronger. The journey has been a constant reminder that God wants His followers to hold everything—especially the dreams and desires He puts in our hearts—with an open hand. We can’t grasp onto our own plans and timetables. We have to let go and trust that even when we don’t understand His timing, or difficult circumstances overwhelm us, God really does have everything under control.

6.

It’s easy to forget in the midst of struggle, but God is a heavenly father who wants the best for His kids. We need to more intentionally embrace difficult times and loss, because they can get our attention. God can use those challenges to refine us, strengthen us and help us grow.

God puts dreams in our hearts, so it’s human nature to get frustrated when things don’t happen according to plan. But remember, we only see in part.

We don’t know the whole story yet, and in the midst of hard seasons, we need to be mindful of the bigger picture of what God might be doing in us. Thankfully, Romans 8:28 doesn’t have conditions: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose” (TNIV).

It’s a truth Maya and I can attest to. Our journey has been difficult, but what God has done in our lives makes the process more than worth it.

Imagine that. Turns out, God knew what He was doing all along.

We need to be mindful of the bigger picture of what God might be doing.

CAMERON STRANG is the founder and publisher of RELEVANT. You can connect with him (and probably see a lot of annoying baby pics) at Twitter.com/CameronStrang and Facebook.com/CameronStrang.

COMMENTS, CONCERNS, SMART REMARKS > Write us at feedback@RELEVANTmagazine.com

lETTERS I’ve been a fan of Wilco since the film I am Trying to Break Your Heart and never caught Jeff Tweedy’s Jewish background undertones before. His take on Christianity and faith is so true and refreshing. Tweedy’s reference to Jesus and His Spirit being evident in the representation of a homeless person, but so overlooked because of the packaging, was absolutely true. I love Wilco’s brazen, honest lyrical punches.

—RORy MCCALL / Long Beach, CA Just to update you: “Train for a (half) marathon” was a win, but “read Shakespeare” got knocked down to rewatching 10 Things I Hate About You. Win? I say yes.

—ELISABETH SMITH / Boston, MA

As a seasoned Wilco fan, I was disappointed you left out the greatest Wilco record of all time, the 2-disc Being There. Released in 1996 and featuring amorous guitar stylings from Jay Bennet and huge drums by Ken Coomer, this was actually the Wilco album that placed them atop Son Volt and garnered major attention.

“Masterpiece” is what most fans call it.

—MkHUSkER / via RELEVANTmagazine.com Amorous guitars. Huge drums. You sure you didn’t dream this “album”?

I really think Jason Boyett missed the mark on “Highway to Heaven” [Sept./Oct. 2009]. Heaven is not some final destination we’re saving airline miles to get to. Those other religions may have wild-sounding afterlives, but besides the fact that they’re wrong, they lack the one thing ours has: a radiant, loving, God who lights up Heaven just by His own light because He is that breathtaking to behold. If Heaven has nothing but God Himself, it’ll be worth it.

—DAVID BEAN / Nashville, TN Days before I read “The Not Going Back to School Guide” [Sept./Oct. 2009] I had a mini freak-out session about post-grad life (I’m a college senior currently). I recently realized I won’t be doing what I’ve always thought.

After reading your guide I realized my real passion is to help create a nonprofit to benefit teenagers. God used your article to help me get the ball rolling. Thanks a lot!

—AMBER ELWOOD / Knoxville, TN

Paper Route has been a favorite band of mine this year. Thank you, RELEVANT, for telling the world about Nashville’s best-kept secret.

—COLLEEN DAWSON / Nashville, TN And here we thought that townhouse by Pancake Pantry where Tupac is living was Nashville’s best-kept secret.

I really appreciated Cameron Strang’s First Word [“Embracing the Real,” Sept./Oct. 2009]. I spent the summer disconnected from the Web and realized how much I depend on my Facebook and email. Thanks for your words!

—SHELLEy JOHNSON / Embarrass, MN I have been in a spiritual rut since I moved to Oregon for a new job last year. In “Faded Faith” [Sept./Oct. 2009], I appreciated the view of how I should not be trying to recreate intimacy with God, but come to Him from where I am now: With these new trials, with this new view of life, with this style of worship or vision of the world.

—RyAN CONLEy / Portland, OR I have enjoyed the RELEVANT Podcast since its inception, usually browse your website for new tunes, and obviously enjoy the mag as it magically appears in my mailbox on occasion.

But this new face of the “RELEVANT Weekly” email has made me stop and feel informed enough to continue with my email for the day.

—MIkE BREWSTER / Winnipeg, Canada

We just ran it to be funny.

OK, be honest with me: Was I actually supposed to gain some insight from your interview with Regina Spektor [“Like Usual, Regina Spektor is Causing a Stir,” Sept./Oct. 2009], or were you guys just trying to sell copies?

—CHRIS FUJINO / Aiea, HI

I took your advice and tried a few of the alternate not-going-back-to-school suggestions.

The insight was only made available to full-year subscribers.

10 / RElEvaNT_NoV/deC 09

RELETWEETS If you didn’t know, we tweet every day over at Twitter.com/RELEVANTmag. Here’s some of the (almost completely positive) Twitter scuttlebutt about us, in 140 characters or less:

Discovered @RELEVANTmag cos of Jeff Tweedy being on cover! Finally a mag w/ meaningful insights into the faith that changed my life!

—SARAH0504

I was pleasantly surprised to see Jeff Tweedy on the cover of the latest issue of @RELEVANTmag today. Nice writeup on Wilco. —kEVINkMILLER

Just subscribed a friend to @RELEVANTMag for her upcoming birthday. The gift that keeps on giving!

—ERBREW

Used the newest issue of @RELEVANTMag in class as an example of a publication with great editorial direction. Woo! —LEAHHITCHENS

AMAZING article about Gluttony in this month’s issue of @RELEVANTmag.

Provocative, deep and readable.

Author Jeff Cook nailed it.

—BRANDyGLOWS

Great interview in the newest RELEVANT with Shane Hipps regarding his book Flickering Pixels. —CHRISMPOWELL

Starting my night off with a little Pandora.com and reading @RELEVANTmag—deciding to finally get a subscription was a good idea. :) —DLWALTER1

“Jason Boyett’s Pocket Guides are smart and hilarious. And they’re sneaky too: You don’t realize how much you’re learning because you’re having so much fun.”

–AJ Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically

Historically Funny What happens after I die? What’s up with all these Bible translations?

Why is my church/hospital/school named after that guy?

You have questions. The Pocket Guides have answers. Bursting with humor, attitude and plus-size entertainment, these little books will do more than make you smarter … they’ll make you happy.

Available at bookstores nationwide

SLICES

f If Al Gore invented the Internet in a forest and no one was around, would it have made a sound?

in the

balance World Leaders Meet in Copenhagen to Determine Our Environmental Future In early December, delegates from all over the world will gather in Copenhagen, Denmark to discuss climate change, and look for practical and responsible ways nations around the world can agree to address the planetary shift in temperature and weather patterns. “Whether or not you believe that climate change is real, or is human-caused, it is clear that environmental degradation is having the greatest impact in the most vulnerable communities around the world,” says Dr. Matthew Sleeth, co-head (with his wife and fellow activist, Nancy) of Blessed Earth, a Christian organization dedicated to creation care. “It is the poorest among us that are hit first and hardest by lack of access to clean water, clean air and sustainable land.”

This comes two years after a climate change conference in Bali, Indonesia asserted evidence for global warming is inarguable, and that humanity must act immediately to avoid even more devastating consequences to the planet. Among the hopedfor guidelines are a firm emissions cap and a date to reduce the carbon footprint of each nation.

RAy Mason

14 / RELEVANT_NOV/DEC 09

Today is the greatest day I’ve ever blogged

Infinite Blogging

Four Things Dr. Matthew Sleeth Hopes Come Out of the Copenhagen Meeting: b That industrialized nations follow the advice of Matthew 7 and work on the plank in their own eyes. Before we point the finger at developing nations, we must examine our own actions. Every family in America could reduce their environmental impact immediately by at least 30 percent simply through conservation. b That developing countries forgive and learn from our mistakes.

We all need to do a better job of following God’s first commandment to humankind in Genesis 2:15—“to tend and watch over the Garden” (NLT) This means not doing everything we want, just because we can.

b That the world takes heed of the conservation lessons in the

Bible’s first recorded environmental dream. As interpreted by Joseph, Pharaoh’s dream instructs us to prepare for the lean years ahead by conserving now. Changes in the environment are already estimated to be responsible for 300,000 deaths a year and affect 300 million lives.

b That industrialized nations use their resources to show

compassion. The parable of the Good Samaritan teaches us that it may be inconvenient, costly, dangerous, difficult and even subject us to ridicule to show compassion for those we typically do not define as our “neighbor,” but that is exactly the sacrifice Jesus calls us to. We must be generous in dedicating resources to helping developing nations reduce their emissions, protect their forests and grow sustainably.

Misc.

>After a really long time away, Jennifer Knapp is back, to the joy of 1990s Christian rock fans.

She announced her return via a note on her website, and has a new song streaming at her MySpace ... >A Florida man was shocked to discover the remains of a frog (or toad) in his can of Pepsi. The FDA says the frog lacked normal internal organs. Obviously, they missed the press conference when Pepsi announced their new “Be Young, Have Fun, Drink Froggies” campaign ...

t Billy Corgan (lead singer of the Smashing Pumpkins and ... um ... Zwan) has started a new website about spirituality. According to the singer, Everything from Here to There’s purpose is “to discuss openly and without fear concepts of Mind-Body-Soul integration.”

Corgan’s spirituality has long been an interesting aspect of his lyrics—he often confronted ideas of God and faith on older albums (particularly in songs like “Quiet” and “Zero”) and especially on Mary, Star of the Sea, his single album with Zwan. Corgan has increasingly spoken about his own beliefs and his concepts of God, and this new site is an extension of that. It’s not clear yet what form that will take (will Corgan write every entry himself? or will others chime in?) but it’s an interesting direction for the lead singer of an alternative-rock band.

More Celebrity Spirituality

Beliefnet.com/ Entertainment/ Desperate to know what Brad Pitt thinks about God? Then, Beliefnet. com is your place—the site features interviews from celebrities about a variety of spiritual topics.

soul pancake Rainn Wilson’s SoulPancake.com aims to bring conversations about philosophy and spirituality to a worldwide audience by posing a “deep” question on the site each day.

RELEVANTMAGAZINE.COM / 15

SLICES

> Speaking of award-winning films, they’re going to make Big Momma’s House 3 after all. So our hunger strike worked.

Talking Film with Quentin Tarantino The Inglourious Basterds director talks to RELEVANT about craft and inspiration. by Carl kozlowski

Film season is just around the corner, meaning the studio’s best films are primed for release. Here are a few fall picks getting plenty of buzz.

Inglourious Basterds is a movie that shows a love for cinema ...

I would definitely say so. One thing that cracked me up when I was first writing the scene between Zoller [a Nazi who tries to charm Shoshanna] and Shoshanna, and they’re debating [classic film directors] Linder vs. Chaplin—or he’s debating and she’s listening—I thought, “OK, I go make my WWII movie and it becomes a love letter to cinema.” I guess I cannot not have that love show.

When you started, was it a more traditional war movie?

It changed, but what gets me to sit down and write something in the first place is something, usually a very thin idea.

Reservoir Dogs was bam, sit down and write a heist movie. You don’t see the heist, but still it’s a heist movie. Then I hope I get beyond that and it becomes its own thing, but hopefully still developing the pleasures of the genre I’m dipping my toe into. Yet the whole idea is to expand beyond it.

You have a real passion for cinema and use touchstones from the past in your current films. Out of current films from the past 20 years, anything that inspires you?

I just wrote down my top 20 movies of the past 17 years that I’ve been directing. I was happy to find it was hard to break it down to 20. There’s a lot of

v Pulp Fiction One of the most game-changing films of the last 20 years, Fiction brought style, non-linear narrative and homage into the mainstream.

16 / RELEVANT_NOV/DEC 09

v Inglourious Basterds

The WWII epic took the box-office by storm—but underneath the flash was a movie about the nature of revenge, violence and classic film.

u and the award goes to ...

A Serious Man The latest film from the Coen Brothers has all the makings of their Oscarwinners. It combines the spiritual longing and questioning of No Country for Old Men with the dark humor of Fargo.

Up in the Air Directed by Juno helmsman Jason Reitman, and starring George Clooney as a traveler with no ties to a place or person,,this film is sure to appeal to our quirkier side.

Precious terrific filmmakers out now, like my contemporary Paul Thomas Anderson. I remember something that when I met Brian De Palma, a hero of mine, he was talking about having a friendly rivalry with Scorsese.

While he was doing Scarface, a big epic with Pacino, and on a day off went to see Raging Bull. And that opening shot of rain, slow-motion, Jake LaMotta dancing, and he thought: “Ugh, there’s always Scorsese. No matter how good you are or what you do, he’s always looking back at you.” But in the last couple decades, great directors would include Paul, Robert Rodriguez, Richard Linklater—not because we’re friends­, but we’re friends because we respond to their aesthetic. To me, some of the best cinema on earth is coming out of Korea.

In 17 years of doing this, what’s your biggest triumph and your biggest disappointment?

I guess the career goal that I always go to is winning the Palme d’Or for Pulp Fiction. There’s only one list of filmmakers more prestigious than those who’ve won it, and that’s the directors who haven’t. I took it very hard when Grindhouse didn’t do well. I like the movie, I’m very happy with that and what we did, and when we had an audience it played like gangbusters.

I never had that kind of a flop before and it hurt my feelings, but you get over it and I’m lucky that I’m in a position to follow my muse; sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t.

This will be one of the more intense entries in the awards race this fall.

The winner of the Grand Jury prize at Sundance, it’s a tale of incest, abuse and hope with incredible performances.

Bright Star Directed by Oscar-winner Jane Campion, this romantic biopic tells the story of poet John Keats and his affair with Franny Brawne during the last years of his life.

The Road Based on a Cormac McCarthy novel, the film centers on the relationship of a father and son as they make their way through a post-apocalyptic landscape in search of the ocean.

Invictus This latest film from director Clint Eastwood tells the story of Nelson Mandela (played by Morgan Freeman) as he seeks to bring his country together in 1995 during a rugby tournament.

mYou already know the couple that tweets together ... well, they tweet together.

We could build that same bond. Creepy, huh? Twitter.com/RELEVANTmag

FLAVOR OF THE

BI-MONTH

Bob Dylan released a Christmas album on Oct. 13. Christmas in the Heart is the singer’s first holiday release, despite speculation about such an album earlier in his career. The album features a combination of sacred and non-religious Christmas songs, including “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” and, um, “Christmas Island.” Proceeds from the album will go to hunger charities around the world. The album’s announcement led to a renewed interest in Dylan’s religious affiliations; though he frequently performs songs from his “born-again” period in concert, most have assumed he’s returned to the Judaism of his childhood. Perhaps hearing him wheeze his way through “Here Comes Santa Claus” will make everyone realize the speculation is, in fact, dumb.

the couple that tweets together

c An Associated Press story says many

Christian couples are beginning to share online accounts as a symbol of openness and to avoid Internet temptation. Couples say they made the switch naturally, and to make a statement of their trust. Still, the practice may imply a tacit distrust. In an AP interview, James Furrow, a professor of marital and family therapy at Fuller Theological Seminary, said sharing an account can hurt a relationship. “We can take steps to manage our behavior, but then the problem with that is it begins to become the emphasis rather than the trust of giving the other the benefit of the doubt,” Furrow says.

“What you end up with is the doubt.”

u Thanksgiving // It’s time for turkey-

u World AIDS Day // World AIDS Day

december 2 december 25

> According to his Twitter, Arnold Schwarzenegger still has his sword from Conan ... and keeps it in his governor’s office. Maybe for slashing through the budget deficit? ...

SANTA BOBBY

december 1

> According to reports, Marvel and Paramount have been so impressed with 3D versions of Iron Man 2 footage they may release the film in Digital 3D. We just hope the 3D phenomenon lasts long enough for Transformers 3D: Don’t Worry, This One Sucks Too ...

u Pixies Doolittle Tour // Aging hipsters rejoice! The iconic indie grunge rockers have reunited for a U.S. and European tour. They’ll be playing their landmark album Doolittle in its entirety.

Make sure to catch this tour, because who knows if Kim Deal and Frank Black will be able to tolerate each other enough to do another.

november 26

> A former detainee at Guantanamo who may have been as young as 12 when he was put in the military prison is suing the U.S. government after a military judge ruled that much of the case against him was inadmissible.

He was imprisoned at Guantanamo for seven years ...

Five Things to Pay Attention to in November & December

NOVEMBER 4-30

Misc.

you better watch out, you better not cry

u International Day for the Abolition

induced comas and celebrating the deadly sin of gluttony. Everyone, of course, knows the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, but many cities have great Turkey Day events. For instance, if you’re in Houston make sure to check out the Uptown Holiday Lighting where the city’s Christmas light display is turned on.

It marks the official transition from gluttony to consumerism.

started in 1988 to raise money and awareness in fighting the disease.

The theme for this year’s World AIDS Day is “Universal Access and Human Rights.” The UN estimates that more than 33 million people are afflicted with the disease, and 95 percent of them live in developing countries.

of Slavery // Slavery is still alive. From sex

trafficking to forced labor, it’s a problem many people are unaware of. The UN designated Dec. 2 to raise awareness of the human rights violations brought about by forced servitude.

u Christmas // The most wonderful time of the year! If you’re not sick of Christmas carols yet, join in as the world celebrates the birth of Christ and annual breaking-and-entering of Santa. If you can get to New York, it’s worth the trip. Iceskating at Rockefeller Center, Christmas shows at Radio City Music Hall and the Saks Fifth Avenue light display will even put cynics in a yuletide mood.

RELEVANTMAGAZINE.COM / 17

SLICES

f You say your grandma got run over by a reindeer? Walking home from your house Christmas Eve? That’s Ludacris.

Misc.

How To Avoid Holiday Homicide The holidays are upon us again, and that means getting together with family. Though home is where the heart is, it’s also where the conflict usually is. Will cousin John pass out in the egg nog again? Will Uncle Louie corner us for a long and detailed conversation about his latest medical procedure? With a bit of savvy, however, you can get through the family holiday experience with minimal fear and trepidation.

low-riders will end the recession

ludacris lends a hand

d Shop Early We say this knowing you won’t. We all have good intentions of getting our Christmas shopping out of the way, but end up frantically searching through the clearance bin at Wal-Mart at 11:45 p.m. on Dec. 24. Still, with all the stress that family holidays can bring, it pays to remove the stress of last-minute shopping from the equation.

Forget Cash for Clunkers. Rapper Ludacris apparently decided he’d seen enough of the current recession and its effects on everyday folks, and took matters into his own hands. The hip-hop artist started the nonprofit Ludacris Foundation, and gave away 20 cars to drivers in need in his hometown of Atlanta. Luda announced that if wannabe car owners could pay the taxes, title, registration and insurance, they could submit a 300-word essay about why they should receive a car. The Ludacris Foundation picked 20 winners, including a refugee from war-torn Sudan. Winners also received 30 days of free gas. Now that Ludacris has given them a ride, will Xzibit pimp it?

> British scientists are working on a “telepathy” chip that will let you control things by the power of thought. This is great news for people who are too lazy to reach for their remote on the couch next to them ... > In an interview with Rolling Stone, Keith Richards says he’s been recording songs with Jack White and didn’t dismiss a rumor that White could produce the next Stones album. Richards is also working on his autobiography and says it’s “very difficult” to remember things. Kids, say “no” to drugs ... > T-Pain, everyone’s “favorite” Auto-Tuned singer, has released an iPhone app called “I Am T-Pain.” It does exactly what you’d expect: AutoTune everything you say into the phone. We hope someone plays Jay-Z’s “Death of Auto-Tune” through the app. Did we just blow your minds? ...

Remember You Can Say “No” Expectations can be a major cause of holiday stress. Keep others’—and your own—expectations of you realistic. If you’re getting stretched thin with functions, parties and visits to distant relatives you’ve never even met, draw the line and trim down your itinerary.

Pick Your Battles Conflict can be healthy, but it has to be weighed against its motive and what you can actually hope to achieve by engaging in it. A lot of family conflict is utterly unnecessary, and it’s your choice whether or not you take part in it. When your half-deaf 90-year-old great-aunt starts regaling you with her atavistic political opinions, remember you’re probably not going to sway her through reasoned debate and presentation of fact. Just smile and nod.

18 / RELEVANT_NOV/DEC 09

Is There Christ on Mars?

The image of Christ has shown up in some bizarre places. Now NASA’s Mars Orbiter has snapped an image of the planet that some say shows a representation of Christ wearing a robe. We doubt many people will be taking pilgrimages there any time soon.

Jesus of Siberia A man in Siberia now has more than 4,000 followers after claiming to be the Messiah.

Sergei Torop, who now goes by the name Vissarion, says he realized he was the Son of God 20 years ago. He warns of an impending ecological disaster, but promises that his remote village in Siberia will become a jungle paradise.

No God, No Green Pope Benedict XVI placed the blame for global warming in the lap of atheism in a recent speech. The pontiff claimed ecological irresponsibility comes from a lack of belief in a Creator.

12

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SLICES

f We know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “RELEVANT, you tricksters! I [may/may not] have seen this stuff before” to which we say “yes.” RELEVANTmagazine.com. Go there. To the interweb. Specifically our site. Your friends will think you are cool.

RELEVANTmagazine.com Spotlight Every day on RELEVANTmagazine.com, we post original features, reviews, blogs and news. Here’s an excerpt from one recent feature that got people talking:

Watch Your #$@&%!! Mouth When I’m around Christian friends and I hear them cussing up a storm, I cringe. It makes me sad. The words themselves don’t necessarily bother me. They aren’t what make me cringe. Rather, it’s the fact that my Christian brothers and sisters are so recklessly abandoning scruples in what I daresay is one of the most crucial areas of our Christian witness: our language. Just read James 3:1-12.

Not using profanity in today’s world is noticeable. It’s the sort of abstaining activity people will take note of. What an opportunity for Christians to truly show restraint and demonstrate the difference of the Christ-like life! We shouldn’t chastise non-Christians for using bad language or avoid movies or music with salty language, but we, as Christians, should set an example by being different.

