RELEVANT - Issue 80 - March/April 2016

OSCAR-WINNER ALEJANDRO IÑÁRRITU | SHAUNA NIEQUIST | CHRIS TOMLIN | ISLAMOPHOBIA | RICK WARREN FAITH, CULTURE & INTENTIONAL LIVING

R E L E VA N T M A G A Z I N E . C O M

THE

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AND THE MUSICAL SHIFT WE’VE BEEN WAITING FOR

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SMALL GROUP GUIDE

Refugees are caught in the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today.

The Church must respond.

Help your congregation draw closer to God’s heart for refugees and invite them to care for the most vulnerable.

You have been a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy in their distress. —Isaiah 25:4 (NIV )

Seven-year-old Sedra and her family live in a refugee camp in Jordan, where World Vision has been working to improve living conditions.

HOST A REFUGEE SUNDAY Learn more at

worldvision.org/church World Vision is a Christian humanitarian organization dedicated to working with children, families, and their communities worldwide to reach their full potential by tackling the causes of poverty and injustice. Motivated by our faith in Jesus Christ, we serve alongside the poor and oppressed as a demonstration of God’s unconditional love for all people.

TIRED OF THE NOISE?

As people looking to help change the world, often the busyness, pace, noise and demands of leadership can become overwhelming.

We know that feeling too.

Good thing that’s not the end of the story.

For the past 8 years, we’ve fought for, and invited others, into discovering a deeper sense of rhythm, adventure, calling and passion in our lives as leaders. And we believe now more than ever, that to truly change the world, we must first discover a deep connection with God in our own journey first.

A journey that could change everything. www.rhythmintwenty.com

T H E M A G A Z I N E O N FA I T H , C U LT U R E & I N T E N T I O N A L L I V I N G

MARCH/APRIL 2016, ISSUE 80 Celebrating 13 years in print—we weren’t børns yesterday.

Publisher & CEO | CAMERØN STRANG Editorial Director | AARØN CLINE HANBURY Senior Editor | JESSE CAREY Associate Editor | DARGAN THØMPSØN Editorial Coordinator | LINDSEY STATØN Social Media Coordinator | TIFFANIE BRUNSØN Contributing Writers: Matt Conner, Matt Damico, Rob Fee, Tyler Huckabee, Ruth Ann Irvin, Emily Mcfarlan Miller, Shauna Niequist, David Roark, Christopher Smith, Eugene Suen, Matthew Paul Turner, Rick Warren Contributing Photographers: Peter Bárci, Zedek Chan, Ira Chernova, Lauren Dukoff, Pooneh Ghana, Paul Kranzler, Guilherme Silva da Rosa Designer | JØHN DAVID HARRIS Designer | DANIEL BARCELØ Videographer | DØUG JACKSØN Photographer | ABBY CØX Audio Producer | JEREMIAH DUNLAP Digital Development Director | STEVEN LINN Senior Account Manager | MATT BLAHNIK Account Manager | RACHEL DØUGLASS Project Manager | NIKKI GRAHAM Circulation & User Experience Manager | AME LYNN DUNN Customer Experience Coordinator | CARØLINE CØLE Finance Manager | MERCEDES SIMØN Special Projects Coordinator | ERIC WARD Operations Assistant | JESSICA CØLLINS Systems Administrator | JØSH STRØHM ADVERTISING INQUIRIES: www.RELEVANTmagazine.com/advertise

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Issue #80 March/April 2016 (ISSN: 1543-317X). RELEVANT is published 6 times a year in January, March, May, July, September and November for $14.99 per year by RELEVANT Media Group, Inc., 900 N. Orange Ave., Winter Park, FL 32789. Periodicals postage paid at Orlando, FL, and at additional mailing offices.

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FIRST WORD

A LET TER FROM THE EDITOR

WE’VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS

BY CAMERON STR ANG

very year in our March issue, we spotlight the trends and artists that will define the year in music. We’re passionate about finding great art, and we always look forward to highlighting the things that are breaking new ground.

When we look at music, we’re not looking at it like other magazines might. At RELEVANT, we believe when you’re pursuing God with your life, it affects every aspect of how you live. Our spiritual lives shouldn’t be relegated to Sunday mornings. God is (cough) relevant to every aspect of our lives, which means there’s a spiritual perspective we should have on our relationships, careers, social justice and, yes, how we engage culture.

We believe God can speak in and through culture. You can easily find spiritual significance in an Arcade Fire hook, if you’re listening with discernment.

We also believe there are artists saying important things the Church needs to hear.

They may be on a very different page spiritually, but by engaging those artists and hearing their stories, it brings an understanding that’s important. We don’t want to be separatists and avoid those we disagree with—we want to engage them.

Also, we’re not interested in status quo. Just because something is popular doesn’t mean it’s good or worth covering in the magazine. That’s why we love looking deeper for great art—music that’s redemptive, innovative or creatively compelling.

When we do our new music issue, we’re always looking to highlight artists who check those boxes—artists who are making music that’s interesting or groundbreaking. You know, the stuff worth talking about.

And I’ll admit, some years, it’s been a struggle to find stuff that really excites us.

But not this year.

In 2016, we’re embarking on what looks like a significant new era in music. Some of the art being made right now is fundamentally unlike stuff we’ve seen before.

E

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Last year was largely defined by the breakout success of smart, genre-blurring EDM (electronic dance music). We saw Skrillex and Diplo collaborate with pop stars and make unexpectedly great stuff.

Major Lazer (Diplo’s reggae/dancehall project) and DJ Snake pretty much ruled the summer with massive hits like “Lean On (feat. MØ),” and Australian DJ Alison Wonderland showed the chops of her classical training with stand-out tracks like “Run.” This year, we’re seeing the genre-blurring trend go even further, pushing the worlds of indie, dance, R&B and even pop into very interesting territory.

Gallant (who we talk to on page 56), Troye Sivan and Raury are young artists building on the experimental approach we’ve seen in the past from the likes of James Blake and Thom Yorke, but with soaring, hook-laden songs that showcase lyrical vulnerability and defy genre categorization.

These new artists are drawing influences from a broad spectrum of music, wrapping their art in strong pop sensibilities and unexpected depth. The result is a song like Gallant’s “Weight in Gold”—something that grabs you and doesn’t let go.

Think about this: These artists grew up in an era where the world’s music library has always been just a couple of clicks away.

Want to immerse yourself in the late ’70s/ early ’80s punk scene? There’s a playlist for that. Want to dive deep into the catalog of Patty Loveless? You can do that in an evening. Want to hear the latest from the London grime scene? Just turn on Apple’s Beats 1, because they play it all the time.

With technology leveling the playing field globally, it’s forming a totally new musical DNA in a generation of artists. We’re entering a fundamentally new era of music exposure and convergence.

What we’re seeing is bold, interesting, revolutionary and fresh. Boundaries are being pushed, formulas are being obliterated.

Music is exciting again.

Having covered more than our share of trends over the years, I have to say: We’ve been waiting for this.

CAMERON STR ANG is the founder and publisher of RELEVANT. Connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @cameronstrang.

FEEDBACK

ON ISSUE 79 JAN/FEB 2016

LECRAE I’ve enjoyed Lecrae’s music for a long time, and I’ve admired him for his dedication to making great art. But I had no idea he had such an insane back story. I really appreciated his honesty in talking about how he struggled even after he came to know Christ—and how he still struggles today. After reading about some of what he’s been through, I respect him even more!

JIMMY HALTER / Via Facebook

T W E E T N E S S

@ LAWR E N C E P OWE R S

The newest issue of @RELEVANT is on point! So many good articles! (@JonAcuff’s was the swift kick I needed today. Thanks for that.) @ AN D R E AME L C HE

@lecrae Thank you for bravely sharing your story in @RELEVANT. Thank you for allowing God to use your pain to touch others. @MYAMYGO

I feel like I might actually achieve my resolutions this year thanks to the advice in @RELEVANT.

[“Happily Ever After”] is a mustread for married couples. I speak from experience. My husband and I have put each one of these five into practice—and they work! We have a wonderful marriage because God has grown us to this place. Friendship and passion are the components that make our marriage work.

Ever since I started reading RELEVANT, I have been consistently impressed. I applaud the standard of excellence in your selection of writers. The articles are exceptionally written and each article remains uncompromising to the Gospel. The hearts of the writers are evident, not merely writing regurgitated theology but speaking from rich wells of their own journey with God. I’m so excited to have something I can be proud of as a Christian!

BETH HALL / Via email

SAMKE KHUMALO / Via email

As an LA native, the “Welcome to Holy-Wood” article was incredibly encouraging. I’m so excited about what God’s doing here!

@ LE G OFHE R SC HE L

@RELEVANT @cameronstrang Just read the First Word. Thanks for the dedication to balance in a country that seems to want nothing to do with it. @ J _E _PAR K E R

I was skeptical when I saw @RELEVANT published a #2016Predictions piece, but upon review, I’m completely floored.

Well played.

DAMIEN L. / Via Twitter

Thank you for the wonderful content in your magazine. I’ve been enjoying all the stories of entrepreneurs overcoming obstacles to make their dream business a reality. I use the inspiration they bring to keep aspiring and keep working.

I’ve been having a bit of a “quarter-life crisis” for the last year or two. I am realizing God has a lot to teach me right where I am, and I need to be open to hearing from the Holy Spirit in the everyday.

Do I trust God to work through me in the ordinary circumstances I am in? If not, how will I ever be able to handle “big” things? Jon Acuff’s article was very timely advice for me!

KATHRYN LAPP / Via email

LEIGH-ANNE SPILMAN-COOPER / RELEVANTmagazine.com

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@ G U N TU S_

Kendrick, LANY, Alabama Shakes, Bieber, Hillsong and JR JR all on the same playlist. I love @RELEVANT. @ SE AN K E R N O

I’ve been a @lecrae fan since ‘02, and I still learned stuff I never knew in the new @RELEVANT article.

Great interview.

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SLICES P H O T O C R E D I T: S I M O N C A R D W E L L

A B IM O N TH LY LO O K AT FA IT H, LIF E + C ULT URE

MILLENNIALS CAN DECIDE WHO RULES THE FREE WORLD

THERE’S JUST ONE CATCH—IT REQUIRES ACTUALLY VOTING

M

illennials are now officially the largest and most poOne reason for this may be millennials’ negative views of govlitically powerful generation in American history. ernment. In a poll from Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, Population data released by the U.S. Census Bureau only 36 percent of respondents said they trusted the president to reveals that in 2015, millennials—those born between do the right thing all or most of the time.

1981 and 1997—overtook baby boomers as the most populous genBut elections are about more than individual leaders. For erational segment in the country’s history.

Hunter Baker, a professor of political science at Union University And, because they make up more than 30 percent of all eligible in Jackson, Tennessee, Christian millennials’ passion for cultural voters, this generation will have the majority say change should drive them to vote. For Christians, in who wins this year’s presidential election.

Baker says, political participation can be espeThere’s only one problem, though, for policially important as a way to promote thoughtful, ticians attempting to use Between Two Ferns godly viewpoints on things like life issues, reliIn 2015, appearances and BuzzFeed interviews to woo gious liberty and human dignity. millennials younger voters: Most millennials simply aren’t “[Evangelicals] have to engage fully with the overtook politically active. broader society, including with regard to poliThe Tufts University civic engagement center, tics,” Baker says. “Our politics should reflect godboomers as CIRCLE, reports that in the 2014 midterm elecly priorities.” the biggest tions, turnout among millennial voters was the With the U.S. presidential elections coming up, lowest ever recorded. Less than 20 percent of 18millennials should be the demographic that degeneration to 29-year-olds voted, compared with 26.6 percides the next leader of the free world—that is, if in the U.S. cent in past midterm elections. they actually show up to the polls.

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IF IT’S NOT PERFECT, IT’S FREE. Try it risk-free for 100 nights.

If you don’t love it, we’ll help you donate to someone in need.

TN.COM rom Maryland to South Carolina to Texas, stories of black citizens killed unjustly by police officers have become some of the most common events on the evening news. Not surprisingly, racial tensions across America are at their highest levels since the late 1960s— and many Americans believe race relations are worsening.

According to a recent survey from The New

SLICES

M I S C. New findings from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation project that, when measured by weight, the ocean will have more plastic than fish by 2050. Americans produced more than 30 million tons of plastic in 2009 and recycled only 2 million tons. Yikes.

CAN A.I. ACTUALLY SAVE THE WORLD? B

illionaire Elon Musk has launched a project to empower communities of developers to work on artificial intelligence—all with the hope that it can one day solve the world’s biggest problems. Musk and several Silicon Valley leaders chipped in $1 billion to launch OpenAI, an open source research group they say will lead the way in AI advancements. In a statement, they said the goal of the open platform was to “prioritize a good outcome for all over its own self-interest.” But several other companies are at work on AI initiatives that, unfortunately, sound a lot more Terminator-like.

POTENTIAL FUTURE OVERLORDS: Google purchased DeepMind to “combine the best techniques from machine learning and systems neuroscience,” whatever that means.

Microsoft created Project Adam, a “deep-learning” software that can “visually recognize any object”— yup, just like the Terminator eye.

Ken Kratz, the prosecutor in the case featured in Netflix’s Making a Murderer, is writing a book accusing the show’s creators of bias. The book will detail the prosecution’s side and include facts left out of the show.

An inspection of about 17,000 hoverboards— those handleless motorized scooters everyone seems to be riding—found 88 percent were in danger of overheating, catching fire or exploding due to faulty plugs.

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LIKELIHOOD TO ONE DAY ENSL AVE HUMANIT Y:

99% chance this is what Siri really looks like

22% 47%

Apple acquired the startup Emotient, a technology that learns how to read facial expressions.

64%

Mark Zuckerberg announced he is creating an AI personal assistant “kind of like Jarvis in Iron Man.”

99% ‘THE GET DOWN’ COULD BE HIP-HOP’S ANTI-‘EMPIRE’ FILMMAKER BAZ LUHRMANN (the man behind big-budget productions like Romeo + Juliet, The Great Gatsby and Moulin Rouge) is tackling a much grittier story for Netflix: the South Bronx origins of hip-hop. The Get Down is no Empire though. Instead of looking at the glamorous world of a high-profile record label, this drama is set in the ’70s, as young artists were first experimenting with the sounds that would go on to change pop culture. Hip-hop legend Grandmaster Flash has signed on as a producer.

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T H E N E W B I E S L EUTH’ S GUIDE TO THE

TRUE CRIME REVIVAL F

or decades, the “true crime” genre has walked the line of exploiting public interest in real tragedies and offering journalistic looks at important events. But a new brand of true crime—fueled by on-demand TV and podcasts—is doing more than just exploring violent events: It is exposing injustice, finding flaws in the criminal justice system and showing why sometimes the “perpetrators” can actually be the victims.

Here are some of the can’t-miss shows leading the charge:

WAT C H

L ISTEN

THE JINX

UNDISCLOSED

SERIAL

This miniseries from HBO examines the real case of real estate heir Robert Durst, a man who may have used his wealth to avoid prosecution for the murders of two women.

Don’t miss the final episode.

The Undisclosed podcast picks up where Serial season one left off, exploring the case against Adnan Syed. Hosted by attorneys, the show dives deeper into the evidence. Who knew that was even possible?

The hit podcast is investigative journalism at its finest, whether it’s looking at a 15-yearold murder case or the highly publicized story of former POW Bowe Bergdahl. (Season 2 is airing biweekly so you can catch up.)

MAKING A MURDERER

UNSOLVED

CRIMINAL

After serving 18 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, Steven Avery was exonerated and sued local officials for millions. Weeks later, he was arrested—this time for murder.

Newspaper investigative reporters use old interviews, public records and any possible evidence in an attempt to solve a 40-yearold murder case and bring a killer to justice.

One of the top 20 podcasts in iTunes, Criminal does more than just give in-depth looks at compelling cases. It examines the social and psychological motivations behind them.

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Q +A

SHOULD THE CHURCH SUPPORT #BLACKLIVESMATTER?

AT

THE BEGINNING OF THE YEAR, activist Michelle Higgins took the stage at the Urbana missions conference and issued a call to action: all Christians, she said, should support the Black Lives Matter movement. The video of her talk went viral and sparked a fierce debate among evangelicals about their role in the movement. Higgins talked with RELEVANT about the speech and the importance of Black Lives Matter.

CAN YOU DEFINE BLACK LIVES MATTER?

Black Lives Matter is a decentralized movement that maintains momentum by having local organizers and activists take on a call to people in their own spaces. It is headless intentionally, and that’s actually an opportunity for Christians.

We want to affirm that nobody has the right to decide whether a person is executed on the street. The movement is very clear in what it affirms: Nobody has the right to harass or kill a police officer.

WHY SHOULD CHRISTIANS SUPPORT THE BLACK LIVES MATTER MOVEMENT?

Reconciliation is not just a hug and a kiss and now we’re OK. True reconciliation involves equity, racial equity.

Black Lives Matter is preaching life, hope and justice, and if we want to learn how to preach a fuller Gospel, then we have to participate with people who are teaching parts of the truth. If we hide from the areas where truth is being preached— like the truth of all people being created equally—we actually perpetuate some of the lies that come attached to that truth.

[We need to be] in those movements to

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tell people, “Jesus loves justice and Jesus loves you, and He’s calling you into His family.” If we’re not rehearsing the Gospel here, then we’re going to be really bad at making disciples of all nations.

HOW CAN CHRISTIANS HAVE HONEST CONVERSATIONS ABOUT RACE ISSUES THAT HELP US ALL WORK TOGETHER?

Everyone interested in working together has to educate themselves first on the issues surrounding Black Lives Matter. And then, don’t talk about it on social media.

Find somebody in the flesh who will sit with you through the mess of saying the wrong thing for the wrong reasons and still protect you, because Christians are called to create safe spaces for MICHELLE HIGGINS each other. Find Director of Worship somebody who and Outreach, South can help you proCity Church in St. Louis. cess what you’re faithforjustice.com learning.

‘OF KINGS AND PROPHETS’: KING DAVID IS TOO HOT FOR TV THIS MARCH, ABC WILL TRY yet again

to bring the story of King David to primetime. It’s not the first time the network has attempted to bring one of the Bible’s most conflicted heroes to the small screen.

The show, Of Kings and Prophets, was originally supposed to air back in the fall, but after an expensive pilot was shot, the network decided to recast some of the major roles and rework the direction of the series. Luckily for them, the source material has plenty of drama. In fact, one of the problems producers have faced with the story is the amount of X-rated parts.

One of the show’s creators, Adam Cooper, explained to Variety that some of the edgier material might appear in online-only edits: “We have more leeway with online content” he said. “In the broadcast version, we kind of have to cut around [sex scenes] and do it in pieces, but in the online version, I think we can show it as we originally intended.

“Certainly not added scenes, just different edits.”

Too sexy for his vest.

Mark enjoys a hot cup of tea with his good buddy Bullet. He serves in Lesotho as part of an outreach team among Lesotho’s highland shepherd community.

A land where uncommon adventure rewards those who make unconventional choices.

Like a graphic artist who became a shepherd among people unreached by the gospel.

It’s a daring move for anyone — a teacher, a nurse, an analyst, or whatever else you may be.

