RELEVANT - Issue 73 - January/February 2015 by RELEVANT Media Group

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

CHARLI XCX

GENERATION DEBT WILL MILLENNIALS EVER GET OUT OF THE RED?

MAKING TOP 4 0 INTERESTING ONE HIT AT A TIME

CHURCH PHRASES THAT USED TO FREAK US OUT WHAT DO YOU MEAN I’M GOING TO BE WASHED IN THE BLOOD?

JEFF BRIDGES A DUDE ON A MISSION

EMPIRE STAT E O F MIND

FROM ‘THE WIRE’ TO ‘BOARDWALK EMPIRE,’ THE STORY OF THIS G E N E R AT I O N ’ S M O S T ICONIC ACTOR ISSUE 73 | JAN_FEB 2015 | $4.95

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JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015, ISSUE 73 Be Like Mike. Publisher & CEO | CAMERON STRANG > cameron@relevantmediagroup.com Executive Director | JEFF ROJAS > jeff@relevantmediagroup.com Account Manager | WAYNE THOMPSON > wayne@relevantmediagroup.com Account Manager | MICHAEL SCHUERMAN > michael@relevantmediagroup.com Managing Editor | TYLER HUCKABEE > tyler@relevantmediagroup.com Web Editor | JESSE CAREY > jesse@relevantmediagroup.com Copy Editor | DARGAN THOMPSON > dargan@relevantmediagroup.com Editorial Coordinator | LINDSEY STATON > lindsey.staton@relevantmediagroup.com Contributing Writers: John Brandon, Rob Fee, Craig Groeschel, Eddie Kaufholz, Emily Miller, J. Ryan Parker, Liz Riggs, David Roark, C. Christopher Smith, Preston Sprinkle, Laura Studarus, Lisa Thompson Designer | LAUREN HARVILL > lauren@relevantmediagroup.com Production Designer | LINDSEY WEIGLEY > lindsey@relevantmediagroup.com Director of Audio & Video | CHAD MICHAEL SNAVELY > chad@relevantmediagroup.com Contributing Photographers: Gabriel Green, Marcus Haney, Bella Howard, Jesse Jenkins, Sam Jones, Shervin Lainez, Peter Larson, Nathan Mitchell, Max Norton, Steven Taylor, Rory White Customer Experience Coordinator | CAROLINE COLE > caroline@relevantmediagroup.com Marketing & Circulation Manager | AME LYNN DUNN > ame@relevantmediagroup.com Marketing Assistant | MORGAN BECK > morgan@relevantmediagroup.com Finance & Project Manager | MERCEDES LANGDON > mercedes@relevantmediagroup.com Facilities Coordinator | ERIC WARD > eric@relevantmediagroup.com Web/App Developer | STEVEN LINN > steven@relevantmediagroup.com Systems Administrator | JOSH STROHM > joshs@relevantmediagroup.com ADVERTISING INQUIRIES: www.RELEVANTmagazine.com/advertise

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RELEVANT Issue #73 January/February 2014 (ISSN: 1543-317X) 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

a sabbatical. When I came back, I knew it’d be easy to slide back into the same pattern as before. So, we changed the company. We downsized, put people in new positions of leadership, and changed how we do what we do. The company has grown, and I actually have margin now. Sometimes in life we need to look up and see what else could be possible, what more God might be calling us to, and take intentional steps to pursue it. It’s a bigger shift than just a New Year’s goal. But, a new year does offer a psychological reset button. Change and opportunity are in the air. Now is as good a time as any to intentionally challenge ourselves to chart a new course. Here are a few things we all should try to tackle in 2015. Imagine the impact if we do. 1. DON’T BE A JERK

3 CHALLENGES FOR 2015 BY CAMERON STR ANG

very January, about half of the population makes a New Year’s resolution. It’s the usual list: lose weight, get organized, save more. The problem is, only eight percent actually achieve their goal. The first two weeks usually go along beautifully, but by February, people are backsliding and by the following December, most people are back where they started, often even further behind. Maybe the person set unrealistic goals, or maybe they tried to go it alone. But whatever the reason, the pattern illuminates two things: 1) People do want to have better, more fulfilling lives, and 2) a short-term mindset usually doesn’t work. Positive change can happen in our lives, and we do need to make intentional decisions to pursue it. But I think we need to tweak our approach. What if, instead of simply setting short-term goals, we stepped back and asked ourselves, Who do I actually want to be in five years? What is God calling me to? What kind of life do I want to have? Whatever the answer, the next question is always, OK, what steps am I taking today to make that a possiblity? In answering that for myself in recent years, one thing I did was get into counseling. A lot of change has happened in my life, so I started meeting with a Christian counselor to help my journey. I started reading books on the Enneagram and others that have opened my eyes to aspects of myself that I was blind to previously. I made personal growth an intentional pursuit. I got healthy. A couple of years ago, I woke up and found myself tired, sick and really out of shape. I have a young son and wanted to regain the energy (and desire) to get outside with him, to have adventures and, frankly, feel better. So, I went to a doctor and ended up losing more than 50 lbs. It wasn’t easy, but getting my health back was worth it. I restructured RELEVANT. I spent years being maxed out at work. I wore too many hats, put in too many hours and carried too much stress. So, in late 2013 I went on

JAN_FEB 2015

2014 wasn’t a banner year for Christian public discourse. Social media has opened up the chance for every person with an opinion to spew whatever they want without filter. Listen, it’s OK to disagree or take a stand. But keep in mind the golden rule and treat others the way you’d like to be treated—online and off. Let’s be a little more humble and realize our opinions aren’t the only valid ones. 2. GIVE

I’ll admit I haven’t traditionally given well. But thankfully, that’s changed. Maybe it was because I wanted to set a good example for my son, or maybe it’s just growing up, but I’ve tried intenionally to be more generous with my money and time. Giving makes your life more about others and less about you, and that’s something God can really use. 3. TAKE A RISK

When was the last time you tried something that had a real chance of failure? Like you-could-lose-everything failure? We live safe lives. We trust God only up to an extent. This year, step out of that comfort zone. Pursue something so big that without God it’d surely fail. If it doesn’t, you know it wasn’t because of you. It’s His. Taking risks keeps us humble. A new year is a great reminder of the possiblity of a better tomorrow. We just need to be intentional about pursuing it.