Certainly the case can be made that a well-placed swear word might be appropriate for a Christian when no other word will get across an idea or express a certain level of emotion/emphasis. Some of my favorite Christian artists will occasionally throw an expletive into their lyrics to really drive home a point.

There is definitely a place and a time for a well-placed cuss word. But it has to be used sparingly and with a real meaningful purpose behind it.

GOSH DANGIT FIDDLESTICkS DOGNAbIT SHOOT DARN FRICk!

d You Respond

This is something I struggle with, because it’s much easier for me to just let the four-letter words fly out. I don’t really like the whole “think before you speak” thing.

— Travis_Mamone What is a cuss word? People keep saying Jesus didn’t EVER use them but where is the list? If you have never been mad enough to cuss you haven’t seen the world the way Jesus saw it. The hypocrisy made him furious.

— Deluxe

From Our Blogs v Intentional Living // ”What I would really like to see are the major retailers providing ethical options that cost a little more. We have organic/natural aisles in all of our local grocery stores, so why can’t we have a few racks of socially and environmentally conscious clothing?”

v TV // “I can say, with full confidence, that True Blood is not a Christian show. But Christians—real Christians, like you and I—know that Jesus shows His face where we sometimes least expect: in line at the supermarket, in the homeless man outside of church and even on HBO.”

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Misc. > Former Korn member Brian “Head” Welch says he heard from God that he should witness to 50 Cent.

So he found 50’s jeweler, bought some diamonds and passed on a note for the rapper where he witnessed to him. It may be the first time someone has used such an “ice-y” tactic to tell someone about Jesus ... > A Tampa Bay church has begun a boycott of Pepsi over what it considers pro-gay rights stances and actions.

Bell Shoals Baptist Church removed its 10 Pepsi machines and replaced them with Coke machines.

The church will also title its next sermon series “Can Drinking Mountain Dew Endanger Your Soul?” ... > A police officer is under investigation for feeding PopTarts to a gorilla in a zoo in Minnesota. His only real crime would be if he used any flavor but s’more ... >An IT company in South Africa was fed up with their slow DSL service so they did what anyone would do: challenged the DSL line to a duel with a carrier pigeon. They tied a 4 GB flash drive to the bird and had it fly to a city 60 miles away. In the two hours it took to reach its destination, the network had only transferred 4% of the data. Now they just have to figure out how to operate World of Warcraft via messenger bird ...

RELEVANT.TV

spotlight MUsiC ViDEos Check the front page of RELEVANTmagazine.com for our spotlight Video of the Day, featuring the best new music. Here are some recent favorites:

1

2

3

4

5

6

1. The Dead Weather “Treat Me Like Your Mother” 2. Fleet Foxes “Mykonos” 3. St. Vincent “Out of Work Actor” 4. Coldplay “Strawberry Swing” 5. Grizzly Bear “Two Weeks” 6. mewithoutyou “The Fox, The Crow and The Cookie”

Each week at RELEVANTmagazine.com, The Drop streams new breaking albums in their entirety. For free.

Here are some recent favorites:

Ryan Costello After the fire (Independent)

Sleeping at Last storyboArds (Independent)

Jesus Culture

consumed (Jesus Culture Music)

Awaken, North Wind doubt (Independent)

PULsE

wORlDvIEw

Can’t We All Just Get Along? > Jonathan Merritt

T

hat was the cry of Rodney King, the African-American man who was mercilessly beaten on March 3, 1991, by members of the Los Angeles police department. It became a rallying cry for the nation in the midst of hostile race wars. And it’s applicable today, as we find ourselves in very different—but no less contentious—culture wars.

The simple answer is, we are unique people with conflicting passions.

But, shouldn’t it be different for followers of Jesus? Shouldn’t those of us who claim to follow the Prince of Peace be able to stand firmly upon our convictions without being offensive, cutting or downright mean?

Historically, there have always been pockets of Christians who give God a bad name—the Crusades, slavery, segregated America. While those are some of the most egregious examples, late-20th century Americans nurtured a new unChristian trend: incivility in public discourse.

Many Christians during this period noticed the widespread breakdown of morality in America and responded with organized political activism.

A passion developed among America’s faithful, and with it came vicious public debates on hot-button issues like prayer in schools, the public display of the Ten Commandments, abortion and gay rights. As America polarized, public attacks became commonplace—even among Christians.

This struggle for control of our nation’s rudder—these “culture wars”— has hurt the public perception of Christianity. As recent Barna research shows, most non-believers feel “Christians are prideful and quick to find faults in others.” Today, 70 percent of non-Christians aged 16 to 29 say Christians are “insensitive to others.”

Such perceptions have triggered Christian thinkers from the right and left to wonder if this is the best practice for Christ-followers. Public engagement and personal passion over moral issues is laudable, but we should defend our deeply held convictions logically and lovingly instead of emotionally. We should temper our rhetoric with grace, humility and respect. We must learn to disagree without being disagreeable.

“Continuing the present course of the culture wars spells disaster for the United States and a historic failure to seize the moment and demonstrate to the world the significance of the American experiment,” writes Os Guinness in The Case for Civility.

On his God’s Politics blog, Jim Wallis posted “Rules for Christian Civility,” saying we should “not attack our fellow Christians as Democratic or Republican partisans, but rather expect and respect the practice of putting our faith first … even if we reach different conclusions.”

Conservative columnist Peggy Noonan spoke out in her recent book, Patriotic Grace. “What we need most right now, at this moment, is a kind of patriotic grace,” she writes. “A grace that takes the long view, apprehends the moment we’re in, comes up with ways of dealing with it,

22 / RElEvaNT_NoV/deC 09

and eschews the politically cheap and manipulative.”

Political incivility last year prompted Mark DeMoss to launch The Civility Project. DeMoss is the president of the largest Christian PR firm in America and has represented such conservative icons as Jerry Falwell, Franklin Graham and Charles Colson. “During the 2008 election, I began noticing some of the ugly things being said about people like Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, much of it by evangelicals,” DeMoss says.

DeMoss’ Civility Project asks people to pledge to be civil in public discourse and behavior, respect others whether or not they agree, and stand against incivility. “I think more people than we realize are clamoring for more respectful debate, especially on politics,” he says. “People are getting turned off to the entire system, Republicans and Democrats.”

DeMoss is careful to point out civility doesn’t mean unity. Americans will never agree on everything. Furthermore, civility doesn’t simply mean being nice. ”There are pragmatic and practical reasons for civility,” he says. “It is virtually impossible to have constructive dialogue or to inform and educate people in an uncivil environment.”

Incivility is a cultural problem, and is not localized to the Christian community. From Kanye West’s infamous mic-snatching during Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards, to South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson shouting “you lie” at President Obama in the middle of his address to Congress, to Serena Williams’ expletive-laced rant after a line judge called a foot fault on her during the U.S. Open, it seems we’re no longer concerned about people’s feelings.

But Scripture says our attitudes should mirror Jesus’ as we put others above ourselves. Somehow, I just can’t imagine Jesus at a town hall meeting screaming His lungs out and comparing the president to Hitler.

Rather than getting dragged into the vicious spirit marking today’s public debates, Jesus would express the fruits of a greater Spirit: love, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness and self-control. Rather than letting opposing positions frustrate us, let’s see them as opportunities to live the virtues of our faith. Let’s infuse grace and humility into an uncivil world. r

We should defend our convictions logically and lovingly instead of emotionally.

JONATHAN MERRITT is a faith and culture writer who has been published in numerous publications, including USA Today, The Atlantic Journal and The Washington Post’s “On Faith” blog.

RELEVANTMAGAZINE.COM / 23

DEEpER walk

When God is Silent > a.J. GreGorY

I

have to admit, I usually cringe when someone starts a conversation with “God told me …” It just makes me uncomfortable. I wonder if they’re one of the weirdo Christian types or a bit delusional.

Sure, maybe it’s a prematurely negative reaction, but having heard people boast “God told me xyz” during much of my youth has made me somewhat of a skeptic. It’s not that I doubt God’s ability to speak to us.

It’s that I sometimes question people’s motive for telling me, or their on-the-money certainty, or the smug look-how-special-I-am attitude with which they say it.

In the church where I grew up, apparently God was telling all my peers who to marry and which Bible college to attend. Hearing God was quite the obsession. Because I didn’t hear God telling me things with the clarity my friends were, I felt like a religious reject. God was more silent than not. Granted, I’m sure there were times I didn’t listen and other times when I should have been paying more attention. I won’t be naive and deny that. Still, He just wasn’t as transparent and as clear to see, hear and understand as I believed He should have been. I was plagued with questions. Why was God ignoring me? What was wrong with me? What did I do or not do? Was I not sincere? Should I pray more? And on and on.

I’ve since resolved, or have more peace than not, with the fact that God doesn’t communicate with me in theatrics, but with a quiet assurance.

Sure, it bothers me every now and then, but I remind myself that it just happens to be His modus operandi. I don’t have to walk around thinking I suck because other people are allegedly hearing God talk to them in flowery soliloquies that could match the length of a novella and I don’t.

Make no mistake. I definitely believe God speaks to us. But I also believe the wires can get disconnected sometimes and His “speaking” and our “hearing” is much broader and deeper than what human beings experience in everyday conversation. We need to be very careful in trumpeting “God told me _____” from our rooftops, especially when it involves other people’s situations or the pain they are enduring.

I believe God can speak to us in the still, small voice in our soul, through words of wisdom from other people, through the indescribable beauty of creation and through the Bible. I believe He speaks to us through movies and even reality TV shows (He did speak through a donkey), when we’re staring blankly into space paralyzed by life circumstances, daydreaming while mopping the kitchen floor, crunching numbers and bothered by a case of the Mondays, or while experiencing road rage in a traffic jam. God can speak to us whenever and wherever.

Ecclesiastes 11:5 puts it this way: “As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things” (TNIV). I’m going

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to guess His “workings” include how He communicates with us. Even if we don’t understand the method, we usually know it when it happens because it’s so powerful, yet without the theatrics. And it’s usually about ourselves instead of other people.

I remember a few years back, sitting on my porch manically puffing on a cigarette. I was in my chain-smoking phase and was indulging in some self-destructive behavior, not knowing how to cope with my depression. I was writing some words to encourage myself because I felt like crap and I hated myself. Between furiously writing and breathing out the nasty nicotine, in the depths of my soul, this thought struck me from out of nowhere. “What are you doing?” That question, which was so poignant, so genuinely caring and so loaded, prompted me to take some serious stock of what was going on with me. Do I know beyond a shadow of a doubt it was God? Of course not. If we’re honest, it’s impossible to know for sure. But in the depths of my being, I really felt it was Him. Most of us are plagued by the same questions when we feel God is silent. Why does God choose to keep mum? Why doesn’t He choose to talk to us more clearly? The truth is, there just aren’t any pat answers.

Sometimes we’re too busy with our own conversations to hear Him. Sometimes His reasons for communicating (or not) with us are as mysterious as He is. And the truth is, when we feel we hear God, sometimes we’re right and, sadly, sometimes we’re wrong.

How many bloody wars and senseless conflicts have been sparked by those who think God told them to do something clearly immoral? That’s why getting wise counsel and following biblical principles are critical for guiding us to figure out what we think God is telling us.

Don’t base your spiritual walk on how often you hear God or don’t or what He’s saying or not saying. When Jesus told Thomas, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29), I think He was saying something like, “Blessed are you who still believe in me but don’t hear me all the time, or don’t always experience the kind of religious pomp and circumstance that makes you feel warm and fuzzy.”

We are blessed because we believe—whether we hear or not. a

i usually cringe when someone starts a conversation with “God told me ...”

A.J. GREGORy is the author of the newly released book Silent Savior (Revell) and Messy Faith. She is not afraid to seek out and expose the truth of the inner life—the good, the bad and the ugly.

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Africa is Not That Sexy > Morgan Hansow

I

am standing in the African village, the hot sun beating down on my shoulders, a group of village children surround me and chant my name, laughing and bidding for a turn to hold my hand.

That’s what I imagined working for a nonprofit in Africa would look like. Two years into founding and running a nonprofit dedicated to helping women in Uganda, I’ve realized that’s a far cry from reality. Sure, those moments come now and then, but the true reality? Me at home in Colorado with my husband and two kids, sitting on the living room floor watching Disney’s Earth and packaging necklaces into cardboard boxes.

The reality isn’t bad—it’s just not as “sexy” as I thought it would be.

We live in an age when humanitarianism, philanthropy and international awareness have moved from completely off the radar to right in the spotlight. It’s great, and I would be the first one to thank God for it.

But it also seems like this attention has created an illusion—a romanticized picture of what it looks like to work in social justice. The Internet has made so much possible, but sometimes at a loss. Combine good graphics, pictures and a stellar website, and before you know it, something run by three full-time employees looks a lot less human.

Sure, at first there was an excitement in appearing bigger than reality, but recently we’ve felt convicted that maybe we’re enabling people to find satisfaction and fulfillment in a fantasy rather than reality.

The truth? Light Gives Heat (LGH) was birthed simply out of a response of love when two mid-20-year-olds and their 2-year-old son moved to Uganda to complete the adoption of their 8-month-old daughter. It was sort of an act-first-and-figure-out-the-details-later response. We knew we didn’t want to live life with regrets or should-haves, so we simply acted.

Dave quit his job, we rented out our home, took the insurance off our cars and boarded a plane with nine pieces of luggage and a double stroller.

We got to Africa and it was … life. No cool music in the background, no slow-motion shots of beautiful “African villages” and no one telling us what we were doing was even good or right. Burning trash and body odor filled our nostrils. Things weren’t safe and predictable. Our Western ideals of time management and productivity weren’t valued. And, honestly, most of our first interactions with Ugandans were pretty, well, normal.

Within a month of our arrival, we were meeting weekly with a group of 60 Acholi women—most of whom had been widowed and forced off their land—and offering them a consistent income through the purchase of necklaces made from recycled paper. The Suubi (hope) project was born.

Fast-forward two years: We currently offer roughly 100 women a consistent weekly income, as well as literacy and English classes, and a handful of other consistent incomes through a tailoring project, Epoh.

For our staff and volunteers, most days in Uganda are filled with long

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walks, long conversations and dirty feet. Most days for our small staff in the States are filled with long periods of staring at a computer, balancing QuickBooks, filing paperwork, packaging necklaces and shipping product.

As we’ve grown, we’ve gotten more attention—a good thing in many ways, but something that’s also led to more “eyes”on us. More people questioning motives and offering ideas that look good on paper but are often unrealistic within the culture and context of a third-world country. In fact, we’ve realized the traditional operating expectations for nonprofits actually set us up for failure rather than excellence.

Then there’s the personal aspect: Running an organization with your spouse is beautiful but messy. We both work full-time for LGH, but we’re also parents and we split our work time between the office and home, so one of us is always home with the kids. Though we work together, we never actually work together!

I’d be lying if I didn’t say there are days we feel like waving the white flag. Days when it feels 6. like we’re holding the pieces and asking, Is this working? Days when the burden is too heavy, the work/home lines too blurry, the demands too high and the lifestyle unmanageable. Most days don’t feel like what working in Africa was “supposed to be.”

We’re flawed people trying to be real as we learn how to love and explore what it looks like to be connected to our brothers and sisters around the globe. LGH is working not because of connections in Hollywood, big breaks or a huge staff, but because lots of people have found it worthy of their time, finances and lives. Behind the website and branding, there are countless hours of tedious work, phone calls, emailing, brainstorming and lots of prayer.

Although no one ever said giving our lives to something big would be easy, fun or “sexy,” a lot of us have a fantasy that something glamorous happens when we do. It doesn’t—at least not in the way we thought it would. The truth looks more like life than a dramatic adventure film.

Beauty, hope and joy are found in the pursuit of living outwardly— sometimes it just takes patience to see the beauty, find the hope and experience the joy in the everyday. r

We got to Africa and it was … life.

No cool music in the background, no slow-motion shots.

MORGAN HANSOW is the co-founder of Light Gives Heat, a nonprofit working with Ugandan women to create and sell necklaces from recycled paper.

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Venture teams have biked across continents and hiked some of the worlds tallest mountains; rasing hundreds of thousands of dollars to meet – and bring attention to – some of the worlds most desperate needs.

"Venture has always inspired me and I'm grateful to be a part of it."

- Sara Groves, Recording Artist -----------------------------------------------Read stories ffrom the Ride:Well Tour in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller, Best-selling Author

hello endurance challenge... meet social action

join us this summer for the: just+hope tour | cycle along the Underground Railroad route or summit Kilimanjaro to fight slavery & injustice.

ride:well tour | cycle across the United States to help our friends in Africa have access to clean water and medical clinics.

join a tour > join the cause > join our movement

ventureexpeditions.org | apply by feb. 2010

RELEVANTMAGAZINE.COM / 27

FRONTLINER

DESI

STARR > Kate Cremisino

Denver, Colo., is home to the Broncos, the Nuggets and a Rocky Mountain view. But there’s another side of Denver—the one colored by a 20 percent poverty rate. Just north of downtown Denver is a pocket of poor neighborhoods outfitted with homes barely suitable for habitation. This is where Desi Starr, a native Californian, lives, plays and works.

Starr and his wife moved there in 2003 to plant a large, missional church with friends. They quickly discovered God had a slightly different plan.

What developed was a network of simple, organic house churches. They found that adapting their own model to fit the needs of their neighbors actually spread the hope of Jesus much more quickly and effectively.

“I was skeptical as I had preconceived ideas of house churches as groups of disgruntled people who were angry at the Church and hiding away from the big, bad world,” says Starr, who was recently featured in the documentary What is Simple Church? “But as I started reading material on what house churches can be, I became intrigued about the possibilities of seeing multiplication really take place in ways I’ve never seen in the traditional church.”

Last year the Starrs, along with their community, befriended a particular family through a park outreach. This family was resistant to the Gospel but were drawn to this intentional community of people. Not long after, the father of the family faced criminal charges from his past and

28 / RELEVANT_NOV/DEC 09

was jailed. While there, someone gave him a book on prayer. It encouraged him, and he surrendered his life to Christ. Later, when his charges were dropped, he returned to his family and led them in a new direction—straight to God. Today, they host a simple church in their home with a focus on reaching others facing addictions and hopelessness.

“I am anticipating God using ordinary people more and more all the time to reach their own spheres of influence,” he says. “I want to help empower people to hear the voice of God and simply obey, knowing they have all that they need to live out the calling God has placed on them.”

Starr regularly meets with other planters in the city, hoping to share ideas and collaborate. He also facilitates urban outreaches for traveling mission teams, and coaches others on starting their own organic gatherings. In a time when people crave community, Starr believes this expression allows for family-like authenticity and participation. And, he says, it creates more room for God to lead because everything is flexible.

“I believe that God is raising up an army of lovers to lead a revolution,” he says. “A revolution where ordinary people do extraordinary things through the leading of the Holy Spirit as we recognize that no man is the head of the Church—only Christ.”

To learn more, visit ColoradoHouseChurch.com or DenverChurch.net.

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GO DEEPER elias fund

Eric Byington

In recent decades, Zimbabwe has been marked by dictatorial leadership and economic meltdown—major contributors to its widespread poverty and decline in health. The nation has seen inflation skyrocket into the sextillions. But this year, a unity government effort has led to some political hope, and the recent dollarization of the economy has put a lid on hyperinflation. Despite the chaos and uncertainty that has painted the landscape, Zimbabweans are known as a resilient people.

During a trip to Zimbabwe in 1994, Dispatch frontman Chad Urmston met Elias Sithole—a gardener with a great capacity to love. Urmston went on to write what became one of the band’s most well-received songs, “Elias.” Inspired to do something to help Elias and his family, a fundraiser was organized. Friends of the band, Eric and Scott Byington, headed up the effort, helping to raise $13,000 for the family. Elias’ three sons were then guaranteed an education—the realization of their father’s dream.

After the Byingtons visited the country and met Elias firsthand, they went on to expand the effort into a grassroots organization, the Elias Fund, which now partners with local initiatives in Zimbabwe. The brothers aim to empower the struggling nation toward selfsustainability, so when they discovered locals already doing something in their own communities, they were

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inspired to offer partnership. The Elias Fund currently supports locals in Chiredzi and Kadoma who organize food and medical outreaches, educational scholarship funds and a micro-agricultural program. It also supports a school in Johannesburg, South Africa that educates Zimbabwean refugee youth. The Byingtons hope to begin supporting other local initiatives, perhaps in retail.

The idea? Sell handmade shoes, made from recycled material, in the American market.

But the focus is not just on Africa. The Elias Fund encourages Americans to also remember to stay involved in community-building stateside. It stems from a greeting they discovered in Zimbabwe—one that’s become an approach to life. The nation has a strong belief in community, which impresses the Byingtons during their visits. “Life is meant to be more than just personal pursuits,” Scott Byington says. “It’s most vibrant when you are taking care of the community around you.

When you care for those around you, they in return care for you. It’s a beautiful feeling. People in Zimbabwe have a saying for this feeling: ‘I am strong if you are strong.’

In this small African country racked with poverty and oppression, you find people dedicated to caring for their community. When everything is stripped away, we find that this is the only way to live abundantly.” A

EliasFund.org > Visit the organization’s website to read more about what they’re doing and Elias, the organization’s namesake. You can also check out a video about the organization and read up on a few other groups that work with the Elias Fund. If you’re on Twitter, follow them @eliasfund.

The Dispatch foundation DispatchFoundation.org > Elias Fund’s partner organization, The Dispatch Foundation, has the same goal as Elias Fund: to empower Zimbabwean communities so they may have a better future.

On their site, you’ll find suggestions about first making a difference in your hometown—including finding soup kitchens, joining Big Brothers Big Sisters and more.

GET INVOLVED >“I am strong if you are strong.” So

goes the old Zimbabwean saying and Elias Fund’s motto. Visit the site and discover ways to help whether you have 30 seconds (sign up for their monthly newsletter), two minutes (donate on the site) or a day (host a dinner party to raise funds and awareness for the organization).

Make an eternal difference in the life of a needy child this holiday season.