But the greatest risk is not considering it. Because you might leave life’s biggest questions unanswered and your most significant work undone.

Find your way to an unreached mission field.

AfricaIsUnexpected.com

SLICES

M I S C.

THE H T LIST BIMONTHLY CULTURE POWER RANKINGS

VIRTUAL REALIT Y [HOT TEST] Instead of spending all of your time looking down at your phone, you can now just strap giant screens onto your face!

DAREDEVIL [HOT TER] Crime fighting. Superpowers.

Catholicism. What’s not to love about the new season of the Netflix series?

‘90S ROCK [HOT] The return of bands like Weezer, Pearl Jam, Thrice and Mogwai prove that the dream of the ‘90s is still alive.

HIPSTER SOMBREROS [COLD] Attention hipsters: Some oldtimey gold prospectors called.

They want their hats back.

THE END OF THE WORLD [COLDER] X-Men: Apocalypse. Independence Day. The Walking Dead. We get it already. We saw Left Behind.

POLITICAL DEBATES [COLDEST] Let’s be real, debates have become just a bad reality show, and TV has enough of those.

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Obviously just coming from a Sunday morning service.

STUDY: RELIGION MAKES YOU HAPPY

W

hat’s the secret to lifelong happiness? According to a recent study in the American Journal of Epidemiology, it’s getting involved in a church. Teams from the London School of Economics and Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands found that involvement in organized religion was more effective at producing “sustained happiness” than sports, political groups, charity work or continuing educational efforts. In a statement, one of the study’s authors explained, “The Church appears to play a very important social role in keeping depression at bay and also as a coping mechanism during periods of illness in later life.” It’s a conclusion anyone who ever went to a youth group lock-in is already well aware of.

LIBERTY UNIVERSITY WANTS STUDENTS TO CARRY GUNS A MER IC A’S L A RGES T CHR IS T I A N UNI V ER SI T Y has found itself

at the center of a national gun debate. Just days after Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr.—the son of the school’s founder—made controversial comments advocating for firearmwielding students being able to “end those Muslims” after the San Bernardino terrorist attacks, the school changed its campus gun policy. School administrators will now allow students to carry firearms in residential dorms. Falwell told the student body that it is his “responsibility to keep you safe in an increasingly dangerous world,” noting that the school offers classes where students can get their concealed-carry permits.

Nielsen will soon be using social media conversations about your favorite TV shows in their official viewership metrics. The new “Social Content Ratings” will allow advertisers to see how engaging shows are among viewers that use Facebook and Twitter.

Two of your friends from Pawnee may be headed back to TV—sort of. NBC has purchased pilots of new shows from both Amy Poehler and Rashida Jones, In both cases, the former Parks and Rec stars will be producing.

According to a new Oxfam report, the richest 1 percent of people in the world have more wealth than the rest of the global population.

Much of that belongs to just 62 individuals, who have more wealth than 3.5 billion people combined.

YOU HAVE THE PASSION TO CHANGE THE WORLD. WE’LL PREPARE YOU TO LEAD THE WAY.

Children’s and Family Ministry Christian Thought Ministry Practice Transformational Leadership Master of Divinity Doctor of Ministry

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To whom it may concern YOU’RE ALREADY STARTING THE NEW YEAR OFF RIGHT

We are not interested in finding the “qualified.” This is a search for the brave few who find value in serving others and showing mercy.

This is not a program to participate in but a new way of being, a life dedicated to intentional community, humble service, and the stewardship of grace.

The requirement is caring. The measurement is empathy.

Only apply if you are poor in spirit. You mourn. You’re meek. You’re a peacemaker, persecuted and insulted, but also blessed, made righteous and redeemed.

Only apply if you believe in giving, not taking. When the world tells you to consume, collect, gain, and prove—you choose to share, help, heal, and love.

Christ bids you come and die, to be part of a generation of healers, not those who harm; of those who are here to serve not to be served.

JOIN US. SERVE SEATTLE.

Sincerely The brokenhearted, The bruised, The weary, The redeemed.

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ENTERTAINMENT ACTUALLY WORTH YOUR TIME

F IL M /T V AUDIO B O O KS

This gorgeous boutique hotel in Austria employs 20 refugees who’ve fled violence.

CHECK IN TO THIS HOTEL RUN BY REFUGEES AS

1 OD D I S E E : T H E G O O D F I G H T

Oddisee’s eclectic hip-hop album draws on funk influences, making it fun for fans of any genre.

OMONIGHO

2 M R . R OB OT

A refugee from Nigeria

Catch up on USA’s surprise hit about a rebel hacker before season two drops this summer.

3 J E S U S C U LTU RE: L E T I T E C H O ( L I VE)

This live album from Jesus Culture is more than just a collection of great songs; it’s a worship experience.

EHSAN

Fled Afghanistan in 2010

refugees from North Africa and Syria continue to flee violence and make their way to Europe, one hotel has found a way to welcome them to their new homes— by providing them with jobs.

The Magdas Hotel in Vienna, Austria, employs refugees and asylum seekers at a chic, 78-room former retirement home. The boutique hotel pairs 20 refugees with 10 hotel industry experts, giving them both an income and long-term job training.

Though it was founded by a Catholic nonprofit, Magdas aims to be a sustainable business that shows how valuable refugees are to European society.

“They are open-minded, they speak many languages, they are warm-hearted, they like to work, they are engaged,” says founder Gabriela Sonnleitner. “They really want to contribute to the country. It’s a big chance for Austria if we get young, talented, motivated people who want to work, and I think we should make use of these talents.”

4 DON VERDEAN

From filmmaker Jared

5 R E P LY AL L

Though it’s billed as “a show about the Internet,” Gimlet’s Reply All podcast is really a look at stories of the humanity behind the technology.

6 H I S FOR H AWK

A stunning memoir, H Is For Hawk is about loss, grief, fatherhood and, yes, falconry.

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DID ARCHAEOLOGISTS JUST FIND EVIDENCE OF THE REAL HEZEKIAH?

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he reign of King Hezekiah is well-documented in the Old Testament, but until recently, there’s never been physical proof that the ruler mentioned in 2 Kings, Isaiah and 2 Chronicles ever existed. A new discovery may change that. Archeologists in Israel have uncovered what they believe may be the seal of the king on a small artifact that reads “Belonging to Hezekiah [son of ] Ahaz king of Judah.” However, because it was found on contested landed, some researchers are skeptical of the discovery, and say more research needs to be done to confirm its authenticity.

P H O T O C R E D I T: S _ B U C K L E Y / S H U T T E R S T O C K

Hess (Napoleon Dynamite), this comedy tells the story of a biblical archaeologist (played by Sam Rockwell) who has something to hide.

THE CHURCH IS UNDER ATTACK. Will you stand with our brothers and sisters?

In northern Iraq, radical Muslims (ISIS) spray-painted the Arabic letter ‫ن‬, or “N,” on the homes and businesses of Christians. The property owners were publicly identified as Christ-followers and given a choice to convert to Islam, leave, or die. The courageous believers refused to deny their faith. Over 100,000 left with barely the clothing on their backs. For these exiles, this is not temporary; their life circumstances on this earth are unlikely to improve—ever.

“I will not let them suffer in silence.

I will not let them serve alone.”

Learn how you can help

i-am-n.com

®

SLICES

WHAT CHRISTIAN LEADERS ARE SAYING ABOUT GUNS

“The apostle Paul called Christians not to avenge ourselves, but to leave it to the wrath of God and instead to return good for evil. And then he said that God gave the sword (the gun) into the hand of governmental rulers to express that wrath in the pursuit of justice in this world … Jesus promised that violent hostility will come; and the whole tenor of His counsel was how to handle it with suffering and testimony, not with armed defense.”

—JOHN PIPER, D esir ing God Minis tr ies

We have the highest number of privately held guns in the world. We are about 4% of the world’s population and we have about 42% of it s privately held weapons. T hat’s insane.

— ROB BELL , author

“When somebody’s got a gun in your baby’s mouth, you want somebody to do more than praise the Lord or pray. You, as a parent, want them to take action to protect your child.”

—T.D. JAKES, author, senior pas tor o f T he P o t ter ’s House in Dallas

What kind of society values the lives of its people so little that it would allow the unregulated sale of weapons created for the single purpose of ending human lives?”

— LISA SHARON HARPER, chie f chur ch engagemen t o f f icer a t Sojour ner s

“I do not think that our debates over gun control are debates over whether or not we will be pro-life. The uestion of gun control is a different question than the question of gun violence itself. ... I’m suspicious of gun control measures as na ve and ineffective, if not counter-productive, preferring to combat gun violence with strict enforcement of laws against gun crime and murder rather than with measures to impede the ability of law-abiding citizens to own weapons.”

— RUSSELL MOORE, pr esiden t o f the S outher n B ap tis t Ethics and Religious L iber t y Commission

“ Mr. P r e si d e nt , yo u’r e l o o k i n g a t t h e w ro n g p l a c e w h e n it c o m e s to t h e ro ot c a u s e of g u n v io le n c e.

— FR ANKLIN GR AHAM, pr esiden t o f Samar itan’s P ur se

SLICES

M I S C.

MARTIN SCORSESE IS ADAPTING A CONTROVERSIAL MISSIONARY NOVEL

The TSA found a record number of guns in carryons in 2015—20 percent more than in 2014. Of the 2,653 guns TSA found in luggage, 83 percent were loaded. Firearms were found in a total of 236 airports, with the most coming from Dallas/Fort Worth International.

Straight Outta Compton star Corey Hawkins has been cast as the new lead of the upcoming 24 reboot, 24: Legacy. None of the original cast will reprise their roles, though, and the show won’t continue the realtime format.

LEGENDARY FILMMAKER Martin

HOLLYWOOD’S NEW MIRACLE OBSESSION A CROP OF TV SHOWS AND MOVIES ARE EXPLORING THE SUPERNATURAL SIDE OF FAITH

S A poll conducted by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni reveals that 10 percent of American college graduates believe Judith Sheindlin, also known as Judge Judy, serves on the Supreme Court.

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igns and wonders have inspired several new projects headed to a screen near you. This spring, Jennifer Garner and Queen Latifah will star in Miracles of Heaven—an adaptation of a Christian memoir about a young girl’s miraculous healing.

In the new historical film Risen, Joseph Fiennes plays a Roman centurion who investigates if Jesus actually performed the ultimate miracle: rising from the dead after His crucifixion.

Fresh off proving that God’s not dead, Kevin Sorbo is headed back to primetime TV, this time teaming up with supernatural auteur Sam Raimi (Evil Dead, The Gift) for a new NBC series called Miracle Man about a former Army Ranger who discovers he has the ability to perform miracles.

And, based on Anne Rice’s novel Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, the upcoming movie The Young Messiah tells the story of a 7-year-old Jesus as He first comes to recognize His miraculous powers and calling.

If all of these are good—now that would be a miracle.

Scorsese chose an interesting project to follow up his Academy Award-nominated look at debauched brokers, The Wolf of Wall Street. He’s now adapting the acclaimed—and controversial—book about Christian missionaries, Silence.

Based on the 1966 novel by author Shusaku Endo, the film tells the story of two Jesuit missionaries who face unimaginable persecution, including watching their own congregants being tortured, while bringing Christianity to 1800s Japan.

The book’s somewhat ambiguous theology and disturbing imagery has made it into a best-selling, but also highly debated look at faith, prayer and the Gospel.

At a press conference at Los Cabos International Film Festival, Liam Neeson (who stars alongside Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver) told reporters that the intensity of the story was ever-present on Scorsese’s set. “He requires absolute silence on the set—if he hears one tiny sound, it shatters it for him.” The movie hits theaters later this year.

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STATEMENT

pain, you typically isolate yourself. But that is a mistake. God never meant for you to go through life on your own.

And then, look at how open and gut-level honest Jesus is about His emotional condition. He doesn’t sugarcoat it. No, He tells them exactly how He feels. He says, “My heart is so overwhelmed and so crushed with sorrow, I feel like I am dying.”

Second, like Jesus did, you need to reach out to God the Father. You do that by praying (Mark 14: 35-36). When you are in your worst day of pain and you need to talk to God about it, you don’t need to use fancy language. Just say, “Daddy, help,” because your heavenly Father loves you.

You can pray just like Jesus did. He prayed for three things. When you are in pain, pray the Gethsemane prayer: 1) I know You can do anything; 2) I don’t want this pain; and 3) I want Your will, not mine.

HOW DO I GET THROUGH MY DAYS OF DOUBT AND CONFUSION?

THE ANSWER IS EASTER WHAT THIS SEASON MEANS ON YOUR TOUGHEST DAYS B Y R I C K WA R R E N

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ive days after Easter in 2013, my 27-year-old son ended his own life. He battled mental illness since he was a child, and despite the best doctors, meds, therapy, prayers and love, he lost his battle for hope. The day Matthew gave in to despair was the worst day of my life. Our family was devastated.

Since then, I’ve often been asked, “How have you made it? How have you kept going in your pain?” And I’ve often replied, “The answer is Easter.”

Do you ever find yourself discouraged, depressed, defeated or even devastated by the circumstances in your life? If so, let me encourage you about the pathway to hope, change and transformation that I found in the Easter story of the resurrection of Jesus.

The death, burial and resurrection of Jesus happened over three days: Friday was a day of suffering, pain and agony; Saturday was a day of doubt, confusion and misery; but Easter Sunday was a day of hope, joy and victory.

You will face these three days over and over in your lifetime. And when you do, you’ll find yourself asking—just like I did—three fundamental questions:

WHAT DO I DO IN MY DAYS OF PAIN? You do the two things Jesus did on the last day of His life.

First, reach out to friends. We see this in Jesus’ life in Matthew 26:36-39, where the Bible tells us two startling facts: even the Son of God need friends in the middle of pain. You see, this is the exact opposite of what you normally do. When you’re in

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You need to remember the promises of God. Never doubt in the dark what God has shown you in the light.

What do we know about God in the light? We know God sees everything you go through. We know God cares about everything you go through. We know God grieves when you hurt.

The only reason you’re able to have sorrow and grief is because you’re made in God’s image and God grieves.

We know God loves you unconditionally and He will never stop. We know God is close. We know God wants the best for you. We know God can bring good even out of bad, even out of evil, when we give Him the pieces.

HOW TO I GET TO MY DAYS OF JOY AND VICTORY? You rely on the power of Jesus. You can’t resurrect yourself; you need a Savior. You need to trust Him. The answer for you, just like for me, is Easter. Sunday is the day of joy.

RICK WARREN is an author, speaker and the founder and senior pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California.

LOVE WHO YOUâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;LL BECOME NNU provides an education that helps you achieve your dreams Even growing up as a refugee in Kenya, Habtam Asmeche (â&#x20AC;&#x2122;13) never gave up on her childhood dream of becoming a doctor.

Coming to NNU was a miracle for her considering her situation, and it proved to be the opportunity she needed to realize her goals. Thanks to her hard work as a pre-med major and the investment of the NNU science faculty, Habtam started at the University of Washington School of Medicine this fall.

nnu.edu/relevant 877.NNU.4YOU

HOW MILLENNIALS ARE CHANGING THE WORKPLACE days of having Regional Manager Michael Scott peer over his minions from a corner office may soon be coming to an end.

According to new research, millennials are reinventing professional life in America. A study from Brookings Institution found that by the year 2025, millennials will make up 75 percent of the entire workforce. But with more 18- to 35-year-olds entering the job market every day, the revolution is already beginning.

THE

66 percent of millennials want to work for themselves as a business owner or freelancer.

Unlike previous generations, most millennial workers aren’t satisfied spending their lives trying to climb a corporate ladder simply to earn more money. Research from Michael C. Fina, a company that specializes in creating incentive programs for businesses, shows that most millennials—86 percent, in fact—never aspire to become CEO of the

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place where they work.

Instead, 66 percent want to work for themselves one day as a business owner or freelancer. That’s one reason more than half view traditional management techniques as outdated and say they want to see changes to workplace hierarchies.

Surveys of more than 300 millennial employees at Price Waterhouse Cooper found that instead of top-down power structures, millennials tend to value collaboration, working in teams and, ultimately, flexibility.

Part of the reason for the shift could be because for millennials, money isn’t as important as community, personal fulfillment and making a difference. When asked about their top priorities in life, more than 52 percent said being a good parent was number one.

Living close to families and friends, having a happy marriage, helping others and owning a home all ranked higher than having a high-paying career.

Maybe it’s because they’ve seen the toll overworking had on their own families growing up, but this generation clearly wants to engage career and life differently. It’ll be interesting to see what impact that ultimately has.

THE NUMBERS

75% of the entire workforce will be made up of millennials by 2025

52% of millennials say being a good parent, not career, is their top priority

ARTICLE: THESE ARE THE MOST GODLESS CITIES IN AMERICA

“America, you may have a new Sodom and Gomorrah...Providence, R.I.” (TIME Magazine, Jan. 22, 2014)

IT’S A NEW ERAAWAKENING IS COMING...

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GOOD ART CAN SHIFT C U LT U R E .

A C O N V E R S AT I O N W I T H C R E AT I V E DIR ECTOR A LEX MEDINA

A

LEX MEDINA COULD BE THE MOST INFLUENTIAL GUY you’ve never heard of. He’s a creative, both in the general sense and professionally. He’s responsible for branding one of America’s most important record labels: Reach Records—the home of Lecrae, Andy Mineo, Trip Lee and more. He’s also a Grammy-winning music producer and sought-after speaker on issues of faith and culture, the arts and justice.

He and his wife, Elidaysi, were both raised in New York City. Now they live in Atlanta with their son, Luca.

We sat down with Medina to talk about what he’s most passionate about: connecting the deepest truths of the Christian faith to culture through hard work and making great art.

WHAT IS YOUR PHILOSOPHY FOR RELATING ART TO CULTURE?

As a record label, if we do our job well, we’re serving artists and helping them tap into what they truly want to communicate.

So it’s a process of research and development and spending time with the artists.

Saying, “All right, where are you at in this space and this time?” and coming together and trying to figure out how we can best tell that story visually—through promos, through music videos.

That’s one of the things that has kept Reach distinct: making sure the lifespan of an album has one aesthetic, one feel and everything feels connected. We’ve carved our own lane, in a sense, saying, “This is who we are. This is what we believe. This is how our Christianity informs the decisions we make, the art we make.”

All the artists on the label are Christians.

For some artists it’s more explicit, and for some artists on the label it’s not as explicit—and that’s fine. We want to show the full gamut of what Christianity is and not just one side of the diamond, per say.

SOME OF YOUR ARTISTS HAVE BROKEN INTO THE MAINSTREAM. HOW DOES THAT AFFECT WHO YOU GUYS ARE AS A LABEL?

We lead by good art—that’s our main thing.

We want to be good at what we do, we don’t want to hijack an art form and try to make it propaganda.

I’m a designer, and I want to be great at what I do. The philosophy I hold onto is that when you make good art, it gives you access to a wider industry. It gets you a seat at the table of conversation so you

can shift cultures. It’s one thing to sit back and say, “Don’t do this, don’t do that,” but it’s another thing to be at that table with people who are leading those conversations. To sit with them as peers and say, “What if we take a different approach?”

That starts by gaining the respect of those leading voices.

