go see this

Last night I saw Young @ Heart, a documentary that originally aired on the BBC about an elderly (70's, 80's, 90's) choir that takes on the challenge of rock. It really is amazing: hilarious, strange, sad, hopeful, perfect.

(If you're in GR, it's at the cheap theater: Celebration Woodland.)

(To avoid watching terrible movies, visit RottenTomatoes.com for reliable ratings.)

everything in its right place

I’ve been on a maddening house hunt. The intensity is equal to barking at opposing players on the football field.

Our current place? Perfect, but it holds a now vacant room that used to be our “office,” which, unfortunately, still costs money.

The hunt has been exhausting, sifting through endless Craigslist and rental websites daily, as if panning for gold, then rifling off emails and phone messages to strangers, only to attempt to sound intelligent when they call back, “Which place is this again?”

“Oh yeah, that place. How’s the area? What’s the parking? Laundry? Gas bills? When can we meet? Let me check with my roommate.”

We’ve seen a heap of dives, been stood up three times (gosh!) and once told, “Our landlord is the worst landlord ever. He threw away half our stuff. And this area is kinda ghetto, someone tried to steal my friends car and shot at him.”

Great.

Another landlord told me about an exquisite paint job in her glorious apartment; the way she described it sounded like it would cost a fortune. “I think this is going to be a gem,” I confidently told my roommate Barry on the way there, watching his GPS. Turns out, it was an OCD painter who rented the house before us, who allegedly stopped paying rent, went insane and meticulously painted every square inch of the apartment in wild patterns of purple and green, even pink.

As you can imagine, the often-fragile, single male ego clashes with such a color scheme.

However, there’s something about the east side of this city that’s stolen my heart, and I was determined to continue living in it. Two nights ago I was peddling my bike around the eastern neighborhoods at dusk, pen and paper in hand, scribbling down phone numbers and addresses and little notes (“looks abandoned,”) like a doctor penning illegible prescriptions.

And then I saw her.

She was an old mansion, though we would only take a piece of her. She was perfect: first floor, great area, affordable, available, amenitiable (new word).

I scheduled a viewing for yesterday at 4:45.

At 4:25, the owner called. “Sorry, the place has been rented.”

“Oh,” I said. Not much else to say. I’ve drank plenty of rejection.

It left me angry, exhausted, pissed about perceived perseverance without any tangible results, calling out to God for a solution.

“Okay, one more round of Craigslist,” I reason.

And then I saw her: But she was a new “her.”

“Hi, I’m calling about the place in Cherry Hill,” I said. Now an expert at asking the proper questions to avoid monumental disappointments and pink walls, I was walking through it within 20 minutes of the phone call.

And I knew it was finally her. I called Barry.

“I say we rock this one,” I said. Maybe I didn’t deliver the message with the three C’s (calm, cool, collected). It was probably more like, “Hey dude, this place is tight and I’m tired and I think we should rent it.”

Anyways, back to the story.

At 9 p.m., we walked through: Wood floors, tall ceilings, spacey, amentiable, vintage.

“Let’s do it,” Barry says.

The check was written, handshakes were shared, and everything has its right place.

“Nice work,” Barry says.

“It's grace, man,” I reply.

And it is.

Thanks, Everything.

news

Rapid Growth wrote a story on our company move today. Click to read.

zim aid crisis

A picture is worth a thousand words. Read more about the aid crisis on the BBC.

mountain bike musings

Today, on this Sabbath, mountain biking has reminded me the Deep.

My two-wheeled ride had been out of commission since last fall, the new chain doesn’t fit the other parts, aged eights years and uncooperative with change. I decided to go regardless.

After a brief stop at the gas station for 75 cent air, I arrived at high noon, the weather, hot, sticky, beautiful. The iPod was set to the “Fargo or Bust” mix, opening with Coldplay’s latest Violet Hill. After that, “Something” by The Beatles came on, and I took the ear buds out, tucking them safely into my generic Camelbak straps.