Pack a gift-filled shoe box and join Operation Christmas Child in delivering the Good News of God’s greatest gift to boys and girls around the world!

follow your box online find out the destination of your shoe box by making your donation online at

www.samaritanspurse.org/ezgive

National Collection Week is November 16-23, 200 9

“Every shoe box offers an opportunity to share the Good News of the Savior with a hurting child.”

Franklin Graham PresideNt, saMaritaN’s Purse

THE DROp

Website:

www.ournameisfun.com

MySpace:

myspace.com/fun

For Fans of:

E.L.O., The Format, Queen

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To hear more emerging artists, check out The Drop at RELEVANTmagazine.com

WHEN A BAND BREAKS UP and the members form new bands, dedicated fans might equate it to seeing an ex with a new spouse. Luckily for Nate Ruess, former frontman of The Format, this hasn’t been the case.

“I was really worried that certain rumors would float around,” Ruess says. “I’ve seen it happen to a lot of people that were in another band that might have had success, and then they do a new band and their music might even be better than the last, but people just don’t give it time because there’s something—nostalgia, I guess, counts for a lot in music.”

When The Format disbanded in 2008, its fanbase was distraught. But soon after parting ways, Ruess began making new music. Joining forces with former Anathallo member Andrew Dost and Steel Train lead singer and guitarist Jack Antonoff, the trio began a new venture called “fun.” (complete with the definitive period).

The band released their debut album, Aim and Ignite, in August and has already toured with Manchester Orchestra and Taking Back Sunday. So far, fun. has been well-received by old and new fans alike. “I think a lot of our early success has had a lot to do with our other bands, and I’m really grateful for it,” Ruess says. “It’s nice to know that after you put in a few years of doing one thing that people crossed with it to the other side.”

Helping that transition is fun.’s theatrical quality—due partly to multi-instrumentalist Dost and Ruess’ vocal range—which is reminiscent of The Format’s sound on their last album, Dog Problems. “It speaks a lot for my personality—I can be a bit manic,” he says. “Songs are like storytelling, and that’s my lyrical style. There’s a lot of ups and downs that lend themselves to theatrics. It kind of speeds up and slows down when I’m writing it in my brain, like I’m performing it. I like for it to be sort of an emotional rollercoaster.” —ASHLEy EMERT

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THE DROp

Website:

www.shadk.com

MySpace:

myspace.com/shad

For Fans of:

Common, Kanye West, A Tribe Called Quest

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WHEN YOU FIRST HEAR SHAD’S DEBUT ALBUM, The Old Prince, you might think you’ve been transported back in time to an era where Native Tongues hip-hop (think A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, early Common and Black Star) ruled the airwaves. The buttery, jazz-inflected productions provide the perfect backdrop for Shad’s laid-back flow, social consciousness and lyrical acrobatics. “I’ve always listened to all kinds of music,” Shad says.

“Some of the first albums to really leave an impression were [by] Common, Outkast and De La Soul.” But it might surprise you to find out that Shad’s from Vancouver, British Columbia—not exactly a hotbed of hip-hop.

“Hip-hop has always been about originality,” he says. “I’m not going to try to find a specific way of negotiating this and that, because my thoughts are tying stuff from [everywhere]. The end result will inevitably be something original and compelling because that’s what we all are.”

A particularly notable quality to Shad’s lyrics is how clever, insightful and genuinely funny they are—without being crass or using obscenities. Shad, a committed Christian, sees lyrics as both a way to have fun and to communicate a deeper message. “With music, I always try to express something a bit deeper that you can’t necessarily get out in regular conversation,” he explains. “[But] music has always been something to have fun with, something to maybe [help] people laugh. There’s generally a lot of playfulness and also a lot of deeper themes—spiritual themes and stuff like that, [that’s] a little harder to get at.”

Shad’s ability to join socially aware rhymes with his faith and his sense of playfulness (and some of the best beats this side of Kanye West) make him a RELEVANT favorite—and an artist to watch. —RyAN HAMM

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THE DROp

Website:

www.loscampesinos.com

MySpace:

myspace.com/loscampesinos

For Fans of:

The Smiths, Ra Ra Riot, Belle & Sebastian

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A BIG-BOW-WEARING 5-YEAR-OLD can get away with just about anything. All it takes is the bat of an eye and a deceptive smile of innocence to retract any inappropriate comment. Los Campesinos! is that kid.

With youthful exuberance, Los C! manages to weave the abrasive yet romantic, humorous but serious, bizarre but relatable truth into just about every song they sing. Perhaps it’s the energy of early Brit-punk that erases all offense, or maybe it’s their dreamy accents that have crowds on both sides of the pond swooning.

What was once a motley crew of university students from Cardiff, Wales, is now a seven-piece music machine taking the U.S. by storm. They are living the dream—and they know it. “We’re in America,” says Neil Campesinos!, one of the guitarists. “This is the best thing in the world to do and if you don’t enjoy it, you might as well go home and get a job because we’re in the most ridiculously privileged situation.”

Sure, the electric rock instrumentation paired with a catchy vocal-centric aesthetic is probably enough to win over most, but really, it’s the mildly inappropriate, yet relatable storytelling that makes it impossible not to love them. Their lyrics are the commentary in our heads—all those thoughts we can never muster up the courage to say aloud. Los C! is a fresh break from the fairy tale sonnets—their music is about a life we all know and live.

“If you’ve never heard us before, it would be quite difficult to dig through everything and actually hear the lyrics. But, if you can hear the lyrics then just take from it what you can,” Neil says.

Los Campesinos! is whatever you make of it. Take it as indie-pop dance jams, the awkward truth said with a smile or simple interpretations of life’s most complex issues. —MALLORy McCALL

jon bergman

The Biblical answer to each of these is false.

This quiz was designed to highlight common Christian misconceptions. Andrew Farley’s new book, The Naked Gospel , will help you peel away the layers of meaningless religion that have been added to the Gospel. For more info, visit TheNakedGospel.com or purchase a copy at your local or online bookseller today.

maTISyahU

BY JESSICA MISENER

As an Orthodox Jewish reggae singer/rapper is ostensibly destined to do, Matisyahu entered the music scene and immediately caused a stir. Starting with his debut, Shake Off the Dust‌Arise, in 2004, his blending of Jamaican backbeats and a hip-hop flair with heavily devotional lyrics, all doled out by a crowd-surfing man in traditional Jewish garb, left some questioning his sincerity—and others dismissing him as a novelty act. But this fall, Matisyahu continues to silence the critics, releasing his third major album, Light, touring the country and inspiring fans everywhere with his signature style of spiritual music.

On Light, Matisyahu continues to chip away at the pigeonholing, unleashing a record bursting with influences of rock, hip-hop, folk and dance, and one that tackles some of his deepest spiritual questions yet.

RELEVANT caught up with Matisyahu as he traveled from Philadelphia to New York.

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Q:

Your faith has been front and center since the very beginning of your career.

How do you feel as a very public spokesperson for Hasidic Judaism?

A:

Personally, I don’t see myself as a spokesperson, but when you’re in the public eye talking about religion, a lot of people tend to assign to you that label. For young Jewish people, I think the attraction is that my music might be the closest they’ve ever gotten to Judaism, and for them it maybe forms the bridge between their heritage and their mainstream Jewish culture. I think that’s terrific. And I think across the board, I’ve been given a great opportunity with my music to make people happy and inspire them and to talk to them in deeper ways.

Q:

How have you managed to keep your faith practices centered in the process of recording and especially touring?

A:

I’ve never met any open hostility to my faith from record companies, which is a good thing. And I think, on the flip side, the fact that I do travel and do music helps me to get outside of the insular nature that can result from religious practices and learn to be a person of faith in a worldwide community.

I have done things differently sure, like not

playing shows on Friday nights, but it’s good to have certain things that are your guidelines to keep you centered. In my awareness, people haven’t pushed against my dedication to that.

Q:

Have your beliefs changed—or ebbed and flowed—since you began getting more critical and commercial recognition?

A:

My beliefs have been constantly changing since I was a teen. It’s all about evolution and spiritual development. I’d hope to be in more of a nuanced position now than when I was younger, but my devotion to God and my faith has remained consistent.

Q:

Your new album, Light, takes a more experimental route than your previous work, adding stronger hip-hop, dance and rock elements and maybe less reggae, and definitely more production. Was this a conscious direction you wanted to take?

A:

In the past, I recorded my albums with my band and there were lots of ideas, and it turned the albums into amalgams of different styles and things. At this point, I wanted to really make music in the style I feel at home in. I also wanted to venture

into different realms. I’m really at peace with expanding into the mainstream, and my current single, “One Day,” is more of a pop song and is hitting those markets.

Q:

What was it like working on the new album with more pop-affiliated musicians, like producer David Kahne (Sublime, Sugar Ray, The Strokes) and Joel Madden (Good Charlotte)?

A:

There was an enormous amount of collaboration, and I think to its benefit.

Some of the songs were written by my guitar player. I also worked with singer/songwriter Trevor Hall who added a lot of variation, as well as some Israeli artists. David pulled it all together, and he added that certain level of production sheen. I really like the collaborative aspect, because I think it represents where I’m at in life, which is really a balancing act

RELEVANTMAGAZINE.COM / 39

“It’s awesome when people of all faiths can get past the things that might hold them apart.”

of exploration, different modes of expression and different ways of seeing myself. The album honors where I’ve been and what I’ve been through the last two years.

Q:

What is your songwriting process? Do you start with Scriptures and lyrics and create the music around it, or do you first get your musical inspiration?

A:

Sometimes I go into the studio and sketch out lyrics and then throw the music together, but other times it’s the reverse. For this record, I was in the process of studying different themes in Kabbalah, themes of the creation of the world and how that relates to the brokenness of the world today. It was a lot of back and forth where concepts got developed over time, and each song kind of developed its own theme.

Q:

On “Silence,” a track off your new album, you tackle the tough issue of feeling God’s absence in the midst of struggle.

Theodicy is something a lot of us struggle with, both within Judaism and within Christianity.

Do you have any ways that you personally deal with this issue in your spiritual life?

A:

I think we need to embrace that feeling because it works in two ways. On the song I discuss the idea of God being absent, but then I add the lyric, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.” In other words, God is sovereign and acts in distinct ways that we don’t know about, but that’s how it should be. There’s a philosophical idea in Judaism that God, in order to create

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the world, had to evacuate Himself from it, in a sense. So God’s absent just enough in order that the world can feel its own autonomy. It can in a sense exist on its own, and that’s the ultimate act of giving for God: to pull away.

And at the end, when a person lives through God’s absence and then goes to his or her church or temple, there’s a feeling that God has created something, a lesson or a learning experience. There’s a creative element to the absence, and I think often there’s a redemptive quality to it.

Q:

The song “We Will Walk” off the album seems to be an interesting exploration of both spiritual and romantic themes.

A:

It tells the story of a couple in a relationship, and my main inspiration for it was the [Kabbalistic tale] “The Seven Beggars,” especially the part where two children get lost in a forest. I started to find ways to apply the story to my life. I also began to do some work with the Instant Karma benefit album for Darfur [which features present-day artists covering John Lennon songs] and I was just really struck by the tragedy of the whole situation. I heard a story about a kid in Darfur who was a rapper and who escaped and made it across the region and got out alive. I was really inspired by that idea of children trying to cross the wilderness and the romantic and sometimes scary nature of that.

Q:

A commenter on one of your YouTube videos wrote, “Man, I’m a Catholic, but this bloke is a HERO!” Have you received a

positive response to your music from the Christian community?

A:

Yes! My band and I just played at Notre Dame University for a back-to-school event, and it was tremendous to see a lot of fans there. I worked with POD early in my career, and I love to see that there are fans from all walks of life. I think that’s what it’s all about. It’s awesome when people of all faiths can get past the things that might hold them apart.

Q:

And the response from the Orthodox/ Hasidic community?

A:

It’s been positive, and it’s a bit of a different type of thing, because they’re able to get into the source of the music in a different way. I’m encouraged when they’re able to get past their own fears about modern culture and how the music might sound and appreciate the message.

Q:

Do you feel like you have any specific “purpose” behind your music, or a vision for what your music can do? How has that evolved during your career?

A:

The biggest motivation for me, and my aim, is for every person to find what inspires them and to go out and give back and give it to the world. For me, my sense of purpose is the music, and it’s traveling and writing songs and trying to create music that’s an outgrowth of my spirit, and hopefully that can do nothing but benefit and inspire others. a

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BY jason BoYett

Question: Which is better? Fishing with one Baptist or two Baptists?

Answer: Two. If you take one, you’ll have to share your beer. If you take two, you’ll have the beer to yourself, because Baptists won’t drink in front of each other.

I’m not much of a drinker. I didn’t drink alcohol at all until I was 22 years old. And these days, I might have little more than the equivalent of two six-packs over the course of a year. A Coors or Shiner Bock when I play poker with my brother’s friends. The occasional mixed drink when hanging with

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another couple from our church. And should I find myself in the Caribbean, I’m man enough to admit I really like banana coladas—not the virgin ones my wife prefers, but the real thing.

And that’s pretty much it.

Other confessions: I like to smoke when I go fly-fishing, because campfires are better with

a good cigar, and mountain air is fresher after a cigarette. Furthermore, I play cards, invest in the stock market, let my wife manage our family’s finances and used to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer with devoted regularity.

Next time you’re in a church service, fold a paper airplane out of the bulletin, give it a good toss, and chances are you’ll hit someone who thinks at least one of the activities above is sinful. Problem is, none of them are expressly prohibited by anything in the Bible, unless you do tricky things with the language or remove things from context. That’s one of

the big struggles with being a Christian in a society two millennia removed from the time the last of our Scriptures were written—all the gray areas. Jesus never said, “Disciples, don’t drink alcohol.” He never told any parables about the effects of R-rated movies on His followers. He never chastised the Pharisees for spending too much time playing video games.

Of course, He was pretty clear on things like adultery and divorce. And He really got worked up when the religious folks passed judgment on those who didn’t live up to their lengthy lists of societal and religious rules When Jesus walked around Palestine, the people who most upset Him were the Pharisees. Why? Because they focused on their petty, pseudo-religious rules while losing sight of the important stuff like loving God and loving people. We do the same today. Lots of the “rules” of our comfortable Christian subculture are based more on tradition than the Bible. They have more to do with the notion of “being separate” from the world than being made in the image of Christ. And how

huge cardboard cutout of the band had they known what went on that evening.

That’s all there is to the story. You’re wondering who the band was, aren’t you?

Why is that? Is it so you can judge them? Pray for them? Join them? What’s the Christian response to that kind of story?

Let’s leave those questions aside for a bit and just look at some of the issues regarding the Bible and alcohol.

Grape juice I attend a Southern Baptist church. I’m not much of a Southern Baptist myself, but that’s a long story, and I won’t get into it. Anyway.

Whenever a discussion of alcohol comes up among members of my congregation, and someone mentions the story about Jesus turning water into wine for His first public miracle, one point is inevitably made: that the wine back then was watered down so much it had little or no alcoholic content, making it barely more than grape juice.

That sounds good, and it’s an easy way to

or to do anything else that will cause your brother to fall” (TNIV). Based on the context of this verse, causing a fellow Christian “to fall” means causing him to do something that violates his conscience by imitating an action he believes to be wrong. This is how we usually interpret the scenario: I go to Wal-Mart and grab a six-pack. Bob sees me standing in line with my hands full of Coors. Bob thinks to himself, “Hmm … I’ve always been taught that drinking beer is sinful, but since Jason’s doing it, I think I’ll give it a try.” And so Bob drinks alcohol, even though he has been taught—and he himself believes—that the action is a sin.

Bad for Bob, and bad for me, too.

Abstinence (or, perhaps, sneakiness) makes a lot of sense in this case, but let’s not consider the matter settled yet. There are three specific actions in the verse: 1) Eating meat; 2) Drinking wine; and 3) Doing anything else.

That pretty much covers everything, doesn’t it? And it’s just as clear on meat as it is on wine. Let’s consider our Seventh-Day Adventist brethren, who hold it as a doctrine

Remember who Jesus kept calling a “brood of vipers”?

Here’s a hint—it wasn’t the immoral, the prostitutes, or the drunkards. Nope. It was the churchy people who burdened the above with too many rules. significant is it that this attitude of separation places great emphasis on some issues of outward appearance (alcohol, smoking, tattoos, entertainment) and not others (unthinking consumerism, gluttony)?

Which brings us to the issue of drinking alcohol. Many readers strongly believe the Bible is clear in its prohibition of alcoholic beverages. Others believe Scripture doesn’t precisely disallow it, but feel it’s best in today’s society to abstain. And there are still others who think there is absolutely nothing wrong with drinking, while recognizing that drunkenness is very much a sinful act.

Some Christians go even further on the issue and don’t condemn drunkenness. A good friend of mine got to spend an evening with the members of a notable hardcore Christian band. After a concert at a local Christian venue, they all proceeded to a local bar and got plastered—the band, their management, the venue’s promoters, everyone. My friend ended up actually escorting the entourage around that evening because she was the only one in any condition to drive. Needless to say, it was a very long, weird night for her. She wondered if her local Christian bookstore would still display their

justify the nearly 50 times wine is mentioned in the Bible as one of God’s blessings. It also helps account for the many times the taking of wine or alcoholic drink is referenced neutrally, as nothing but a common cultural practice.

But there are some problems with the “it was only grape juice” argument. How did the communion-takers in Corinth get drunk off of grape juice? Why did the Good Samaritan pour grape juice on the wounds of the assaulted man in Jesus’ parable? Why does Paul warn us not to “be drunk with wine”? Why were the apostles at Pentecost accused of being full of wine when they began speaking in tongues? Is strange behavior usually rationalized because someone’s been sipping the Ocean Spray? Yes, there were several different kinds of wine in the Bible with varying amounts of alcohol—but it was at a sufficient level for drunkenness to be an issue. People got drunk back then just like they do today. My guess is that Bible wine is exactly what it says it is.

Being a stumbling block A more reasonable argument against wine is made based on an interpretation of Romans 14:21: “It is better not to eat meat or drink wine

that the eating of meat is wrong. Many believers have problems with SDA doctrine, but among most they are still considered to be a Christian denomination. So do you also think of Romans 14:21 when you pull up at the Burger King drive-thru? When you fire up the backyard grill? When you’re carrying a couple of steaks through the line at the supermarket?

For those who take the Bible seriously, the proper application of the verse becomes a problem. Because in addition to being a teetotaler, you’d better also be a vegetarian.

And we haven’t even touched the “doing anything else” part. Keep in mind that almost anything we do in our current culture has been labeled sinful by some aspect of Christianity.

The list includes dancing, wearing makeup, women wearing shorts, listening to rock music, swimming in mixed company or buying anything on a Sunday. The list goes on and on. How do we apply Romans 14:21 consistently without living in constant fear that we’re causing a fellow Christian to stumble? How do we faithfully “avoid the appearance of evil” (1 Thessalonians 5:22) when evil can be almost anything?

To close out this point, remember this: Jesus greatly offended the Pharisees. He certainly

RELEVANTMAGAZINE.COM / 43

Both sides make good points, and both sides are wrong. Why? Because either way the focus is on rules.

spent time with the wrong people, and He drank enough for them to label Him a drunkard (Matthew 11:19). It’s pretty clear He did enough to be a stumbling block (1 Corinthians 10:32) to them. After all, they put Him to death. Would that qualify for failing to “avoid the appearance of evil”? Jesus didn’t sin, did He?

Considering our society It’s estimated that there are more than 5 million alcoholics in the U.S. alone, and another 4 million who are considered problem drinkers. The mortality rate is 2.5 times higher among alcoholics than for the general population. Suicide rates are nearly three times higher. Accidental death rates are seven times higher. Up to 40 percent of all traffic fatalities and a third of all traffic injuries are related to the abuse of alcohol. One-third of all suicides and mental health disorders are estimated to be associated with serious alcohol abuse. And that’s just among adults— according to Encyclopedia Britannica, there are more than 3 million problem drinkers between the ages of 14 and 17 in the U.S. Clearly, the abuse of alcohol has a devastating effect on our society. It messes people up.

Even if the Bible doesn’t condemn wine, wouldn’t we be better off in today’s culture— where it seems more people are likely to abuse alcohol than to enjoy it responsibly—to forgo it completely? It’s a logical argument on the surface, and one that Christians have been using since the days of Prohibition. But there’s one problem: It’s pretty much moral relativism.

Here’s the logic (or illogic): 30 or 40 years ago, our culture as a whole frowned upon things like divorce, adultery and sexual immorality. Why? Because the Bible said they were morally wrong, for one thing. Yet in today’s society, people hardly bat an eye about divorce. Everyone’s having adulterous and promiscuous sex with everyone else, and homosexuality has entered the mainstream.

Our culture accepts these actions, but Christians continue to resist them because we believe the Bible calls them sin. And if

44 / RELEVANT_NOV/DEC 09

something was a sin 2,000 years ago, it’s still sinful now. If Scripture is what we say it is, then you can’t eliminate certain parts of it because our society has changed. You can’t rewrite the Bible to accommodate today’s cultural standards. Sins are moral issues, not cultural ones. Got it?

Now, let’s apply that logic to alcohol. If we can’t drop sins from the list for cultural reasons, wouldn’t it be equally wrong to add them to the list for the same reasons? The opposite of the statement in the paragraph above also applies: If something was not a sin in first-century Palestine, then it can’t be a sin now. And isn’t making ourselves the definers of sin a little too close to saying we’re better than God? At the least, it’s legalistic and Pharisaical. Remember who Jesus kept calling a “brood of vipers”? Here’s a hint—it wasn’t the immoral, the prostitutes or the drunkards.

Nope. It was the churchy people who burdened the above with too many rules.

Judgment and fear Let’s think again about the Christian band with whom my friend spent a saucy evening.

What was your immediate reaction to that story? I can think of several possible reactions among readers of RELEVANT: 1) Excitement. Who are these guys? I need to know who they are so I can add another celebrity name to my list of Christians who think it’s OK to drink.

2) Anger. Who do these guys think they are? Don’t they know they’re examples to our youth? How irresponsible!

3) Sadness. Why does everything have to be so hard? Why is it so hard to enjoy something without eventually messing it up?

That brings us to the root of the issue. All the arguing about whether or not the Bible says it’s OK to drink really ends up saying much more about the arguers than the topic.