There’s this creative director at a leading agency—I won’t say who it is—who sent me an email, and he was like, “I’ve been watching you guys and what you’ve been doing for a while, and you guys are leading the way in the music industry from a design perspective. Every artist has his or her own brand.”

When I got that email from someone I really value, I was like, “Yes!” Because if we’re Christians and we want to do the work of evangelism, that’s how we do it.

It’s not by making songs that only Christians are going to listen to—it’s by influencing the influencers, by entering spheres where non-believers are.

WHEN MAINSTREAM ARTISTS LIKE KANYE WEST OR KENDRICK LAMAR TALK ABOUT FAITH, DOES THAT MAKE YOUR JOB EASIER?

I do feel like, in recent years, there has been more of a posture of “All right, let me see what you’re about.” That’s one of the things artists like Kendrick have been able to bring to the forefront: It’s OK to talk about spiritual things in the mainstream space. It’s OK to talk about Christianity. This is my upbringing, and I can’t change that. This is what I believe about things and this is how I see the world. But at the same time, I’m trying to be great at what I do.

That’s part of who we are at Reach.

We’re authentically hip-hop, we’re authentically Christian, and we’re not trying to compromise either one of those things.

Sometimes, people get the pass because they talk about Jesus or Christianity or theology, even though their art sucks. I don’t think that’s doing justice to the beautiful things God has created, to the art forms God has created.

WE’RE FINALLY SEEING CHRISTIANS MOVE AWAY FROM COPYING AND MORE TOWARD INNOVATING—AFTER ALL, AS CHRISTIANS, WE KNOW THE SOURCE OF CREATIVITY, RIGHT?

Exactly. That’s one of the things in the design world I’m seeing, as well. There are tons and tons of Christians in the design industry who are not necessarily just doing mediocre work, but who are the cream of the crop in the industry. They represent their faith well in the art they make.

I feel like, over the last couple years, there has been a resurgence of the idea of vocation: this idea that not only the pastor is valuable in advancing the Kingdom of God. It’s everyone knowing who they are and everyone playing their role.

You’re doing God’s work in the sphere you’re in, and you should do it well, because you’re pointing to what it looks like to live in God’s Kingdom.

AS A CREATIVE, IT CAN BE DIFFICULT TO SHUT OFF WHEN YOU LEAVE WORK. HOW DOES THAT WORK FOR YOU?

My wife and I have been married for five years, and we have a 1-and-a-half-yearold son. They obviously play a huge part of my life—in every decision. I think the boundary aspect has probably been the hardest thing for me to manage.

My wife and I are constantly having these discussions. One of the things that has helped us is having drastic moments of, “All right, I’m shutting off for a couple days” or “We’re going to fly out to LA just to disconnect for a week or so.” I think those things have really served us in the midst of that.

But I also think I’ve had to learn over this last year or so how to do that in smaller doses throughout the year. It’s definitely something I’m thinking about, that I’m growing in and trying to figure out as things grow and get even more busy.

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CAN A $1,300 PURSE CHANGE THE WORLD? T H E S E T H R E E Y O U N G I N N O VAT O R S A R E U S I N G HIGH-EN D PRODUC TS TO M A K E A DIFFER ENCE

etermined to help victims of human trafficking, Brittni Adams originally planned to sell bags for around $100. But she realized with the cost of production, that would only allow maybe $10 from each bag sold to go to the cause.

Skimming through fashion magazines looking at the leading brands that make up the $48.5 billion fashion industry, she realized she could shoot way higher—in quality, design and in price— which would allow her to give significantly more, as well.

“The women who invest in these high-quality bags have a great deal of disposable income, but are also philanthropists, influencers and prominent voices in their communities,” she says.

So in 2015, Adams officially launched Whitby, with the goal of selling Italian leather handbags that near $1,300—with the aim to make a significant dent in protecting and educating women and girls in highrisk situations. Adams partnered with The 410 Bridge, an organization that sponsors girls in Haiti, who are often in danger of being trafficked if their families can’t afford to send them to school.

Adams isn’t the only entrepreneur taking the approach of making high-quality products to make a big impact. Here are two other social innovators making a splash with goods that cost a little more:

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WHITBY HANDBAGS Each handbag Whitby sells is crafted from Saffiano Italian leather and stitched by artisans in New York— using the same products and similar techniques as the top luxury handbag companies. More importantly, each bag sponsors a year of schooling for a girl in Haiti, paying for her school supplies, a daily meal and even a portion of her teacher’s salary. The bag is accompanied by a packet that includes a photograph of the student and a piece of her story, letting customers know specifically who their purchase helps.

whitbyhandbags.com $ 1,295 The inside of each Whitby handbag features a pattern drawn by the girl whose education is sponsored by the bag’s purchase.

TOM CRIDLAND While most clothing is designed to fall apart and keep wearers coming back for more, Tom Cridland aims to make garments that last. Cridland works with craftsmen in Portugal—who have been handmaking clothing since 1964—to create classic-styled garments from quality materials that will hold up for decades.

“We’re protecting our natural resources by making clothing that will last longer,” Cridland says. Plus, 10 percent of the profits from sales go to Deki, a website that provides microloans to entrepreneurs in developing countries.

tomcridland.co.uk $ 94

Tom Cridland’s high-quality 30-Year Sweatshirt literally comes with a 30-year guarantee, aiming to be an alternative to fast fashion.

JOYN Joyn’s mission, according to its founder, Mel Murray, is to “connect artisans with healthy markets, and create joy in the process.” Based in Rajpur, India, the company aims to empower by creating jobs. Every step of the production of Joyn’s bags is done by hand—from spinning the cotton to stitching the finished product.

“The more hands it takes to make the products, the more jobs we can create, the more lives we can change,” Murray says. Joyn also partners with nonprofits to get Joyn’s 200 employees food, medical care and educational opportunities.

joynindia.com $ 40 Joyn now employs more than 200 Indian artisans to create locally sourced, handmade bags.

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REJECT APATHY S U S TAIN AB L E CH AN G E . SA C RIF IC IA L LIVIN G .

A LITTLE BLUE BOX IS STOPPING THOUSANDS FROM BEING DISPLACED W HEN A FIR E DES T ROY ED COUN TL ESS HOMES in the impoverished

IS CHINA'S NEW 'TWO-CHILD' POLICY JUST AS BAD? his fall, officials in China started phasing out the country’s “one-child” policy. But in its place, a new law still limits couples' birthing rights: Now, Chinese couples can have two children.

First introduced in 1978, the controversial population control measures affected tens of millions of families. Penalties for violation were dramatic: pay an exorbitant fine or have a state-enforced abortion.

Forced abortions, sterilizations and mandatory birth control measures became commonplace, but the one-child policy also led to a massive gender gap.

Though the change in policies will allow millions of families to grow, critics of China’s population mandate say

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that regulating the number of children a couple can have is itself a tremendous human rights concern.

“Despite the platitudes given to China for the recently announced two-childper-couple policy, the pernicious structure of coercion remains completely in effect,” Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) told CBN news.

Even organizations that traditionally come down on opposite sides of life issues have united against the new policy.

Along with opposition from the Vatican and many Christian pro-life groups, Planned Parenthood has become a vocal opponent of China’s policy.

Smith said, “This is nothing less than state-sponsored violence against women and girls.”

South African township of Khayelitsha, local engineer Francois Petousis had an idea. If he could create an affordable, easily installed early warning system, thousands of lives and homes could be saved. Because there are so many makeshift structures in such close quarters, there is a constant danger of large-scale fires sparked by candles, stoves and open flames, which are a part of daily life in the communities.

Petousis’ “Lumkani” box can actually detect rapidly rising heat— not just smoke—to provide nearby residents with a warning that a fire has been sparked. “The in-shack heat detector will ring when a fire is detected, enabling the family in the home to respond proactively and possibly extinguish the fire," he explains. "If this is not the case, the device will then trigger all devices within a 40-meter range of itself, using transmission technology, creating a community-wide alert.”

This little box could save an entire village

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SUSTAINABLE CHANGE. INTENTIONAL LIVING.

RECENT T R AGEDIES I N PA R I S A N D S A N BER NA R DINO H AV E S P U R R E D A D R A M AT I C R I S E I N ISL A MOPHOBI A, A N T I-R EFUGEE POLITICA L R HETOR IC A N D A C U LT U R E O F FE A R . BU T SHOU L D C H R I S T I A N S H AV E A D I F F E R E N T TA K E ?

homas ended up deleting this tweet two months after he posted it: “Christians should be the first in line to help the more than 4.2 million men, women and children who have fled their homeland since 2011.”

The 29-year-old youth pastor, who serves at a large church in the suburbs of St. Louis and requested that his name be changed, sent that message to his 439 followers on Twitter at a time when there was a growing cry against the United States’ accepting Syrian refugees.

The backlash Thomas received settled down after a few days, mostly because he stopped discussing his thoughts about Syrian refugees online. “But then the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino happened,” he says. “Those attacks really caused me to rethink my opinions about offering displaced Muslims refuge amid our borders. What if one of them ends up being a terrorist or becoming radicalized?”

Thomas stops short of suggesting that fear for his own safety was a motivating factor in changing his opinion.

“I became a father last year,” he says, “so maybe I’m scared for my kid, for his safety. But if I’m honest, I think my biggest fear was being wrong—what if something I stand up for ends up being a costly mistake for somebody else?”

Thomas isn’t alone, of course. As most of us know from the Facebook updates of friends and family members, a large number of decent people who love Jesus offer plenty of reasons as to why they’re proponents of excluding Syrian refugees from immigrating to the U.S. Moreover, there is a growing number of Christians who think the U.S. should block immigration to all Muslims, regardless of their country of origin.

On his Facebook page last November, evangelical leader Franklin Graham posted, “If we continue to allow Muslim immigration, we’ll see much more of what happened in Paris—it’s on our doorstep ... This is not the time to be politically correct.”

Though Graham received a torrent of criticism for what many called

political fearmongering, more than 170,000 Facebook users “liked” the post.

Numerous polls suggest that last year’s terrorist attacks not only inspired greater fear among Americans about the threat of terrorism, they also caused a wave of one-time supporters of Syrian refugees to change their opinions. Overall, most polls suggest that roughly 50 to 65 percent of Americans are in favor of blocking Syrian refugees from entering the country.

Among people of faith, a poll conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute after the attacks in San Bernardino found that the steepest decline of support for Syria’s displaced population was among mainline and evangelical Christians.

According to the PRRI poll, not only were Protestants less inclined than Catholics and non-religious Americans to support allowing Syrian refugees inside U.S. borders, they also showcased much more cynicism and negativity about Islam and Muslims in general.

As for Thomas, he says he’s not actually against helping refugees, he just thinks Americans should help them from afar.

“We should do it in a way that doesn’t put American lives in harm’s way,” he says, “because we can’t just ignore terrorism, can we?”

And despite Thomas’ saying that “perfect love casts out all fear,” he still wonders, “Isn’t it possible for us to love people and also possess a healthy level of fear?”

Diana Butler Bass, a historian of Christianity and author of Grounded: Finding God in the World, doesn’t buy the “healthy level of fear” justification some Christians use to support xenophobia.

Shortly after the San Bernardino attacks, Bass traveled the country in an effort to remind Christians that “the story of Jesus begins with the words, ‘Fear not.’” And also that “[Muslims] are not ‘the other.’”

“This needs to be fixed by all of us on the ground,” she says. “And we can’t just ‘pray about it.’ Doesn’t Christianity insist that we welcome strangers? Isn’t that the essence of the faith?”

Not only is Bass convinced that fear

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paralyzes Christians from being able to love their Muslim neighbors, she also says she’s “far less worried about American Islam than about American Christianity.

There are millions more Christians—and many of them are giving in to fear, bigotry and hatred. That’s more dangerous to the common good—and to our national soul— than the threat of violence.”

Adrienne Brewington, a pastor who leads a conference of United Methodist churches in the New York City area, believes that fear can steal more than national ideology.

“Fear robs us of our knowledge of who God is,” she says. “[Fear] causes us to forget that everything comes from God and that everything from God is for sharing.”

Fear as a driving force among Christians isn’t exactly a new concept. Throughout church history, kings, politicians, preach-

Because so many unknowns exist around caring for refugees, Woodrow says, “doing nothing” becomes a defense mechanism for many. “[When we] don’t know what to do to quell the fear, we do nothing, because that makes us feel safer,” she explains.

But how deep does this rabbit hole of fear and apathy go? In other words, has fear affected the Christian response to other big hashtag-trending issues?

It’s easy to imagine fear as the reason some Christians vocalize more passion about gun rights than they do about America’s alarming number of mass shootings. Or that resistance to entering conversations about Black Lives Matter is based in fear. Has fear affected the responses—or non-responses, as is often the case—from Christians to that movement?

Pastor Nate Pyle seems to think so.

“Fear inspires silence,” says Pyle, the lead

“FEAR ROBS US OF OUR KNOWLEDGE OF WHO GOD IS. [FEAR] CAUSES US TO FORGET THAT EVERYTHING COMES FROM GOD AND THAT EVERYTHING FROM GOD IS FOR SHARING.” —ADRIENNE BREWINGTON ers and the like have wielded the power of so called “biblical-based fear” in efforts to shape opinions, promote revival and motivate action for or against a myriad of ideas and causes.

Is it possible that fear has become so interconnected with American Christianity—so threaded throughout history, weaved into doctrines and embedded into psyches—that Christians have grown blind to its presence and unaware of how it can limit, paralyze and undermine responsibility for the common good?

Has fear caused a multitude of Christians with good intentions to unknowingly become apathetic toward the hardships of others? Do we first feel fear and then slowly, over time, fall toward indifference?

“Fear can lead us to apathy,” says Nova Woodrow, a U.K.-based psychotherapist and life coach. “Or sometimes, it might simply cause us to act in such a way that we’re perceived as apathetic.”

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SUSTAINABLE CHANGE. INTENTIONAL LIVING.

pastor of the Indianapolis-area Christ’s Community Church and author of Man Enough: How Jesus Redefines Manhood.

“Fear keeps me from being more vocal about these issues, because there is often a cost associated with speaking up.

“We talk often of the suffering that comes with following the way of Jesus,” he continues. “But very rarely do we see that suffering as something that happens on behalf of another person or cause. We suffer for Christ. We suffer for the Gospel.

We suffer as we take an unpopular stance for truth.”

Todd, a Nashville-area pastor (who asked that his real name not be used) says publicly supporting the Black Lives Matter movement would likely cost him his job.

“My gut tells me that my middle-toupper class, mostly white congregation would fire me without blinking,” he says.

While the Southern Baptist pastor isn’t proud of that fact, he also knows he’s not

the only pastor working for churches where such concerns are a reality.

“I’m friends with a lot of pastors,” he says. “More than a few of them stay quiet about controversial topics or causes because they know that speaking up only creates drama for them. All it takes is one church member becoming offended and all hell can break loose. Running a church is exhausting enough without creating situations that inspire more meetings, more disagreements, more stress.”

The saddest part for Todd? “The people at my church have seemingly no ability to see how their ‘concern’ about something like Black Lives Matters is basically fearbased racism. They just don’t get it.

“But that’s why I don’t want you to use my real name,” he says, sighing, “because I’m afraid.”

For Mike Morrell, the communications director at Presence International, an integral theology think tank, the fear-based silence he notices from Christians regarding Black Lives Matter is not only deafening, it’s personal.

“As someone who’s married to a black woman,” Morrell says, “who’s raising two mixed-race daughters, I’m amazed at the white evangelical indifference and, at times, outright hostility toward the dignity, valuing, reparations and full inclusion of our sisters and brothers of color.”

Fear, Morrell says, “limits our ability to help, because it stops cold our inclinations toward relationship. We can’t possibly even know what ‘helping’ means before we know those whom we’re allegedly, ostensibly, helping.”

But, Morrell admits, it’s not always fear that causes Christians to go silent.

“Some of us are just exhausted by the debate. Compassion fatigue is real,” he says. “That said, for many evangelicals, their exhaustion for caring seems to be selectively felt. They seem tireless in their campaigns against abortion, marriage equality and, at times, sex trafficking, and yet, at the same time, dismissive of Syrian refugees and Black Lives Matter.”

The funny thing about fear is that it’s one of those things that’s easy to point out in others and difficult to notice in one’s own life. Morrell says he’s learned that truth far too many times.

A Syrian refugee and her child at a volunteer’s camp in Kos, Greece

“All of us who have been born in power and privilege are, on some level, racists,” he says. “I don’t like admitting that I’m a recovering racist. I don’t think any of us do.

But it’s true, nonetheless. And our white fears don’t trump very real black fears.

Nor do they trump the very real needs of Muslims, who, because of fear and violence, are homeless.”

Morrell believes the only way for us to know whether our opinions are birthed out of wisdom or fear is through self-reflection.

“If we’re truly loving our Syrian and black neighbors as ourselves, we do need to start with compassion for ourselves,” he says. “I think this starts with a ‘thorough moral inventory’—to borrow 12-Step language—of who we are and how we got here.”

Pyle agrees, but says fighting the effects of fear also comes down to whether Christians are willing to trust.

“Is God good enough to love ‘them’ and me?” he asks. “Is there enough room in the country for ‘them’ and me? Moreover, is the Kingdom of God big enough, broad enough, wonderful enough that I can trust Jesus at

THE NUMBERS

81%

of Americans expect a serious terrorist attack in the U.S.

150.8

The average number of antiIslamic hate crimes in the U.S. each year

56%

of Americans oppose accepting refugees into the U.S.

His word when He says the first will be last and the last will be first? Because if I don’t believe that, then it is unlikely that I will be willing to lay my rights and privileges down for another.”

Thomas, the youth pastor from St. Louis, isn’t convinced it’s that simple.

“Our world is complex,” he says. “And trust me, I get that the realities of the Syrian refugees are dire. But my reasons and concerns for not wanting them to live in our country are based on realities that are just as dire.”

On that point—that it’s not simple—Pyle actually agrees with Thomas.

“Overcoming fear is never easy,” he says. “But I think, in the end, we need to ask ourselves if we really believe that the Kingdom of God is big enough.

“Do we really believe that? If our answer is, ‘Yes,’ that means we must lay our rights and privileges down for another—because that is what Jesus did, and that is what our faith calls us to do, too.”

MAT THEW PAUL TURNER writes, takes photographs and has authored 20 books, including Churched and Our Great Big American God.

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A look at the artists, albums and trends that will define the year

the

SOUND OF MUSIC 2016

T H E MUSI C I SS U E

INALLY, MUSIC MATTERS AGAIN. Sure, every year, there are some bands worth talking about. But all of a sudden, something bigger—and fresher—seems to be happening in music.

Pop is actually interesting. Bands are taking risks to completely reinvent themselves. And a new generation of artists like Raury, Troye Sivan and Gallant are absolutely defying genre categorization. The music today is pairing new depth with fresh sounds that are destroying past conventions.

We gathered a panel of music industry experts to talk about the state of music in 2016, artists they’re excited about and trends that will define the year. It’s the most innovative and exciting era of music we’ve seen in a long time. Here’s the conversation: TYLER: What are some of the albums or artists you felt really made a big impact in the industry or on you personally this past year?