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

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NOV/DEC 2014 ISSUE 72

THE AMAZING REESE RE: REESE WITHERSPOON

I got to meet Reese Witherspoon on the set of Don’t Mess With Texas (2015) as I worked as an extra, and she is exactly like described in the article. She is so sweet and bubbly, and yet there is something about her that radiates strength and intelligence. I like what Margaret Nagle says in the article: “There’s fierce intelligence in what she does, and yet, she’s every woman.” That’s definitely Reese. JORGE FLORES / Via RELEVANTmagazine.com

T W E E T N E S S

@ K YL E D IG IAN

So thankful for magazines like @RELEVANT that continue to hold me accountable and challenge me every day. @ OHMOLLYB E

Really appreciate the honesty I find in @RELEVANT. Thx @JenaNardella for sharing your journey with Blood:Water Mission. @ E N G R DAWG 06

I’m loving how @RELEVANT is featuring Christian hip-hop artists lately. @ RYAN J WALTE R S

The Simpsons has been one of my favorite shows since I was a kid. I really enjoyed Rob Fee’s insights into what it says about life—and about us as viewers.

I wanted to take the time to say thank you for creating your magazine. It makes me proud of my faith. It is something I am comfortable sharing with others, whether they are believers or not. Growing up in church has left me skeptical of many things modern day evangelical Christianity has to offer. Your magazine has left me hopeful, which is one of the greatest gifts to give someone. The work you do matters more than you know or will probably ever comprehend in this lifetime.

When I look at the cover of my new @RELEVANT & see @damienjurado @gungormusic @MrSwoope, my head kinda blows off. #sostoked @ _THE N OISE MAK E R

@RELEVANT Got an iPad, thought I’d try out the tablet edition, thinking it would be cool. It is an order of magnitude better than I thought.

R ACHEL OGOREK / Via email

JAMES JOHNSON / Via RELEVANTmagazine.com

It’s good to see China becoming Christian [“Is China Changing the Future of Christianity?” Nov/Dec 2014], but I fear what government intervention into religion would bring. An organization that is dedicated to the here and now is not a good marriage for an organization that’s dedicated to the future and unseen. @ ME G AN LOV E SJ E SU S

FOXLINK38 / Via Reddit

I truly appreciate RELEVANT’s gritty articles that bring out both sides of a viewpoint. It’s easy to get caught within a comfort zone, but your articles remind me that this life is always about more than just me.

I greatly enjoyed “Putting Faith and Creativity to Work” [Nov/Dec 2014] and the story of Stephen Kenn. There are so many people with a heart for God, His Church and changing the world that don’t fit the typical platforms of ministry or church. You guys at RELEVANT have done an incredible job of celebrating these people!

MORIAH DAVIS / Via Facebook

SHAUN SCHAEFER / Via email

JAN_FEB 2015

Read Gungor’s article in @RELEVANT, and I think it’s awesome. He truly points out a big factor in Christian communities. Let’s unite, not divide. @ WHITN E YYAN N

I’ve been subscribed to @RELEVANT over a year & JUST now looked at the digital version of the magazine. SO COOL! Beautiful and interactive.

To whom it may concern

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. There will be no credit or accolades. This is not a box to check. 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 THIS FALL. SERVE SEATTLE.

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

APPLY NOW

A ministry of Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission

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SLICES A BI-M O N TH LY LO O K AT FA IT H, LIF E + C ULT URE

LOSING IT

We’ve all heard that millennials are leaving the Church in droves. Here are three common reasons:

THE UNEXPECTED THINGS MILLENNIALS WANT IN CHURCH F

or most churches, the trick to getting the millennial generation to engage is simple enough. Millennials, the thinking goes, want a church that is technologically savvy. They want a chill, lowkey environment. And, above all, they want to be surrounded by people with whom they can relate.

Millennials aren’t interested in having social media be a part of their Sunday morning. Those things aren’t necessarily untrue, but a new Barna Group study has found some unexpected things about what millennials are looking for in their church experience. Those things defy some of the general assumptions about why millennials go to church. First of all, millennials (in this study, defined as those 14 to 30) aren’t interested in having social

JAN_FEB 2015

media be a part of their Sunday morning. They tend to see church as a place to unplug. They’re looking for something different and, perhaps, more authentic than what they get during the rest of the week. The study also found that, in something of a reversal from their parents, millennials care deeply about the building. While they’re often turned off by the massive, entertainment-heavy productions of many larger churches, they do care about aesthetics and creativity, and they like to see that expressed in church. Perhaps most intriguing, the idea that millennials are turned off by older generations is untrue. In fact, many of them come to church looking for a group of people with more years and more wisdom than they have. They’re looking for guides. None of these things are necessarily the responsibility of church to provide, but they are a little counter-intuitive to what many churches are trying to do. And it all circles back to that idea that is frequently discussed but so rarely actually achieved: authenticity.

NOT FEELING HEARD

Millennials often feel they have no voice for their ideas in churches still being run by the “grown-ups.”

TOO INWARD FOCUSED

Millennials care deeply about what goes on outside church walls and making a difference in their world.

LACK OF REAL COMMUNITY

Millennials are looking for a community where they can share struggles. If they don’t find it at church, they’ll go elsewhere.

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THE H T LIST

P H O T O C R E D I T: J U S T I N S T E P H E N S

BI-MONTHLY CULTURE POWER RANKINGS

NEW RELEASES FROM OLD FAVORITES [HOT TEST] Sleater-Kinney, The Decemberists and Belle & Sebastian all have new albums. It feels like 2003 all over again. HUMAN TR AFFICKING AWARENESS [HOT TER] Jan. 11 is Human Trafficking Awareness Day. Visit IJM.org or FreeTheSlaves.net to see how you can join the fight. CLICKBAIT [HOT] When headline writers pander to social media, you’ll laugh, get curious, then spend hours looking at puppies who resemble Zac Efron.