It was time to listen, not to rock.

Work is now downtown, a quick-and-blessed 180 from nearly two years of laboring from home in a small office adjacent to the room where I sleep. Now, our space has been multiplied many times over, with new front-window views of city streets and people everywhere. I’m also considering a personal move downtown to centralize life.

Our space sits on the entrance to a section of the city called The Heartside District, “known for its compassion,” according to a local website. Our street hosts the main hub of the city’s homeless shelters, food distribution organizations, artists, hipsters, punk rockers, mentally handicapped, the list goes on.

Along with all the beauty and diversity comes an equal amount of noise.

I found myself surrounded by silence, minus my breath and the rhythms of the woods. As I peddled down the trail, I was reminded of my physical being. Much of my daily work is thinking, talking, assigning language and images to ideas, clicking and typing, making agreements.

Lately, I’ve been eating like a college student—an unbalanced diet with too much junk food, rarely sitting down for a meal, (minus my mandatory breakfast involving eggs or French toast). The discipline of exercise has been washed away by deadlines, though I know the stress we carry in our bodies, if not properly dealt with, will make itself known.

But there, in the woods, my body was tested. It reminded me of our frailty and strength, of the importance of others coming alongside to refine and push us, as I was passed by a much more experienced rider, who motivated me to peddle harder.

As I began to think about our physical bodies, I thought of the dwelling of Christ in us, how the Scriptures describe our physical beings as temples of the Holy Spirit, as living sacrifices, and the closeness and unity and reverence these heavy statements imply.

And how often I forget these truths.

It made me think of physical desire, how strongly we’re wired for physical connection, how in the beginning the LORD decided, “It is not good for man to be alone.” Friends in The Song of Songs repeat, “Do not awaken or arouse love until it so desires,” while Ecclesiastes (and The Byrds) speak to proper timing, saying, “To everything, turn, turn, turn. There is a season, turn, turn, turn.”

And in moments of peace, how we bow submissively to His timing, and at other times, we wrestle with two clocks: “one God’s, one mine.”

The green trees quietly spoke of the original order of created things, and I caught a sliver into the ecstasy of God walking with Adam in the Garden before the Fall. It was a reminder of how Adam enjoyed his work as I was enjoying the ride, how the death and resurrection of Christ is the “second Adam,” how Christ’s restorative work is fully underway in the here-and-now through the mystery and power of the Trinity.

(Culture tells us to think of work as our identity, something to be segmented, defined by money, but there is good work in the unpaid as well as the paid. Oftentimes, the former is more fruitful.)

The woods remind me that order will reign when I lie down in my grave and ascend to be with God, that someday our existing Earth will also be re-ordered and restored, as Derek Webb puts it in the aptly titled song, “This, too, shall be made right.”

A remote click to the news clarifies that we must be people living with hope, not just academically or intellectually by cleverly adopting churchy buzz-words, but having hope we can feel in our guts, living people who truly believe that in the end, [Insert your current crisis, problem, emergency, hopelessness, etc.,] “This, too, will be made right.”

In the morning I read a chapter on “recollection” by “my favorite monk Thomas Merton,” who wrote of the balance of internal and external peace and the disconnection we must make from results and measurements of the world in order to successfully live in it.

The ride reminded me of the beauty I’ve seen, so concentrated in the last two years through travel and encounters with God and people. For a moment I felt like the famous Yankee Lou Gehrig, who once called himself “the luckiest man alive.”

Michigan’s forest stirred up stored images of the Amazon and climbing trees and shooting blow-dart guns, of walking through the jungle with the Waodani, seeing firsthand how the Creator provided the unthinkable: a tree root that lulls fish to sleep and draws them to the surface of the water, allowing the Indians to pluck large fish with wooden spears and feed a tribe.