ANDY: One that really stood out to me was the Father John Misty record, I Love You, Honeybear. I am a huge Fleet Foxes fan, and when he left the band and did his own stuff, I wasn’t super crazy about it. But this record, for whatever reason, does it for me. It just clicked a lot.

JON: I loved that record, but he has this sort of smug cynicism-irony that I’m getting tired of.

Did you guys hear that Tobias Jesso Jr. record? He’s got this voice that’s not the most incredible in the world, but it’s super captivating. It reminds me of Glen Campbell—it’s simple, very human.

T H E

P A N E L TRIP LEE

Hip-hop artist Atlanta, Georgia AMY STROUP

Musician, Sugar and the High Lows Nashville, Tennessee JON GUERRA

Singer-songwriter, worship artist Chicago ANDY BARRON

Music photographer Brooklyn, New York TYLER HUCKABEE

Journalist Nashville, Tennessee

Some of his lyrics are like, “I can hardly breathe without you.” It feels like it’s drawn from a 13-year-old’s notebook. And it’s so sincere that it’s almost indicting toward the Father John Mistys of the world who are so ironic. There’s a sincerity to it that is almost awkward. Maybe that’s his schtick and he’s totally pulling the wool over my eyes, too—but it feels like he’s at least trying to be sincere, which is refreshing.

POSITIVE CYNICISM TYLER: For the past few years, there’s been a lot of cynicism in pop culture.

Do you think cynicism has a valuable place in music, or are we starting to get over it?

TRIP: If we want to be cynical for the sake of being cynical, I’m not

LANY When the members of LANY (pronounced lay-nee) first started collaborating, everything just clicked.

“I think without even talking about it, we kind of wanted to make the same thing,” says Paul Klein, the trio’s lead vocalist.

The band ended up with an

irresistibly catchy mixture of ’80sand ’90s-inspired R&B sounds and modern, etherial pop. It quickly earned them a rabid and growing fanbase online.

A few months after LANY dropped their debut EP on Soundcloud and Spotify, the songs had millions of

plays. Their infectious single “ILYSB” was making the rounds on indie radio, and they were headed to play the summer festival circuit.

LANY’s full-length debut, due later this year, is full of the massive pop hooks, innovative sound and sincere lyrics they’re becoming known for.

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sure how helpful that is. But if, instead, people want to use music to see clearly the issues that are going on in the world, I like that.

One piece of music that did that this past year is Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly.

On that record, he dealt with a lot of the racial issues going on that a lot of people don’t really want to talk about. He went against the grain by doing this very experimental record with a lot of jazz, but he also faced head-on a lot of stuff that’s going on racially, even saying controversial stuff, not the commercial stuff.

That serves a good purpose in popular music when people are willing to talk about hard issues and even have a kind of negative, cynical take on things. I don’t agree with all the conclusions he comes to, but I think it is valuable to get people talking about those things.

JON: I would argue, though, that Kendrick Lamar is almost the epitome of sincerity, because he’s actually trying to say something.

There doesn’t always need to be a clear message in music—there can be poetry for the sake of the beauty of it—but Kendrick is trying to say something, and that is so refreshing. Even though he has a negative opinion about some things, at least he has an opinion.

thinking, that’s good. Any time you get people saying, “Is there some way I can be part of a positive solution?” that’s a good thing.

There’s a quote for when I’m writing: “You can either add cosmos to the chaos or you can add chaos to the cosmos.” I have to ask myself when I’m writing a song, “Is this going to add to the chaos or is this going to add cosmos? Is this going to add structure? Is this going to add a positive perspective on the issue?”

TYLER: Is there anybody doing that particularly well right now—adding cosmos to the chaos?

AMY: There are artists who are raising the right questions. I went to the Global Citizen Festival in NYC, and the whole point was to raise awareness on world poverty.

Coldplay’s Chris Martin curated the event. It was Beyoncé and Ed Sheeran and Pearl Jam, and it was interesting to see them bring their fans.

Bono was there, and a couple of other people. I

MUSIC FOR GOOD TYLER: How would you respond if people accused you of being too negative in your music, even if you’re being sincere—if fans said you need to start focusing on what’s good instead of what’s bad?

AMY: I think you can tell when music is written from a place, and it all starts with the place.

If someone is frustrated with an issue—bullying, racism, immigration—it’s important to put a voice to an issue. Any time you can get people

NAO The year 2015 saw the ’90s music revival finally break into the big leagues. Lots of acts tried to capitalize on the craze, but few did so with more sophistication and nuance than Nao on her debut EP, February 15.

But it’d be a mistake to write Nao off as a copycat of the R&B masters. She’s recontextualizing the look and feel of

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the turn of the millennium for her own generation. Nao uses her sound to cast a rosy glow over recent history, but she does so with a distinctive FKA Twigs-like sensibility. She takes what could be a throwback and makes it sound fresh and timely, all while keeping an eye on the past. It’s a marvel.

think that was an example of people using art to bring a positive awareness.

TRIP: For me personally as an artist, most of the people who listen to my music are Christians, and one of the things I’ve found is that a lot of people who follow my music don’t really want me to be a full, entire person.

It’s like, “If we’re going to like your music, we don’t want to hear anything negative. We love it when you talk about God’s grace, but we don’t want to hear you talk about race.”

One of the things it shows is there are particular corners of the Christian community, and other

T H E MUSI C I SS U E

HAIM You could be forgiven for thinking the secret to Haim’s success is simply that they’re cool. The three sisters have cool friends (Julian Casablancas and Taylor Swift), cool style (designer leather jackets and gas station sunglasses), even cool collaborations (A$AP, Fergie and Kid Cudi).

Make no mistake, Haim is cool.

But let’s be honest: They don’t really sound cool. At least not by the typical indie rock definition.

Their music is ’70s melodies wrapped in poppy ’80s production.

Haim came on the scene in 2013 sounding like time-tested veterans, not the next big thing.

Haim’s debut, Days Are Gone, topped charts worldwide, nabbed a couple Grammy nominations and landed them on tour with Taylor Swift, the most popular person in the known universe.

Because of that, anticipation is sky-high for their sophomore project, due this year.

Haim recorded the new album with Vampire Weekend’s Rostam Batmanglij and producer Ariel Rechtshaid, who produced Haim’s debut. In an era in which everyone from Justin Bieber to Kanye West is trying to find a new sound, you get the feeling Haim is happy with the one they have.

communities, that are uncomfortable talking about certain subjects and are content to ignore them as if they don’t exist.

I feel like part of my role as an artist is to poke people and to make them a little uncomfortable so we can have those conversations.

TYLER: Jon, you’re also in the Christian music industry. Have you seen that with your music?

“THE MORE WE CAN, AS A CULTURE, JUST EMBRACE GREAT ART AND THE LESS WE TRY TO FIT PEOPLE INTO EXACT BOXES, I THINK WE’LL BE BETTER OFF.“ JON: Totally. But I think there’s also an equal amount of people who are refreshed by not getting the sort of glossy, Christian, tie-a-bow-at-the-end song. There’s an honesty in writing that validates the humanity in all of us and kind of liberates the

listener to something, rather than marginalizing the listener or almost invalidating the humanity by just ignoring it.

Everybody wants to feel validated in their mess.

When you hear somebody being human and sincerely struggling or sincerely identifying the mess in the world we’re all living in, whether it makes you uncomfortable or not, I think it’s a fundamentally liberating thing.

TYLER: Probably beginning with rock in America, there has been this idea that music can and should bring about change. Is that music’s responsibility?

AMY: It’s interesting: One of the few places where people will come and gather in masses is around live music. I think it’s an opportunity.

When you’re playing live and you’re expressing ideas, sometimes they aren’t “end world poverty” kind of ideas. Sometimes it’s like “Love your spouse well. Love your friends well.” Even in those little ways, I think that sparks change.

JON: Thinking about it historically, there’s good precedence for it, like in the Civil Rights movement.

Music has always been part and parcel with movements of change. So it makes perfect sense that that tradition would continue in whatever form.

TRIP: Music is such a powerful tool. There are no other tools that connect with the entire person and his or her entire heart—from their mind to their emotions to what they’re motivated to do.

Every artist doesn’t have to use their music in the same way, but there would be a huge chunk missing if no artist tried to use their music to make changes in the world.

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LAUREN DAIGLE Listening to her album, How Can It Be, you would never guess that Lauren Daigle is only 24 years old. Her powerful voice has a maturity that belies her years.

Her lyrics, too, show an unexpected level of wisdom and depth, reminding listeners of important truths about God without crossing over into cheesy platitudes. Perhaps this is partly because as she was writing the album, Daigle was reminding herself of God’s goodness just as much as she was her listeners. As she started the writing process, her grandfather passed away. She says working through her grief pushed her creatively and drew her closer to God. “During that season, He taught me what grace and hope looks like,” she says. “I just remember thinking, ‘I just want this to be an album where Your presence is so thick, it’s tangible.”

People are taking notice—and not just in Christian spheres. Her songs have millions of plays on Spotify, she won New Artist of the Year at the 2015 GMA Dove Awards, and she’s also up for a Grammy.

MOST ANTICIPATED ALBUMS

2016

F RAN K O C E A N

Frank Ocean’s sophomore album—reportedly called Boys Don’t Cry—has been a bit of a mystery, but we can’t wait.

JAMES B L A KE

Here’s what we know: The new album will be out in 2016 and it’ll feature collaborations with Justin Vernon and Kanye West.

S L EI G H B E L L S

Judging from the first single, Sleigh Bells’ fourth LP will be a slightly more subdued, pop affair, still with an eclectic twist.

M8 3

The band’s producer said the new album is “very epic” and “quite different” from their earlier music. Sounds exciting.

RADIOHEAD

The band’s ninth album has reportedly been recorded, so they could drop it on us any minute.

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THE POINT OF POP TYLER: There’s this idea that pop music is just for fun, and that makes it less important. Or that it isn’t as good or cool as other music. Is that idea going away? Is there a sign of pop music being redeemed?

ANDY: Pop music is “pop” because it’s popular, so I mean, obviously, the themes in there connect with everyone. Everyone listens to Taylor Swift—from the Pitchfork guy who listens to bands no one’s ever heard of, to your little sisters.

Everyone I hear talking about the new Justin Bieber songs are the people who are too cool for school. He’s been really honest and forthcoming with what he’s going through and thinking, and people just connect with that.

TRIP: I used to, in some ways, see a lot of pop as less valuable, because one of the reasons it’s popular is because it’s so easy to engage with— sometimes because it’s not as much about important things.

But a lot of the reasons pop songs

are pop songs is because they have great melodies. There are people writing these songs who are great songwriters. And part of the beauty of art is not just the subject matter, but it’s the beautiful sounds that bring us joy and connect with our souls in unique ways.

I think it shows a misunderstanding of the art form of music to act like pop music can’t be as valuable or as well-done.

AMY: When I write for the Amy Stroup projects, it’s more you know what am I feeling, maybe talking about an issue.

When Trent [Dabbs] and I got together to write Sugar and the High Lows, we said, “Let’s just have a good time. Let’s not overthink it.”

And it’s been crazy, because that’s what has taken off.

From a writing perspective, I think both kinds of songs have value. Songs that may seem “light” or sound good because they have a great pop melody could be a little bit deeper than you think, in retrospect.

T H E MUSI C I SS U E

QUEEN TAY TYLER: Speaking of pop, Taylor Swift is probably the most popular person on the planet right now. How is she able to manage her career and her image so well?

AMY: When I was in college, I met a producer who played me some demos of this girl named Taylor Swift, who probably 15. We were making a record, and he was like, “What do you think about her music?” I was like, “Yeah, she’s a genius.” You could hear it in the guitar demos.

I’ve seen her evolve over time, and with all the transitions of her sound, she’s had great timing. It all comes back to the song. If Ryan Adams can record it and it’s completely different and still holds, you know it’s a great song.

The other side of that is she really does have a unique engagement with her fans that I don’t always see. She acknowledges them. She has an incredible way to relate where you want to be her best friend. She hits probably every market, but she absolutely nails her target market.

TRIP: I’m nervous for Taylor Swift, in a way.

It’s almost like watching a pitcher throw a perfect game, where every pitch makes you nervous. She cannot lose right now. She writes a letter attacking Apple and she takes her music off Spotify, and every single thing she does she seems to win. Her image is so crystal clear. Nobody’s ever caught her saying anything bad. I’m just very interested to see how long that goes.

But the thing I really like about her, at least so far, is she’s kind of pushed against the standard image for a young woman in pop. She

hasn’t given into the overly sexualized image.

I think that’s a really good thing, and I wonder how long that will continue.

TYLER: It seems like we don’t know what to do when our pop stars start to grow up. We see that with Miley, with Justin Bieber, One Direction. It seems like there’s an infatuation with the new, but whenever we start seeing some wrinkles, we move on.

ANDY: One thing that’s interesting is Sia’s career. She had this first wave with “Breathe “MUSIC IS SUCH A POWERFUL Me,” and then she TOOL. THERE ARE NO OTHER was this kind of darling in a small TOOLS THAT CONNECT WITH market, and then all of a sudden, THE ENTIRE PERSON.” with this last record, she blew up, because her songs rule.

And she’s 40.

Stuff like that is compelling to me, because the cream will rise to the top. If the songs are good, we’re going to care. It’s going to be worth our time and money to invest in this artist.

MIIKE SNOW Long before they joined forces with singer Andrew Wyatt to form Miike Snow, producers Bloodshy & Avant had already mastered the art of catchy pop. Back in 2004, the pair won a Grammy for Best Dance Recording for co-writing and producing Britney Spears’ song “Toxic.”

Since 2007, they’ve been channelling their creative energy into eclectic synthpop tunes. In the leadup to their new album, iii, the group released collaborations with artists like Run the Jewels and Yoko Ono. Their latest music is perfect mix of singable, stick-in-your-head melodies, dance beats and layers of odd sounds that make it sound like the perfect soundtrack to your most wonderful, bizarre dreams.

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TRIP: One of the things that gets in the way of that happening more often—an artist’s songs blowing up later in their career— is because with pop stars, we as a culture buy in not just to the music they make, but into the image they portray.

People don’t just like Miley Cyrus because they like her records; they like something about the way that she is.

And I think one of the reasons we see these bumpy transitions into adulthood is because there are only a few little boxes we will allow these people to be in. The more we can, as a culture, just embrace great art and the less we try to fit people into exact boxes, I think we’ll be better off.

G E T

ON THE RADAR TYLER: Who is an artist or a band you think people need to keep an eye on this year?

AMY: Chris Stapleton is incredible. He performed with Justin Timberlake at the CMAs—talk about cross-pollinating and getting respect from another genre.

I also love the work Kevin Parker is doing with Tame Impala. I love Unknown Mortal Orchestra—the tone of their music

ALESSIA CARA Here’s a story that’s becoming increasingly common: A precocious teen starts strumming acoustic covers of idols like Justin Timberlake and The Neighbourhood and uploading them to YouTube. She picks up a few views, starts building a YouTube brand and makes a few appearances on local radio stations.

Usually, the story ends there, but for 19-year-old Alessia Cara, that was act one. The Toronto native’s distinctly soulful R&B sound got her signed by Drake, landed her major late-night TV performances, and scored “Best Songs of 2015” nods from Rolling Stone and Billboard for her breakout single “Here.”

Her debut album, Know-It-All, shows the artist’s depth, full of vulnerability and fragile acoustic moments as well as upbeat anthems.

Along with artists like Lorde, Cara is charting a new course for pop—one that is jarringly honest and real. She started out by covering the greats, but give her a little time, and she could well be joining them.

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T H E R E

FOUR FESTIVALS YOU CAN’T MISS THIS YEAR: SXSW

Austin, Texas March 11-20 COACHELLA

Indio, California April 15-24 LOLLAPALOOZA

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New York City July 22-24

is awesome.

And then one tiny plug for an artist in Nashville called Rayland Baxter. He’s definitely indie, but he keeps showing up.

JON: I’ve been listening to Beach House.

They’ve been hemorrhaging music. It’s beautiful. I love it. It’s super emotive. I read something about their method of writing songs. They find some chords and sounds they’re into and basically park there for an hour or two until something kind of evolves from that. It’s super refreshing for me.

ANDY: If we’re going the pop route, which I like to talk about, I have been loving the songs from Joe Jonas’ new band DNCE. I’m definitely partial just because I have some friends who work in that world, but the songs are awesome.

I wasn’t expecting to like it, but then I went and saw them play and I was like, “Oh, these guys are actually good.” They’re all shredders, they all play really well.

It’s the thing Amy was talking about before about writing: They were like, “We just want to have fun and write some stuff that’s this one thing. Let’s just not think too much and write some fun jams.”

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BO R N

T H E MUSI C I SS U E

its early days, “indie” meant something culturally progressive. It was by outsiders, and for outsiders.

It all traces back to the late 1970s, when the cool music was rock. Rock was sexy and tough and over the top. But then, regular, middle-class kids in London started making pop music for themselves. Their sounds were simple—at first—and their lyrics squarely rejected the agendas of in-crowd music.

Indie pop was a revolution of sorts, bringing in new sounds and taking risks far outside the mold of made-for-radio music.

And it birthed its own culture. But, in recent years, as major players in indie pop have gotten more attention and radio play, it’s almost like indie pop lost its edge.

That’s part of the reason you’re hearing all this buzz about BØRNS. In a very real sense, BØRNS represents an evolution for indie pop. His sounds call back to the roots of the genre, leaning on the organic side of synth rather than digital. This gives him a warm and human feel that the sterile electronics found in most pop just misses.

But his songs are also irresistibly catchy, with huge, soaring choruses that will stick in your head for days. Listen closely, and you’ll hear the most accessible elements from just about every genre and decade flowing through his lush melodies. If pop is sugary, BØRNS sounds more like syrup.

Even though it is decidedly “indie,” his music is wildly popular and mainstream— you can hardly turn on a television without hearing his single “Electric Love” playing behind a commercial. He’s all that’s fun about pop married with everything that’s progressive about indie.

IN

NS B Y M AT T C O N N E R

INDIE POP IS A LL

M A I N S T R E A M N O W, BU T SOM E W H ER E A L O N G T H E WAY IT LOST ITS SOUL .

T H AT ’ S W H Y W H AT BØR NS IS DOING IS SO U NIQUE —A ND I M P O R TA N T.

MAGICAL BEGINNINGS When critics and fans hailed Garrett Borns’ arrival onto the pop music landscape as magical, they were closer to the truth than they realized. Magic was literally how the performer known as BØRNS got started.

“My first performance was actually not making music at all. It was doing a magic show at a kid’s party,” he says with a laugh.

“But it was synonymous with music, in a way. Music and magic have similarities, you know, of creating something out of nothing. It was performing arts. That sort

of experience showed me that I like performing in front of people, crafting a show and putting it on as an artist.”

Making magic is an apt descriptor for BØRNS’ musical approach, ever since his debut Candy EP released in 2014. Working with songwriter Jack Kennedy and producer Tommy English (5 Seconds of Summer, New Politics), BØRNS delivered an infectious, and seemingly impossible, modern pop amalgam—a glam rock/synth pop mix that conjures both The Beach Boys and Wham!

With dreamy compositions like “10,000 Emerald Pools” and “Electric Love” as sweet as the EP’s title, Candy’s rush up the charts was immediate.