I get the feeling that many of those who vehemently defend their rights to be Christian drinkers do so because, well, they’re nervous about being Christian drinkers. As my sister,

Micha, says, “It seems like we have to speak so loudly about why we’re free to smoke and drink because deep down we worry we might be wrong.” Same goes for the teetotalers, who argue and quote verses because they’re afraid to face the ease with which they pass judgment on their drinking brethren.

Both sides make good points, and both sides are wrong. Why? Because either way the focus is on rules. It’s all legalism. Does the Bible say don’t drink? Not exactly, so I can drink. Does the Bible say don’t drink? Not exactly, so I better not drink.

Here’s Micha again, because she says it so well: “It’s hard to tell people to be wellbalanced—to drink, but not to drink too much.

Because drinking screws people up, and how could Jesus have been a part of something that can turn bad so quickly? The truth is, none of us are very good at identifying and following our conscience. It’s hard to hear that still, small voice, and even harder to trust it. So we would rather have rules. And don’t the rules end up screwing us up just as much in the end?”

So those are the questions we’re left with, and there really aren’t any good answers. I could write that the Bible doesn’t say drinking is a sin (which I believe), but lots of readers will still disagree with me. I could also say that many of the drinkers’ arguments are based on their own fear of being wrong (which I also believe), but those readers will disagree with me, too. I could be angry about the Christian band, or I could feel some sort of kinship with them based upon their penchant for alcohol.

But mostly I’m just sad, because it’s so hard to be like Jesus.

That said, I’ll close with two statements I think we all can agree on: Too much drinking does bad things to people. So does too much judgment. r

Jason Boyett is the author of Pocket Guide to Sainthood and Pocket Guide to the Afterlife, among other books. He blogs about faith and culture at JasonBoyett.com.

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2010 Ten ways the new year will melt your face

2009 is almost over. And thank goodness for that. 2009 is so ... well, 2009. Really, what did we get out of it? A recession? Kanye West’s VMA Tirade? Lady Gaga’s utter existence? Yes, you can have 2009. But 2010! Now there’s a year. All the round numbers. We put our finger on the pulse of society and fearlessly bring you our predictions of 10 things you can look forward to definitely, certainly happening* in the next 12 months. We’ll never get bored of 2010. At least until 2011 ... *and by this we mean “no chance of”

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0

02

01

Obama Will Make a Case for Joining the Dream Team

Fashion Gets Down And Dirty

We don’t mean to brag, but, we called it. In 2008, we predicted 2009 would be the Year of the Dude. Along with fluorescent-armed wayfarers, obscenely low-openings on button-down shirts proudly rocked by TV personalities like Simon Cowell and—thanks to Nick Cannon and America’s Got Talent—an unprecedented amount of Hoff exposure, Dude-like behavior ruled 2009. Who could forget the wise-cracking antics of a Nazi-killing Brad Pitt and the epic resurgence of yacht-rock gods Journey?

But in 2010 we predict fashion and hipster behavior to take a drastic turn for the less indulgent. Following his performance in the hit comedy The Hangover, bearded, vagrant-looking comedian Zach Galifianakis will usher in the cultural and fashion trend predicted

Twitter Will Inspire a Variety of Other “Micro” Activities

just a few short years ago in Zoolander— the Derelict Movement.

Put aside your crisp-looking skinny jeans and $60 hair product, because in 2010, looking like you just woke up—next to a dumpster behind the gas station— will be the new standard for cool.

Is that guy a train-hopping drifter?

A survivor from a future where people fight for gasoline and water while making their way through a post-apocalyptic wasteland? No, that’s just the drummer for Kings of Leon! Is that the Gravitron operator from the traveling carnival? No, that’s just Twilight star Rob Pattinson!

So throw away that razor (and other needless personal hygiene products) and bust out those ratty corduroys and your oldest pair of gas-cutting shoes because in 2010, disheveled is the new debonair.

04

Twitter, the micro-blogging site that allows users to post 140-character updates, exploded in popularity in 2009, becoming an online phenomenon. But in 2010, what started as a way of updating your friends with your increasingly unstable emotional status, latest daily mundane activities and thoughts about the current episode of Project Runway, will inspire all manner of other “micro” activities. On Flitter.com, users will be able to post tiny 4-pixel portions of photographs they’ve taken; YouTubitter.com will allow for 140-millisecond videos, and Gmailitter.com will let users send 4-word emails. Even Microsoft will cash in on the micro trend.

In 2010, they will release the operating system Vistitter—a software 140-times faster than Vista, without all of the unnecessary pop-ups, obtrusive Digital Rights notifications and bugs. It will also be called Windows XP.

Long-known as a basketball fan and recreational hoops player, President Barack Obama will make a case to the American people that he should have a spot on the next Olympic men’s basketball team. President Obama will dedicate the majority of the 2010 State of the Union Address underscoring to his fellow Americans why having a standing president on the “Redeem Team 2” would be fitting considering the recent plight of the nation’s economy and America’s need for a morale boost. Though he will admit he doesn’t think starting is “realistic,” he does think his defensive skills and maturity make him a more valuable sub than point guard hopeful Brandon Roy.

Steve Jobs Will Admit He’s Not Sure What “3G” Is Just a few short years ago, Apple’s iPhone completely redefined what a mobile device could look like and do.

But since its acclaimed release, the company has tried repeatedly to come up with upgrades and additions to keep the buzz alive. In 2009, that update was its latest “3G” phone. But, our predictions indicate that in an interview with CNET to take place in 2010, Apple CEO Steve Jobs will finally admit he is not sure what “3G” is or what it stands for. After several incorrect guesses, which will include “3 gigabytes,” “it’s the Roman Numeral for 2010” and “it’s called that because it’s easily worth $3,000,” the interviewer will inform Jobs the third-generation network is actually just a marginally noticeable data upgrade that drains the battery twice as fast. Jobs will then counter by telling them it doesn’t matter anyway because the phone is now obsolete, and will simultaneously release the 4G and 5G iPhones.

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05

GM Inadvertently Releases a Replica of the Homer Simpson Car

After taking billions of dollars in federal loans from the United States government to save itself from bankruptcy in 2009, in 2010 General Motors will release a car they will tout as “the most innovative breakthrough in automotive design since the Aztek.”

GM will promise the vehicle will be “like a BMW met a Boeing 777 and made a baby that was delivered by workers on an assembly line in D-town.” (This statement will be rapped by Eminem).

Unfortunately for the company though, the car looks like a nearexact replica of the car Homer designed in that one episode of The Simpsons. GM will frantically backpedal, saying “by ‘BMW,’ we meant ‘boring motor wagon’ and by ‘777’ we meant the number of pointless features on the car.” Despite its atrocious design, propensity to breakdown and poor fuel-efficiency, it will still far outsell all previous editions of the Chevy Malibu.

06

Don Miller Will Win The 2010 Tour De France

Kevin Bacon Will Host a Family Reunion Having long been assumed to be the single link for all human relationships, Kevin Bacon will host a massive effort to bring all of his family together for the first time in the summer of 2010. With family members spanning the globe—and only six degrees of separation between them—the actor and Hanes T-shirt spokesman will organize Bringing Home the Bacon Barbeque, the largest gathering in the history of humanity.

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Best-selling author, sought-after speaker and all-around cool guy Don Miller is known for his down-to-earth writing style and intriguing thoughts about faith. But in recent years, the author of the cult favorite book Blue Like Jazz has become a cycling aficionado—he even participated in the Ride:Well cross-country cycling campaign to support clean-water wells in Africa. But in 2010, Miller

will take his new two-wheel passion to a whole new level. We confidently predict Don Miller will enter and convincingly win the Tour de France.

Maybe it’s the leading-jersey yellow color and bike gear on the cover of his latest book or those cool European baseball caps he’s now wearing, but something tells us he plans on giving Lance Armstrong a run for his money.

08 Lil’ Wayne Will Have an Existential Meltdown Having come off a landmark year in 2009 and reaching new levels of success as a rapper, rocker, performer, sports blogger and producer, hip-hop phenom Lil’ Wayne (aka Weezy, aka Young Money, aka Tha Carter) will have a complete existential meltdown in 2010. After rising to the top of the pop-music, underground hip-hop and rock charts, the multi-talented performer will be forced to answer the question, “Just who is Lil’ Wayne?”

Weezy will retreat to an isolated cabin in the wooded countryside of Concord, Mass., where he will ponder his own self-identity versus his Hot Boyz persona, the simple complexities of singles like “A Milli,” and the struggle of the human condition juxtaposed against the changing seasons and the subtle rhythms of the natural world. The experience will be distilled in his first classical record, On Waldeneezy Pond: Reflections.

10

KFC Will Release the Best Thing Since Sliced Bread In late 2009, KFC did what many thought was impossible: created a product more deadly than its 10-layer bowl of deep-fried side items. The release of the DoubleDown, which contained two slices of bacon and two types of cheese, forgoing slices of bread for two pieces of deep fried chicken meat, immediately raised the national obesity rate to the highest numbers in history, and wreaked complete havoc on local plumbing systems. Even

though just one partaking of the Double-Down poses significant physical and psychological health risks, the latest innovation from Colonel Cardiac will become a full-on national craze next year. The product will become so popular that in 2010, bakeries across the country will close down as bread falls completely off the food pyramid and American eating habits favor extra-crispy fried chicken opposed to anything based on wheat, grain or natural substances.

Fantasy Sports Will Reach Even Larger Audiences Through Fantasy Bass Fishing And Fantasy Professional Bowling In 2009, the participation in Fantasy Sports reached new heights.

Even Time magazine noted the popularity of the activity that allows office workers, students and even celebrities to manage fake baseball, football and basketball teams in leagues made up of their friends and co-workers. But in 2010, we predict Fantasy Sports will find a new audience far south of the MasonDixon line with the advent of Fantasy tournaments involving some of America’s lesser-known professional sports. Fantasy Bass Fishing, Bowling and Funny Car leagues will sweep the Deep South. Once only the domain of truckers, insomniacs and generally downtrodden diners, Denny’s Restaurants will redefine themselves as the sports hub of the South—the site of massive draft parties, weekly watching events and pancake-fueled blockbuster trades. The craze will become so prominent, even citizens in America’s neighbor to the north will launch their own series of Fantasy Curling, Hiking and Biathlon leagues as Fantasy Sports take over Canada.

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iS

G o d aN ILLuSIoN? what the New atheists are saying about belief— and what they’re missing

BY AMY ORR-EWING

aT SoMe poiNT or aNoTHer, We’Ve aLL WoNdered iF beLieViNG iN God iS irraTioNaL. or NaiVe. or MaYbe JuST pLaiN STupid.

Many people have questions about Christian experience. These questions can be genuine objections to Christianity or things that trouble Christians in the back of their minds. Finding answers is a real challenge because the questions do not just touch on intellectual ideas but are undergirded by emotional realities and the pain of life.

In a “postmodern” society, spirituality is generally seen as a positive thing. People may not be signing up for organized religion

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in huge numbers, but many do believe in a valuable spiritual dimension to life.

However, there is still much skepticism. A number of years ago at a baptism service in my church in Oxford, a newly converted man shared his own story of initial doubt after his wife announced her conversion. He was horrified to hear the news and immediately began quizzing her about her new beliefs.

Had she been brainwashed? What on earth attracted her to the Church in this day and age? What did a “personal relationship with God” mean? Could she feel it? What was the factual basis for Christianity? And on it went.

God—a delusion?

A delusion is something people believe in despite a total lack of evidence. For atheists like Richard Dawkins, who holds the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, “religion

is scarcely distinguishable from childhood delusions like the ‘imaginary friend’ and the bogeyman under the bed. Unfortunately, the God delusion possesses adults, and not just a minority of unfortunates in an asylum.”

Atheist Sam Harris goes further: “We have names for people who have many beliefs for which there is no rational justification. When their beliefs are extremely common we call them ‘religious,’ otherwise they are likely to be called ‘mad,’ ‘psychotic’ or ‘delusional.’”

On the face of it, this seems like an extraordinary insult in our tolerant age, yet it’s important we not just ignore these wild assertions, but that we listen to and investigate such stark objections to the truthfulness of Christianity. How have the so-called New Atheists, and Dawkins in particular, come to the conclusions they are so widely propagating? Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, et al., base their assertions that

RAychel Mendez

religious believers are deluded on three important ideas about religious faith.

Science has dispensed with God The idea that evolutionary science has disposed of God seems to be a strangely shaky basis on which to build one’s opposition to theism, since it is so easy to demonstrate—by reading the research of the many scientists who persist in believing in God, Nobel Prizes and all—that the science itself does not necessarily exclude God. It shows the overly simplistic assertions that science has dispensed with God should be taken with a hefty pinch of salt, if not entirely rejected as empty polemic.

But why do Harris, Dawkins and other atheists believe scientific research has dispensed with any possibility of God existing? Dawkins believes his atheism is grounded in biology. He argues that since

his belief in Darwinian evolution provides an explanation for the complexity of the universe, there is no need for and no place for a designer, and thus God does not exist.

There are many problems with this chain of thought, but for our purposes the important question to raise is that of whether the scientific method, using scientific tools, is able to competently comment on a philosophical question.

Atheist Stephen Jay Gould concedes this point: “Science simply cannot (by its legitimate methods) adjudicate the issue of God’s possible superintendence of nature.”

Dawkins understands this difficulty and in his writing draws on Bertrand Russell’s famous analogy that disproving God is as difficult as disproving the speculation that there could be a teapot in space orbiting the moon. It is impossible to say for sure that there isn’t one, but we basically know it isn’t

there, and we don’t spend valuable energy looking for it. But this is surely a flimsy basis on which to build such an aggressive edifice of polemic as Dawkins’ certainty to deny God’s existence.

But Dawkins continues in his convinced trajectory over the nonexistence of God and takes issue with Gould for implying that scientists cannot comment on the metaphysical, asking, “Why shouldn’t we comment on God as scientists?” Surely the logical and correct conclusion in this case is Alister McGrath’s: “If the scientific method can neither prove nor disprove the existence or nature of God, then either we abandon the question as unanswerable [something Dawkins certainly does not choose to do] or we answer it on other grounds.”

But this is exactly where Dawkins’ arguments begin to collapse. When he ventures outside his area of expertise—

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Is religious faith based purely on assertion rather than evidence? Can it therefore not be reasoned with? human biology—he relies on tired atheistic arguments, offering no new ideas, parodying religion but failing to engage with the philosophical strengths of theism. As Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, puts it: “It becomes readily apparent that Dawkins has aimed his attack at a naive version of faith that most serious believers would not recognize. Dawkins’ choice of atheism emerges as the most irrational of the available choices about God’s existence.”

The New Atheists equate religious belief with irrationality. As John Lennox points out, they strongly believe that “‘supernatural’ implies ‘non-rational.’” But, he goes on, “to those of us who have engaged in serious theological reflection, this will seem quite wrong-headed: the notion that there is a Creator God is a rational notion, not a non-rational one. To equate ‘rational explanation’ with ‘natural explanation’ is at best an indicator of a strong prejudice, at worst a category mistake.”

You can’t reason with delusion The second plank of the idea that God is a delusion is that religious faith is always based on empty assertion and not evidence. This then raises a number of questions: Is religious faith based purely on assertion rather than evidence?

Can it therefore not be reasoned with?

It is an obvious generalization to assert religious believers are incapable of reasoned argument. How do the New Atheists square this with the thousands of elite philosophers, theologians, political scientists, natural scientists and other academics who brilliantly pursue their disciplines and at the same time believe in God and are able to talk reasonably about Him? There have been prominent atheists who have changed their minds in recent times on the issue of God’s existence, such as Antony Flew, as stated in his book There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind. Hitchens, Harris, Dawkins and others seem to fall into exactly the trait they criticize in others: making wild assertions that have no basis in evidence.

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Christianity in its genuine forms has always sought out intelligent unbelievers for debate and interaction. Just look at the apostle Paul: It was his custom to speak about Jesus and debate the claims of Christ in the public squares. This historical example was followed by the early Church fathers and apologists and has continued to this day, as Christians throughout the ages have believed they have a true message that stands up to argument in the public sphere and will not be destroyed by genuine, intelligent and rational debate. To assert that Christians are unable to reason is rather like a schoolboy putting his hands over his ears and shouting so as to block out the sound of someone else speaking.

God as a virus of the brain The third plank of New Atheist belief is that faith in God is a virus that infects the brain and should be eliminated. Sam Harris, in his Letter to a Christian Nation, concludes: “Religion is the product of cognitive processes that have deep roots in our evolutionary past. Some researchers have speculated that religion may have played an important role in getting large groups of prehistoric humans to socially cohere. If this is true, religion has served an important purpose.

This does not suggest, however, that it serves an important purpose now.”

Religion in general is written off here as a construct of the human brain that has served its evolutionary purpose. Dawkins goes one step further than Harris in his rhetoric: “For many people, part of growing up is killing off the virus of faith with a good strong dose of rational thinking. But if an individual doesn’t succeed in shaking it off, his mind is stuck in a permanent state of infancy, and there is a real danger that he will infect the next generation.”

Or, as Nicholas Humphrey puts it, “We should no more allow parents to teach their children to believe in the literal truth of the Bible than we should allow parents to knock their children’s teeth out.”

But, of course, some would argue, it’s not

interfering with free speech when atheists pass on their views to their children. Here again we see the double standards of this kind of atheism: I will indoctrinate my children with my assertions, but I object to religious people passing on their beliefs. There is also an unstated belief the atheist’s assumptions are scientifically tested whereas the religious person’s are stabs in the dark. We have already seen that science can adequately explain a lot about the world, but some philosophical, metaphysical questions—whether questions about ethics, morality, emotion, thinking, personhood or God—cannot be reduced to biochemical equations. Much of the atheist’s thinking is based on metaphysical assumptions just as “unscientific” as a religious person’s.

McGrath presses home the challenge: “The rhetorically freighted ‘argument’ that God is a virus amounts to little more than thinly veiled insinuation, rather than rigorous evidence-based reasoning. Belief in God is proposed as a malignant infection contaminating otherwise pure minds. Yet the whole idea founders on the rocks of the absence of experimental evidence, the subjectivity of Dawkins’ personal value-judgments implicated in assessing what is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and the circularity of self-referentiality.”

This talk of a “virus” that needs to be killed is powerful rhetoric that would fit comfortably in a totalitarian context, but it (like the other “planks”) does not move us any closer to determining whether belief in God is justified or not—whether God is real or a delusion.

As atheists write about the delusion of faith, attacking any basis in rationality or reality, Christianity continues to grow. Around the world there are more than 600 million adherents, largely in the great urban centers of Asia, Africa and Latin America. In Marxism’s traditional stronghold, vibrant, orthodox, experiential Christianity is emerging as the true friend of the poor in these regions. Indeed, who are we to pronounce them “deluded”? a Adapted from Is Believing in God Irrational?

Copyright © 2009 by Amy Orr-Ewing. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press.

Amy Orr-Ewing is the European training director for Ravi Zacharias International Ministries and is the author of several books.

There’s a Bethel Seminary student who started a church in an urban coffee shop. Wackily caffeinated idea? Not to the people who cram in for one of the three services every Sunday. Something’s happening. God is at work in unusual ways and places. And if He’s calling you, get ready to go at Bethel Seminary. Go online and see why.

seminary.bethel.edu

St. Paul • San Diego • new York • waShington DC • PhilaDelPhia • new englanD • 800-255-8706

Get ready to go!

Switchfoot’s Unexpected Journey Conquering the charts has changed the band in ways you wouldn’t think

BY MARK LORE AND ROXANNE WIEMAN

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photos by Andy Barron

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“A cynic is just someone with a broken heart,” Switchfoot frontman Jon Foreman says with the certainty of a motto. “Things tear you apart, and the easiest response is to tear something else down.” It’s a sentiment that sums up both his dismissal of and empathy toward those critics who would belittle him and his band.

with our lives,” Foreman says. He points to that first tour as a time when the vision for their music started to form. “We toured around the world and people really [were] listening to what we [had] to say. So we said, ‘Let’s dig a little deeper into ourselves, and into the political, spiritual climate to find topics to write about other than things at the top of your head.’

“I think that was a transition,” he continues. ”And then when we first signed to Columbia, I remember our goal was two-fold. We sat down in this room, this hip-hop studio where we were mixing a record, and you could smell weed everywhere. We were just trying to find a place where we could focus and not

Foreman is an enigma. Sitting on the floor of his band’s trailer before a concert, he’s friendly and eager to talk, but cautious ... even, yes, jaded. “For me, I think there are many things that have happened that make me cynical, even about interviews,” he looks up and laughs as he says it—a jest, kind of.

“It feels like, ‘Why do we do them, what’s the point?’ ... When I go on stage or do an interview, I try and remind myself that I am here to serve people. If they want to take what I said and use it then that’s an honor and if they don’t, then it’s not my responsibility.

“But I think the point is ultimately not about me. And if you approach the world with the apron of a servant, then you are allowed to go places that you can’t go if you approach it with the crown of a king.”

And with that, the Switchfoot frontman hops up, opens the mini-fridge—exclaiming at the unexpectedly abundant selection—and offers chilled coffee to everyone in the room.

Now and then The past three years have been somewhat of a coming-of-age story for the San Diego quintet. Foreman entered his 30s. He ventured out on his own for the first time with a stripped-down acoustic project, and earlier this year he released a bluegrass album under the moniker Fiction Family with Nickel Creek’s Sean Watkins. And Switchfoot—the band Foreman started in college more than a decade ago—severed ties with Columbia Records after three albums.

“It was a time to step back and re-evaluate why we play music, why we’re still a band,” says Foreman of the decision. “It’s almost bigger than disengaging from a major label, but almost disengaging from who we had been for the past 10 years.”

Now on Atlantic Records, this November Switchfoot releases its seventh full-length, Hello Hurricane, the band’s first album of new material in three years. The record reveals a

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new side of Switchfoot, while still including that familiar anthemic rock the guys hope will continue to resonate with audiences—and, perhaps more importantly, themselves.

“I feel like with this record, the motto was, ‘What are the songs you want to die singing?’”