GROUNDHOG DAY [COLD] Since 1897, Punxsutawney Phil has only been right about the weather 39 percent of the time. When will the madness stop?

TAKEN 3 [COLDER] Seriously, people should know by now not to take anything from Liam Neeson. How does this keep happening? SUPER BOWL XLIX [COLDEST] Lately, the NFL has been talked about more for domestic abuse scandals and team name controversies than anything happening on the field.

JAN_FEB 2015

JUSTICE’S NEW CHAMPION WITH SATIRICAL NEWS, JOHN OLIVER IS MAKING A DIFFERENCE

ohn Oliver has spent most of his career in the long shadow of Jon Stewart, playing a sort of daffy, British foil for Stewart’s satire. Of all of The Daily Show’s correspondents, he was not the most obvious pick to fill the host spot during Stewart’s 2013 sabbatical, but he turned in a run for the ages, which prompted HBO to offer him a gig hosting a show on their channel. That show, Last Week Tonight, is entering its second season after getting plenty of attention for its first. Unlike Comedy Central’s news offerings, it’s far less interested in the day’s headlines than with the back pages. Oliver takes on smaller, justice-oriented issues—corruption in scholarship programs, unfairness in immigration and racism in the prison system. Stewart and Colbert have largely gotten famous by preaching to the choir. Oliver is finding issues that don’t have much of a choir to be preached to yet, but given the popularity of his YouTube channel (his most popular uploads have upwards of 8 million hits), that may be about to change.

WHITE EVANGELICALS THINK THEY’RE AMONG AMERICA’S MOST PERSECUTED A R ECEN T S T UDY FROM PE W R ESE A RCH CEN T ER seeking to find which Americans think they undergo the most persecution revealed a complicated discrimination complex. Fully 50 percent of white evangelical Christians say they face “a lot” of persecution in America, while only 36 percent think African-Americans face discrimination. In the general public, 31 percent think white American evangelicals face persecution, and 54 percent think African-Americans are discriminated against. In an era in which ISIS is seeking to behead those in the Middle East who don’t conof white evangelical vert to their radical brand of Islam, perhaps white evangelicals’ Christians say they face understanding of “discrimination” needs a little fine tuning. “a lot” of persecution

50%

MINISTRY LEADERSHIP MINISTRY CREATION CREATION LEADERSHIP

SUMMER SUMMER 2015 2015

Apply Apply Now Now at at ACMNP.com ACMNP.com

Live, Work, Worship Live, Work, Worship and Serve God in a and Serve God in a national park national park

www ww w.acmn .acmnp p.com | Get social with us! www ww w.acmn .acmnp p.com | Get social with us!

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A service at Lakewood Church in Houston, TX

HOW MEGACHURCHES SPEND THEIR TITHES HIGHEST-PAID ROLES

LARGEST MEGACHURCHES IN AMERICA

How the salaries of megachurch senior pastors compare to other staff roles

Weekly Attendance

100%

100

70%

59%

spend their finances, and the report has some interesting findings, all of which are free to download online. Among the findings: A little under half of a church’s annual income typically goes to staff, with senior pastors making at least 30 percent more than the next highest paid staffer. Here are a few more of the insights:

51%

50%

$ 70 MILLION $ 46 MILLION

NORTH POINT COMMUNIT Y CHURCH Alpharetta, GA | Senior Pastor: Andy Stanley

27,400 4

20% Region

$ 39 MILLION

SECOND BAP TIST CHURCH Houston, TX | Senior Pastor: H. Edwin Young

25,200

3% Race

$ 55 MILLION

3% Pastor’s Age 1% Multisite 1% Theology 1% Age of Church

JAN_FEB 2015

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DETERMINERS OF PASTOR SALARIES 70% Church Size

49%

L I F E C H U R C H .T V Edmond, OK | Senior Pastor: Craig Groschel

42,800

Annual Budget

L AKEWOOD CHURCH Houston, TX | Senior Pastor: Joel Osteen

43,500

47%

AVERAGE BUDGETS

WILLOW CREEK COMMUNIT Y CHURCH South Barrington, IL | Senior Pastor: Bill Hybels

24,400

$ 36 MILLION

13% Building/Rent/ Mortgage/ Capital Funds/ Projects

9% Denominational Contributions 9% Utilities 8% All Other 7% Office Supplies 5% Missions

SOURCES: 2014 LARGE CHURCH SALARY REPORT

September, Leadership Network and Vanderbloemen Search Group released what they claim to be “the biggest-scale, cross-denominational response anyone has ever collected about church finances.” They interviewed 727 large American churches about how they

What is 11 Eleven?

It is a conference that will

create an initiative, a change in thinking and a recognition of calling. It will equip you—the out-of-the-box dreamers and doers— to take God at His word to make Jewish people jealous of what Jesus has done in your life. 11 Eleven offers the community in which daring ideas are conceived and time-tested approaches in Jewish outreach are encouraged. It will provoke action and offer the opportunities for you to discover your unique role in fulfilling Paul’s words in Romans 11:11: I say then, have they stumbled that they should fall? Certainly not! But through their fall, to provoke them to jealousy, salvation has come to the Gentiles. We are ready to bring the message of the Gospel back to the original messengers!

ENGAGING SPEAKERS MESSIANIC WORSHIP JEWISH EXPERIENCES PRACTICAL WORKSHOPS OPPORTUNITIES TO SERVE REGISTER NOW FOR THE 11 ELEVEN CONFERENCE THIS SPRING!

CHOSEN PEOPLE MINISTRIES

A P RI L 23 - 26, 20 1 5 NEW YORK CITY CHOSENPEOPLE.COM/11ELEVEN $190 . AGES 18-25

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M I S C.

The University of Pennsylvania is now offering a course called “Wasting Time on the Internet,” where students are required to do nothing but stare at the screen for three hours. The goal of the class isn’t entirely clear, but it has something to do with pondering the literary value of things online ...