International tours and late-night TV appearances followed. Festival appearances at Lollapalooza, Pitchfork and others were sprinkled during tour breaks with Charli XCX, Bleachers, MisterWives and his own headlining slots. All of which came before BØRNS released his full-length debut.

The pace hasn’t slowed since.

“All of this has become very normal, to the point where I don’t know what it will be like when I will actually have down time,” he laughs. “I’ve been on the road so much. I’m pretty much in a new city every day or every other day.”

BIRTHING A SOUND Growing up in Grand Haven, Michigan, BØRNS inherited his musical talents and tastes. His grandmother and parents always had music on, listening to Elvis Presley and Motown legends.

Guitar is the instrument of choice these days for BØRNS, but he started on the family piano. He figured out several songs by ear, inspired by old footage he’d watched of great performers.

“We had a baby grand piano in our living room growing up,” he says, “so I would just play it by ear, and I also took some lessons for a little bit. But I was really into my own compositions more than anything.”

Approaching adolescence, BØRNS entertained friends and family with a Billy Joel impersonation.

“I had a Billy Joel craze when I was in middle school,” he says, “and I did my best ‘It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me.’” With amateur karaoke under his preteen belt, BØRNS scored his first paid gig at the age of 10: the aforementioned magic show.

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“I didn’t start playing guitar until I graduated high school,” he explains. “I needed something I could travel with. I was putting it off for way too long. It was one of the things I’d made more difficult in my head. Once I picked it up, I was like, ‘Oh, this isn’t bad!’ I wish I had picked it up earlier, to be honest.”

After high school, BØRNS studied music theory and also sought to deepen his musical perspectives beyond formal education.

The journey from playing music to becoming a performing artist and songwriter turned into a literal one. He traveled more than 3,500 miles from his Midwest home to New York City, and later to Los Angeles, in search of his new sound.

“I wanted to travel and write music,” he says. “I thought that was the only way I would really break out of my comfort zone and learn how to be a better musician—just meeting people and other musicians and hearing how they did it.

“When I moved to LA, I felt I was in the right place. It was very welcoming. I was meeting a lot of musicians and writing a lot of music and feeling inspired to create a new sound.”

A BEAUTIFUL PROCESS That new sound is still turning heads (or ears) across continents. BØRNS was already touring nonstop before Dopamine dropped in October. The album brought further fanfare, landing on several Billboard charts in both the U.S. and Canada.

With long drives, photo shoots and the like, BØRNS says it’s a challenge to ground himself while still rising to the occasion.

“The schedule is crazy,” he says. “It’s like a huge test of endurance, patience, and taking care of yourself as much as you can.”

As he’s talking about his grueling schedule, someone puts on Black Sabbath and “Iron Man” begins playing in the background. “That’s very comforting,” he says, laughing. “It’s almost empowering, like, ‘You can do this!’”

For BØRNS, being in tune with himself means finding space to breathe during 10-hour drives without much time for exercise or proper meals.

“We’re starting early and not making too many stops, going straight to the gig sometimes,” he says. “It is creatively finding time to nap between interviews or

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performances or after sound check. It’s pretty wild.”

The payoff comes in the live shows. A recent string of sold-out headlining shows served as a nightly reminder of the joys of making music for a living.

“It’s very energizing to see people excited at your shows, singing along to the music you just put out,” he says. “When we first played in London, we hadn’t released music in the U.K. yet. We were playing a couple gigs, and there was a pretty goodsized crowd, and they were singing along to ‘Electric Love.’ That’s the power of being a musician in this day and age, and having your music travel through the Internet. It reminds me of why I am doing this.”

BØRNS likens a song’s journey from artist to fan to crafting a love letter.

“I do it because I love the process, and to create things people react to. From the genesis of the song, an idea, you jot it down in your phone, or you just have some lyrics written down in a notebook. You bring that into a studio and fully realize the song, adding all the layers, mixing and mastering it, before putting it out into the world.

“When you see someone memorize it,

someone who goes to the show to stand in line, that’s a beautiful process and journey the song goes on,” he continues. “It’s pretty amazing. Your message got delivered.

People like receiving it and reciprocating that love letter.”

As a music fan himself, BØRNS also experiences the beauty of that exchange from the other side as he’s toured with bands he loves.

“I really love their music,” he says about Avid Dancer, who he toured with in the fall. “It was one of my favorite tours, and they were great people. Their music is so genuine to listen to, and I looked forward to hearing it every night.”

2015 was a magical year for BØRNS. “I am very grateful,” he says. “I’m on the road with really great friends, and fans have been so gracious and loved the music.”

For those looking on, it’s apparent that it’s just the beginning for BØRNS. And it looks like a new beginning for indie pop, as well.

MAT T CONNER is a freelance writer, editor-inchief of Stereo Subversion and managing editor of Pledge Music.

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gallant MEET THE GENR EDEF Y ING A RTIST YOU’L L BE H E A R I NG A LOT A BOU T THIS Y E A R

B Y DA R G A N T H O M P S O N

TO

say it’s been an explosive year for alt-R&B singer Gallant would be an understatement. After all, it’s not every day a new artist gets a shoutout from Elton John.

“I went crazy when I heard it,” John said of Gallant’s remarkable single “Weight in Gold,” before debuting it on his Beats 1 radio show. “Gallant is an artist to watch. He is going to be huge.”

It seems that bold prediction was right on. A month after John’s endorsement, Gallant was touring with Sufjan Stevens.

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He was racking up millions of listens on Spotify. The soaring falsetto, sleek hooks and deep songwriting on his Zebra EP caught the attention of music critics, producers and artists like Skrillex (who attended one of Gallant’s sold-out shows in Los Angeles).

“I feel extremely surprised and humbled that [Elton John]—or anybody—would pay any kind of attention,” Gallant says.

“It was reassuring, and really surreal to see it get that kind of response. It was validation of my being uncomfortably honest in the stuff I say in my music. I’m

eternally grateful.”

With Gallant’s debut full-length album on the way this year, buzz is only increasing. But things didn’t always seem so hopeful for him.

BOY TO MAN Growing up in Columbia, Maryland, Gallant listened to artists like Toni Braxton, Brandy, Babyface and Boyz II Men. “Nineties R&B had a specific melodic comfort attached to it for me,” he says. But soon, he was ingesting an “eclectic mix” of music—everything from Japanese pop to

T H E MUSI C I SS U E

Brit-rock to ’60s-era Chicago blues.

He “dabbled” in electronic underground for a little bit, and also found himself drawn to the “cryptic honesty” of prog-rock lyrics, which “feel like they’re coming straight out of someone’s journal.”

Starting in middle school, songwriting became a journal of sorts for Gallant.

“I felt like I was keeping a lot of stuff inside,” he says. “The only way I could really express it was to have a mic and write whatever I wanted at the time.

“They were horrible, horrible, awful songs,” he continues, laughing. “But it made me happy to listen back to it, even though I didn’t necessarily want to share it with anyone else.”

Later, as he was studying music at New York University, Gallant continued to draw on all the different genres he loved as a kid.

Lyrically, he aimed for the vulnerability he heard in rock. Musically, he wanted to include “all that ’90s R&B candy,” but also mix in elements of other genres.

“I just subconsciously pulled from all of those different types of things I was hearing,” he explains.

“I wanted to try to put them together, kind of like a puzzle.”

He adopted his last name (pronounced guh-lahnt) as a stage name (his first name is Christopher). He was ready to share his music with the world.

GENRE CONFUSION

WEIGHT IN GOLD

Gallant’s breakout single was hailed by many critics as one of the best songs of 2015.

In today’s musical landscape, Gallant’s mix-and-match of influences makes sense. In the last few years, musical genre has mattered less and less as artists defy categorization. Sufjan Stevens can set aside his acoustic guitar and call Gallant onstage to perform a cover of Drake’s “Hotline Bling”—and audiences eat it up.

But in the not-so-distant past, definitions were a bit more rigid.

In New York in the early 2010s, Gallant’s sound confused music execs, who couldn’t figure out

where to place him. His creamy falsetto sounded like R&B, but his backing tracks were too experimental. His lyrics were too raw—if he wanted to make it as a pop star, they said, he needed to sing about sex and partying.

But Gallant wasn’t willing to change his sound to fit into a genre. He describes his music simply as “soulful.”

“All the music I like has some type of soul in it,” he explains, “some type of honesty and vulnerability and humility that I’m really drawn to. I focus on that more so than exactly what type of genre it might be.”

go in having nothing and come out three and a half hours later having something that felt like one of the best things I’d ever written. That was a huge moment for me.”

While his music is forceful and emotional, Gallant describes his personality as “calm and kind of muted.” Music is a way to work through what he’s really feeling.

And he’s getting comfortable baring his soul in front of audiences.

“It’s almost like I’m meditating,” he says of performing. “It’s extremely cathartic to finally release all of the energy onstage.

It’s similar to going to the gym and just beating a punching bag

“THE MUSIC I LIKE HAS SOME TYPE OF SOUL IN IT. I FOCUS ON THAT MORE THAN EXACTLY WHAT TYPE OF GENRE IT MIGHT BE.” Discouraged by the walls he was hitting trying to make it in New York, Gallant moved across the country to LA. Soon after, things started to pick up.

EMOTIONAL WEIGHT When it came time to work on his upcoming album, Gallant wanted to push himself—to let his music express the full range of emotions.

While writing songs with LA producer Stint, Gallant let loose, abandoning his quiet falsetto and opting to scream into the microphone instead.

“While I was screaming, the message and the meaning of the lyrics just kind of popped into my head,” he says. “We started with that chorus and then the verses naturally flowed somehow.”

Three and a half hours later, they had written “Weight in Gold,” a song hailed by many critics as one of the best of 2015—the song that made Elton John go “crazy.”

“It was, at the time, the most different song we had done together,” Gallant says. “But it felt the most special. It was surreal to

after you’ve been keeping something inside for a while. It feels like a release.”

SPEAK OUT In confessing his own insecurities through his music, Gallant’s ultimate goal is to encourage audiences to share their stories, too.

“There’s so much suppression and people trying to dictate how other people should feel, or what emotions are ‘good’ and what emotions are ‘bad,’” he says. “I hope [my music] lets them know that whatever they want to say is valid and deserves to be said.”

Gallant has already come far on his journey, but, more than recognition, success to him means continuing to grow and make music.

“Being able to sit and listen back to hours and hours of material that all meant something to me will feel like an accomplishment,” he says. “I’ve come so far and have so far to go.”

DARGAN THOMPSON is RELEVANT’s associate editor. Find her on Twitter at @darganthompson.

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T H E MUSI C I SS U E

CAGE THE ELEPHANT T H E Y ’R E A L R E A DY A P L AT I N U M - S E L L I N G OU TFIT W ITH M I L L I O N S O F FA N S .

BU T SI NCE T H EIR L A ST R EL E A SE , C AGE H A S FA C E D S T R U G G L E S O N A L M O S T E V E R Y F R O N T. HOW DID I T CH A NGE W H AT T H E Y D O ?

B Y M AT T C O N N E R

T

his will sound unfair to most bands, but Cage the Elephant is just now arriving.

Ten years after their debut, the rock band has built a global following on the strength of three acclaimed studio albums: 2008’s Cage the Elephant, 2011’s Thank You, Happy Birthday and 2013’s Melophobia. They’ve toured the world over, headlined every festival you’ve ever heard of, topped the charts, played all over late-night TV and even scored a Grammy nomination.

As guitarist Brad Shultz tells it, they’ve accomplished it through the awkwardness of musical adolescence.

Now, the growing pains are over.

Tell Me I’m Pretty, which released in December, is the band’s fourth album and perhaps their finest. The

band members say it’s the most authentic to Cage the Elephant and represents the season in which they finally found their voice.

Arriving at such a place of confidence has come at a high cost to the group, but they’ve emerged with a stellar set of songs borne from struggles on the road, lineup changes and the tensions that come with close quarters and high expectations for years on end.

“On every record, I feel like there’s been growth,” Shultz says. “We’re definitely learning by both trial and error and trial by fire. I’m learning how to become a better songwriter, and I think part of that is just always continuing to try to be honest and real with yourself.”

The trials arrived largely during the season of writing, recording and releasing Melophobia. Internal tensions formed. Pressure to succeed increased. It’s the gauntlet any successful rock band endures, and as Shultz explains, it was simply Cage’s turn.

“We lived for close to 10 years on the road with the same group of people,” he says. “When you do that, little things become big things, and big things become disasters. We were going through some of that, and then also just really pushing ourselves on Melophobia to be reflective, to really try to follow our instincts rather than overthinking things.”

Despite the struggles of the last couple years, Shultz says the idea of not making music together never entered his mind.

“I mean, we definitely went through some hard times, but me and Matt [Cage the Elephant’s lead singer] are brothers, so we’ve written songs together from the time we were probably 13 or 14 years old,” he says. “And I’ve been with the other guys for close to 10 years. It’d be like ending a marriage.”

When longtime guitarist Lincoln Parish left the band in 2013 to pursue a career in production, the guys found fresh energy in his replacement as well as a new keyboardist. The mix of old and new members worked well in the studio.

“To me, it felt like the first album we recorded,” says bassist Daniel Tichenor. “The excitement was there, and the brotherly bond was alive, as well.

When you’re writing and recording, I feel that is a

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“WE’RE DEFINITELY LEARNING BY BOTH TRIAL AND ERROR AND TRIAL BY FIRE. I’M LEARNING HOW TO BECOME A BETTER SONGWRITER.” very important element to the process.”

The authenticity of the band’s voice on Tell Me I’m Pretty developed over time.

The band’s gold-selling debut found influences from decades past. But there was a world of rock and roll that Cage’s members had yet to find.

“We were all raised in Bowling Green, Kentucky,” Shultz says. “It’s always had this cool little music scene, and that was really good for us. But there weren’t a lot of ways for us to find and really dig into music. There was maybe one record store in town, and only a couple radio stations.

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L-R: Brad Shultz, Jared Champion, Matt Shultz, Daniel Tichenor

get online and discover music.”

As the band traveled away from their Kentucky home, they discovered new influences and wore them well. Perhaps, as Shultz details, a little too well.

“On our second record, we were in such a discovery period. You can really hear the influences,” he says. “We were discovering so much music, and I think, in some senses, we wore the influences a little too heavily on our sleeves. Then, on Melophobia, instead of discovering new music, we had to let it become a subconscious part of us.

But on [Tell Me I’m Pretty], I think we’re coming into ourselves.”

It also helped to have one of the industry’s most acclaimed musicians producing the album. Dan Auerbach, a man with eight Grammys as a producer and a member of The Black Keys, agreed to help Cage the Elephant after the bands toured together and became friends. He encouraged the band to record live to tape, trust their instincts and explore new territory.

“As a producer, he has an incredible sense of creating space within the track,” Shultz says. “Also, a lot of the tones and stuff he comes up with are really great, and he has such a great sense of melody.

He’s really good at recognizing if there’s a special part of the song.”

Consider Melophobia as a hill crested, and Tell Me I’m Pretty as the summit’s vista. Shultz believes the conflicts and resolution of the former directly led to the beauty of the latter.

“Once we got past the struggles, I think it really spurred something creative,” Shultz says. “I really never stopped writing from the back of Melophobia, and this record is almost like an extension, in a way. It is its own thing, but we couldn’t have gotten here without that album and all that came with it.”

MAT T CONNER is a freelance writer, editor-inchief of Stereo Subversion and managing editor of Pledge Music.

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B Y M AT T DA M I C O

T H E MUSI C I SS U E

AS THEY’V E CHANGED A L MOST E V ERY T HI NG A B O U T T H E M S E LV E S , THEY’R E CHANGING THE L A NDSCA PE OF M U S I C I N T H E U. K .

BU T ON E T HI NG H A SN’ T C H A N G E D AT A L L .

M

uch has changed for Rend Collective in the last few years.

The band from Northern Ireland, which grew out of a church community back in 2002, has achieved a level of success and stylistic maturity they couldn’t have foreseen 14 years ago.

The Rend community initially started meeting in a room with no chairs and three light bulbs, “before light bulbs were hipster and trendy,” says band founder Gareth Gilkeson, who was the pastor.

Now, the band is playing sold-out venues like Madison Square Garden and Red Rocks Amphitheater, where there are a few more chairs—and light bulbs.

This past fall, the band released an album that climbed to the top of the iTunes Christian charts in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. As Family We Go, Rend Collective’s fifth album, is seeing more success in the U.K. than any Christian album in the last 20 years. “‘Christian’ has always been a laughable genre, and it’s difficult to get any credibility,” Gilkeson says. “But on this record, we’ve just seen some crazy things happen.”

The “crazy things” to accompany the album’s reception include a growing audience of people uninterested in the fact that some of the band’s music is sung in churches around the world. Seeing their music make headway on non-Christian charts and radio stations “gets me really excited,” Gilkeson says.

Rend Collective’s broadening appeal is

exciting not just because of the success it signals for the band, but also for what it means for the success of their mission.

“We come from a secular society, so we always try to think of people who have no interest in God,” Gilkeson says. “As Christians, we’re called to be not just in our subculture; we’re called to be affecting the culture. At the same time, we’re not ashamed. We’re not trying to be too cool. We are a worship band.”

The band has had the chance to affect lots of cultures lately, recently playing in Brazil, Hungary, Switzerland, Hong Kong and Canada. They recently toured with Chris Tomlin, then Hillsong United, and they will headline two tours this year.

Gilkeson says the opportunities to travel the world are about more than just gaining an audience.

“We could all stay in North America and make a living,” he says. “Or we could all do what we need to do, to go out and reach the nations.”

That, Gilkeson says, is success.

“It’s not so Rend Collective can get a big name; I just love being part of the heartbeat of God,” he says. “The call of the Gospel is to go, and we want to be allencompassing to all societies, all colors, all backgrounds, all tribes.”

What seems to be effective in drawing such a broad audience is the appeal of Rend Collective’s authenticity and community. Those priorities remain unchanged even through a shift in style, Gilkeson says.

“Some people saw us do our Campfire record (released in 2013), and they were like, ‘Oh, that band is really authentic. That band’s really sincere,’” he says. “On this record, we’ve tried to write big songs, big pop anthems—whatever you want to call it—but the authenticity hasn’t changed.

“We’ve come from a folk sound, but we’ve also had quite an eclectic sound, trying to pull in all our roots,” he continues. “On this new record, we have tried to push creatively out of those boundaries and try to do something new.”

Some of the tracks on As Family We Go even feature some of the punk elements popular in the U.K. during the 1980s, he says.

As they shift their sound, one goal of Rend Collective is to communicate to a listening world that authenticity is not

synonymous with a certain style or tempo.

“A lot of worship music is pretty serious and uses middle-of-the-road tempos and approaches God in one specific way,” Gilkeson says. “I believe there are so many different ways and aspects and colors that we’re meant to enjoy God with. We don’t want to stick to a formula and think that just because we have an acoustic guitar, a banjo, a mandolin and we’re around a campfire, that that’s authentic, but as soon as there are lights on a stage it’s not.

“Just because something’s popular doesn’t mean it’s not authentic, and just because something’s ‘irrelevant’ doesn’t mean that it is.”