Foreman says. “We’ve all had incredible moments on stage playing songs that are enjoyable musically. It was a matter of trying to dig deeper and to figure out what are the songs we want to sing for the rest of our lives.”

Foreman jokes that in the beginning, playing music was just a matter of entertaining himself and friends while trying not to fail college— and, ironically, it was music that prompted him to drop out of college. But now, his vision for the band has evolved.

“I think there might be a few different evolutions of how we saw music interfacing

be distracted, and I remember the clarity of saying, ‘OK, we want to be salt and light in the world at large.’

“The second part was a revolution of ‘being,’ and the idea that it’s not a revolution of ‘doing.’ I mean doing is certainly part of it, but it’s being transformed within, more than it is trying to force something else down someone’s throat. And from there to today, I think that has been expanded, and caring less about what people think, and just being very sure of what we do.”

Of course, Switchfoot is a long ways from college in more ways than just music. The band members now have wives, children and homes to take care of. Touring, Foreman admits, is not quite what it used to be.

“I remember a point, we were in Australia, and we were coming home. Letterman had

“I have had moments in my life where I’ve been naive enough to think I’m going to change the world.

And it’s a really incredible feeling, the day you discover that’s never going to be the case.”

—Jon Foreman asked us to come out and perform one of our songs on his show, and we hadn’t seen our families in a long time. And we said, ‘No, we can’t do Letterman. We’re spent.’

“We all came to the conclusion that we had stretched the rope too tight,” he continues.

“If you don’t have the flexibility to perform on a show that would be a dream for any band to play on, then you’ve made some mistakes in the way you’ve managed your time. So we tried to make adjustments. We have not done everything right. We have made mistakes along the way.”

That said, Foreman is not planning to quit anytime soon, and says they just try to be creative and make it work. “We’ve done tours where we bring everyone out with us,” he laughs. “Three buses, kids—everyone comes out. Other times we’ll try and fly home more often. It’s all about trying to find a way to make it happen. It seems like most things worth doing in life are pretty much darn near impossible, you know? Marriage, kids, being in a rock band. But at the same time, those are the only things worth doing.”

The band, Foreman says, is a necessary support system on the road and a community for one another, when there is often little community to be had elsewhere.

“Everyone has bad days, and to have someone out on the road to help you through the bad days is crucial. Playing rock and roll is a very bipolar existence. It’s a manicdepressive reality of walking out in front of thousands of people with an electric guitar in your hand. You feel pretty invincible, you know? Then you walk off stage, five minutes later you’re alone in a city where you don’t know anyone, and you haven’t seen your wife for however long, and you’re depressed and a little bit lonely. You’re lonely, but you don’t want to see anyone, so it’s a really bad

combination. It’s really good to have someone that knows you who can help you through the darker moments. There are great moments, and I love what I do and wouldn’t trade it for the world, but I do feel like it’s not always a healthy place.”

The dreaded “label” There’s something to be said for Switchfoot’s longevity. Over the past six years, the band has straddled that unyielding line between Christian and mainstream markets while maneuvering through the tangled web of major label bureaucracy at a time when the record industry continues to crumble. Through it all, Switchfoot has managed to maintain the same core lineup since forming in 1996. “We wouldn’t still be around if it wasn’t for the close friendship we have,” Foreman says.

Foreman and his brother Tim have been making music together for even longer, playing in bands throughout their teens, the brothers’ first being—not surprisingly—a Led Zeppelin cover band (Jon is an unabashed Zep fan).

“We’ve always been close,” Tim Foreman says. “But being in a band is difficult. It’s not just something Jon and I have to be mindful of, but the whole band.”

Jon and Tim formed Chin Up with drummer Chad Butler in 1996 while Jon was attending UC San Diego. Later, Chin Up became Switchfoot (a surfing term for the ability to ride a board regular or goofy foot), and the band signed to Charlie Peacock’s Christian label Re:Think Records.

It didn’t take long for Switchfoot to break into the Christian market. And even though Foreman’s lyrics always seemed to convey

Christian festivals for a short spell after the double-platinum success of 2003’s The Beautiful Letdown.

“My thoughts on whether or not we’re a Christian band—I don’t think that’s our job to decide because I think people can call us whatever they want,” Foreman says. “I just think to have it as a blanket statement portrays a value I don’t really subscribe to.

“We’ve dissected our faith and made it a commercial commodity,” Foreman continues.

“That’s why it’s got a stigma on it. That seems to be the reason from my perspective.”

A new season The last several years have been a prolific time for Foreman. Inspiration, it seems, has come from all sides. “I’m the guy who has a hard time not finding things exciting,” he laughs. “The last few songs I’ve written have been about fireflies at sunset in the graveyard.”

Over the course of 2007 and 2008, he recorded the four EPs that would make up Limbs and Branches. It stands as some of the most sparse and introspective music Foreman has ever written. Nothing is obscured by the usual wall of noise, a trend he continued with Fiction Family.

Foreman met Nickel Creek guitarist Sean Watkins in 2005, and the two began writing songs together—a low-pressure process of bouncing ideas back and forth by email. The album—which was finally released this year— leaned more toward the country and bluegrass roots of Nickel Creek and tapped into yet another side of Foreman’s songwriting.

“There’s a crew of us that run together,

“We’ve dissected our faith and made it a commercial commodity.” —Jon Foreman more universal messages, it wasn’t until 2002 that Switchfoot crossed over to the mainstream scene after appearing on the sountrack for the Mandy Moore movie A Walk to Remember.

Being labeled a “Christian band” has always been somewhat of a sensitive topic for Foreman. Switchfoot even stopped playing

including Jordan from New Found Glory, and we always hang out back at home; Sean and Sara, and this guy Todd that was in a Led Zeppelin cover band who’s now married to Sara. It is kind of a fiction family. We have these family dinners, that’s the way it started ... we started writing songs together and it was very natural. So we’re actually going to go into

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“If you approach the world with the apron of a servant, then you are allowed to go places that you can’t go if you approach it with the crown of a king.”

—Jon Foreman

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the studio and track another record soon.”

But Foreman always comes back to Switchfoot. By no means was he at a loss for material when it came time to record Hello Hurricane. The band started out with a dizzying 120 songs, which were pared down to 80 with the help of engineer Darrell Thorp, known for his work with Beck and Radiohead.

Foreman says Thorp was responsible for sharpening the contrasts of the new material.

“If the lyrics had sunshine in them, he would try to make sure we saw the shadows,” Foreman says. “I think that was a very grounding experience for us as a band to look at the sonic palette as a counter-weight to the lyrics.”

New producer Mike Elizondo came in toward the end of the recording process, and brought with him an interesting resumé, having produced records for everyone from Fiona Apple and Rilo Kiley to Eminem and Dr. Dre. “I met Mike through Sean from Fiction Family, and we were jamming together one time, and I remember thinking, ‘That guy is an incredible musician, and way too talented to be that humble,’” Foreman says. “I got a chance to write a song with him, and I remember going up there, and it was one of those things where I was like: ‘Oh my gosh, this is the guy. He’s perfect.’ He understood who we were, and he understood the heartbeat of what we wanted to offer to people. That’s why we decided to finish the record with him.”

Elizondo and Thorp’s touches are all over the new record, while each producer remained true to the hook-laden rock the band has been making for 13 years. Hello Hurricane’s first single “Mess of Me”—a monster-riffed rocker that would fit snugly on any of the last three Foo Fighters records—continues in the spirit of Switchfoot’s biggest hit, “Meant To Live,” as Foreman continues his universal message of overcoming the obstacle of self.

“I think we’re continually, myself included, looking for something that’s going to be the end-game, fix-all—some form of selfmedication that helps us feel better about ourselves and the world around us, whether it’s a relationship or a physical drug. I think that’s the continual American dream or pursuit of happiness.”

Justice matters Labels aside, Foreman has a lot of opinions on what it means to live as a Christian band— especially when it comes to issues of justice.

“I expect everyone to do social justice. ‘To whom much is given, much is required,’” he says. “Just the fact we’re here on American soil means we’re among the luckiest 98 percent of the world; we’ve got shoes, a pair of jeans, a fresh pair of underwear, opportunities to shower in fresh water. These are things you

don’t take for granted when you travel.”

Even now, Foreman wears a ONE shirt, and speaks with passion about his support for a plethora of organizations from To Write Love On Her Arms, to So Much to Save, to Habitat for Humanity. He clearly has little patience for those who would label his advocacy and justice work an obligatory part of celebrity.

“The whole idea of a cynic looking down on somebody … ‘Oh, you’re just doing it for the popularity and the notoriety of being involved.’

“I’m just excited that somebody’s talking about what’s going on in Darfur on the news,” he says. “I don’t care who’s saying it. It could be somebody good-looking; if that’s what it takes, put Brad Pitt up there. I don’t care.

But to throw rocks at Brad Pitt because he’s talking about Darfur seems ridiculous to me. ,,, To say, ‘I hate Angelina Jolie, she’s talking about the poor again’ feels a little bit counterproductive. From my standpoint, as long as we’re talking about real issues I could care less who’s saying it.”

For Foreman, who spent time with Habitat for Humanity in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, advocacy is important, but personal action is what makes it real.

“We are hoping to bridge the gap between what we do with our music and what we talk about. For me, when I’m face to face with something that impacts me, when I actually use my hands and not just send money, that has a deeper impact on me. You meet the people who are coming into the house and they’re working right alongside you. You learn how to use power tools, and it’s fun to lay tiles, it’s fun to learn how to drywall and all these things. I think that’s the thing, is how do you do something you care about, but that’s also affiliated with what you do naturally? Where you’re at and what’s around you, that’s where you have to start.”

You can sense Foreman’s passion as he talks about these issues. There’s a heaviness to his words as he relates the story of a woman he met while in New Orleans—a woman who lost her home and her leg to Katrina. “She was learning how to walk on this prosthetic leg,” he says. “Her response instead of being jaded

or angry or bitter, she was completely rising above the situation. I will never forget it.”

It was a moment Foreman says actually inspired the name of their album and the title track, “Hello Hurricane.”

“Storms will come and storms will go, but our response to those storms is what we are responsible for. ... You can’t control what other people are going to do, you can’t control what’s going to happen, but you can control the way you approach a situation. That’s one of the things no one can take from you. That’s a poignant point that inspired the record.”

To whom much has been given It’s clear Foreman takes these words to heart, owning up to his own responsibility with the platform he’s been given.

“Ultimately, it comes back to the idea to whom much is given, much is required. That can either be a nail in the coffin, like, ‘How can I approach anything?’ Or you can say, ‘It’s only by the grace of God I am here and whatever He wants to do from here on out is His business.”

For Foreman, it comes back to fighting off that inner cynic.

“Cynicism for me, if I didn’t have belief in a God who loves me, I would be a very cynical man. I don’t think I would be alive anymore, there’s not much else worth living for.”

But he also admits his perspective on outreach, justice issues and even the significance of music has changed as he’s gotten older. “I have had moments in my life where I’ve been naive enough to think I’m going to change the world. And it’s a really incredible feeling, the day you discover that’s never going to be the case.

“So I think, ultimately, alongside of that has to be the corollary of truly trusting in the God of the Heavens. If this deity formed the stars and the space and actually cares about me, then as I abandon myself to Him, there’s a hope greater than some form of hope I’m going to drum up within myself. I will continue to attempt to achieve things in my life with music that means a lot to me, but that’s going to be against the counterpart of just enjoying and loving every moment of being alive.” r

Switchfoot Supports

ONE is a grassroots campaign and advocacy program fighting for awareness of AIDS and global poverty.

Habitat for Humanity helps people get on their feet in their own affordable housing.

So Much to Save, started by Dave Matthews Band, encourages people to reduce their carbon footprint.

Proceeds from the band’s annual Bro-Am—a charity surf contest and concert—go to StandUp for Kids.

This past May, Foreman fasted to bring attention to injustices in Darfur through FastDarfur.org.

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Are young adult ministries killing the Church?

by Josh LoveLess

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Andy OlsOn

I have been leading a rebellion, and chances are, you’ve been part of it.

Sure, you’re not participating in my particular branch of this rebellion, but each week, hundreds of thousands gather together under this banner of mutiny. And they do so to worship God. I have been leading a 20s/young adult/college ministry—whatever it is you want to call these ministries that are launched with a separate worship service, under the blessing of their church. But I’ve realized that at their core, these services are birthed out of rebellion.

The attitude is rarely named. We prefer to cloak it, to explain it away as a simple difference in musical tastes, or as an aversion to getting up early on Sundays. But let’s call it what it is. Rebellion. Mutiny.

Most of these ministries are created out of a desire to do church differently. There are a handful of young adults in a church who have new ideas for what church should look like. They want their church to be different, and starting a new ministry that looks like the church they wished their church was is the easiest way to leave without leaving.

I began leading one of these communities without question— accepting it as the current ministry paradigm—but recently I’ve started to recognize the rebellion that was in the water from the inception. It’s a rebellion that didn’t come from the leader who started this ministry, but from a group of restless and idealistic young people. A group who didn’t engage with the older church leadership about how to contribute to the existing structure, but instead built a new structure—a 20s ministry— where all the younger people could get church the way they wanted it. That may be a good idea when you’re in middle school (though we should probably take another look at that, too) but not when you’re 20. > At 20 you have to integrate. > At 20 you have to join the rest of the intergenerational world. > At 20 you have much to voice and contribute to the overall body of the Church.

This isn’t a story about blame though, it’s a story meant to help us understand how we got where we are. From my perspective as a pastor to the 18- to 30-year-old demographic, I’ve seen so many people walk in with an expectation that the church would cater to them and their specific season of life. Where would they have learned that? Perhaps it’s because the last season of life they were in—high school—the church felt compelled to create fireworks, cotton candy and a petting zoo to keep them happy and interested in Jesus. The entertainment-driven student ministry model that’s emerged in the last 25 years has caused those who grew up in it to want a similar spiritually catered meal for every new stage of life they enter after high school. This season-of-life segregation in our churches—that pastors like me have been responsible for creating—has fed the consumerism monster and turned many church leaders into babysitters who try all sorts of toys and treats to keep the different babies from crying.

Over the years, I’ve noticed the more transitions and graduations that have to happen for someone to be a part of a church, the more difficult it is on a person’s spiritual formation. I don’t know what happens, but we get lost when we transition from middle school ministry to high school ministry, from high school ministry to college

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ministry, from college ministry to single adult ministry, from single adult ministry to the young married ministry, etc. For those of you who are fortunate enough not to slip through the cracks, you end up spending your church life exclusively in relationship with people who are just like you. And relationships formed over a lifetime with people who are just like you is, honestly, a form of self-worship.

But now I think it’s time for us to take a deep breath. It’s time for us to find another way. Both younger generations and older ones need to own their mistakes and the ways each one has contributed to the situation we now find ourselves in.

Arrogance versus fear The truth is, many of us who represent younger generations have been hungry for a church experience different than the one we were raised in. Historically, younger generations have always been the “lookout.” They’ve sat atop the masthead on the ship, trying to describe to the captain below what’s happening in culture—both the good and the bad. Younger generations have an intuitive understanding of where we’re headed long before anyone else.

It‘s for this reason the future of the Church is best anticipated by looking at the younger generation and what you’re talking about and feeling. The struggle has always been what the struggle continues to be: Will anyone hear your voice and, if they do, will they do anything about what you have to say?

If you find yourself in this age demographic, then you also know your generational position as the “lookout” can make you arrogant and perpetually dissatisfied by your current church. You’re perceived as a constant challenge to the process and the way things have always been done. While some of you have stuck around and tried to change your church, most of you have responded by walking away in silence, quietly hoping you could ease out the back door and no one would notice.

But apparently you didn’t leave quietly enough. The Barna Group has famously studied your every church move. They’ve found that from high school graduation to age 25, your weekly church attendance drops by 42 percent, and by age 29, 58 percent of you vanish from church altogether. However you’ve chosen to respond, the spirit of arrogance will follow you until it swallows you. If this is you, you must look deep into your heart and repent from the sin of arrogance that’s caused you to emotionally pull away from the churches you’ve been a part of.

Relationships formed over a lifetime with people who are just like you is, honestly, a form of self-worship.

Whenever arrogance is present, having a heart willing to submit to authority becomes impossible.

But the ownership of this tension must be shared. Older generations have spent much time trying to prove themselves as a worthy “captain” of the ship. They have chosen not to heed the younger voices around them as contributing members of leadership. The truth is, churches still only hire young people to work with young people.

The idea that Earl Creps has written about in Reverse Mentoring remains largely uncharted for most people in church leadership. Creps maintains that mentoring goes both ways—the learning transaction between the old and the young shouldn’t be a one-way street. Creps admits the most troubling part of the research he did for his book was discovering how open people in the secular market—in technology, culture and business—have been to insight from younger generations

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and how slow the Church has been to follow suit. He points to examples in business literature where companies like Texas Instruments, General Electric and Proctor & Gamble advise inviting the ideas and leadership of younger people. Creps goes on to say that “Christian literature doesn’t begin to point this out [as necessary] until the 21st century.”

Fear is often at the root of this broken relationship between generations. I’ve heard elders in leadership confess to fear of change, fear of not being able to execute new ideas, fear of disrupting the way things have always been done, fear of what church people will think.

Whenever fear is present, control becomes the way we respond.

And because older generations of men hold the power card in most churches, nothing will change until control and fear are surrendered.

I’ve often wondered about my own church. What would have happened if our senior leadership had invited the voices of the young leadership team to speak about what they were seeing on the horizon for the Church? What would have happened if old men had embraced the visions of young men and young women? And what would have happened if our team of college-aged people had initiated a conversation about their hopes for our city and our church? What would have happened if the young men and young women had embraced the dreams God had given the old men? I’m left to wonder how our story might have been different.

Remember how passionate Peter was in Acts 2 when he quoted the prophet Joel? “Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy” (TNIV).

When we speak of the Church, all of us have different ideas on what that means. Peter’s message is a reminder to all of us that one of the essential pieces to the movement of the Church is a generational one—a collective, intergenerational voice that’s sensitive to the Spirit of God. I believe in that dream God gave to Joel thousands of years ago. I believe each of us has been designed to contribute to that dream right now.

The time is now If you’re going to rebel, it’s pretty important to make sure it’s against the institution of church and not the dream of God known as the Church.

Whether your sin is arrogance or fear, whether your age is closer to old or closer to young, each of you has a responsibility to this moment

in church history. Each of you has a responsibility to engage in dialogue about how we are pursuing the mission of God on the earth.

For the first time in history, we have five generations alive at the same time. Imagine what that might look like if members of each generation were invited to a seat at the table—to teach one another about theology and ecclesiology.

Part of what has become broken is the language we’ve adopted in the Church to define younger generations.

The phrase the “next generation” has been thrown around a lot. This phrase points to an idea that this group of people will “one day,” “in the future” be a contributing member of the Church community. Languages can be limiting. We have to find words that envision and inspire who we are supposed to be in the present. This “next generation” is spending money, making music, writing books, making websites, educating children, making children … and they are doing all of this right now.

They aren’t standing on deck. They are in the batter’s box hitting home runs right in front of us. And yet many of them are still looked at in the Church world as if “one day” they will be able to contribute.

Making the shift Though we’ve seen incredible numeric growth since we began our 20s ministry five years ago, it would be much easier to confront this issue if we hadn’t. It’s a heavy thing for a leadership team to make a change to inherent philosophies when current philosophies seem to be working. We all know by now numeric growth doesn’t mean what you’re doing is right, but it sure makes it confusing when you’re growing on the outside and questioning how you’re doing it on the inside.

This conversation is very personal for me. I’m both a pastor and a part of this younger generation. As a result of all this, I’ve come to a place of repentance. A season of naming and owning what I’ve done as both a pastor and a young person to contribute to this segregated ministry that’s become so commonplace in our churches.

Turns out, that itch to see things change—the itch we thought only young people were feeling—was also being felt by certain people of every generation in our church. You’ve met some of these 63-yearolds who may have left the 1970s, but the spirit of that era hasn’t left them. They’re still asking questions and will forever see themselves as spiritual seekers. They believe faith is the result of risk, and they’re living the truth that comfort and Christianity were never meant to

sleep together. In our church community, we’ve begun to see this intergenerational itch and that it’s characterized by more than just youth—it’s accompanied by a desire for creativity, experiential gatherings, social justice, narrative theology, friendships, Spirit-led and holistic generosity, team leadership, spiritual diversity, intercultural and gender equality, ancient-future worship, city renewal, and so on.

Through our conversations, the challenge has been trying to find language that identifies who we want to be as a community but doesn’t unintentionally communicate what our larger church is not.

Last year I met with the elders of our church and I shared with them the best imagery I have been able to come up with so far to explain where I think we need to go from here. I’ve been wondering what it might look like for our 20s ministry to become an intergenerational “indie label” under the umbrella of our larger church structure. Where relationship and wisdom bind us together. This will only work as long as we believe we are better together. What works in our favor is that the church we are a part of (Discovery Church) is already a multi-site church. Because of their support and encouragement, this will now allow us to become an intergenerational community with a new flavor in the family of Discovery Church campuses.

All of our current locations have been planted as a centralized model from our main campus. STATUS (formerly the 20s community I’ve been leading) will now seek to be an example of a decentralized campus to many of the cities represented in our worship gatherings. In some ways it feels like this new approach is a bit like watching a small car launched from the back of a semi-truck going 75 mph on the freeway. It feels dangerous but will allow both vehicles to travel in their own unique way.

One of the first questions we get when people ask us about our transition as a ministry is what we have changed to reach older people.

The truth is we haven’t changed anything. That wasn’t what this shift was about. Older people had been “sneaking in” for years and apologizing to me as they walked past.

There is a hunger inside all of us for more. We’re all the same when it comes to what we’re searching for: a church environment unlike anything we’ve ever experienced before. This search will continue—with young people playing the role of the “lookout” and those in church leadership playing the role of “captain”—but what must change is our communication. We must trust one another across generational barriers and share our vision for where we are going together.