Pixar recently announced plans for Toy Story 4. It’s coming to theaters in 2017 and will be directed by John Lasseter, who directed the first two installments. Because obviously, if it ain’t broke, you should keep “fixing” it until it is ...

2.8 million Iraqis currently need food

HELPING IRAQ’S DISPLACED CHRISTIANS

any people have been reading about ter- Orthodox Christians in Iraq have been displaced ror in Iraq for so long that the idea has over the past generation. lost its power, but the destruction has In an effort to help, Mark Burnett and Roma escalated far beyond norDowney—TV’s power couple behind mal levels. The United NaThe Voice, The Bible miniseries and Surtions reports that 2.8 million vivor—have started what they’re calling people in Iraq currently need food, and The Cradle of Christianity Fund. They 800,000 urgently need shelter. The U.N. aim to raise $25 million for displaced has enough resources to assist about 40 Christians, and they gave $1 million to get percent of those in need. it started. The plan, according to Burnett of Orthodox Christians in Christians are a particular target of Iraq have been displaced and Downey, is to “rescue, restore and rethe chaos, and more than 90 percent of over the past generation turn” Christians to their homes in Iraq.

90%

[ H O R R I B L E

S T U D Y ]

MEN SAY WOMEN AREN’T AS ATTRACTIVE AFTER 22

Michael Bay, America’s visual poet, is in talks to bring his particular flair to a political drama about Benghazi. The movie, called 13 Hours, is based on a book about the 2012 attacks on the U.S. compound in Libya ...

JAN_FEB 2015

URBAN DECAY: THE DECLINE OF URBAN OUTFITTERS It’s hard to say if Urban Outfitters was ever truly cool, but it definitely isn’t now. Last year, Urban released a fake blood-splattered “Kent State” sweatshirt (apparently a nod to the four Kent State students shot while protesting the Vietnam War in 1970). Then there were T-shirts with the words “eat less” and “depression” on them and a T-shirt with the words “Everyone loves a Jewish girl” on it surrounded by dollar signs. Sluggish sales have plagued the company in the last few years for a lot of reasons, but public relations failures certainly aren’t helping.

unflattering picture of how men view the opposite sex as they grow older. Generally, as women age, they continue to find men around their age the most attractive. But as men age, they continue to find women 20-24 most attractive. “From the time you’re 22, you’ll be less hot than a 20-year-old, based on this data,” OkCupid co-founder Christian Rudder told a group of women at a recent talk. The findings were based on data collected from OkCupid’s notoriously obsessive info-gathering process and published in Dataclysm, Rudder’s new book on data collection.

P H O T O C R E D I T: M A J I D S A E E D I / G E T T Y I M A G E S

NE W R ESE A RCH PA IN T S a pretty

“SOME OF US HAVE EXCHANGED JESUS FOR A CHRISTIAN RELIGION.”

Undiluted Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus BENJAMIN COREY confronts

our vision of Jesus head-on, asking the hard question: Is what we see and hear in the modern church all there is to the message of Jesus… or is there a more radical side to Jesus than we have been led to believe? Undiluted uncovers a Jesus that is determined to turn over the tables of a stale, ineffective and boring gospel that seeks to escape from the world instead of transforming it. This radical Jesus and His message invite us to reorient our lives not on Christian religion, but on the person of Jesus. It calls us to live out faith in the context of authentic community with others, instead of benjaminlcorey.com

isolation. It includes the excluded and invites the outcast to have a seat at the table. It responds to enemies with a radical, unexplainable love. Step out of your comfort zone and into a process of rediscovering the radical, counter cultural, and life-changing message of Jesus. Discover a more vibrant faith as you embrace an undiluted Jesus and His radical message!

“… A JOLT OF FULL-STRENGTH GOSPEL.” - BRIAN D. MCLAREN

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CELEBRITY CHARITIES THAT ACTUALLY MAKE A DIFFERENCE

ne of the universal rules for celebrities is that once you reach a certain level of fame, you have to get involved with some sort of charitable work. This is never a bad thing—it’s always nice when people with tremendous amounts of disposable income put it toward something of real value. But sometimes, stars get involved with charities that feel a bit more than obligatory— they’re backed by money, expertise and, seemingly, a true passion for the cause. Here’s a breakdown of a few of our favorites: THE MADDOX JOLIEPITT FOUNDATION

M I S C. AC/DC drummer Phil Rudd was arrested for “attempting to procure the murder of two men.” Who the men were and what they did to make Rudd try to plot their demise is unknown, but Rudd was also charged with possession of meth, so, you know, stay away from drugs ...

mjpasia.org Without putting too fine a point on it, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are some of the world’s most charitable people. The foundation they started in 2006 has donated millions of dollars to war-torn countries.

THE MARK WAHLBERG YOUTH FOUNDATION markwahlberg youthfoundation.com Wahlberg spent a lot of his youth in inner-city youth clubs. His foundation organizes camps, provides scholarships to at-risk teenagers and donates millions of dollars to schools in low-income areas to provide opportunities for other inner-city kids.

Bon Iver frontman Justin Vernon is starting a new music festival in his hometown of Eau Claire, Wisconsin. The two-day festival, scheduled for this summer, will sell enough tickets for 25,000 attendees a day ...

NOT ON OUR WATCH Founded by Don Cheadle (with assistance from George Clooney, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, David Pressman and Jerry Weintraub), Not On Our Watch gives a voice to victims of global atrocities, providing humanitarian aid to the displaced and marginalized.

SHOW ME CAMPAIGN showmecampaign.org After John Legend read Jeffrey Sachs’ The End of Poverty, he was motivated to start the Show Me Campaign, which offers practical relief—such as mosquito nets, clean water and health care clinics— to impoverished countries.

JAN_FEB 2015

In every nerd’s dream situation, Marvel has chosen Benedict Cumberbatch to play Doctor Strange, a wizard who does battle against the supernatural. The movie is due out in 2016, so you’ve got time to get a costume together ...