This commitment to authenticity grows out of a commitment to community. When Rend Collective—which calls itself a “celebration band”—formed, the band members were desperate for community, and they knew they weren’t the only ones.

“We knew a lot of people who were cynical, but who were searching Christianity, and it was mostly because they saw community, they just saw people who cared about each other,” Gilkeson says. “We really lived our lives together.”

The band continues to live their lives together on the road. Gilkeson often takes his wife and his 2-year-old son with him on the road, and he says he loves that the other band members are invested in the welfare of his family.

The band members relate like a family, Gilkeson says, where the “sense of community and joy and relationship” helps resolve any problems.

“If we can play for people and still be friends in 10 years, that’s success,” he says.

“We’re closer now more than ever, as a community and a team.”

The community—the family—keeps them focused on the goal of making music that serves as “a vehicle for people to experience or transform with the Holy Spirit.”

Things will likely continue to change for Rend Collective. Their audience will widen, their style will continue to mature and, the band hopes, their listeners will be changed through their music. But we can all be sure that wherever they go, they’ll go as family.

MAT T DAMICO is a writer, editor and the worship pastor at Kenwood Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky. He’s on Twitter at @mattpdamico.

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BY ROB F E E

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3. THE GREETER FOR LIFE

HERE’S JUST SOMETHING about your childhood church. It’s lodged into your memory for the rest of your life. Maybe it was the Bible lessons you learned, maybe it was that familiar smell, or maybe it was those criminally uncomfortable wooden pews.

Most likely, though, it was the people. They seemed unique, but the more you talk to other people who grew up in church, the more you realize these same nine people showed up in every church.

1. THE PEPPERMINT GUY I don’t know who runs the company that sells those little red and white peppermints wrapped in clear plastic, but they’d better thank this guy and medical waiting rooms for keeping them in business.

He may have had a different type of candy in your church—maybe a Werther’s Original—but he always had one for you.

The best part was how he would slip it to you during a handshake, like you were a tiny CIA agent being passed classified information on the whereabouts of an international criminal.

2. THE ACOUSTIC GUITAR TEEN Every girl in the youth group wanted to date this guy. He was so cool with his denim jacket and WWJD bracelet.

The only time he ever got in trouble was that one time he started playing “Wonderwall” on a youth group trip and one of the parents said it wasn’t appropriate to play secular music in the church van. Don’t worry, he knew how to play “Dive” by Steven Curtis Chapman, so the van was still a nonstop rockin’ party.

You never actually saw this guy sitting in the service, but he was everywhere else. If he wasn’t in the parking lot directing you to your spot, he was at the door shaking your hand and asking you how you did on your social studies test last week. How did he know about that?

If you go back and look at your childhood photos, you’ll realize he was in the background of all of them. Then you’ll go ask your mom about him and she’ll say, “Mr. Phillips? Honey, you never met Mr. Phillips. He died 30 years ago ... in this very room ... on this very night.”

4. THE LADY WHO WORKS WITH KIDS, BUT DOESN’T LIKE KIDS It’s unclear if she lost a bet or was fulfilling some sort of community service, but every church had that one lady who either volunteered with the teens or in children’s church, but always seemed on the verge of a complete mental breakdown.

If she wasn’t yelling at a kid for getting Goldfish crumbs on the felt board, she was holding back tears to keep from screaming, “How did I get stuck with the fourth graders again?” She always wore denim dresses and beige shirts, by the way.

5. THE BATHED IN PERFUME LADY It’s like she called up JCPenney and said, “Hey, you know that Liz Claiborne fragrance you’ve had sitting on the shelves for the last 20 years? How about you fill up a bathtub full of that and I’ll take a running jump into that bad boy until you can smell me from the next county over?”

She was always really nice, but if you shook hands with her or gave her a hug, you smelled like a Diamonds by Elizabeth Taylor clearance sale for two days.

6. THE GUY WHO STARTED COMING TO CHURCH TWO WEEKS AGO AND ALREADY WORKS IN EVERY DEPARTMENT You probably didn’t even learn his name, but he certainly did stay busy for his short time at your church. He started coming after a special service and immediately wanted to be involved in every aspect of the church.

Every time you saw him, he was cutting the grass, driving the church bus, setting up for the Memorial Day picnic or handing

out flyers for the youth car wash.

No one knew anything about him, but he was volunteering for everything, so praise the Lord! A month later, he vanished and no one ever saw him again.

7. THE CONVERTED ROCKER/BIKER This was the closest thing to Kid Rock your church would ever see. He wore a leather jacket on Easter Sunday because when you live that rock and roll lifestyle, the traditional rules don’t apply to you. He rode a Harley, wore a bandana, and every once in a while, you’d hear him say a cuss word during a bake sale.

He was extremely nice, but if a fight ever broke out, you knew he would be ready to break a bottle over someone’s head. (A soda bottle, of course.)

8. THE OIL-SLINGING PASTOR If he wasn’t your full-time pastor for a short period of time, he was a guest evangelist at your Pentecostal church. You’d be called up for prayer, and this guy was ready to go. He didn’t just dab a little anointing oil on his fingers and gently touch it to your forehead. No way. He was probably using up an entire bottle by every third prayer.

He’d slap it onto your forehead, and everyone standing next to you would get drenched like they were standing on the bridge in front of a water ride at Six Flags.

If the oil slap wasn’t enough, he also did this move where his hand would start at your forehead and slide up until your hair was completely demolished, leaving you wondering if Jesus really needed your hair to get wrecked with an oily iron claw in order to help with your sore throat.

9. THE OVER-SHARER You know how some people would say they had an “unspoken” prayer request? Those words never even popped into the oversharer’s mind. She would raise her hand in service and ask everyone to pray for her nephew’s diarrhea. She would reveal anyone’s personal secrets, because she wanted you to join her in prayer for them.

You didn’t call her by her actual name; you called her “Sister.” God bless your heart, Sister Brenda.

ROB FEE is a writer and comedian. Follow him on Twitter at @RobFee to read more jokes.

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ALE JANDRO

IÑÁRRITU T H E O S C A R-W I N N I N G D I R E C T O R O F B I R D M A N A N D T H E R E V E N A N T I S D O M I N AT I N G H O L LY W O O D R I G H T N O W W I T H C O M P L E X , G R I T T Y TA K E S O N H U M A N I T Y A N D S P I R I T U A L I T Y.

AS

a teenager, Alejandro González Iñárritu worked on a cargo ship and sailed across the Atlantic Ocean and up the Mississippi River. This allowed him to experience a wide array of cultures and immerse himself in worlds he’d not known before.

In a sense, he has never stopped.

In the last two years, Iñárritu’s innovative films have swept the Oscars. In 2015, Birdman took home Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Cinematography. This year, The Revenant scored 12 nominations.

But to Iñárritu, the accolades and awards don’t define him. He speaks soberly about the fleeting nature of fame, and he says he’s far more interested in creating long-lasting works that reflect his spiritual and moral preoccupations.

In his 2015 Oscar acceptance speech, the Mexican-born auteur remarked that “True art can’t be compared, can’t be labeled, can’t be defeated. Our work only will be judged, as always, by time.” The work is what matters to Iñárritu, as does the journey along the way.

And he has consistently shown his spirit of exploration and adventure in his work.

From the early Spanish-language Amores Perros to the satire of Birdman, from the multi-linear, cross-cultural mosaic of Babel to the singular, personal redemption of Biutiful, each project finds the filmmaker pushing into new geographical, technical and thematic territories.

Iñárritu wants to explore the diverse faces of humanity. He wants to dig into spiritual life. This is as apparent in The Revenant as in any of his work.

“The factual thing that happened to Hugh Glass [Leonardo DiCaprio’s character] 200 years ago—of being attacked by a bear, being abandoned and then the difficult, emotionally and spiritually painful survival quest he had to go through—got my attention,” he says.

“My question was: How would a man be shaped by that experience? What’s going on in the mind of somebody who has the will, the endurance and the resilience to survive? What makes people survive and

BY EUGENE SUEN

fight? I felt this was a great opportunity to explore those themes, and to explore the idea of revenge, to understand how revenge works in a human soul.”

The Revenant was the biggest and most expensive film of Iñárritu’s career so far, with elaborate battle sequences, jaw-dropping natural settings and stunning special

effects. But what makes the film memorable is the way it carries the same dramatic potency, spiritual rigor and interest in physical and psychological exploration that have always defined Iñárritu’s work.

These tensions are what drive him.

“As a filmmaker, the most important thing for me was the spiritual dimension of these journeys,” he says. “There is a very animalistic and primitive dimension to these people’s stories, but you can’t judge people—it’s a big mistake to judge people without understanding their context.”

This type of spirituality fits Iñárritu’s own religious sensibilities. Even though he grew up in the Roman Catholic Church, the only real expression his faith finds now

is an earthy spirituality. But he doesn’t keep his background from seeping into his filmmaking.

“I consider myself a spiritual person in the way that I try to be present and aware,” he says. “I try to live in the moment and be mindful of everything going on around me.

I think that’s really my biggest spirituality.

Alejandro Iñárritu directs Leonardo DiCaprio on the set of The Revenant

“Most of the artistic things we normally neglect come from the instinct, and not from a very rational point of view,” he continues. “I’m sure that, consciously or unconsciously, many of the things that I was raised on, the things I consider important to reflect on, have a role in what I do when I’m writing and working.”

Mostly clearly, you can see this in his films’ ethics and in the moral universes he creates. Particularly in The Revenant, the dark, gritty landscapes aren’t accidental.

Growing up in Mexico City, violence was

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P H O T O C R E D I T: A L I S O N R O S A / F O X S E A R C H L I G H T P I C T U R E S

“AS A FILMMAKER, THE MOST IMPORTANT THING FOR ME WAS THE SPIRITUAL DIMENSION OF THESE JOURNEYS.” more than just an element of entertainment for Iñárritu.

“I think we now live in a culture where violence is considered brave. It’s considered cool and entertaining,” he says. “I come from a very violent city. I have been witness to violence, and I have sometimes been a victim of violence. I can’t laugh about violence. I cannot use it to exploit it.

I can’t.

“In this film, I try to show that these men were living under very raw, difficult circumstances,” he continues. “There’s violence integrated in their lives—it’s man against nature, and man against man.

Everybody is trying to survive, including the animals.

“But I always try to present violence with a consequence. I always try to show the painful consequences that violence brings. You cannot deny violence, because we are violent. But every act of violence has a painful consequence no matter what.”

Along with violent scenes, The Revenant particularly includes a head-on look at religion: the Native American spirituality of the indigenous tribes and the Christianity

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brought by Europeans.

And like his approach to violence, Iñárritu’s portraits of religion are intensely human in the rawest ways.

“At that time, there were people from all around the world,” he says. “Most of them came from Europe, and there were a lot of Catholics and Protestants with strong spiritual roots.

TOP: Iñárritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (right) prepare to “It’s integrated in the shoot a scene with actor Michael Keaton (left) on the set of Birdman. film in subtle ways. But BOTTOM: Michael Keaton in a scene from Birdman, which won an sometimes you can feel Academy Award for Best Picture. that the characters were praising something that was absolutely wrong, or they were saying one thing but doing the complex stories of people and cultures yet exact contrary, which is a contradiction. untold—and telling them back to us in all of That is a part of our weakness as human their complexity. beings. I feel like that’s very human.”

That’s exactly what Iñárritu is going EUGENE SUEN is a filmmaker with Almond Tree after: “Human.” Ever since he explored the Films and the co-director of Reel Spirituality, the film world as a teenager, he’s been taking in the center at Fuller Seminary.

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BY RUTHANNE IRVIN

T HE MOV I NG STORY BEHIND ONE OF A M E R I C A’ S M O S T TA L K E D A B O U T TAT T O O S

began in New York City, where Chad Veach was preaching at Hillsong Church. During the sermon, he told the story of his daughter Georgia’s illness and his family’s “unreasonable hope” in Jesus Christ.

After the sermon, a man walked up to Veach and told him he planned to get a “G” tattooed on his arm. The tat, he said, would remind him to pray for Veach’s daughter.

“I was like, ‘Bro, first of all, you’re the kindest person I know. You don’t have to do that. Second of all, if you’re going to get one, then I’m going to get one, too,’” Veach remembers.

So they went together and both inked a “G” on their arms.

That was a few years ago. Now, this so-called “G-tat”—and the message it represents—has spread from two guys in a Manhattan tattoo parlor to some of the biggest names in pop culture.

If you look, you’ll see a “G” on celebrities like Justin Bieber, the Phoenix Suns’ Tyson Chandler and PGA superstar Rickie Fowler—who even made sure to place the tattoo where photographers, fans and anyone who sees him swing a golf club can see it. That way, Fowler says, he “can tell people the story. And it’s a way for me to tell people about God.”

*** For most people, the birth of a child is one of the best days of their lives. And Veach

was no exception. He and his wife, Julie, welcomed their daughter, Georgia—they call her “Gigi”—in December 2011. And sure enough, it was one of the most important days of their lives.

Four months later, however, was what Veach calls his family’s “worst day, hands down.” Gigi wasn’t gaining weight. Her eyes seemed to wander off—she never really made eye contact.

Doctors told them that Gigi has Lissencephaly, or “smooth brain condition,” a diagnosis only 1,200 to 1,600 people around the world share. According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, people with the condition rarely live longer than 10 years.

The diagnosis left the Veaches shattered.

Doctors said Gigi’s brain would never fully develop. She would live a life with no mobility or speech, and she would have to eat through a feeding tube, probably for the rest of her life.

Georgia has never crawled, Veach says.

“She’s never rolled over, because she doesn’t have a brain that tells her how to do anything.”

*** Growing up just north of Seattle, Veach lived a fairly easy life, he says. He was a pastor’s kid. If he knew one thing, though, it was that he wouldn’t follow in his dad’s footsteps.

But to make his father happy, Veach began school at Life Pacific College, a

Bible school in Los Angeles. “I thought I was going to be there a year, because the last thing I wanted to do in the world was become a pastor,” he says.

But after his first year, Veach really “felt like this was what I was supposed to be doing with my life.” So he stayed and earned a degree.

This led him fairly naturally to work as a youth pastor with inner-city kids in LA. He did this work for almost five years, until Gigi was diagnosed. Then, one of his best friends, pastor Judah Smith of The City Church in Seattle, called.

“When my daughter got sick, Judah was in a position to say, ‘Hey, why don’t you come up here on staff? We’ll take care of you,’” Veach remembers.

So the Veaches joined the staff of The City Church as pastors at one of the church’s four campuses. Before they knew it, two years passed. But they never got LA out of their hearts.

So, along with a team of 30 others, they moved back to Hollywood in 2014 to plant and lead Zoe Church. Now in one of the most influential cities in the world, Veach has been able to share his family’s journey with some unlikely people.

*** Veach continually points himself—and anyone who will listen to him—to the hope he knows in spite of circumstances.

“The thing about having a 4-year-old disabled daughter, it’s not like your pain

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GEORGIA’S FRIENDS

JUSTIN BIEBER “This is for the strongest couple I know,” the pop star wrote on his Instagram.

SELENA GOMEZ The actress got a lowercase “g” inked behind her ear last summer.

TYSON CHANDLER The NBA star got the tattoo on his wrist to support the Veaches.

HAILEY BALDWIN The model says the Veaches have been an inspiration to her.

RICKIE FOWLER The golfer says the tattoo gives him an opportunity to tell people about his faith.

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or your trouble goes away,” he says. “We still face difficult days. But to know that God is with me in this, that God is providing financially for me, that He’s giving me peace when I feel like I’m going to lose my mind and He’s giving me strength—that’s my hope and confidence.

“My confident expectation is that even if my daughter isn’t healed, God is still providing for me. He’s still with me,” Veach says. “I think it plays on a real practical level for us still every day. We’re going to get our hopes high today. Why? Because God is real, He’s alive, He’s with me in this.

He’s not abandoning me. He’s given me the provision that I need to face this.”

It’s Veach’s hope-filled outlook on his daughter’s condition that connects with people. And that shows in the ink spreading around the country. By Veach’s count, around 70 people have gotten the “G-tat.”

He says he’s still astounded by the popularity of the tattoo—particularly the variety of people now wearing it.

“I went and got the ‘G’ tattoo on my wrist,” says Tyson Chandler, who is one the NBA’s most recognizable players. “I

Others, like actress Ashley Benson of Pretty Little Liars, connected immediately with Georgia’s story.

“I felt such a connection to Georgia, and right when I left to go back home, I got a G tattoo,” she says. “I end up talking about Georgia almost every day to different people who ask what the G stands for. That story has touched so many people.”

Everyone with the “G-tat” is, of course, supporting Gigi and the Veach family. But it’s about something more, too.

“I think it speaks to people’s desire to be a part of something,” Veach says.

The tattoo is about more than ink. It’s a statement of hope, the kind Veach holds to even on the most difficult days.

*** Before Georgia’s diagnosis, Veach struggled to relate to people in pain, “because I wasn’t in pain myself,” he says. “You know, all these things you preach in the pulpit, but you haven’t had to live [them].”

This spring, he will publish his first book, Unreasonable Hope, in which he shares his family’s story through a collec-

“GOD COMES AND TAKES BROKEN THINGS AND BRINGS GLORY OUT OF THEM. I THINK YOU CAN GO THROUGH ANYTHING AS LONG AS YOU KNOW THERE’S AN ANCHOR.” —Chad Veach know—he is only human, after all—that Chad has his moments of despair. But what makes his story different is how he turned those moments, those trials of tribulation, into a triumph by celebrating Georgia’s strength and will to live. With this story, Chad Veach will continue to touch, motivate and transform lives around the world.”

Model Hailey Baldwin, daughter of the youngest Baldwin brother, Stephen, wears the tattoo because of her love for the whole Veach family, she says. “[The Veaches’] journey with Georgia is something to be wildly admired, and their endless dedication as parents is something I can only hope to achieve,” she says. “Seeing them grow their church and always maintain their hearts for people has had an impact on my life as well as many other people’s lives.”

tion of messages he “preached out of [his] own pain.”

“God comes and takes broken things— shattered lives, shattered stories—and brings glory out of them,” he says. “When you realize we have hope against hope in this person Jesus, I think you can go through anything as long as you know there’s an anchor.”

That’s what the G-tat is all about. It’s a reminder. “I look down and I’m praying for Georgia. I’m praying grace over her, and grace over everyone who has this tattoo— and grace over the movement of the G-tat,” Veach says.

“I believe this is going to bring much glory to God.” RUTHANNE IRVIN is an editor and writer living in Louisville, Kentucky.

SQUAD GOALS

BY JESSE CAREY

I F YOU’R E L I K E MOST PEOPLE, YOU M A DE YOU R CLOSEST FRIENDS IN COL L EGE . BU T YOU P R O B A B LY D O N ’ T L I V E ANY WHERE NEAR THEM A N Y MOR E. M AKING —AND KEEPING —NEW FRIENDS AS AN A D U LT C A N B E DA U N T I N G , B U T I T IS POSSIBLE. HER E’S H O W T O D O I T— AND W HY IT’S SO I M P O R TA N T.

AT

some point in your childhood, the kid who lived next door probably also happened to be your best friend in the world. Back in the day, the only factors needed to make a friend were proximity and closeness in age.