As I was cruising down a hill, across the 2 x 4 bridge over the small river, I sensed it was time to stop. Laying my bike down by the river and putting the headphones back on, I caught the end of U2’s Grace, and its lyrics, “Grace, a thought that changed the world,” flooded my mind.

I’ve been the recipient of much grace as ointment for various trials over the past two years, from financial graces to spiritual and relational graces. Lately, I’ve been listening to a Caedmon’s Call song, Lead of Love, which says,

Looking back at the road so far
The journey's left its share of scars
Mostly from leaving the narrow and straight

Looking back it is clear to me
That a man is more than the sum of his deeds
And how You've made good of this mess I've made
Is a profound mystery

Looking back You know You had to bring me through
All that I was so afraid of
Though I questioned the sky, now I see why
Had to walk the rocks to see the mountain view
Looking back I see the lead of love

Looking back I can finally see (I'd rather have wisdom)
How failures bring humility (than be)
Brings me to my knees (a comfortable fool)
Helps me see my need for Thee

I’m certainly still in the stage of walking rocks (and perhaps for the majority of our lives we always are, we just may have multiple mountains to climb), but we’ve been given glimpses of hope in recent times.

Slowly, I’m learning to hold onto life much more loosely than in the past, a result of experiences where I’ve squeezed hard and stubbornly, only to have the mini-worlds I’ve created destroyed, so proper orientation can be restored.

The next song was Out of the Woods by Nickel Creek, triggering thoughts of all the beauty that is to come. The trail is full of mud, hills, rocks, roots, trees, obstacles. It is always changing, much like life. In Africa, we went whitewater rafting on the Zambezi, wedged between Zimbabwe and Zambia. “The river is different every day,” the tour guide said, who had been riding its waters for seven years.

Merton said that each of us is constantly changing—the changes we make either take us closer to the person The Maker intended to be, or further away.

May we all pursue the people we are intended to be, with hope of seeing the mountain view.

to play or not to play?

"It's just rain, it's not going to kill you," the old man says to me, a smile envelopes my face.

standing in summer heat
under cover with open eyes
as the rain pounds the streets

Now is not the proper time for rain, let alone a rain blizzard. Tornado watches, sour-looking radar, the whole deal. But there's a problem: our band is scheduled to play outside at 6:45 p.m. downtown. I'm not smiling anymore.

At first, the rain seemed standard, as it often comes and goes. For a moment, the sun came out, but the rain is still falling hard. Drenched hipsters walk across the street, clothes stuck to their bodies, and as soon as I finish typing another sentence, the rain stops.

And perhaps, tonight we'll play.

zim worship project preview

Click on “Ini Na Jesu Wangu” to hear a preview of the Zim Worship Project.

This was recorded acapella in a grass root hut at a youth conference in Zimbabwe. The atmosphere that night was incredible. Listen closely for the crickets in the beginning.

And the lyrics:

Ini naJesu wangu
Tatenderana

(Jesus and I have made a covenant)

Tapanana chitsidzo
Chekuenda kudenga
Tatenderana

(A covenant that guarantees me a place in heaven)

Ropa raJesu
Hari zo peri simba

(The blood of Jesus will never be powerless)

news

Today's a big day for us. We announced our new studio, new website, and launch of our audio division. You can read about the news on our business blog and check out the new site here, where you can subscribe to our regular newsletter updates.

coming home

Standing in the back of Simon's truck in Zim, a young man from the worship services came up to me with a plastic bag in his hand. "This is for you. I didn't think I could ever part with it, but I know I should give it to you."

When people who have nothing give you everything they have, thank you doesn't feel like enough, but sometimes it's all we can muster. Inside the plastic bag was No Compromise: The Life Story of Keith Green, along with a note of encouragement and some Bible verses. Prior to reading the book, I knew nothing about Keith Green. I was supposed to read it.