It’s time for us to tell a new story about how we as the Church are seeking to build the Kingdom of God. And this new story for us is obviously taken from the old story. If you are a young person trying to figure out how to best contribute who you are to the mission of God, I ask you to consider doing it in a way that honors the beautiful dream God had for the Church. A dream that included the old and the young bringing their God-given design into relationships with one another for the Glory of God and for the redemption of the world. a

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Heather Petrey

ThE nEw FaCE OF

HoMELESSNESS

BY Carl KozlowsKi

walk the beaches and sidewalks of the international tourist mecca of Los angeles’ Venice beach, and you’ll see enormous drum circles pounding out rhythmic beats that can be heard for miles or watch capoeira practitioners fly, spin and kick their way through their martial arts dance moves.

Or you might see old bums on the sidewalk, panhandling or selling artwork. You can watch muscle-bound men and women swinging from rope rings or lifting weights at the worldrenowned Muscle Beach workout area.

What you likely won’t notice as easily are the hundreds of homeless teens and twentysomethings who claw for survival every day amid the prettiest people and greatest ocean views in America. They are among an estimated 1.8 million children nationwide who are reported homeless, which means the actual figures are probably more than 2 million, as many of them don’t admit they’re minors for fear of being shipped home. It’s also believed an average of 13 kids die on U.S. streets each day.

One of those fighting to keep it together is Rolando, a soulful soft-spoken 20-yearold African-American who goes by the name “Youngster” and hails from Long Beach, about an hour away from Venice.

“I currently live on the beach. I’ve been out here since I was 12, maybe younger,” Rolando says. “It’s been weird all these years, watching everything grow and change, the people and the environment here. Sometimes I don’t like it, sometimes I do. I’m trying to go to school, but it’s hard for street kids. They have way more places to take a shower and clean up a little than ways to go to school.”

While the downtown area is making some definitive changes for the better, L.A.’s beach scene is still rife with people like Rolando. They often look “hard” but in reality are hiding an extreme vulnerability and pain.

On a sunny Saturday in August, actor and aspiring filmmaker Luke Barnett drove through the crowds and into one-on-one meetings with some of these young people. Some, like a 16-year-old named Pedro, have defined their dreams—he wishes to turn 18 and qualify for electrician training school. But most are vague when asked about the future—it’s just not part of their worldview, which focuses mostly on the day-to-day of survival.

Rolando claims “family issues” as the reason he chose to leave home, a common refrain heard on the beach. Yet according to Michael Leoni, a twentysomething filmmaker who’s part of a team working on Spare Some Change, a documentary about the Venice Beach homeless, most of the kids and young adults out here— even the ones with seemingly detailed stories— are actually hiding a far more disturbing past.

“I didn’t have the best childhood. I didn’t have the war stories like they do either, but I can relate to them,” Leoni says. “When I was about their age, I was in New York City and was evicted from my apartment after 9/11. I saw that I was really close to being homeless myself, so I started hanging out with the community of kids out there, getting involved. I have a family that supports me, but if I didn’t, I know it would be really easy to wind up like these guys.”

Leoni and his partners, who include Barnett and Michelle Kaufer, hope their film’s impact will extend beyond just being a documentary and create a movement to end homelessness. As they’ve interviewed the homeless on the beach, they’ve also invited several to become involved in the project as well. One 19-year-old named Ryan enthusiastically coordinated several different shooting setups that afternoon alone— Leoni and his team rave about Ryan’s focus and how his organizational skills are helping them move much faster than they anticipated. And with a desire to submit the film to the Sundance Film Festival, such planning is key.

“I’ve been out here four months, but I was up in Ridgefest in the Mojave Desert for five years with my father,” Ryan explains. “My brother and I left for a vacation, liked it here and we got stuck, too. I was on the streets of Phoenix for three years, too. Here it’s hard because you don’t know where you sleep, not sure about eating, but I enjoy it overall. Misjudging us is one thing. All the kids have a hard time out here. Economy’s so dead, we’re not here because we want to be. It’s our life now. I’d like to have a home. It don’t matter what kind of

work I do. I help others before I help myself, that’s just who I am.”

“We got another kid off heroin and into a 90-day Christian rehab in Texas,” Leoni says.

“And now he wants to come back and work on the film. We’re just providing friendship, mainly.

They don’t want to be out here, they’re abused or their mom dropped them off at a rest stop.

Not one of these kids wants to be here. They wear masks to hide their emotions. It takes a while to get the truth from them. These kids are just trying to survive each day, and some of them have done so since they were little kids.”

“all the kids have a hard time out here. economy’s so dead. we’re not here because we want to be.”

—ryan, resident of venice beach

Kaufer has also come to learn some sad truths about the youngsters on the beach: namely, that even as outsiders are labeling them as rebels, or drug addicts or lazy, these kids have created a community, with a moral code anyone would be wise to follow.

“I realize now these kids are all heart, and

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“these kids are all heart, and they take care of each other. if there’s 15 of them and one has $20, they give each a dollar first.”

—Michelle Kaufer, actor and filmmaker they take care of each other. If there’s 15 of them and one has $20, they give each a dollar first,” she explains. “That’s why it’s hard to get out—because some get an aid check for $200 a month, but they divide it up. This is their family, they travel together, eat together and sleep amongst each other.

“A lot of these kids run away at a really early age, so their emotional growth will stop,” Kaufer continues. “They don’t have anyone saying how to save, get a job or get an apartment.

It’s challenging if you never had a positive role model in your life. It’s challenging to take those steps. Even if groups will help them, you have to get to the psychological level they’re on and teach them they’re capable of anything.”

“We give so much money to Africa and all these countries, which is amazing, but in our own country, we have kids dying every day from

66 / RELEVANT_NOV/DEC 09

drug abuse and suicide,” Barnett says. “It’s important to get a crack addict off the street, but a 16-year-old still has so much more time and energy to get it together. We’re not giving up on them, and neither should anyone else.”

On another side of L.A., Andy Bales walks the streets of Skid Row. He’s got a million stories, and is often able to tell them with the weary smile he’s learned to wear at all times—a symbol of hope he offers to everyone who crosses his path.

Yet Bales loses his smile when he remembers arriving for work one morning to find a dead man lying outside his front door.

As the CEO of Los Angeles’ Union Rescue Mission, one of America’s largest homeless shelters with room for 820 people to sleep each night, Bales was accustomed to seeing some of the saddest examples of blighted humanity. Yet almost as often, he was able to offer hope to the people who entered the mission doors and transform their lives for the better.

But on that morning, there was no reviving the man, who had died just hours before from a heroin overdose. The story doesn’t end there.

“I’m standing with the body and a young lady who used to [prostitute] out of an outdoor toilet walks over to us and said: ‘I know how he died. He was having withdrawal symptoms at 4 a.m., so I gave him 40 ccs of heroin and he died,’” Bales recalls. “That killed him, and she got charged with murder. I think she preferred prison over the Porta-John. She wanted help that bad and she got it.”

Bales’ voice trails off, as he looks down at

Homeless youth often take up residence on Venice Beach, putting down roots for years and forming an ad hoc family with other residents their age.

the ground and then out again at the streets he knows so well.

“You go home, weep a little bit, rest and do it again. And you thank God you have a wife and kids who understand.”

“Skid Row” is the poorest part of any major inner-city environment, the place where a life in decline hits its bottom and “skids” to a halt.

In Los Angeles, this area has been particularly

bleak, as at one time thousands of the poor, addicted and mentally ill were sometimes literally fighting for sidewalk space in an eightto 10-block radius centered around the city's biggest homeless shelters and drug rehab centers, but often also filled with drug dealers, liquor stores and flea-bitten dive bars.

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to be living on the nation’s streets at any given time, homelessness is one of the last great social ills America has not been able to eradicate. Yet even as the current economic recession is leading to record foreclosures and what Bales terms a “tsunami” of families entering the doors of the Union Rescue Mission, there are signs of hope the battle against this scourge may finally be seeing some success.

Just in Los Angeles alone, Bales proudly notes, in the past three years the number of people crowding the streets of Skid Row has plummeted from 2,000 each day to just 750. Bales points to the Los Angeles Police Department’s Safer Cities Initiative as partly

to accept the help they needed, from going to rehab and job training to getting properly medicated for mental illness and moving into Single Room Occupancy (SRO) residence hotels. Accordingly, much of the crime in the area left along with them. And now, Bales has his sights on an even more ambitious goal.

“I want to do Project 500,” Bales says. “If we can bring homelessness in L.A. down to just 250 people chronically choosing to live in the streets, we would basically have eradicated the problem from this city.”

Bales’ commitment is the result of half a lifetime’s dedication to the homeless.

Something he recounts—with an edge to his

of these hotels, crime still runs rampant, just off the street, as gang members have moved their predatory activities inside.

One other major step in reducing Skid Row’s

“This is important to us, to show we take pride in where we live, even if the world only wants to see it as Skid Row,” —General Jeff, resident of Skid Row Los Angeles’ Skid Row has been the object of several renewal programs during the last several years, including “Operation Facelift/Skidrow” in 2008.

responsible for this success. The initiative greatly increased police horse and foot patrols in the area, while scaring away a purely criminal “predatory population” that lived on the streets in order to victimize those who couldn’t help themselves.

Most ambitious, however, was Campaign Fifty, in which police and social workers teamed up to identify the 50 people with the most chronic problems and convince them

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voice—as he searches for homeless camps under bridges one Saturday.

“I was working with people who are homeless and reaching out to day laborers with coffee and sweet bread once or twice a week,” Bales says, recalling his time on staff with Lake Avenue Church. “When one of the Pasadena city councilmen and a city planning and zoning fellow and a neighbor went to Lake Avenue Church and told them that as long as I was dealing with homeless and day laborers, the church would be at a standstill in getting things done in the city, I felt they were threatening the church and me, and that the church got timid in their support for me. So I ran for city council to make sure someone was standing up for the homeless and day laborers and was put on a paid leave of absence to corral my passion, but it didn’t do that. It caused me to be more passionate because I felt hammered like poor people felt hammered, so instead of returning I chose to return to Skid Row.” He chuckles, wryly. “I worked my whole life to end up on Skid Row, and I finally made it.”

There have been many factors at play in the vast improvements in the downtown L.A. area, beyond the increased police presence and Project Fifty. SRO renovations were more fully and quickly funded, creating the space to house people at last—yet on the inside of many

inherent problems came in eliminating the Porta-Potties that used to clutter the sidewalks.

These often went beyond their intended use as public bathrooms to become drug-shooting hideouts for junkies, or mini-bordellos for the area’s vast prostitution population. Now, most of the public restrooms are large oval structures that require the payment of a quarter to enter, and that self-clean like a car wash every 15 minutes to keep conditions sanitary and prevent undesirables from maintaining constant control of the toilets.

“Cops have put a stop to other cities dropping off poor and homeless people in Skid Row, and stopped hospitals from dumping mental patients here,” Bales says. “I hope someday we can have a day when there’s nobody on the streets of Skid Row. If every neighborhood took care of their own troubled family members, you wouldn‘t have a major urban homeless problem.”

Yet the biggest and smartest step in battling crime came when police and other community leaders decided to take on the “tent cities” that once flooded the sidewalks 24 hours a day.

One big problem was that drug dealers and gangs ingratiated themselves to the homeless by providing them the tents to live in—winning over hearts and minds from the police, as well as building a thankful and soon-dependent

ACT IV A group of actors are huddled around a table: rehearsal. In front of each sits a photocopied script of a never-beforeperformed Shakespeare play, recently discovered. Act IV of the five-act play was never found. In order to perform this play, the actors will need to create an Act IV based on their deep familiarity with the characters as they develop in Acts I-III, finding ways to bring those characters through the narrative elements that lead them to where Act V begins. What a daunting task. What an incredible opportunity.

I first heard this story metaphor while sitting in a movie theatre in the Belltown neighborhood of Seattle. Fellow prospective graduate students surrounded me. The smell of popcorn was as electrifying to my senses as were the words of the professor who was speaking about the Kingdom of God. With his words, he cast us all as those actors who knew the beginning of the story, as well as its end, but whose task was to perform the middle.

I learned later that the professor was expanding an idea originally offered by

Shakespeare and the Embodied Word essay by kj swanson a mars hill graduate school student

Bishop N. T. Wright. This may have been the first, but has not been the last time my perception of the Kingdom of God has been transformed through the lens of Shakespeare. I came to MHGS after years of studying and working in theatre, but it had never occurred to me that the process of interpreting scripture might very much be like directing a production of Hamlet.

Hamlet was never conceived for the printed medium; it only becomes Hamlet when actors embody the story. Though reading it may introduce one to its poetry and plot, you cannot truly experience the play of Hamlet until it is performed.

I’ve found the same to be true of Scripture. True, not only in many of the ways we’ve received the texts we have, (Shakespeare has folios and quartos; Scripture has codices and autographs) but also in the sense that we as individuals and communities are meant to embody the story, not just study it on the page.

I won’t attempt a comparative study here (though I’d loved to bend your ear about eschatology and how all Shake-

speare’s comedies end with a marriage).

Instead, I reflect back on that woman moving from NYC to Seattle to begin graduate school who received that movie theatre introduction to hermeneutics and gospelembodiment through Shakespeare like a still, small voice saying, “You’ve already begun this work, Kj. Maybe this move isn’t as big a departure as you thought.”

Interpretation is always an act of transformation. Whether it’s the art of theater or the art of hermeneutics, that transforming moment when interpretation becomes embodiment is what I live for. The Word made flesh. It’s that Act IV space of mystery between what has been and what is taking shape. What a daunting task.

What an incredible opportunity.

Kj Swanson is a 4th year MDiv. student at Mars Hill Graduate School and an interpretive artist. She recommends you enjoy a film and gourmet popcorn at The Big Picture when you visit Seattle, WA.

Mars Hill Graduate School is a learning community dedicated to transformation through the study of text, soul, and culture. Our students are writers, artists, bloggers, theologians, and counselors who are devoted to experiencing God through relationships. They are passionate and purposeful; committed to both academic excellence and relational maturity; curious about the biblical text, the human soul, and the culture at large. To learn more about joining us in a transformational education, visit mhgs.edu.

Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology Master of Divinity Master of Arts in Christian Studies Application Deadline · January 15

mhgs.edu · Seattle, WA.

customer base for drug sales.

Eventually, police realized the tents provided were color-coded, to indicate which people were compliant with the gangs and those who weren’t. They also enabled gang members to know which people were merely customers and which worked with the gangs, as well as providing a means for gang members to know which kinds of drugs different customers were using. If you were a cocaine customer, you might have had a purple tent, or a green tent if you shot heroin.

“Once the police figured that all out, they started rounding up the criminals from among the tents, and then they limited tent use from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. each day,” Bales says. “Crime

and children away from the hard-pressed downtown area. Hope Gardens offers transitional supportive housing for 32 mothers, 64 kids and 22 elderly single women in the peaceful foothills town of Sylmar, nearly 20 miles away from the heart of the downtown squalor. Unfortunately, Bales notes that so far there are no similar programs available for senior men on the streets.

And L.A. isn’t the only place where innovative programs are helping lessen the problem of homeless on the streets. Controversy arose recently in New York City over a program that offered to pay for a one-way ticket to pretty much anywhere for homeless people and especially families who could find a relative to

Andy Bales, CEO of Union Rescue Mission, spends a sunny Saturday talking with Skid Row residents.

There are some other positive signs on the streets around Skid Row on this sunny Saturday afternoon.

Ice cream men push carts through just like in much safer neighborhoods, Bales points out an old church that was converted into high-end condos that yuppies are actually occupying, but most surprising of all is the sight of Gladys Park.

Long known as one of the most notorious public spaces in the city for its rampant drug activity, Gladys Park has been partially reclaimed by the city’s police and the lawabiding citizens of Skid Row in the past couple of years. One Friday a month, cops clear the park of drug paraphernalia and all criminal elements and supervise as children get to be children and play without worries for an afternoon. And each Saturday, an ad hoc group of male area residents clears out the bad elements as well, in order to host games in the Skid Row 5-on-5 Streetball League.

Playing on a strikingly well-maintained court donated by Nike—which also donates new sneakers for the league’s players each year— dozens of men hoop it up peacefully. Classic old-school R&B grooves pour forth from a huge sound system, adding to the afternoon’s relaxed flavor, while an announcer makes hilarious comments about the players as they race the court. The league climaxes each year with a championship tournament played outside the hallowed halls of the LA Lakers’ Staples Center.

“This is important to us, to show we take pride in where we live, even if the world only wants to see it as Skid Row,” says General Jeff, a former rapper from the ’80s who had platinum hits under another stage name he declines to state (though Bales vouches for his one-time stardom) before hitting hard times and rebounding his life into neighborhood activism.

“We’re stepping up and showing we care and we’re gonna keep turning this around.” a

“WINTER SHELTERS WERE UP 700 PERCENT IN FAMILIES. THE FORECLOSURE PROBLEM HAS NOT STOPPED, NOT HIT BOTTOM YET. IT’S BEEN COMING IN WAVES” —ANDY BALES, CEO OF UNION RESCUE MISSION

and drugs went down, the sidewalks became passable and the area looked a whole lot better.

Once you start looking better, people often want to keep that going and keep improving things.

That’s where we’re at now.”

And then there are the little things that Bales and his 170-member staff at the mission do to improve basic quality of life and a sense of trust among the poor in his area. On any day that’s 85 degrees or hotter, he and two others hand out 1,500 bottles of cold water or Gatorade.

On this day, numerous other churches including a Baptist church and a Jehovah’s Witness congregation, are also easily spotted in action serving food and distributing clothing.

Elsewhere, a Catholic priest famously dispenses hundreds of dollars in crisp bills each week to eager hordes of people.

Bales has also been fortunate to open successful alternative programs for mothers

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take responsibility for them in another city.

When many accepted the offer, some complained that individuals were flown as far away as Paris. But city officials pointed out that even the cost of a plane ticket to Paris paled in comparison to the ongoing taxpayers’ cost of caring for the same person within the city limits, and that restoring family ties is almost always a key to true progress for the mentally ill and homeless.

Sadly, it’s families that are forming the majority of new cases of homelessness for Bales and his counterparts nationwide. In fact, the problem is so bad he compares it to Hurricane Katrina and the Asian tsunami.

“With families, we’ve been up as much as 40 percent,” Bales says. “Winter shelters were up 700 percent in families. The homeforeclosure crisis affects families a lot more than individuals. The foreclosure problem has not stopped, not hit bottom yet. It’s been coming in waves.”

To accommodate families, preserving their need for privacy, Bales and the Mission purchased 17 E-DAR units last October. Standing for Everybody Deserves a Roof, EDARs are mobile tent units that fold up to fit easily in a shopping cart and then expand out when needed to provide cover. They’re spread out across the Mission’s chapel, community room and other spaces that can accommodate the larger-than-usual beds.

“A mom and child can sleep in one more comfortably than on a cot,” Bales says. “And it gives privacy and safety to moms with kids so they can sleep easier.”

NATASHA KHAN EMERGES FROM THE DESERT WITH MORE THAN JUST NEW MUSIC

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Brooke Nipar

NATASHA KHAN IS EXHAUSTED, and for good reason. The 30-year-old singer/songwriter has spent the better part of 2009 promoting Two Suns, the second album she’s recorded under the name Bat for Lashes, touring the world three times over and talking to journalists ad nauseum. Along the way, she’s picked up a second Mercury Prize nomination in her native England and the respect of everyone from Kanye West to Thom Yorke.

Two Suns moves in a strange space between the shimmery sound of the late ‘80s UK music scene and the sun-baked atmospherics of the modern freak-folk scene. She explores matters of the heart, mind and spirit by evoking such disparate influences as the Song of Songs, The Karate Kid and the voice of a persona she’s created—Pearl. Sitting amid the clutter of her tour bus lounge, fighting off her allergies and need for a good night’s rest, Khan spoke about her art, finding inspiration in the desert, and the natural rhythms of the world that help her create.

Two Suns seems to carry a lot of influences. What were you listening to as you wrote the songs?

I was listening to my friends’ music and bands in Brooklyn, where I was living at the time. There would be people coming into the house, crazy instrumentalists coming in and playing cool stuff. I was listening to a lot of Dead Can Dance and some of that old shoegazer-y stuff. Listening to old, weird African and voodoo stuff and old-school things like old desert blues-y stuff, which was great for going into the desert.

to The Cure and Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground. I worked the whole thing into a beautiful narrative that we lived in a place like Big Sur and there were big fires in the Redwood. And there’s this element of driving around past fires and the smell of pine and woodland. I wrote the chords thinking of that, and those chords make my heart feel a specific way; the beat and the choir sound is very specific to my memory. So, I worked even further to get to the next level, thinking, “When else do I feel like that?” And I remembered that when I was little, it was when I used to watch The Karate Kid.

What inspired you to create the character of Pearl?

I love the New York of Andy Warhol time and the later ‘80s era and all those things I heard about and romanticized about.

But when I went to New York, it wasn’t there at all. I had this epiphany that maybe all of those people that were there at that time, perhaps it wasn’t that cool for them either. Perhaps people’s mythologies they created are trying to perpetuate that romance of New York because maybe they didn’t find it for themselves. I realized what I was looking for wasn’t there so I’d have to create it myself. I bought a blonde wig and fake eyelashes, and I dressed up as this amazing femme fatale lady. I walked around Brooklyn and had someone take pictures of me and I documented it in my notebook. And then she stuck with me when I was writing some of the songs. She was an aspect of myself that relates to the pain and delusion of New York and the subterranean dark escapism that you can get sucked down into.

What was it like to spend time alone in the desert?

I went to Joshua Tree for inspiration and to experience the landscape. I took pictures and made films and did illustrations.

That was a very visual inspiration, which I took back home with me and I’d look back over and remember it and try to use it to inspire the songs.

Do you do a lot of visual art as well as music?

I do a lot of illustrations and papercuts. I make films and have made little stop-frame animations. I did that a lot at art school where I studied music and visual arts. I’ve just carried all this through to things like the album artwork, which all comes from sketches that I’ve made. And I work closely with the directors of my videos to tell them exactly what I want.

You worked with a few artists on this album, including Yeasayer and Scott Walker. How do you choose collaborators?

My intuition will tell me what things a song needs, or I’ll hear a very specific thing like the Scott Walker part on “The Big Sleep.”

From the second I wrote that song, I could hear his part. Even though I left it for a year and a half, I knew that was what it needed. I could hear a voice, but it didn’t click until much later that it was his voice. We emailed each other and discussed the characters and ideas behind the songs and narrative and mood, and he got it.