But something happens when you no longer have someone two feet away to pass notes to in math class or when you move out of a dorm with dozens of your peers.

As an adult, making new friends becomes hard. Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be that way. Here are some ways to actually extend your friend group, even into adulthood:

KNOW WHO YOUR ‘REAL’ FRIENDS ARE Social media platforms like Facebook offer an efficient way to stay connected to former classmates, old acquaintances and your cousin’s old roommate you met once 10 years ago. But they’re lousy ways to maintain actual friendships.

Research out of Oxford University shows the average Facebook user has about 150 “friends” on the site, but most respondents said in times of crisis, they would only be able to depend on four of them.

The study’s author, Robin Dunbar, explained in his report, there’s “a relationship between time invested in a relationship and its quality.” In non-Oxford terms, this means there’s a big difference between “liking” someone’s photo of a cat that looks like Kylo Ren and actually having a conversation with them.

STOP COMPARING Up until adulthood, most of your peers were probably in the same boat you were: They were just students trying to figure things out. But when you hit your 20s and 30s, life starts changing rapidly. Some people get married. Some move. Some have kids. Some get high-profile jobs.

Some go back to school.

Change, of course, isn’t all bad, but when it leads to unhealthy comparison, things can get complicated.

“We’re all struggling,” says Paul Angone, author of All Groan Up. “Yet, we’re all struggling to make it appear like we’re not struggling. Then we wonder why we’re not exactly thrilled to spend time with all our friends who apparently have grown-up life completely figured out.”

It’s easy to start comparing yourself to friends when everyone seems to be blowing up your Instagram feed with an unending photostream documenting every minor life accomplishment. Oh cool, look. Tommy and Joe ran four miles over lunch while I was eating a hot dog from Dairy Queen in my car by myself.

“It takes courage to say, ‘I don’t have it all figured out,’” Angone says. “We don’t connect over our pretend perfection, we connect over our shared struggles.”

If you fall into the trap of comparing yourself to peers who appear to have it all together, not only will you unnecessarily feel inadequate, but you can also project a sense of perfection that leads to superficial relationships.

“Don’t waste valuable time pretending to be bulletproof and have it all together,” says psychologist and author Dr. John Townsend. “People are drawn to authenticity, not perfection.”

“PEOPLE ARE DRAWN TO AUTHENTICITY, NOT PERFECTION.” BE ADVENTUROUS It’s hard to meet new people if you stay in every night binge-watching Making a Murderer. If you want to make new friends, you have to go where people are—even if it means getting outside of your comfort zone.

Attend a church small group. Join a sports league. Volunteer with a local nonprofit. It can be tempting to embrace being a loner, especially when making new friends requires extra effort. But, even if it’s not always comfortable being the new guy in the office dodgeball league, the risk is worth it.

“As adults, we need friendships,” says Jonathan Holmes, author of The Company We Keep: In Search of Biblical Friendship.

“Dutch psychiatrist J.H. van den Berg famously said, ‘Loneliness is the nucleus of psychiatry.’ There’s a lot of truth to that.

The vast majority of the people I see in counseling could be greatly helped through simple, meaningful friendship.”

Townsend says getting plugged into a church you like is key.

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“Attend one in your area that has a healthy and well-resourced ministry that fits your own demographic, such as singles, couples or families,” he says. “Similar circumstances and challenges always bring people together. You will be welcomed, given support, and will find those closer relationships within the larger group.”

KNOW HOW TO WORK A ROOM The adult world is full of awkward affairs like dinner parties, business conventions and church events. But navigating a room of perfect strangers doesn’t have to be as anxiety-inducing as it sounds.

Jeanne Martinet, author of The Art of Mingling, says knowing a few proven icebreakers can make any dinner-party-goer instantly approachable.

One way is to appeal to the most basic of human needs: the desire to be told you are wearing really cool shoes. Just remember, when complimenting someone’s appearance, there’s a fine line between effective and friendly (“Cool glasses. Are they Warby Parkers?”) and creepy and weird, (“That’s a very interesting tan line happening on your forehead. Did you have a reaction to your shampoo?”)

If all else fails, Martinet suggests just being honest with the person standing next to you in the buffet line: “I’m ____, and I don’t know a single person at this party.”

But just as important as asking the right questions is avoiding the wrong ones.

“So what do you do?” is the worst possible question to kick things off, Martinet says. “It’s a terrible first line, because A) It’s like asking people how much money they make; and B) What if they do something that’s boring to you?”

Instead, keep things light. Focus on something you might have in common, like how you know the person hosting.

UNDERSTAND TECH ETIQUETTE No one likes a Facebook creeper. When you do meet someone you think could potentially be a new friend, respect the unwritten rules of the digital age.

Martinet says that instead of just sending a friend request right away, shoot over a text or a Facebook message as a way of extending the conversation you were having when you met at church or a party.

“The best follow-ups always refer to the conversation you had when you met them,”

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she says. “Like, ‘Here’s the link to that crazy cat video I was talking about.’ It’s better to have a little back and forth before asking the person to do something.”

Getting a friend request from someone you barely know can be off-putting. (“Who is this person?”), but following up on a conversation you were having feels natural. (“Oh, it’s that fun girl from the party who told me about the cat that can drive a remote-controlled boat with its paws.”)

Along with the humanity-uniting power of funny cat videos, remember that phones are a great way to follow up with new friends, but terrible when it comes to meeting them in the first place.

Instead of using your iPhone as an escape hatch from social awkwardness, Martinet says, turn it off and focus on the people around you.

“Engage with people,” she says. “The people around you in-person could be more rewarding than the texting you are doing with old friends on the phone.”

DON’T RUSH IT You may have hit it off with a co-worker over an mutual interest in spending inordinate amounts of time playing fantasy football, but that doesn’t automatically make him your new BFF. Building meaningful relationships takes time.

“One of the unfortunate lies we tell ourselves in forming new friendships is that it’s

supposed to be easy and ‘organic,’” Holmes says. “‘Organic’ often becomes code for— ‘intentional pursuit not needed.’ I’ve rarely seen friendships just happen. They take work, cultivating and self-sacrifice.”

Be willing to make time and invest energy into other people. Find out how new friends are doing, ask how you can help them in their struggles, take an interest in their interests and actually be a friend—not just someone they can watch Netflix with.

YOU DON’T NEED AN ENTOURAGE Not everyone is capable of maintaining an ever-expanding Taylor Swift-style squad.

Some people are capable of having dozens of close friends at one time, but some are simply wired differently—and that’s OK. “Sometimes we believe friendship has to happen on a Facebook-like scale: thousands of friends,” Holmes says. “For an introvert, that’s not only overwhelming, it can be paralyzing.”

Instead, focus on the quality of relationships you have, not just the quantity of them. Holmes points to the example of Christ: “Jesus Himself had a circle of 12 friends, but within that circle, a more meaningful circle of three friends.”

JESSE CARE Y is the senior editor for RELEVANT and a mainstay on the RELEVANT Podcast.

T H E

D R E A M :

O N E M I L L I O N P E O P L E S TA N D I N G T O G E T H E R F O R J E S U S O N T H E N AT I O N A L M A L L .

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KARI JOBE NICK HALL

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RAVI ZACHARIAS

CHRISTINE CAINE A N D

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FRANCIS CHAN

ANDY MINEO

TRIP LEE

JEREMY CAMP

WHOLE HEARTED

BY S H AU NA N I E Q U I S T

WHOLE HEARTED

MOST CHR ISTIANS, I F A SK E D, W I L L P R O M P T LY T E L L Y O U T H AT G OD’S LOV E IS U NCONDITIONA L .

BU T K NOW I NG T HE R IGHT A NSW ER ISN’T THE SAME A S A C T U A L LY

I

remember the buzz of the needle from my first and second tattoos—that metallic rattle, high-pitched.

It makes the muscles in my neck twitch, remembering the nagging pain that goes along with that buzzing sound.

I got my first tattoo during my senior year of high school on Casimir Pulaski Day, a school holiday in Chicago thanks to the large Polish community. I told my parents I was going to do it, but they weren’t too worried—I’d been fainting at the sight of needles all my life—in doctors’ offices, at the mall getting my ears pierced.

When I came home and showed my mom the small Chinese symbol under the bandage, she called to my dad, “Bill, you’re not going to believe this.”

Two decades later, here I am again, that buzzing sound ringing in my ears, offering up the tender pale flesh of my forearms: the shape of a heart on one, the word “yes” in elegant cursive on the other.

K NOW ING HIS LOV E . SH AU NA NIEQUIST W R ITES A BOU T HOW SHE LEARNED THIS V I TA L L E S S O N .

The heart—blood red, perfectly simple, just exactly the way a child would draw a heart—is about love, of course. It’s about God’s love, about the revolutionary and foreign idea that I am loved by God, no matter what.

Every Christian learns that early on. But that wild love is a difficult one to experience for many of us, for me.

I understand conditions, proving, record-keeping, tallies of grievances and offenses. I don’t know about unconditional. I feel like I’m just beginning to taste it for the first time.

I’ve been a Christian nearly all my life. But the older I get, the more I realize there are so many things we know in our brains—in our mental filing cabinets of knowledge about God—that we don’t really know in our souls, our veins, our very beings. Of course I understand unconditional love. That’s Christianity 101 stuff. That’s Sunday School level.

Why, then, did I find myself in my mid-30s, soul wrung out, body exhausted, relationships skimmed over, hustling and pushing and proving, trying to grasp at some sense of being OK in this world?

To be honest, I wasn’t even shooting for loved. I just didn’t want to be kicked out, found out, exposed. I just wanted to run hard and fast enough to break even, whatever that was. I didn’t have any illusions of knocking it out of the park. I just didn’t want to be a disappointment.

So I put my head down and worked. I worked too hard and too long and too often. I took on responsibility after

responsibility, like I was competing in a “Miss Extremely Capable” pageant, where instead of being beautiful or playing the violin, you just have to do absolutely everything—work, manage a home, raise kids, take care of your marriage, work out, attend church, volunteer, cook, go to meetings, speak at conferences, hit deadlines.

The pageant would be like a massive obstacle course of multitasking and contorting oneself according to countless sets of expectations, turning on a dime to be all things to all people.

This would be a truly terrible pageant, of course. But it’s sort of how my life began to feel, more often than not.

Something had to change. Actually, a lot of things had to change. I began, like one does, with the outsides of my life: canceling things, creating more space in my weekly calendar. As I began to spiral more and more deeply down to the core of it, I had to learn about codependency, and learn to

I WASN’T EVEN SHOOTING FOR LOVED. I JUST DIDN’T WANT TO BE KICKED OUT. say “No.” I had to become comfortable with disappointing people, which has never been my strong suit.

And deeper still, I had to address a sort of odd gap in my spiritual life and identity: I had to truly learn unconditional love—not to just know it in my head, but carry it in my heart. I needed to work it though my life, all the way through, like working yeast through dough.

What has helped me integrate the reality of God’s unconditional love for me more than anything is centering prayer— the practice of sitting in silence and focusing on one word or phrase or attribute of God. Sometimes, I practice centering prayer alone, sometimes with my church community, and sometimes with a spiritual director, which has been tremendously helpful.

When I pray, I picture a red heart—that perfectly simple red heart—and in the

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silence and stillness. Instead of avoiding it, I found myself craving it, aching for it.

After a lifetime of running from silence, now it was in silence that I found my identity, my grounding, my true contentedness. Because it was in the silence that I could feel—actually feel—God’s love for me, for the first time.

I wanted to carry that red heart—that symbol of love—around with me, and I wanted it on my left arm. I’m left-handed, and I want that love to be the fuel.

Whatever I build from here on out, whatever I make, whatever I write, whatever I create, I want the fuel that propels it to be love—not competition, not fear, not proving. I want whatever I build in the next season of my life to be fueled by love, and nothing else.

Shauna Niequist’s next book, Present over Perfect, releases in August.

silence, I am reminded of God’s love, that it began before I was born, that it will continue far past the end of my life.

Before the day begins—kids, coffee, toast, little socks, little shoes, deadlines and decisions—I close my eyes and picture that red heart. I remind myself what is true: God loves me, and there’s nothing

THE ESSENTIAL SHAUNA Shauna’s books remind readers to slow down and live every day intentionally.

PRESENT OVER PERFECT

An invitation to stop, reflect, rest and value where you are rather than focusing on where you wish you were.

B R E A D & WINE

A collection of essays about friends, family and food that is part spiritual memoir, part love letter to community.

B I T T E R SW EET

Reflections on the beauty and brokenness of life—and the fact that pain often is what makes us strong.

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I can do in the day to come to earn more love—nothing. And there’s also nothing I can do in the day to come to ruin or break that love—nothing.

Can you imagine anything more lifechanging for an earner like me? That love is secure no matter what. No matter what I do or don’t, no matter whether I succeed or fail, no matter if I perform well or fall apart.

When I begin the day drenched in that love, that centering awareness of my worth and connection to God, the day is different.

I don’t have to scramble or hustle. Fear dissipates, and what I’m left with is warmth, creativity, generosity. I can make and connect and create and tell the truth, because my worth isn’t on the line at every moment.

I found that space and silence were the richest soil for my growth. I began to truly understand God’s love for me when I was alone and quiet. For most of my life, I’ve avoided being alone or quiet in any way— I’m a classic extrovert: I love to be busy.

That is, I used to love to be busy. I’ve realized in recent years that I used busyness to shore up that inner emptiness, and as I began to practice centering prayer, that inner emptiness began to be filled, little by little, almost like an egg yolk going from soft-boiled to hard.

That simple practice of picturing a red heart, and letting the profound reality of God’s love impress itself upon me, changed everything. I began to seek

And so, those two: the red heart and the word “yes,” the heart on my writing hand, the invitation to accept it on the other.

My friend Sarah and I drove to the city

WHEN I BEGIN THE DAY DRENCHED IN THAT LOVE, THAT AWARENESS OF MY WORTH, I DON’T HAVE TO SCRAMBLE OR HUSTLE. on a rainy Tuesday, having set aside the afternoon for more than a month, having talked about this day for years. We were nervous when we arrived, jittery, giggly.

We talked to each other to take our minds off the needle, chatting about anything we could think of to cut through the noise of that needle.

I know some people think tattoos are insane or tacky or passé. But for me, these are the lines in the sand, the daily, visual, tactile, with-me-all-the-time twin symbols for how I want to live: with great love and openness. These are the symbols of my future, of my calling, of my identity. I’m loved, and I choose to say yes.

SHAUNA NIEQUIST is an author living outside of Chicago. She is married to Aaron, and they have two boys, Henry and Mac. Her great loves are family, dinner parties and books.

PURSUING YOU R

CALL

IF

YOU’VE BEEN AROUND CHURCH ANY AMOUNT OF time, odds are, you’ve sung a song by Chris Tomlin. A few years ago, TIME estimated that 30 million people sing Tomlin’s songs every single Sunday—and that’s just in the United States. So it’s not a stretch to say he has influenced the Church more than anyone else during the last 20 years. And to hear him talk, he’s just as passionate heading into his third decade of ministry. We sat down with Tomlin find out what inspires his work and what keeps him hungry year after year.

WHAT KEEPS YOU INSPIRED?

CHR IS TOMLIN IS ON E OF T HE WOR L D’S MOST IN FLU EN T I A L CH U RCH L E A DER S — H ER E’S HIS A DV ICE F O R S TAY I N G I NSPI R E D A S YOU PU R SU E T HE WOR K GOD H AS CA LLED YOU TO DO

I think when God’s spirit is really in you, it’s eternal and it’s always bubbling up and expressing things. There are definitely days where I’m just like, “Maybe life would be simpler if I just go sell real estate or wait tables or something.” But that doesn’t last long, because God put a calling in me that I can’t deny. I don’t think you retire from those callings of God. At the end of the day, it’s “Am I doing this for the praise of men or the praise of God?” That’s what I’m always checking.

Are the motives just to keep getting praise of man and to keep selling records?

At the end of the day, honestly, I really feel like if I never sold another record, I would still do it. I feel like it’s a calling from God, and hopefully it continues to be relevant to people.

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO TRY TO HELP OTHERS WORSHIP WHEN YOU DON’T ALWAYS FEEL LIKE WORSHIPPING?

Not all of life is on this mountain top. It’s not just gliding through the clouds. Most of life is nitty gritty. There’s pain, there’s hurt, there’s our own selfishness, our own sin. There are seasons where I don’t want to even think about music, but that doesn’t last long, because God wired me a different way than maybe He wired other people. I get very passionate about music.

I’m just like anybody else. I have my triumphs and my failures, but that doesn’t stop what God’s given me to do as my work. I really feel like that’s the work God has put on my life to do, and I try to be

responsible for it. I try to work hard at it.

Songwriting is not just a mystical thing.

It’s a lot of work. You don’t just wake up and become a songwriter, just like you don’t just wake up and become a piano player. You work at it. I’m trying to be as responsible as I can and work as hard as I can at it, because I want to do it with excellence.

HOW DO YOU STAY HEALTHY PHYSICALLY AND SPIRITUALLY?

I think the greatest thing you could do is to press pause. You cannot stay healthy from just going and going and going.

I get caught up in that. You get to an unhealthy place spiritually and physically and you’re just exhausted. I don’t think that’s how God meant us to live. I feel like He wants us to be filled up.

So it’s pressing pause. I’ve been very fortunate and gracious enough to be married to an amazing wife who teaches me more and more about prayer and listening to God and being still.

Right now, I have this daily prayer that I’m praying. It’s quite long, but it goes through these different things—just speaking some things out loud, bringing it across before anything is coming against me and my family, praying protection through the power of Jesus over my family.

I think pressing pause is the only way to do it, and obviously, that’s nothing earthshattering, because Jesus told us to do that every week. I think in our world, it’s hard to do that. But I find myself getting to really bad places when I’m not stopping.

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RISE

OF

THE

COOL CATHOLICS E M I LY M C FA R L A N M I L L E R

ST EPHEN COLBERT IS QUOTING SCR IP T UR E O N T V, P O P E F R A N C I S IS GET T I NG ROCK S TA R T R E AT M E N T E V ERY W HER E HE GOES, A ND A NEW G E N E R AT I O N O F C AT H O L I C S A R E R ECL AIMING THEIR FA I T H . W I L L T H E Y S PA R K A C U LT U R A L R E F O R M AT I O N ?

W

hen her twins were born six weeks premature and hospitalized in the neonatal intensive care unit, blogger and author Elizabeth Esther wanted an example of someone else who knew what it felt like to watch their child suffer. All Esther could think of were the words of Peter and Paul and David—and then she remembered Mary, Jesus’ mother.

She didn’t know where the thought came from, she says, but it was the lifeline she needed. It also sent her to midday Mass at a Catholic church, wanting to find out more about Mary.

“That one moment started the journey for me. I didn’t know where it would lead me,” she says.

Brantly Millegan just wanted to go deeper.

Millegan had been raised in an evangelical Christian family, but he was familiar with Catholic prayers and liturgy, having gone to Catholic schools. In high school, he began to question which church he should belong to. Later, studying philosophy at Wheaton College, he read the writings of pre-Reformation Christians—Christians who were unapologetically Catholic—for the first time.

Millegan and Esther are just two Protestants who have found themselves drawn to the Catholic faith, but they’re definitely not alone.