P H O T O C R E D I T: T H AT C H E R H U L L E R M A N C O O K

notonourwatchproject.org

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I . C .Y. M . I . IN C ASE YOU MISSED IT

ENTERTAINMENT ACTUALLY WORTH YOUR TIME

F IL M AUDIO TV

1 S E R I AL

The first season of the podcast from the creators of This American Life took listeners on a riveting week by week journey, examining the case of a man accused of murdering his girlfriend in 1999.

EMMA WATSON

MEET FEMINISM’S NEW SPOKESPERSON “FEMINISM H A S BECOME A N UNP OPUL A R WOR D,”

Emma Watson told a room of delegates during her speech at a U.N. conference in September. And she’s got a point—feminism has often been vilified and misunderstood. But feminism had a resurgence in 2014, with stars and influencers from Beyoncé to Sheryl Sandberg reclaiming the word. Watson urged men to participate in the conversation about women’s rights, introducing a campaign called HeForShe, which aims to eliminate all aspects of sexism and gender inequality. Her speech was simple enough, defining feminism as “the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities,” but it still managed to serve as a rallying cry for feminists around the world.

2 DE A R WHI TE P EOP LE

Justin Simien’s satire examining race relations packages important messages in witty humor.

3 PE A KY BLI NDERS

Cillian Murphy and Tom Hardy star in this gritty crime drama about gangsters in post-WWI England.

“How can we effect change in the world when only half of it is invited to participate in the conversation?”

4 SHAKEY GRAVES

Shakey Graves’ sophomore album captures his fun, freespirited folk rock sound.

5 B E YO N D THE LI G HTS

The director of Love and Basketball spins a story of love, expectations and the real pressures of fame.

6 VEEP

Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ satire is a welcome (and hilarious) counterpart to the recent string of political dramas.

JAN_FEB 2015

SPEAKING IN TONGUES IS ON THE RISE IN AMERICAN CHURCHES

ccording to new research from Duke University’s Mark Chaves, several kinds of Christian worship experiences are on the rise among American churchgoers. Chaves has been studying church worship since 1998, and in that time, “spontaneous jumping, shouting or singing” has increased by 9 percentage points. But perhaps most notably, speaking in tongues has jumped by 5 percentage points—not a huge number, but definitely noteworthy. Chaves told The Atlantic that the current trend is for worship and church experiences that are “more emotionally engaging, not just intellectually engaging.”

25% One in four Christians are Pentecostal or charismatic, according to Pew Research Center

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

AND THE WAR CAME

T H E FO U N D AT I O N O F U N I Q U E L E G A C I E S MICHELE BACHMANN ’86

(J.D.) Presidential candidate 2012. First Republican woman from Minnesota in Congress 2007. Elected Minnesota State Senator 2000.

KELLY WRIGHT ’08

(B.S. Communication Arts) General assignment reporter for Fox News Channel, and co-host on America’s News Headquarters. Inductee to MLK Jr. Board of Sponsors.

PHIL COOKE ’76

(B.A. Communication) Internationally known author and speaker. Owner of Cooke Pictures. Writes a daily blog entitled “The Change Revolution.”

LARRY STOCKSTILL ’75

(B.A. Theological and Historical Studies) Overseer of Bethany Church, which averages 6,000 attendees. President of Heartbeat of Louisiana.

JEAN CACERES-GONZALEZ

DR. MITCHELL DUININCK

’83 (B.A. Spanish) Founder

’85 (M.D.) President and

of His House Children’s Home, which has bettered the lives of more than 4,500 neglected children in South Florida.

Residency Director of In His Image. Forerunner of local and international medical outreaches. Prestigious family physician.

These alumni are the architects of world-impacting legacies, all originating from the distinguished ORU grounds in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Visit oru.edu/legacy or call 844-768-1855 to learn more about how you can embark on your journey and create a legacy of your own.

SLICES

IS THE NEW SATANISM REALLY SATANISM?

Pictured: Thom Yorke. He doesn’t belong here

REINVENTING THE ALBUM RELEASE HOW THOM YORKE, BEYONCÉ AND U2 HAVE CHANGED MUSIC

ack in September, Radiohead front- popping up on iTunes. It was a significant man Thom Yorke released a surprise power play, but it flipped the music industry solo album via file-sharing software in ways even Bey probably didn’t predict. BitTorrent Bundle. It was Following her example, U2 an unconventional way to used an Apple launch to automatrelease an album, but unically send its new album, Songs conventional is becoming of Innocence, to the hard drive of the new style in the music industry. anyone with an iTunes account. It all started with Beyoncé’s selfIn October, hip-hop outfit Run titled album, released overnight in the Jewels tweeted out a free late 2013. There were no singles, download of their new album just Don’t stop Beylievin’ no press releases, just a new album days before its official release.

ast year, a group of Harvard students attempted to celebrate Black Mass—a traditionally Satanic ceremony that Peter H. Gilmore, mocks Catholic teachHigh Priest of the ing and the Eucharist. Church of Satan Harvard pulled the plug at the last minute, much to the chagrin of The Satanic Temple, a New Yorkbased group who ostensibly serves as the most visible manifestation of Satanism in America. And yet, all may not be as it seems. In addition to Harvard’s attempt at Black Mass, The Satanic Temple either supported or sponsored a number of other “Satanic” activities in 2014, including the push to erect a statue of Baphomet (a goat-like figure Satanists adopted from the Knights Templar) at the Oklahoma Courthouse and distributing Satanic coloring books to children in Florida. In all of these activities, there were churlish hints of tongue being planted firmly in cheek. The statue included young children sitting happily at the feet of Baphomet’s horned personage. The children’s book featured word jumbles and mazes. While Satanism undoubtedly remains alive and well in America and many other countries, most of The Satanic Temple’s recent activities sound more like the work of another type of monster: trolls.