What inspires a song for you? Is it a lyrical idea, a musical idea or trying to create a particular mood?

Often I’ll feel a sense of a place or someone or something, almost like a spirit around me, of the song. It will seep into me and I’ll need to immerse myself in that place. Then these characters or images or still photographs of a place or a scenario or a fable will come to me and I’ll feel the desire to write this out, to create the sound of that feeling. With “Daniel,” for example, I was thinking about my first boyfriend. I was away from home a lot, and I started remembering those simple, long, hot summers from when we were kids.

We fell in love, and we drove around in a car all summer and we listened

A few songs on the album reference Song of Songs—what about that spoke to you?

I first read parts of it when I was reading Last Exit To Brooklyn [Hubert Selby Jr.’s 1964 cult classic novel]. There’s a section from the Bible before each chapter and there was part of [Song of Songs] before the Tralala chapter. “I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broadways I will seek him whom my soul loves; I sought him, but found him not.” I read it and it was, like, (gasp).

It sounded like the manifesto of the record.

Do you consider yourself a spiritual person?

I definitely feel like there’s a level I work on that’s not the normal everyday things you see and hear and feel. I suppose it’s being in touch with my intuition and my subconscious and the collective unconscious, feeling we’re all connected in some way. I feel like there’s a path you should be traveling. I try to stay on it and do the things that feel good with my soul and have integrity. I guess my religion has more to do with nature and natural rhythms.

Do you feel like you are on that path?

I don’t feel like touring works with the natural rhythms. You have to forget your life and be in this parallel touring universe where you’re giving of yourself in terms of the giant cycles of creating and going out and coming back and starting all over again. I know it’s just playing the game, but it doesn’t really sit so well with me. But as you get older, you realize if you’re being supported, then you work out your niche and your way of dealing with the situation at hand and figuring out how best to keep everybody happy. That’s what I’m trying to do.

What does your family make of your career?

I think they’re very proud. My family’s creative even though they’re working class and quite English and normal. But there’s a creative spark in my family that they never did anything with.

The fact that I did do it ... in some ways, they don’t get it; but in others, they are very proud because it’s quite pioneering. A

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you don’t have to be a Scrooge to do the holidays differently by margot starbuck

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Raychel Mendez

We’ve been here before.

In the weeks leading up to Christmas, many of us relax. We spend time with family, sharing anecdotes of Christmases past with a smile, and quietly reflecting on what this time of year is meant for—loving each other and remembering the joy of our Savior’s birth.

Well ... maybe not.

When December rolls around, most of us find ourselves squeezed between our convictions about responsible stewardship and the cacophony of messages ever wooing us toward indulgent consumption.

Then, when the credit card bill arrives in January, we lament that—as if against our will—we’ve once again been dragged into the holiday marketing machine and spit out like packing peanuts.

And we’re not even festive pagans.

We’re Christians.

We’re people of faith who have heard the call of God to dominion over the earth and stewardship of resources. But, with the best of intentions, perhaps, we’ve earnestly hoped reliving the ancient drama with our molded plastic FisherPrice nativity set or singing “Happy Birthday” to Jesus might sustain us.

When we’re completely honest though, we doubt it can. We truly do want to live differently this year.

The good news is, unlike so many consumers who are squeezing into crowded malls and shopping by mouseclick this season, Christians wage the holy war against indulgent consumption with resources more sustainable than

willpower, nagging worries about increasing debt or even the legitimate human aversion to strip mall parking lots.

In the face of our culture’s obsession with stuff, Christians truly are navigating a brave new way.

A powerful pull Research estimates Americans view more than 200 commercial advertisements each day. Our online purchases, Facebook profiles and even the personal text of our emails now allow advertisers to dangle the lure of custom ads tailored specifically to our particular demographic profile.

Marketers pay millions to do it­, of course— because it works. Like mindless fish, we’ve taken the bait.

In December, though, the pressure to consume gets even more personal. As Christmas approaches, we’re additionally plagued by voices from within—and sometimes from family members. If we’ve decided to reduce consumption by giving fewer gifts, we may hear the hiss of an internal shaming voice. “It doesn’t matter that her needs and wants have all been met. You know she’s going to give you an expensive gift,” the voice accuses. “You wouldn’t dare fail to reciprocate.” Should you perchance succeed in resisting this clever message, you might even hear, “Christianity is all about giving, isn’t it?” In no time, that twisty devil-logic, grounded in no particular theological rationale, has you pulling out a credit card to purchase some horrible novelty necktie or a Mother Teresa bobblehead figure. Happy Birthday, Jesus.

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We can do better Kalle Lasn is the founder of Adbusters magazine. Lasn recognizes the growing influence of the Christian community in matters of social responsibility. He observes: “I’m noticing that over the last 10 years something has opened up in the faith communities. They are now more than ever before in my memory getting involved in being stewards of the physical environment. They’re stepping up to the plate finally.”

Though progressive believers have, historically, been recognized as more socially conscious and active, this movement to celebrate Christmas in fresh ways is crossing

“Some traditions have gotten distorted and may do more harm than good—like, for example, over-shopping at Christmas. In an affluent, materialistic society, it makes no sense to shower more gifts upon our loved ones as a sign of our love for them in the name of the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ.

“Some people will want to go hardcore and only give homemade goods ... but often that can be divisive—‘I’m righteous and you’re not.’” —Aiden enns theological divides. Specifically, reducing Christmas consumption is where those on the left, who balk at shopping in big-box retail stores that employ underpaid workers, are meeting those on the right, who refuse to let Santa reign as the ringmaster at Jesus’ birthday party. So hooray for unity!

A leader in this movement toward reclaiming Christmas is Aiden Enns. In 2001, Enns, and six other Christian friends, launched the “Buy Nothing Christmas” campaign.

The group sponsored a full-page ad in a Canadian church paper and created a website, BuyNothingChristmas.org. The campaign extends a threefold invitation exhorting Christians to embrace a holiday season that is “richer in meaning, smaller in impact upon the earth, and greater in giving to people lessprivileged.”

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“Christmas is a time for open displays of generosity as an expression of our gratitude and love ... to celebrate togetherness in spite of differences. We can keep doing this, even though we change some of our traditions.”

Living differently Author and activist Shane Claiborne shares Enns’ passion for establishing new holiday traditions. “My mom and I sew clothes every Christmas,” Claiborne says. “I’ve become quite a tailor with her. It’s fun. It’s life-giving. Where that comes from is trying to create a third way that’s neither culture or counterculture, always reacting all the time.”

Like Enns, Claiborne encourages Christians to be a little more creative than we’ve been up to this point. He explains: “Let’s figure out new ways that we really honor Jesus by celebrating

His birth. Let’s figure out ways we create rituals and traditions within our own families.

I see folks making gifts together at Christmas, folks doing things like The Heifer Project and other ways that they give gifts to offer dignity and honor to people who don’t have enough.”

Enns offers some sage advice to those considering establishing new ways of celebrating the birth of Jesus this year— particularly encouraging moderation. “Start small and explain what you’re doing. Sure, some people will want to go hardcore and only give homemade things, used goods or vicarious charity donations. But often that can be divisive—‘I’m righteous, you’re not.’

“I prefer to remain in conversation with those with whom I differ. And try to refrain from being judgmental of others. It helps to be less harsh on yourself, and then extend that grace to others.”

Full of grace, Christians are creatively forging new traditions. In lieu of exchanging gifts among themselves, a group of young women in North Carolina pooled their money to support World Vision’s ministry of justice to women and children trapped in the sex trafficking industry. Another woman creates a two-dimensional work of art, each year, which she has printed and framed for friends and family. One Christian family established a “Make It or Find It” Christmas tradition, exchanging homemade gifts or found objects.

A survey of what’s happening today in Christ’s body makes it evident the reach of the creative Christian imagination stretches further than the line at the local post office on Dec. 19.

FAITHFUL LIVING IN EVERY AREA OF LIFE

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IN HIM ALL THINGS HOLD TOGETHER

FEBRUARY 19-21 PITTSBURGH, PA J2010.COM

refusing to set foot in a strip mall in December may be the most courageous act of discipleship most Americans will embrace all year.

An incarnational Christmas A friend of mine stands in this holy parade of disciples. Last fall, Jan told me she wanted to do Christmas “differently.”

“Yeah,” I thought cynically, “don’t we all?

Been there, tried that.”

After the holiday, I didn’t even bother asking her how it had gone. That can feel so shameful.

The next time I saw her, though, Jan was beaming. Though her home had boasted no Christmas tree, no plastic reindeer, no twinkly lights and no tinsel, Jan exclaimed, “It was my best Christmas ever!”

Jan had canvassed her neighborhood, knocking on each door, saying simply: “Hi. I’m wondering if there’s anything I can do for you?

It’s Christmas and I’m wanting to give back something to my community.”

Typically, her efforts were met with blank stares and polite refusals. Using her most persuasive tone, she’d try to talk folks into a leaf-raking or gutter-cleaning. In the end, she was invited onto a few roofs. She baked a lot of bread for others. She made some new friends.

As I imagined her scooping nasty muck out of gooey gutters, I couldn’t help but notice that her incarnate service was a lot more like the first Christmas than any of the stuff we wrap with red-and-green polka-dotted wrapping paper today.

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The plan Clearly, embracing a more Christ-like Christmas is no small thing. In fact, refusing to set foot in a strip mall in December—should you choose to accept this assignment—may be the most courageous act of discipleship most Americans will embrace all year.

Be clear about your goals. Rather than going cold Christmas turkey the first year, consider starting slowly. Will you buy and give fairly traded items? Will you make your holiday gifts? Will you stay within a certain budget?

Will you lop socially obligatory recipients off your gift list? Commit to an achievable goal and write it down.

Equally important is inviting the support of like-minded family and friends. Choose someone who shares your passion and can encourage you should your resolve waiver.

Find a Holiday Sponsor who you can call at any hour in the unexpected event of a light-up plastic lawn Santa emergency. There are good reasons Christ called us to live out our faith community, and electrically powered lawn ornaments are on that long list.

Know that as you pursue a celebration that is richer in meaning, smaller in impact and greater in giving to people less-privileged, you honor the One whom we celebrate. May He take delight in your holy gifts of obedience. a

Harvard Divinity School Renowned scholars. Experienced leaders.

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Our most treasured traditions were never really all that sacred By jason Boyett

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Bah Humbug. This is going to be a Scrooge-y article, and I won’t try to pretend otherwise. I’m easily annoyed at Christmastime. Not at hearing the same music year after year, though I’m close to filing a petition to remove “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” from compilation albums.

(Seriously. Is there not at least one other uptempo Christmas song?)

Nor am I annoyed because the Christmas displays show up earlier each year, or because the yard decorations get gaudier, or because the mall Santas don’t even try to grow a convincingly real beard anymore. These are mild irritants compared to the real annoyance: the annual uproar from the faith community about how our beloved religious holiday has become so overtly secularized.

Every year, there are banners. Every year, preachers pound pulpits. Every year, talk-radio callers shout a refrain so familiar we might as well put it to music and take it out a-caroling: We need to put Christ back into Christmas.

That’s a peculiar, history-blind notion. In many cases, the things we associate with Christmas—from the greenery to gift-giving to the date itself—don’t necessarily originate with the Christian faith. Some of them predate the manger, the shepherds and the midnight clear.

Put Jesus back in? Might be tough, since we’re the ones who wedged Him into a few pre-existing pagan traditions in the first place.

The most Christmasy parts of Christmas aren’t ours. We stole them.

The tree The origins of the evergreen Christmas tree are so shadowy, few places agree where it came from, but we’re pretty sure it wasn’t Bethlehem. Ancient Egypt is a contender.

Around the time of the winter solstice—the longest night of the year, occurring on either Dec. 21 or 22—Egyptians would bring palm branches into their homes, taking a hopeful stand against the encroaching darkness.

Ancient Rome might also be a culprit. In late December, the Romans observed the feast of Saturnalia—a week-long winter festival honoring the god Saturn—by making evergreen laurel wreathes and placing candles in live trees.

Our Christmas trees might have roots in Scandinavian folk mythology. According to these beliefs, the entire universe was contained in a really big ash tree called

Yggdrasil, which balanced the sun, moon and stars in its evergreen branches. With this in mind, the ancient Scandinavians celebrated the winter solstice by hanging apples, nuts and little animal-shaped cakes from evergreen trees. Perhaps the ornamented trees reminded them of their place in the universe. Or rather, the universe’s place in Yggdrasil.

Regardless of the culture, these tree-related customs reminded people winter wasn’t forever. After all, the winter was a scary time for ancient pagans. The days grew shorter.

The sun appeared less and less. Vegetation withered up during the winter months. But evergreen trees? The harsh winters didn’t faze them. Maybe evergreens had magical powers. Maybe they were eternal. Which is why eventually connecting them with Jesus wasn’t all that difficult.

One Christmas tree origin story involves St. Boniface, an eighth-century monk and the eventual archbishop of Germany. He had a run-in with some local tribes who worshiped a tree at Geismar known as the Holy Oak of Thor.

They considered the tree some kind of leafy deity. Boniface wasn’t too keen on this, so he did what any good saint would do: He chopped down the sacred tree.

According to legend, the tree split to reveal a small, miraculous fir tree growing amid its gnarled roots. Boniface seized the timely metaphor and suggested the little fir tree ought to remind those pagans of Jesus.

See how it seems to point toward heaven?

And see how its color is constant, like the love of Christ? And see how it sorta seems to symbolize the death of paganism and the rise of Christianity?

So Boniface (and in other tales, Martin Luther) gets credit for the Christmas tree. But most scholars agree this story is probably apocryphal. It pretty conveniently disguised the fact that evergreen trees have always played a big role in winter solstice observances. A big, fat, pagan role.

The mistletoe Mistletoe is another one of those Christmas plants with a supposedly Christian backstory. If you hang around botanists, or Latin scholars, you might hear it referred to as lignum sanctae crucis, “wood of the sacred cross.” Past Christian traditions held that the cross of Christ was cut from the wood of a mistletoe tree. Only mistletoe isn’t a tree. It’s a parasite, surviving by attaching to the branches of another tree. The legend has an answer for this, though. It says the parasitism is the result of a curse God put on the mistletoe for its role in the crucifixion. Its current duty as the love sprig? Just a handy way of performing penance for this sin.

Nice story, but mistletoe is another evergreen with a divine history older than Christianity. The ancient Greeks believed it had mystical powers. The ancient Druids thought it to be an aphrodisiac and used it to concoct fertility potions. German pagans got really excited when they discovered mistletoe growing in one of their sacred oaks (see the St. Boniface story above), because they believed a growth of mistletoe was the result of a lightning strike. The mistletoe, they thought, formed the “soul” of these oaken deities. So they would sacrifice a bull upon finding it. Hint: Don’t do this at your next Christmas party.

The ancient Scandinavians considered mistletoe to be a plant of harmony and peace. This is the result of a complicated narrative involving Frigg, the Norse love goddess and mother of Baldr, the sun god.

According to Norse mythology, Baldr dies upon being struck by a spear crafted from mistletoe. The death of the sun god brings winter into the world. Despondent, Frigg forbids mistletoe from ever associating with death again. Instead, she decrees, it must honor her son by ever symbolizing love.

So if two enemies were fighting each other in some Scandinavian forest and happened

RELEVANTMAGAZINE.COM / 81

The most Christmasy parts of Christmas aren’t ours. We stole them. to find themselves beneath mistletoe, they were required to stop fighting immediately, put down their weapons, call a temporary truce and hug it out.

Eventually, mistletoe’s impact on fighting warriors morphed into a connection with fighting lovers. Instead of dropping their weapons, lovers were supposed to kiss under the fortuitous plant. Which brings us to today, when lonely people and IT nerds linger near the mistletoe at the office Christmas parties. Do they do it in honor of Jesus and the cross? Possibly. But don’t forget to also credit Baldr and Frigg.

The gifts This one’s a no-brainer, right? Don’t we give each other gifts on Christmas (and on our birthdays) because the wise men gave Jesus gifts on His birthday?

Not so fast. Yes, the wise men gave gifts to Jesus. But if you’ll read Matthew’s Gospel carefully—instead of, say, getting your history from nativity scenes—you’ll notice the wise men didn’t actually show up at the manger. At all. According to Matthew 2:16, they arrived two years after Christ’s birth.

So those weren’t exactly birthday gifts.

It’s more likely they were traditional and symbolic gifts reserved for a king.

Unless you only give Christmas presents to royalty, your holiday gift-giving owes less to the wise Magi and more to Saturnalia, the

82 / RELEVANT_NOV/DEC 09

aforementioned Roman winter solstice feast.

Its celebrants would exchange small gifts with each other according to socioeconomic status. The rich gave jewelry or gold coins.

The poor gave homemade edibles. Children would give and receive little clay dolls. And everyone gave “strenae,” evergreen boughs thought to bring good luck.

But, hark! Gift-giving isn’t completely pagan. It does have a legitimate—but probably legendary—connection to Christianity, thanks to St. Nicholas. Yes, that St. Nicholas. The kindly fourth-century bishop of Myra used his family’s affluence to give anonymous gifts to the poor (including once dropping a bag of gold down a family’s chimney). After he died of old age, admiring townsfolk continued his habit of secret giftgiving, with credit going to jolly old St. Nick.

Giving gifts to the poor in honor of Jesus?

For something rooted in paganism, it fits pretty nicely into a Christian framework.

So, even though the early Church hadn’t really bothered to observe Christ’s birth at all, Pope Julius I chose Dec. 25 as the official feast day to honor Baby Jesus. And what a coincidence that this date not only competed with rival religions but made it a lot easier for new converts to drop their paganism while holding on to the day’s merriment, feasts and fun. The papal pronouncement became official in 375 A.D. Suddenly Jesus had a birthday.

Redeeming the season What does this all mean? That we shouldn’t decorate trees, kiss under the mistletoe or exchange gift cards because doing so is somehow a nod to paganism?

That by eating Christmas dinner on Dec. 25, we’re affirming Mithraism? That we should feel bad for stealing all the best pagan traditions from the years before Christ?

No. Despite my humbuggery, I love

The date Question: What day was Jesus born?

Answer: We don’t know, but we’re pretty sure it wasn’t Dec. 25.

Even the date of Christmas doesn’t belong to Christianity. While the Bible doesn’t record the date of Christ’s birth, there’s little to suggest He was actually born on the 25th of December. As you might recall from the Christmas story, there were “shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night” (Luke 2:8, KJV). December, in Palestine, is in the middle of the region’s cold, October-to-April rainy season. Sheep would have been inside, not out in the fields.

Regardless, Dec. 25 is a date with a lot of history. It was the feast of the Son of Isis in ancient Babylon, a festival marked with plenty of eating, drinking and even gift-giving. Dec. 25 often marked the end of the Romans’ Saturnalia celebration. The date also coincided with Yule, an ancient German pagan festival occurring on or around Dec. 25.

And in the early years of Christianity, that specific day was celebrated as the birthday of the Persian sun god, Mithras. The religion built around this deity, Mithraism, had become a major rival to the Church in fourthcentury Rome, and Dec. 25 was a big party day for the pagans whom Christians hoped to convert. Which posed a problem: How do we convert these guys if we immediately make them give up their favorite feast?

Christmas. I love evergreen trees and kissing and presents. What I don’t love is the assumption that, as Christians, we own this stuff. What I don’t love is the attitude that cries foul the minute someone removes the cross from the top of the department-store Christmas tree, or that gets upset at the “Happy Holidays” banner outside Wal-Mart.

We call it Christmas and have named it after our Savior, but let’s not be so arrogant as to suggest the holiday is exclusively ours. A better perspective is to admit we have co-opted the season, along with many of its traditions, for the purpose of pointing toward Bethlehem.

Christmas is the story of the Incarnation— of the insertion of Christ into the dust of humanity, of the infusion of grace into something worldly and pagan. In the process, mankind was redeemed. If so, then our theft of these solstice traditions is no crime against history. Instead, it’s yet another picture—a beautiful, generous, peaceful, evergreen metaphor—of redemption. a Jason Boyett is the author of Pocket Guide to Sainthood and Pocket Guide to the Afterlife, among other books. He blogs about faith and culture at JasonBoyett.com.

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THE CONSCIENTIOUS

About to buy another paisley tie for Dad because you don’t know what else to do? Put it down. Here are some gift ideas that could say something more this year; from the ultra-unique to the eco-friendly to the charitable, there’s something for everyone. No re-gifting necessary.

CHRISTMAS GIFT GUIDE

01. iPod Mini Speakers $20

02

www.wishingfish.com Who doesn’t get excited about LEGOs on Christmas morning? Build a mini sound system with these colorful iPod speakers. Works with all models, except iPhone and iPod shuffle.

02. Water-Powered Clock $16 www.bedolwhatsnext.com Forget having to remember to stuff stockings with AA batteries, and buy gifts like this Bedol digital clock that runs on saltwater. It’s available in orange, green and blue.

01

03. Sunshine Hammock $48 www.globalexchangestore.org Both your body and conscience can rest easy in this fair trade hammock, created with recycled scraps from T-shirt factories in El Salvador.

03

04. Mustache Comb $6 04 05

www.urbanoutfitters.com The ‘stache is back (or did it ever leave?). No one likes a messy lip warmer, so keep it in line with this switchblade-style comb.

05. Grassy Lawn Charging Station $25 www.gadgetvenue.com You can’t grow a gadget garden (yet), but you can pretend with this creative charging station.

Cords and cables simply plug in underneath, like roots. Just don’t water it.

06. Drumstick Pencils $7.99 www.thinkgeek.com Who hasn’t occasionally let their inner drummer out while using a writing utensil? Jot down notes and lay down beats with this set of drumstick pencils.

07. Decomposition Notebook $5 www.dreaminplastic.com We haven’t wanted a composition notebook this badly since Harriet the Spy. This one is made from recycled materials and contains planetsaving tips on the inside cover.

06

07

84 / RElEvaNT_NoV/deC 09

08. Speedball Screenprinting Kit $64

08

www.urbanoutfitters.com This kit contains everything you’ll need to be your own Andy Warhol. Buy it for someone, or give screen-printed posters and shirts as gifts.