I've been emailing with my new friend, and feel I need to share an excerpt from his email last week, despite all the horrific news coming from Zim, of persecution in South Africa for refugees and the political mess all around. It reads:

oh, we are more than hanging in here! nay, not even surviving but alive and well! it does seem strange the situation we are in at the moment as a nation. when one lifts off their eyes away from the economic woes and such things alike you'd find that the spiritual reality is great and fantastic. i am one of those who had left the country. i was out for a year and a half. came back about ten months ago. God kinda of impressed it on my heart that He is preparing for the 'exhiles' to return home. exhiles both in the natural and in the spirit. so i am holding onto the promise to see the return of the exhiles and already God has started to herald the songs of the returnees here.

Cheers to all the exiles coming home.

to fargo or not to fargo?

Fargo is notorious for wood chippers, so naturally I was a skeptic.

We spent a majority of our ride from Minneapolis to Fargo making fun of it in various ways, combined with asking each other questions about what kind of animal we would be if we lived in the land, sea or air, respectively.

When we arrived, it was as if someone had airlifted the Mall of America and shattered into little pieces, scattering every retail chain store imaginable in a neat, condensed area known as Fargo.

We discovered that Fargo has the highest concentration of restaurants per capita in the United States, mostly unoriginal and stale. However, the downtown area gets props for its free parking, old 60’s charm and Midwestern hospitality, making up for the suburban clone field lying on its outskirts.

I wish I would’ve had more interesting Fargo native experiences—then I could report something new about this sleepy town made famous by film—but I can’t.

My thesis on Fargo is this: If you want to raise your children in a safe-but-sheltered area of Midwestern America, where they will likely immediately move away from after high school and do something rebellious in college, move to Fargo.

At least you’ll never run out of places to eat.

fargo or bust

Monday I woke up vomiting with a 24-hour flu.

Tuesday I popped a couple immodium AD tablets and drove 600 miles through the night to Minneapolis, arriving at 3 a.m. CST Wednesday morning.

Wednesday was Josh's bachelor party. We walked 18 holes, ate too much pizza and stayed up too late for our own good. But it was perfect.

Thursday we drove to Fargo for the rehearsal and groom's dinner. Some of my best friends and I ended up playing pool at an old northern Minnesota bar in a town called "Downer."

Friday was Josh and Heather's wedding and reception. It went off, we ate food, did a bit of dancing, then drove from Fargo to Minneapolis, arriving at 4 a.m. CST.

Saturday I slept until noon, ate pancakes and drove through the rain back to Grand Rapids.

Sunday was the Sabbath, where everything else fades.

dope and identity

Last night I found out someone who recently met me (and two of my friends) at church thought “they were drug dealers, because of the way we looked.”

Yes, drug dealers. I guess the haircut boycott is working.

This was and is really funny. This morning, on the heels of the thought of me slanging dope, I started thinking about stereotypes. We moved into a new studio space yesterday in an interesting part of town, a district where my hairstyle is pretty tame and it would be easy to manufacture stereotypes.

And in this country, stereotypes often point back to what we do.

Or what we don’t do.

This is a stretch, but there’s a brilliant, dark and irreverent movie (and book) called Everything is Illuminated, where a young American played by Elijah Wood treks over to Eastern Europe to trace his Jewish roots from WWII. He’s guided by a family of Ukrainians, including a quirky guy named Alex who speaks brilliantly busted English.

Alex asks the American about the culture and jobs and money, like, “How much does accountant make?” I started thinking about the places I’ve been where people don’t really have jobs, because there are no jobs to be found.

Where do people find their identity, if it’s not in accounting?

And I remembered the first time I interviewed two brothers in Zim about worship.

“Hi, I’m Francis. I’m a worshiper in the house of the Lord.”

After Francis shared some meaty words of wisdom, Tinashi, standing right beside him, said, “And I’m Tinashi. I’m also a worshiper in the house of the Lord.” And I can’t help but wonder: what would our lives be like if we found our identity in the same place?