OF ALL THE CHURCH’S attempts to infiltrate mainstream culture in the ’90s, none was more successful than VeggieTales. Phil Vischer’s mix of biblical morality, smart character chemistry and (of course) silly songs was set to the then-new genre of computer animation for something charmingly original. The fad waned, but VeggieTales’ parent

JAN_FEB 2015

company, Big Idea, is now looking to the new Fountain of Youth for franchises: Netflix. The company is launching a new VeggieTales series—complete with redesigned characters. Will it win back old fans hungry for a dose of nostalgia? Maybe, but Netflix is also known for using old franchises to lure new fans.

P H O T O C R E D I T: E L I O T L E E H A Z E L

IT’S TIME TO BINGE ON YOUR VEGGIES

reach out

This outstanding cross-cultural guide to evangelism in the twenty-first century directs Christians to respond sensitively and wisely to the cultures and beliefs of non-Christians of any nation. Available wherever great Christian books are sold.

dhp.org

SLICES

2015 : A PREVIEW

6 VERY SERIOUS TRENDS THAT WILL DEFINE THE NEW YEAR

E 01

ach day, our team of editors and writers spend countless hours interviewing tastemakers and binge-reading listicles and news articles to get the gist of current events and bring you the latest in cultural trends. We got our team to put their collective knowledge together to forecast popculture trends that will definitely, with 100-percent assurance, become realities in 2015. We can confidently say they nailed it.

THE SUPREME COURT WILL DECIDE HOBBY LOBBY (HOT GLUE) GUN-CONTROL CASE

In 2014, Hobby Lobby faced a controversial Supreme Court case involving religious freedom and contraception. In 2015, the Christian-owned craft supply chain will once again be the focus of legal news, as the Supreme Court tackles Pinterest and Etsy-lovers’ right to bear (bedazzled, homemade-sweater adorned) arms.

ALL SOCIAL MEDIA WILL JUST FALL INTO THREE CATEGORIES: POLITICAL RANTS, SELFIES, FUNNY VIDEOS In 2015, all social media posts will finally just be assigned to one of three all-encompassing categories to allow for the ultimate ease of use: Political rants, selfies and funny videos.

03 THE FRIED CHICKEN BUCKET CHALLENGE WILL BECOME THE INTERNET’S MOST DELICIOUS VIRAL TREND > FOLLOWING THE SUCCESS OF THE ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, social media users will start Facebook’s most delicious viral trend to date: The KFC fried chicken bucket challenge. Friends and celebrities will raise funds and awareness for the finger-licking goodness of KFC by consuming a bucket of chicken and nominating others to do the same.

04 IMAX BIBLE MOVIES WILL GIVE CHRISTIANS AN EXTRA 12 FEET OF SCREEN SPACE TO FIND THINGS TO COMPLAIN ABOUT > AFTER BIBLICAL EPICS LIKE NOAH AND Exodus caused a stir about scriptural accuracy, a new string of IMAX Bible blockbusters will allow religious viewers to find more inaccuracies to angrily blog about.

HIPSTER WORSHIP LEADERS WILL BRING BACK TRANSPARENCIES DURING VINTAGE PRAISE AND WORSHIP SERVICES

Nothing is cooler than semi-ironic, retro accessories, so in 2015, hipster worship leaders will reclaim “Lord I Lift Your Name On High”-era transparencies on overhead projectors.

FULL HOUSE SPINOFF WILL INSPIRE A SERIES OF ILL-ADVISED TV SHOW COMEBACKS > THE EXCITEMENT OF A PENDING FULL House spinoff will inspire sitcom comebacks that now seem sort of politically incorrect, like Mr. Belvedere (the idea of live-in butlers is a little uncomfortable nowadays) and Perfect Strangers (a show centered on laughing at a clueless foreigner feels kind of wrong).

JAN_FEB 2015

SLICES

CONVERSATION

O+A : ‘FURY’ DIRECTOR DAVID AYER B Y J . R YA N P A R K E R

ury is one of the most brutal, grueling war films since 1998’s Saving Private Ryan. It centers on a WWII tank unit led by Don “Wardaddy” Collier (Brad Pitt). Actors Shia LaBeouf, Michael Peña, Jon Bernthal and Logan Lerman fill out the tank named Fury. The film is a technical marvel with painstaking attention to detail and authenticity, and it also touches on deep spiritual themes. We talked to the film’s writer and director, David Ayer, about faith, redemption and the morality of war.

David Ayer on the set of Fury

IN THE FILM , YOU SHOW THE MOR AL STRUG GLES OF WAR . HOW DO THOSE PL AY OU T?

T ELL US A BOU T THE R ELIGIOUS ELEM ENTS IN THE FILM .

In war films, you’ll often see a person of faith, but the way they’re depicted often feels caricatured. It was important to me to show how someone can lean on Scripture and their relationship with Christ in an environment where they’re seeing this much inhumanity and destruction. [There’s] a strength and a power in that, and I wanted to depict that, so I wrote this character [“Bible,” played by Shia LaBeouf].

JAN_FEB 2015

IS R EDEMP TION POSSIBLE FOR THESE CHAR ACT ER S

“I’m a big believer that, no matter who you are, there’s redemption for you, and there is forgiveness.”

W HO HAV E LOST SOM ETHING OF THEMSELV ES?

Absolutely. One of the tankers that came to meet with the actors was saved after the war and became a pastor. He made his life about ministry and spreading the good news because I think he saw and experienced so much and may have done some things himself that didn’t sit right in his heart. He came out of that war a transformed man. I’m a big believer that, no matter who you are, there’s redemption for you, and there is forgiveness. YOUR BRU TALLY HONEST DEPICTION OF WAR M AK ES M AN Y QUESTION W H Y W E CONTINUE TO FIGHT. WAS THAT T ENSION INT ENTIONAL?

That’s the paradox of warfare. I come from a military family. And I served. No one who’s ever seen a buddy die, no one who’s had to take a life, no one who’s seen the evil that’s out there firsthand is ever going to say it’s a good thing. It’s a terrible thing, and no one’s going to tell you more loudly and more clearly that war is a horrible thing than military personnel. That’s the paradox of it: the nobility of knowing what you’re going to see and expose yourself to and the moral hazards you’re going to experience in undertaking your duty with honor and with pride. There’s great nobility in that. I don’t know if people understand those things, and I want people to get a little insight into that.