09

09. Buy Chickens $25 www.worldvision.org Chicken eggs improve protein levels and can be sold for income in third world countries.

You can also donate goats, ducks and alpaca.

10. Suubi Classic Necklace $20 www.suubiafrica.org This unique and versatile necklace is made from recycled paper. Profits support the Suubi women of Uganda, who handmake all of the products available through Light Gives Heat.

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11. Yellow Bird Project T-shirts $25

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www.yellowbirdproject.com This Montreal-based company has joined with indie musicians, from Bon Iver to the Shins, to create awesome T-shirts that benefit the artists’ preferred charities. Rock on.

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12. Tryptych Retablo Nativity $28 www.tenthousandvillages.com A nativity scene is a classic and beautiful reminder of what we celebrate. These image boxes are handmade by artists in Ayacucho, Cuzco and Lima, Peru.

13. Recycled Windshield Bowl $40 www.uncommongoods.com You’d never guess this lovely bowl once sat in a garage. This piece was created by Colombian artisans out of recycled windshield glass.

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14

14. Pocket Synthesizer $30 www.firebox.com The Stylophone is a miniature instrument from the ‘70s, played with a stylus and guaranteed to break the ice at holiday parties.

15. Freudian Slippers $24

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> Sufjan Stevens has been away for far too long. His last “actual”

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album was 2005’s Illinoise more than four years ago! So any new music from the indie-rock god is cause for excitement ... even if it’s instrumental music for a short film he made in 2007 about a bridge in New York known for being an architectural eyesore.

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Christmas_REL_AD 9/25/09 11:23 AM Page 1

THE CLIENTELE BONFIRES ON THE HEATH (MERGE)

kID CUDI MAN ON THE MOON (MOTOWN)

> Every couple years, The Clientele

> Previously known mostly for some

return with another album of gauzy,

killer guest spots (especially on Kanye

perfect pop music that makes you wish

West’s 808s & Heartbreaks), Cudi took

you were watching a London downpour

over the world this summer with his

while huddled under an umbrella with

ubiquitous single “Day n Nite.” His first

the one you love. Bonfires on the Heath,

solo album elaborates on these hints of

their fourth full-length, is no different.

talent with a fully realized concept as

The title track is lovely, filled with

well as plenty of hipster cred as Kanye,

longing sighs and wailing pedal steel.

MGMT and Ratatat offer guest spots,

But this doesn’t mean they remain

and Common “narrates” the story of

stagnant: “I Wonder Who We Are”

the album. The entire effort sounds

sounds like it could be on a doo-wop

like the soundtrack to some kind of

record from the ’50s, and “I Know

urban sci-fi film, with echo-y beats and

I’ll See Your Face” has some Spanish

synth washes ruling the day behind his

elements. The album is another example

refreshingly not-Auto-Tuned warble.

of why The Clientele make some of the

This debut album makes Kid Cudi

best constructed pop music available—

someone to pay attention to as he tries

especially for the close of autumn.

to change hip-hop.

$

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AS TALL AS LIONS YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU (TRIPLE CROWN)

FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS I TOLD YOU I WAS FREAKY (SUB POP)

RyAN DELMORE THE SPIRIT, THE WATER AND THE BLOOD (VINEYARD)

GIFT OF GAB ESCAPE 2 MARS (CORNERSTONE R.A.S.)

> Not many indie bands sound just

> The new album from the sometimes

> Ryan Delmore’s new album The

hip-hop legends Blackalicious, is known

as good on headphones as they do

inappropriate but always hilarious

Spirit, The Water and The Blood sinks

mostly for his lyrical prowess and

on floor-standing speakers blasted

folk parody band from New Zealand is

deeper roots into Nashville than his

ridiculous vocal dexterity. And that’s

to kingdom come. As Tall as Lions

comprised of songs from the second—

native California. Unabashed in his

on prime display on his second solo

pulls it off with a fine interchange

and, sadly, final—season of their self-

use of countrified basslines, pedal

album, along with plenty of soul, funk

between drums and bass—are they one

titled HBO series. The main difference

steel and harmonica, he takes worship

and electronica. The album, while filled

instrument? Played by one guy? It only

between this album and their first is

music into a rarely occupied strata:

with socially conscious lyrics (“Electric

seems that way—with introspective

that the songs on the new one are

alt-country a la Ryan Adams. With a

Waterfalls” makes mention of electric

acoustic guitar, flap-happy blues-rock

obviously parodies. The R&B-sounding

textured voice, and simple, upward

cars and the title track talks about the

segues and a few ambient/shoe-gazer

“We’re Both in Love With a Sexy Lady”

-focused lyrics, Delmore is best when

effects of global warming), is mostly

moments. “In Case of Rapture,” the

is a spoof of R. Kelly and Usher’s “The

he doesn’t try to do too much. The

about the way words sound together.

most joyous track here, counters

Same Girl,” and the reggae-tinged “You

B-3 on standout track “Sing Like Mary

Gab is such a talented lyricist that

the sullen sentiments about life and

Don’t Have to be a Prostitute” is a male

Sang” swirls around the passionate

his ability to string words and sounds

eternity (e.g., my soul is not for sale)

version of The Police’s “Roxanne.”

lyrics; he clearly believes what he is

into a compelling tapestry is almost

with fantastic backing horns, chamber

Other standouts include the Emmy-

singing, not just putting on a show.

unparalleled. Escape 2 Mars shows one

choir choruses and a crazy-frantic

nominated “Carol Brown” and the ‘80s

Other highlights include the simple call

of today’s best MCs at the the top of his

drum part.

glam-rock “Fashion is Danger.”

to “True Religion” and “Sacred.”

game and shouldn’t be missed.

$

$

$

>Gift of Gab, half of underground

$

THE ROOTS HOW I GOT OVER (DEF JAM)

AIR LOVE 2 (ASTRALWERKS)

THE TWILIGHT SAD FORGET THE NIGHT AHEAD (FATCAT)

THE ALMOST MONSTER MONSTER (TOOTH & NAIL)

> The Roots are one of those bands

> OK, time to get out the mood lighting

> For a band that usually saves their

> The Almost has created a monster.

who make good albums so often that

and lay out the rugs: Air has a new

massive wall of sound for live shows,

The band’s sophomore album, Monster

it’s easy to forget just how remarkable

trance-inducing release, the joyously

The Twilight Sad certainly erupts

Monster, certainly manages to one-up

they are. Album after album is filled

electro Love 2, and—as the product of a

sufficiently on their sophomore

their first release with fuller sounds,

with insightful (and incisive) lyrics

two-man recording project in northern

release, Forget the Night Ahead.

intense lyrics and tighter musicianship.

urging social change and justice for

Paris—it’s highly infectious. In fact,

Aided by James Graham’s surly

This time, the other four members of

all parts of society. This is their ninth

before you get ready to go catatonic,

Scottish accent, towering guitars

the band are thrown into the spotlight

studio album, and finds the band at its

know this: Air has spruced things up.

and propulsive drums, the relentless

to join frontman Aaron Gillespie. This

loosest and most positive in years. The

They’re working again with drummer

scourge on songs like “That Birthday

ensemble effort presents driving

title track sets the tone with a driving

Joey Waronker on a few songs, but

Present” is matched only by the brow-

melodies and beats reminiscent of the

beat and lead MC Black Thought’s

mostly finger-tapping their Korgs to

furrowing wordplay. “Interrupted”

Foo Fighters, as well as quirky lyrics—

musings about overcoming life on the

a congruous confab, similar to what

paints a vivid picture (“You are the

everything from an endearing love

streets. Add in guests like Pharoahe

Owl City and the reinvigorated Moby

olive rose/Bite down on your pillow”)

plea (“If you’re an ocean, then I wanna

Monch along with a cover of a Frank

did this year. Dare to say, it’s almost

as several songs mix slithering

jump right in/If you’re a hand grenade,

Zappa song, and The Roots have pulled

upbeat at times on tracks like the

metaphors (“I Became a Prostitute”)

then I’ll pull the pin”) to the addictive

off another terrific album—now we all

trippy “Be a Bee” and the meandering

with fingers pointed at sexual

chants in the chorus of “Hands,” the

just need to pay attention.

“Heaven’s Light.”

exploitation and other travesties.

album’s first single.

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THRICE BEGGARS (VAGRANT)

BRANDI CARLILE GIVE UP THE GHOST (COLUMBIA)

DAVID CROWDER* BAND CHURCH MUSIC (SIX STEPS RECORDS)

BRAND NEW DAISY (DGC)

> Drums, drums, drums, drums. That’s

> Brandi Carlile is back, bringing her

> The newest album from David

> Everything you need to know about

what makes an alternative band worth

splendidly controlled bellow to a third

Crowder* Band solidifies their

Brand New is that, while the band used

the price of admission. On Thrice’s

album. Give Up the Ghost is a neat

reputation as one of the most inventive

to tour with Good Charlotte and Blink-

best to date, the percussion carries

mix of genres, featuring an array of

groups in Christian music. Church

182, they’re supporting their new CD,

every song—you hear them envelope

songs that spans folk, rock, pop and

Music fearlessly ranges across genres

Daisy, with indie rockers Manchester

the guitar on “The Weight” (a song

country. Less mellow than her first

with a blend of electronica, blistering

Orchestra as tourmates. The denser

about broken promises), on “Circles”

two releases, the album is effectively

instrumentals and unadorned

sound, sans the punkish attitude, is

(where they serve as a droning

arranged, alternating soulful ballads

hymnody. “Church Music – Dance [!],”

slightly goth … and wholly improved.

instrument that’s part heartbeat and

and quirky, rhythmic melodies. She

opens with interwoven electronic

The first song has nothing to do with

part relief from the tedium), and on

rocks out with “Dreams,” which

beats, only to fade seamlessly into a

the band: it’s a gospel song recorded

“Wood & Wire” (which is so slowcore

includes a guitar solo that could’ve

guitar solo that rivals Poison. Lyrically,

in some broken-down church. “At the

emo we think Appleseed Cast has a

come right from a scene of Hawaii

DCB finds inspiration in sources

Bottom” unhinges in glorious fashion,

new soundalike). Wait for the best

Five-O. Perhaps the most notable tune

as diverse as the oldest recorded

and “Be Gone” sounds like Black Rebel

song, “In Exile,” about temporal

on the album is “Caroline,” a sweetly

Christian hymn in use today, and John

Motorcycle Club circa 2005. By “Bought

existence, borrowing a few lines from

blended duet with Elton John (and his

Mark McMillan—Crowder’s stirring cover

a Bride,” you get the point: with the

Larry Norman and even sounding a bit

crazy good piano skills) that will leave

of “How He Loves” is one of the highlights

album’s screaming, steel-on-steel

like him at times.

your toe tapping.

of the album.

guitars, it’s raging cathartic rock.

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> In The Hurt Locker, director Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break) has

> UP, the latest from Pixar, follows

> District 9 is something like The

crafted perhaps the best cinematic treatment of the current Iraq War. Fraught with nonstop action, white-knuckled suspense and gripping human drama, The Hurt Locker transcends mere polemics to present a tragic vision of human frailty and violence. Set in 2004 Baghdad, the film traces the war’s descent into a hellish quagmire of roadside bombs and faceless insurgents. Locker follows a trio of American army specialists in Delta Company, charged with the harrowing task of locating and defusing these hidden explosives: the levelheaded Sgt. J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie), the chronically unnerved Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) and Staff Sgt. William James (Jeremy Renner), a riotous cross between MacGyver and Mad Max. The film flits from sniper standoff to bomb crisis and back, with the trio’s nerves frayed to breaking, the odds of survival seemingly plummeting with every moment, and overhanging every scene—the faint pallor of gruesome death. As the tension mounts, the viewer cannot resist a certain existential solidarity with these men: As they sweat and tremble over a ticking bomb, he sweats and shakes on his couch, and feels that their race for survival has in some sense become his own.

the adventure of 78-year-old,

Creature from the Black Lagoon meets

curmudgeonly Carl Fredricksen (Ed

Hotel Rwanda, blending cultural critique

Asner), an indomitable Wilderness

with ‘50s-style monster drama. Made

Scout named Russell, and a host of

on a shoestring budget by a team

other unlikely companions, including

of unknown South Africans, District

a talking dog and a colorful giant

9 presents a documentary-style

moa. As Carl and Rusty fly to a South

allegory of racism, apartheid and social

American paradise in a rickety house

unrest. When a spaceship stalls over

suspended from thousands of helium

Johannesburg and unloads about a

balloons, the film explores the grief

million alien refugees, are we to fear

that follows death and divorce, the

them, or should they fear us? The

surprising joys of friendship and our

government corrals the “Prawns” (the

ability to begin anew when all seems

human epithet applied to them) into a

lost. Fun, but rarely silly; sad, but

slum, and instigates a controlled human/

not gloomy; and touching without

alien segregation for the next 20 years.

melodrama, UP continues Pixar’s

The movie explores what occurs when

legacy of films that appeal to all ages.

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(PARTICIPANT MEDIA)

(500) dAys of summer (WATERMARK)

LornA’s siLence (LES FILMS DU FLEUVE)

stAr trek (PARAMOUNT PICTURES)

> Ever wonder where your food comes

> In (500) Days of Summer, Tom

> Lorna’s Silence (named best

> In Star Trek, J.J. Abrams jumpstarts

from, or why it’s so cheap at grocery

(Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is obsessed

screenplay at Cannes) depicts a

the classic franchise by paying homage

stores and fast food places? Food, Inc.

with finding “the one,” and Summer

tragic fall from grace: a poor Albanian

to its roots, even as he updates it to

is a documentary that explores such

(Zooey Deschanel) thinks “true

immigrant embroils herself in the sordid

connect to new generations of potential

questions, with insight from authors

love” is a myth. They both work for

world of Belgian organized crime to

Trekkies. Abrams delivers a trademark

Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser (The

a greeting card company, crafting

attain citizenship, but finds herself

visual effects extravaganza, replete with

Omnivore’s Dilemma and Fast Food

new ways of expressing love even as

beset and abused by forces beyond

explosions and fistfights, but not at the

Nation, respectively). From revealing

they argue over its existence; they

her control. The brilliant Dardenne

cost of interesting subplots that flesh out

how chickens are mass-produced,

go on dates to see The Graduate

Brothers have produced another gritty

the origins of the Enterprise’s famous

to telling the story of a mother-

(for a bit of meta-angst) and to

urban drama, set amid a bleak, godless

crew (and sets up the franchise to go

turned-activist who lost her healthy

IKEA, in a 21st century version of

Belgium, in which things like marriage

in both new and old directions). In the

two-year-old to E. coli after he ate a

playing house. With superb acting—

and pregnancy are merely economic

paranoid humor of exiled Scotty (Simon

contaminated fast food burger, the

Deschanel glows, and Gordon-Levitt’s

transactions. Nonetheless, the grace

Pegg), the vast potential of unruly James

film reveals that while fast food meals

descent from love-addled romantic

of love is never far from sight, if only

Kirk (Chris Pine) or the identity crisis

are cheap, there’s still a price. It might

to destroyed ex-lover is winning

in the affection of a nurse at a state

of half-human Spock (Zachary Quinto),

also help you form a new habit: buying

and tragic—a killer soundtrack, and

hospital, and its shadowy presence

Abrams gives these sci-fi mainstays a new

local at farmers’ markets rather than

playful cinematography, (500) Days

animates the heroine in her struggle

lease on life by giving them a past.

turning to a grocery store.

of Summer is an archetypal love story

against despair.

for our generation.

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Exploration not explanation, thatʼs GodFilms. Each open-ended short film invites individuals, small groups and congregations to search, discuss and discover Biblical application together. Rather than experts explaining issues, GodFilms are often mysterious and thought-provoking, pushing us to g “MYSTERIOUS and TOUCHING! Our small group loved this resource!”

— CLAYTON D., KS

unwrap Jesus’ teaching in a new way.

RECOmmENDS

BOOKs/// DRopS LikE STARS ROb bELL (ZONDERVAN)

$

LeAvinGs: Poems WENDELL BERRY (COUNTERPOINT)

A PArAdise buiLt in heLL REBECCA SOLNIT (VIKING ADULT)

> Wendell Berry doesn’t belong to

> The media focused extensively

> Pastor and author Rob Bell’s newest book, Drops Like Stars, is a

a particular school of poetry. He

on the chaos in New Orleans in the

work of practical theology which offers “a few thoughts on creativity and suffering.” Drops is an interesting new direction for Bell, both for the maturity of its theological reflection, and for its fascinating—at times stunning—design and visual elements, which play freely in the expansive book’s “coffee table” dimensions. Bell explores six “art forms” that arise in the wake of suffering: our complacency shatters in “the art of disruption,” we break through our self-deception in “the art of honesty,” we awaken to the brokenness of the world in “the art of the ache,” we discover new depths of community in “the art of solidarity,” we are refined by fire and chisel in “the art of elimination,” and we learn we worship “The God Who Wastes Nothing” in “the art of failure.” At its heart, Drops is a reflection on the mystery of the Incarnation, of Christ as both our co-sufferer and the victor over sin and death, who “takes all of our trauma and hurt and disappointment, all those fragments lying there on the ground, and turns them into … something new.”

writes poetry, he says, for the love

aftermath of Hurricane Katrina:

of it and to his own satisfaction. In

looters, the Superdome, bands of

his latest collection, Berry utilizes

armed men wandering the streets.

a variety of forms, including letter

What they missed was the myriad

poems, a speech, a questionnaire and

ways strangers came together to

short poems as elegantly concise as

save lives and homes, and to preserve

haiku: “Suppose we did our work/

the spirit of their beloved city. In her

like the snow, quietly, quietly/

extraordinary new book, Rebecca

leaving nothing out.” The majority of

Solnit investigates the communities

Leavings consists of Sabbath poems,

which arise in times of crisis. “In

verses written during Berry’s Sunday

disaster people come together,” Solnit

morning walks, which touch on

writes, “and though some fear this

themes familiar to readers of Berry’s

gathering as a mob, many cherish it as

poetry, fiction and essays: marriage,

an experience of civil society that is

the land, good work, and the miracle

close enough to paradise.”

and mystery of life and death.

$

$

the Justice ProJect BRIAN MCLAREN, ELISA PADILLA, ASHLEY BUNTING SEEBER (BAKER BOOKS)

the mAGiciAns LEV GROSSMAN (VIKING ADULT)

the heALinG of AmericA T.R. REID (THE PENGUIN PRESS)

A GAte At the stAirs LORRIE MOORE (KNOPF)

> It is impossible to talk about The

> In this timely new book, T.R.

> Lorrie Moore’s new novel, A Gate at

Magicians without mentioning Harry

Reid, a long-time reporter for The

the Stairs, is told through the eyes and

> Second in the emersion series, a

Potter or The Chronicles of Narnia,

Washington Post, takes his bum

wry voice of 20-year-old Tassie Keltjin,

collaboration between Baker Books

so we’re not even going to try. The

shoulder on a global pilgrimage of

a country girl who is dazzled (but who

and Emergent Village, The Justice

“Harry” in Lev Grossman’s novel is

national health care systems. The

works hard to be dazzled ironically) by

Project is a collection of essays

Quentin Coldwater, a brilliant, bored

Healing of America starts from

college life in the university town of

featuring both well-known and less-

and lonely kid about to graduate

the premise that America’s health

Troy, Mich. This funny and insightful

recognized writers discussing justice

high school before he is swept away

care system is broken and could be

coming-of-age story, which is set

from a diverse array of perspectives

to Brakebills, an elite university for

fixed by borrowing ideas from other

soon after 9/11, follows Tassie as she

and across a broad range of issues.

magicians in upstate New York. This

countries. Reid evaluates each system

takes a part-time job as a nanny for a

Compiled by Brian McLaren, Elisa

book definitely isn’t for kids, though,

by overall coverage, quality, cost and

middle-aged couple who have adopted

Padilla and Ashley Bunting Seeber,

and while Lewis and Rowling provide

choice, while asking the question,

a toddler. Readers of Moore’s work—

these short essays from individuals

the foundation, Grossman builds a dark

should profit be part of the health

most recently the beautiful short story

around the world doing the dirty work

and spellbinding story that’s entirely

care equation? While every reader

collection Birds of America—who’ve

of justice are a fine introduction for

his own, creating a memorable cast of

may not agree with Reid’s answer, his

waited 10 years for her next book (and

those of us Christians longing to learn

characters who inhabit a world both

book is an important and clear-eyed

15 for her next novel) can rest assured:

what it looks like to “do justice, love

strange and unpredictably familiar.

contribution to this complicated and

It was worth the wait.

intensely personal debate.

$

mercy and walk humbly with God.”

Relevant 2_3.65 x 4.98

$

8/3/09$ 10:39 AM

Page 1

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Transformed by

GRACE Live The Language • Stay with a host family • Native Spanish professors • Gain more fluency • Seville and beyond is your classroom

At Grace Theological Seminary,

God will transform your life and provide relevance to your ministry. Your studies will be biblically rooted, academically excellent, and full of valuable and practical ministry insights.

Above all, at Grace Seminary you can experience God’s transforming work that will forever enhance your ministry.

Be transformed by Grace and transform the world.

FOr more Info Contact:

www.semesterinspain.org/rm spain@trnty.edu or call us 800.748.0087

866.974.7223 WWW.grace.edu/relev

CONTENTS 8 First Word 10 Letters 14 Slices 22 Worldview: Can’t We All Just Get Along?

24 Deeper Walk: When God is Silent 26 Reject Apathy: Africa is Not That Sexy 28 Reject Apathy Frontliner & Spotlight

32 The Drop fun., Shad, Los Campesinos!

38 Matisyahu 42 So, Is Drinking OK? 46 2010: Ten ways the new year will melt your face* *And the ice caps

50 Is God an Illusion?

60 Church Mutiny Are young adult ministries killing the Church?

64 The New Face of Homelessness 72 Bat for Lashes 74 Merry Consumerism 80 Stealing Christmas

COVER STORY:

84 Conscientious Christmas Gifts 88 Recommends

SWITCHFOOT

THIS GENERATION CAN END EXTREME POVERTY.

ARE YOU IN?

TO TAKE ACTION AT YOUR COLLEGE VISIT ONE.ORG/CAMPUS