The Rev. James Martin—a Jesuit priest, editor-at-large of America Magazine and best-selling author known for his role as chaplain of The Colbert Report—credits two figures for a recent wave of Catholic resurgence in America: Stephen Colbert and Pope Francis.

Francis, as head of the Catholic Church, has transformed its image in the three years since his election, Martin says.

The pope has shown up on the covers of Rolling Stone, The Advocate and Time magazine, as well as in trending hashtags from #PopeinUS to #PopeBars. And he’s reached out to non-Catholics, too, saying during a 20/20 special on ABC, “I am at the service of all churches and all men and women of goodwill.”

Even before the pope’s visit to the U.S. in 2015, the majority (60 percent) of American adults viewed the pope positively, including 58 percent of practicing Protestants

and 55 percent of millennials, according to a 2015 study by Barna Group. More than one-third reported the pope had improved their view of Catholicism.

And the new host of CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, who has jokingly described himself as “America’s most famous Catholic,” makes it “seem cool to be an intelligent Catholic,” Martin says.

“You can’t underestimate the impact those two people had on the popular conception of the Catholic Church,” he says.

“A few years ago, people’s predominant perception of the Catholic Church was sex abuse. Now, when I walk down the street in the collar, people come up to me and say, ‘I love your pope.’ That is a big change.”

MIRRORING JESUS In the beginning, Martin says, it was Francis’ simple lifestyle that caught people’s attention. In his first moments as pope, he humbly asked the crowd assembled in St. Peter’s Square to pray for him.

He since has eschewed the papal apartments in the Apostolic Palace for its guesthouse, raffled off expensive gifts to raise money for the poor and invited children for rides with him on the popemobile.

His clear words also have caught people’s ears. His favorite image of the Church is as “a field hospital after battle,” and the defining line of his young papacy has arguably been his response to a journalist who asked a question about homosexuality: “Who am I to judge?”

At least, those are the things that got the attention of Paul Rock, pastor of Second Presbyterian Church in Kansas City, Missouri, and author of Jesus, Pope Francis and a Protestant Walk into a Bar. “It’s in the living out of our faith and following Christ where Francis has been dynamic,” Rock says. “You can’t really argue with a guy who reaches out and washes feet on Maundy Thursday.”

Colbert, on the other hand, “presents a Catholicism that is thoughtful, provocative and even playful,” Martin says. He defies the popular stereotype that to be religious is to check your brain at the door.

Colbert has quoted Scripture on-air and talked in-depth about his Catholic faith in interviews. And he’s also poked goodnatured fun at religion.

“The Church is an important part of my life,” Colbert said on the interview program

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THE NUNS ARE ALL RIGHT

“THE CHURCH IS AN IMPORTANT PART OF MY LIFE. I WOULD BE CRAZY IF I DIDN’T MAKE JOKES ABOUT IT.” –Stephen Colbert

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Witness. “I would be crazy if I didn’t make jokes about it.”

“Interestingly, both [Pope Francis and Colbert] sort of mirror Jesus,” Martin says.

“One, in his authenticity; the other, in a sense of humor and playfulness.”

POPE AND CHANGE? Francis’ appeal is key to Catholicism’s sudden coolness, Martin says, because, “In no other church do you have someone so identified with the organization. The way people view the pope very much influences how people see the Church.”

But, Millegan points out, while people have been excited by Francis’ seemingly unorthodox words and actions, the pope hasn’t actually changed any doctrine. The Catholic Church still runs counter to popular culture in many ways.

“I wonder how much of his appeal to people is actually based on confusion about what he believes and what the Church teaches,” Millegan says.

That doesn’t concern Martin. That line of thinking “basically reduces the Catholic Church to those teachings,” he says. Not to mention, Francis’ change in tone, the bishops he has appointed, his approach to synods, his encyclical on the environment and the way people feel welcomed in the Church all are real changes, he says.

“People feel more included, and that’s fantastic,” he says.

That sense of inclusion is something Sister Chelsea Bethany Davis says she has noticed at the Daughters of St. Paul bookstore in Chicago. The store has a life-size cutout of the pope in its front window. People stop in all the time to say, “I’m not Catholic, but I love our pope.”

“I’ll say, ‘our pope?’ Awesome! I’m glad you love our pope,” Davis says.

At 24 years old, Davis is one of those millennial nuns who have been grabbing headlines recently because they are so uncommon. A 2014 study by Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate found there are more Catholic sisters in the U.S. who are over 90 years old than under 60.

Davis, too, had thought nuns were dead, confusing them with saints, she says. So when a sister came to speak to a class at her church, she was surprised to realize not only that becoming a nun was an option, but also that it was an option in which she might be interested.

“I saw this religious sister for the first time, and she was so joyful and so happy,” she says. “I remember thinking to myself at 13 years old, sitting on the floor and staring up at this nun, ‘I want to be that happy when I grow up.’”

So she started spending her summers at a camp run by the Daughters of St. Paul at their motherhouse in Boston—something her parents initially thought was a “nun phase,” she says, like other little girls might go through a horse phase. She entered religious life in 2011 and made her first vows in August.

Her faith isn’t all that different than any other millennial striving to make his or her faith her own. Even before Francis was elected pope, she says, she noticed her peers wanted more than what they had seen in their parents’ lives.

“If I’m going to be true to what I believe, I have to follow through on it,” she says.

“I can’t just say I’m Catholic. I can’t just say I’m a religious person, and then on the weekends, I’m not—like, Friday night I’m not Catholic, but Sunday morning I am.

You can’t live that way and be authentic.”

AUTHENTICITY If Mary was the concept that drew Esther to the Catholic Church, she also was the

thing that initially threatened to push her ROOTED IN TRADITION That could contribute to that feeling of away. Having grown up in a “homegrown Millegan, his wife and four or five other being untethered, sending them looking Christian fundamentalist church,” she says classmates from Wheaton joined the for a church firmly anchored in tradition. she had to overcome a lot of misconcep- Catholic Church in 2009, during their It also could contribute to them borrowing tions about Mary. senior year. In 2014, he started the website from Catholicism the same way they would But she fell in love with Mass right away. ChurchPOP, which he calls “a BuzzFeed any other Christian denomination, taking It was so different from the services at the from a Christian cultural perspective.” from it those things that help deepen their evangelical megachurch her family had But he didn’t do either of those things faith and relationship with God. been attending. because they were cool, he says.

To Rock, descriptors like “Catholic” and “To go into Mass and see a crucifix—it “I interpret it more as a reaction to the “Protestant” mean less and less. Growing was so comforting, because it wasn’t happy very shallow evangelicalism of the last up Protestant among mostly Catholics, he clappy, ‘Everything is great!’” Esther says. few decades—the contemporary worship says he saw the faith as “another great tool “It was, ‘No, suffering is real, and it’s OK.’ I movement, the seeker-sensitive movement. for me to use to understand God and wresfelt understood. I felt like it was OK for me It was a reaction: ‘No, we actually do want tle with my own questions.” to bring my brokenness and messiness and something deeper,’” he says.

“For the younger millennials who are suffering into that place.”

The Catholic Church can offer feeling unmoored or untethered, not necThe overwhelmed mom of five, suffering Protestants a sense of history and tradition essarily having a spiritual home, to find the from postpartum depression and compli- that goes back further than D.L. Moody in liturgy, to find spiritual practices that can cations from the birth of her twins, didn’t the 1800s, further even than Martin Luther cradle them and usher them into spiritualhave to pretend everyity—that’s beautiful,” he thing was OK, she says. says. “For them, that’s She didn’t have to dress not tied into the theola certain way or make ogy or the doctrine as it conversation or be anyis with others. thing other than what she “It’s almost like this was. She didn’t have to Catholicism 2.0 ... leave analyze every lyric from some of the glitches the hymns or every word behind.” from the priest.

She simply could be in BROTHERS AND God’s presence. She could SISTERS gather around the table for Catholics are just as the Eucharist with others, Christian as Protesjust the way they were, tants, Esther says. and let the sights and And Catholics and sounds envelop her.

Protestants can learn a That’s a more “tactile lot from each other. and sensual” way to expeWhile Protestants Pope Francis waves to the crowd during his visit to Philadelphia in the fall of 2015. rience Christ, Rock says, have been drawn to than in his Presbyterian Pope Francis and the denomination, which esteems academics in the 1500s, Esther says. That includes rootedness of Catholic faith, she says, and research and words. It’s communal, prayers that have been prayed for thou- Catholics love the evangelical approach which he says more and more Protestants sands of years. to knowing the Bible and reading the are trying to embrace.

And on any Sunday at any Catholic Bible individually.

And it’s appealing, Davis says, because Church anywhere in the world, the same None of us have it all figured out, Rock it’s honest, and because “everything else in readings are going to be read, the same lit- says. When we all get to heaven, we’ll realour lives right now is superficial.” urgy recited, she adds. ize where we were theologically off.

“We’re living from high to high to high, “For me, that sense of safety, that sense “My hope is what’s getting cool is to depending what your idea of high is,” she of ritual, that sense that this isn’t something take our faith in Christ seriously and not says. “I think authenticity and genuineness that’s going to change in a world that’s con- to retreat into our arguments or doctrine, is what provides that deep joy, that abiding stantly changing—it was a place you could but to, together, follow Christ into a faith happiness we all long for.” slow down and be quiet,” she says. and lifestyle that can change the world,” he Esther was received into the church Millennials are more mobile than any says. “That’s what I think is cool.” in 2009, followed by her husband and other generation, not tied to place or five children. Her second book, Spiritual denomination, Millegan notes. They talk in EMILY MCFARL AN MILLER is an award-winning Sobriety: The Promise of Healthy Faith when terms of the churches they attend, not the journalist and truth-seeker based in Chicago.

Good Religion Goes Bad, releases in April. denominations to which they belong.

Connect with her at emmillerwrites.com.

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RELEVANT RECOMMENDS

MOVIES

SPOTLIGHT TOM M C CARTHY

BROOKLYN

HITCHCOCK TRUFFAUT

JOHN CROWLEY

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The film earns the sentiment through stunning cinematography and honest performances.

Through the struggle of a young Irish woman caught between two worlds, the film is a smart and beautiful reflection on love, God and country.

A compelling examination of Alfred Hitchcock through the lens of his famous interview with French film director and critic Francois Truffaut, Jones’ film is not only a great film—it is great film criticism, enhancing and enlightening our understanding of one of the greatest filmmakers in history.

[OPEN ROAD FILMS]

Some viewers might walk away from Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight more jaded by organized religion due to the film’s subject: the Boston Globe’s investigation into the infamous abuse scandals of the Catholic Church. But that’s not to the fault of McCarthy, who avoids unnecessary commentary and lionizing his characters, remaining ultra focused on the story at hand. Bolstered by an elite cast, this workplace drama is somehow sensitive and disinterested and utterly poignant all at the same time.

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CREED

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ASIF KAPADIA

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The racial drama surrounding the Oscars was absolutely valid given the mere presence of Creed. The film finds a perfect balance of paying homage to its roots, embracing the things we love about the Rocky franchise, while adding an artistic touch.

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Bridge of Spies might be the best movie you didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t hear about in 2015. A Cold War thriller about an attorney tasked to negotiate the release of an American pilot from the Soviets, the film is heartfelt and entertaining. Steven Spielberg again shows that he is one of the greatest directors today.

The simple title of Asif Kapadiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s documentary about British pop star Amy Winehouse encapsulates the intimate posture of the film. Amy cares far more about Winehouse the person than Winehouse the star.

The result is a sad story of celebrity and addiction that Kapadia captures with grace and beauty.

Anchored by unforgettable performances from Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay, Room is both haunting and joyous.

Focused on a young woman and boy trapped in a shed for years, Room is an intense, emotional ride from start to finish, and a unique and captivating meditation on childhood.

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RELEVANT RECOMMENDS

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THE GUNNING OF AMERICA

THE JUSTICE CALLING

CREATE VS. COPY

PAMELA HAAG

BETHANY HANKE HOANG & KRISTEN DEEDE JOHNSON

KEN WYTSMA

[BASIC BOOKS]

[BRAZOS PRESS]

As public conversation about gun rights and the persistence of mass shootings escalates, Pamela Haag’s provocative The Gunning of America might turn out to be one of the most important books of 2016. Haag, a historian, rigorously lays out a new and striking account of how America’s gun culture developed. Specifically, she hones in on the Winchester rifle company and the vital role it played in not only marketing guns to America, but also the culture that has sprung up around firearms.

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Perseverance is not the sexiest of virtues, but it is essential to the work of seeking justice. The Justice Calling is an invaluable resource that points to theology and virtues that will sustain us on the journey toward justice.

Every Christian activist should read and reread this book.

[MOODY]

Ken Wytsma, a pastor, educator and founder of The Justice Conference, explores how creativity is essential to fruitful leadership. Building upon the conviction that humanity was made in the image of a creative God, Wytsma guides us toward the flourishing that God intends for all creation.

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NIGHT DRIVING

STRONG AND WEAK

CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY

ADDIE ZIERMAN

ANDY CROUCH

COLLECTED POEMS: 1950-2012

[SIMON & SCHUSTER]

[CONVERGENT]

[IVP BOOKS]

ADRIENNE RICH

From the author of novels like Thank You for Smoking comes this 16th-century tale of a quest to forge the Shroud of Turin.

Buckley masterfully depicts the religious, economic and political backdrop of his story. The Relic Master serves not only as splendid comedy, but also as a fruitful lesson in history.

Another extraordinary memoir from Addie Zierman, Night Driving weaves together a road trip narrative with the story of her struggles to know God. Her grappling with faith is refreshingly frank and will resonate with many readers who find themselves agonizing over their own theological doubts.

In his latest, Andy Crouch asks: What virtues of character will guide most directly toward the sort of flourishing God desires for us? He suggests the answer lies in the combination of two paradoxical virtues: authority and vulnerability. The book nudges us to reimagine the shape of our faithfulness.

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Adrienne Rich was not only one of the most important American poets of the late 20th century, she was also a bold and prophetic voice that denounced injustices wreaked by modern powers. This volume of collected poems, spanning her career, is a treasure trove.

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RELEVANT PODCAST NOTABLE RECENT EPISODES OF THE RELEVANT PODCAST

MUTEMATH

JOSEPH FIENNES

CLAIRE DIAZ-ORTIZ

LOUIE GIGLIO

EPISODE 477

EPISODE 478

EPISODE 475

EPISODE 471

In the four years since their last album, Mutemath has made some major overhauls.

The band members scrapped almost an entire album’s worth of songs, signed to a new label, and also went through major life transitions personally.

The result is Vitals, a fantastic comeback album. We talked to the guys about their creative process and sticking together.

Joseph Fiennes has played everyone from William Shakespeare to Martin Luther to (soon) Michael Jackson. This year, he starred as a Roman centurion looking for Jesus’ body in Risen, and as famous Christian runner Eric Liddell in The Last Race. We talked to the actor about how he chooses roles, how he prepares and his favorite characters to play.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz gets a lot done. She was one of the early employees at Twitter, leading social innovation for years.

She reads 200 books a year and has written a few herself.

In her new book, Design Your Day, Diaz-Ortiz shares ideas for setting good goals—and reaching them. On this episode, she talks us through a few keys for living each day intentionally.

A few years ago, pastor Louie Giglio thought he was done. He’d suffered a nervous breakdown of sorts, and found himself in a fog of depression and sickness. We talk with him about how he got through— and how anyone can have a comeback like he did. We also feature amazing in-studio performances from Jon Guerra and Fleurie.

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RELEVANT.TV CURATED VIDEOS AND SHORT FILMS PLAYING NOW ON RELEVANT.TV

“TERMINAL” (LIVE) JON FOREMAN Jon Foreman stopped into a California Guitar Center for a live performance of “Terminal” from his Wonderlands EP project. In this video, he explains some of his thought process behind the song, which talks about the reality of human mortality and the desire to make our lives count beyond the limited number of years we get on this planet.

“LET IT ECHO” (LIVE FROM RELEVANT)

AMAZING CHRISTIAN PICKUP LINES

JESUS CULTURE

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Jesus Culture’s new album, Let it Echo, is a celebration of God’s goodness despite hard circumstances. The band stopped into the RELEVANT studio for a live performance of a few songs off the album.

This live version of the album’s title song shows the relentless joy and worship the band has poured into the album.

We asked readers for the most unintentionally hilarious, cringeworthy Christian pickup lines they’d ever heard, then fed the lines to our actors to try out. The result is gloriously awkward. Feel free to use the lines at your next Christian conference or networking event if you’re really brave.

You’re welcome.

“MANOLO” TRIP LEE The main lyrics of “Manolo,” off Trip Lee’s latest album, Rise, aren’t gibberish. “Manolo” is the Spanish version of Emmanuel, meaning “God is with us.” Trip turned the word into a rallying cry, urging listeners to use the Bible as a defense against sin and remember the truth when they’re tempted. This trippy, Matrix-inspired video reinforces that idea.

“David Dark is one of our most astute and necessary cultural critics.”

Flip the Script on “Religious”

—Jessica Hopper,

author of The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic

For many of us, the word “religious” evokes thoughts of brainwashing, violence and eye-rubbingly tiresome conversations.

Why not be done with it? David Dark, author of The Sacredness of Questioning Everything, Everyday Apocalypse and The Gospel According to America, combines wit and candor with sharp cultural observations, flipping the script on religiosity.

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CONTENTS

MAR/APR 2016 ISSUE 80

FEATURES 56

GALLANT Meet the alt-R&B singer you’re going hear a lot about this year.

58

CAGE THE ELEPHANT Ten years in, with platinum-selling music already, the band’s better now than ever.

62

REND COLLECTIVE This worship outfit started humbly, now they’re reaching the world.

44

64

9 PEOPLE WHO DEFINITELY WENT TO YOUR CHILDHOOD CHURCH It’s not like you could ever forget them.

THE SOUND OF MUSIC 2016

70

MARKED FOR GOOD The moving story of Chad Veach and the most talked about tattoo in the U.S.

Our annual guide to all the music that matters.

74

SQUAD GOALS Making friends as an adult can be difficult, but we’ve got some tips to make it easy(ish).

78

WHOLE HEARTED Author Shauna Niequist on how she learned to rest in God’s unconditional love.

82

PURSUING YOUR CALL A conversation with Chris Tomlin, one of the most influential church leaders in the world.

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RISE OF THE COOL CATHOLICS With Stephen Colbert and Pope Francis’ huge popularity, awesome Catholics are back in the cultural limelight.

52 BØRNS

8

FIR ST WOR D

10

FEEDBACK

32

MAKER

The changing landscape of work, Alex Medina on creativity, entrepreneurs using high-end products for good.

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66 ALEJANDRO IÑÁRRITU

12

SLICES

Millennials now rule the world; Elon Musk’s open-source A.I.; a true crime revival; #blacklivesmatter; religion’s links to happiness; 5 products that will keep you active this spring; a hotel run by refugees; faith leaders on guns; Martin Scorsese’s new film; Rick Warren on Easter and more.

38

R E J E C T A PAT H Y

China’s new family policy, the little box that could save millions of lives, how fear leads to apathy and more.

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R E L E VA N T R E C O M M E N D S

The music, movies, books and digital media you need to know about.

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