P H O T O C R E D I T: G I L E S K E Y T E

People are drawn to WWII because it was a contest of good and evil. This enemy with no concept of human rights threw the rule book out on fighting, and our soldiers had to face that. It was a different world back then. Our men who fought did a lot of things that are pretty edgy, pretty tough. All of the things in the movie are things that happened. The question then becomes, how do you maintain your humanity—your moral center—as a soldier when you have permission to cross the line sometimes? I can’t answer those questions, because I think the answer is in your own heart. And that’s something that fascinates me. How do you not lose yourself? How do you not lose your morality? How do you not lose your faith? You can only answer those questions yourself.

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STATEMENT

complicated. It may be true that, at least while you’re dating, opposites attract, but once you get married, opposites often attack instead. Those little quirks that used to be so cute and charming quickly become the annoying habits and stubborn stupidities that drive you crazy, make you argue and withdraw or even wonder what you were thinking when you said, “I do” in the first place. How can you return to “attracting” rather than “attacking”? Accept your spouse for who they are, not who you want them to be. Your spouse may never be ready on time. They may forget to put the toilet seat down or to put the cap back on the toothpaste. Remember that the differences are not only OK; but they are what attracted you in the first place.

Marriage means never giving up on each other or on God’s ability to do the impossible.

FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE BY CR AIG GROESCHEL

ost people know the oft-quoted stat: close to 50 percent of marriages end in divorce. This number can be daunting for those already married or considering marriage. The good news is that we can reverse that trend. We can lead a new wave of marriages that are stronger than ever. Our marriages can do more than just survive—they can thrive. I’m often asked, “What’s the secret to never giving up in marriage?” It’s easier than you think. Early in our marriage, my wife and I stumbled across a truth that has made all the difference. In fact, it’s so simple, it would be easy to underestimate just how powerful it can be in your life: We decided our marriage will be as good as we decide it will be. The same is true for you: Your marriage will be as good as both of you decide

JAN_FEB 2015

it will be. You can choose to never give up. Marriage means persevering. It means never giving up on each other or on God’s ability to do the impossible. No matter where you and your spouse find yourselves right now, I hope you will both decide your marriage is worth fighting for. If you’re married, think back to when you were first getting to know each other. Even though you were madly in love, you probably noticed you were very different. All of those unusual quirks he had and the unique outlook she had on life caught your attention and attracted you at first. Eventually, both of you began thinking, “I know we’re really different, but I actually think our personalities complement each other.” After all, it’s like they say: “Opposites attract.” Once you got married, somewhere along the way, things likely got

Being opposites isn’t a bad thing. God knew exactly what He was doing when He brought two opposites together. He makes it clear in Proverbs 27:17 that “as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” The only way iron can sharpen iron is if your differences are constantly rubbing against one another. Yes, your spouse does things differently, but that doesn’t mean there’s a problem. It just means you are, well, different. To avoid the incompatibility trap, you must decide to accept your differences as a God-given tool to strengthen your relationship. When you’ve chosen to embrace those differences and determined that you’re never giving up and that your vows really are for a lifetime, then your daily decisions become ones of honesty, transparency, confession, forgiveness and compassion. Remember, your marriage will be as good as you both have decided it will be. So decide now. Start today. No matter what has happened in the past, from this day forward, never give up.

CR AIG GROESCHEL is the founding pastor of LifeChurch. tv and the New York Times bestselling author of Fight and From This Day Forward.

Kai Thomas

@Thomas_Kai89

Con: Listening to the @RELEVANTpodcast on my commute makes me laugh awkwardly to myself. Pro: Nobody tries to sit next to me on the metro. 01/02/15, 2:58 PM

T H E R E L E VA N T P O D C A S T

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P H O T O C R E D I T: S H E R V I N L A I N E Z

THE INDIE ROCK DUO IS REFOCUSING THEIR ENERGY ON A FRESH SOUND wo years ago, it looked like The “I wanted to make a sort of garbage can guitar Drums might have reached the record. And Jacob wanted the opposite,” Pierce exend of their time as a band. Two of plains. “He wanted to make a lush, majestic synthethe founding members had left for sizer record. We both wanted these to be pop songs good, and Jonny Pierce and Jacob at the core. I guess we kind of had to force these Graham—the two who regenres together and create mained—were having a hard something out of it ... and “I guess we write time agreeing stylistically. we’re pleased.” these songs with the It’s the kind of thing most The result is unique, with bands don’t recover from, but indie rock arrangements that idea that they’ll just after each working on solo alzig just when you expect go on forever.” bums, Graham and Pierce dethem to zag and are prone to cided to give The Drums anchanging directions mid-temother try, and they’ve come back stronger than ever. po. They keep you guessing, and that’s the point. The two still had very different ideas of what “I guess we write these songs with the idea that they wanted the band to sound like, but for their they’ll just go on forever,” Pierce says. “We’re all going third album, Encyclopedia, they found a way to to die one day and we’ll go away, but that song’s there, mesh their sounds together. so that always has to be the most important thing.”

MUSIC THAT MATTERS

ENCYCLOPEDIA

Somewhere between the angular indie beats of alt-J and the bright surf rock of Best Coast, The Drums are as capable of writing a sunny melody as they are a sharp, oddly disorienting one. It’s unique to them, and it’s infectious.

THE DROP

ARTISTS TO WATCH

hen Berklee College of Music voice majors Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig first started experimenting with making music in the early 2000s, they quickly discovered a unique aspect of their vocal compatibility. “We realized we had this ability to sing in unison and to kind of meld our voices together in a way I hadn’t heard before,” Laessig remembers. In the process of honing their sound, the pair decided to focus on that doubletracked vocal. Influenced by entertainers from the ’50s and ’60s, they created a stage presence that visualized their sound. “Those entertainers had a whole thing where people felt like they were going to a show: not just seeing live music, [but] kind of getting to visualize and get to experience this other world,” Laessig says. “That

MUSIC THAT MATTERS

was something we always looked up to. We wanted to do that for the audience and also for ourselves to kind of transport ourselves when we’re on stage. “The mirror image and the duality and the matching outfits all come from that idea of two voices as one,” she continues. “Everyone in the band plays two things. There’s two drums, there’s two keyboards, there’s two basses, there’s two guitars. It’s kind of all encompassing that idea.” Now a five-piece band, Lucius’ stage presence and catchy mix of Americana and indie pop is catching on. Their debut album, Wildewoman, has been lauded by the likes of NPR, The New York Times and Rolling Stone. It’s been a long time in the making, but Laessig wouldn’t have it any other way. “I’m one of those true believers that things happen how they’re supposed to happen,” she says.

WHY WE L OV E THE M: Wolfe and Laessig are vocal soulmates. At times, they meld their voices together in a gutpunching unison melody. At other points, they weave in and out of hypnotizing harmonies. Their sound is hard to categorize—part Americana folk, part ’60s-style pop—but whatever it is, it’s captivating. You’ll find yourself coming back to the album again and again.

LUCIUS’ WILDEWOMAN

FOR FANS OF:

St. Vincent First Aid Kit Dale Earnheart Jr. Jr. Cults

NOW S T R E A MING

These albums (& more) are streaming on The Drop at RELEVANTmagazine.com. Listen in!

JAS O N BARROW S

Islands of My Soul

LUCY GR IMBLE

Come and Breathe

BENJAMIN BOOKER THOUGH ONLY 25 YEARS OLD, Benjamin Booker sings like an old man. It’s not

WHY WE L OVE HIM:

just his wily rasp or rock and roll yelp—it’s his steely confidence. He brings a bluesy weariness to his songwriting, but he sets himself apart from The Black Keys and other garage rockers by virtue of a wild, furious energy, which he captures on his self-titled debut. “The album, I mean, it’s not perfect,” he says. “It was mostly recorded live, and there are mistakes on it. But for me, I didn’t want it to be perfect. I’m happy that it captured that feeling of not knowing what it’s like to play in front of a bunch of people and not worrying about what they think. I don’t regret it at all.”

Booker makes the kind of straight-forward rock that makes you want to turn the volume all the way up. FOR FAN S OF:

The Black Keys, Ray LaMontagne, Jack White

CI T I ZEN S & S AI N T S

P H O T O C R E D I T: P E T E R L A R S O N ( L U C I U S ) ; M A X N O R T O N ( B E N J A M I N B O O K E R ) ; R O R Y W H I T E ( N E U L O R E )

Join the Triumph

NEULORE

NEULORE DESCRIBES THEIR SOUND as “aggresT H E D I G I TA L AG E

Rehearsals Vol. 2

S T E V E TAY L O R & THE PERFECT FOIL

Goliath

sive folk music,” but that doesn’t quite capture what bandmembers Adam Agin and Tyler Cook are trying to accomplish with their music. Along with beautiful, deep concept albums— including their latest, Animal Evolve—part of Neulore’s mission is to use their music to build community. It started with looking at their motivations for touring. “We just enjoy people,” Cook says. “So our goal moving forward has been to figure out how to create that kind of atmosphere at our shows— create community within a fan of Neulore.” WHY WE L OV E THE M:

Neulore sounds like dusty old folk songs got dug up from deep history and were given a much-needed polish, with catchy pop hooks and lyrical melodies. BETA RAD I O

FOR FAN S OF :

Colony of Bees

Johnnyswim, Fleet Foxes, Ivan & Alyosha

RELEVANTMAGAZINE.COM

CONVERSATION

Left: Sam Evans on stage with Planetshakers Below: The Planetshakers band performing at a conference

O+A : PLANETSHAKERS the late ’90s, Russell Evans felt God calling him to start a conference for young people in Australia. Called Planetshakers, the first conference drew about 300 attendees. Today, Planetshakers hosts conferences all over the world for hundreds of thousands of people. Russell and his wife, Sam, also started a Planetshakers church in Melbourne, Australia, and are part of the Planetshakers worship band, which records live albums at each conference. We talked to Sam Evans about the movement, connecting with God and using music as a tool for evangelism.

THERE ARE A LOT OF WORSHIP MOVEMENTS HAPPENING IN AUSTR ALIA . DO YOU THINK THIS IS UNIQUE TO THE COUNTRY?

Yeah. There’s lots of worship coming out of Australia. It’s more about worship than it is about a band—I think that is something unique. There’s a desire to be still serving the local church and worshiping with people at home as well as people abroad. There have been some amazing prophetic words over the years over Australia about a sound and a move of the Holy Spirit that would come from Australia. I suppose we’re probably living a bit of that.

Q: A: 32

DO YOU HAV E TO BE CAR EFUL TO M AK E SUR E IT’S A BOU T G OD A ND NOT THE BAND?

When we come to a concert or a church, we’ll say, “We’re not here to perform for you, we’re here to worship with you.” I think that helps the crowd not

MUSIC THAT MATTERS

A WORSHIP MOVEMENT FROM DOWN UNDER IS RISING TO THE TOP

adore the people on the stage, but they get focused on what we’re there for—and that is to connect with God together.

Q: A:

W HAT DO YOU THINK IT IS A BOU T YOUR M USIC AND MINISTRY THAT IS WOR K ING?

I do think our team has a purity of heart. The people we choose to be part of the band that tours—not only are they excellent musicians, but they’re genuine men and women of God. We’re believers in what God can do through anyone who would yield themselves, so we always approach things with great faith and boldness. And we try to speak the language of the day. Our style of music needs to be able to reach out to people in the world. We’re not just about building the Church, we’re about having a sound the world can identify with and enjoy.

Q: A:

DO YOU EVER GET PUSHBACK ON YOUR VERSION OF OUTREACH?

The Church’s main goal is to evangelize. If we remain in some of our traditional styles or comfortable ways of connecting with God, then perhaps we’re going to miss out on a generation. Because to them, it’s like the Church becomes irrelevant because the sound is no longer appealing to them. We want to reach a lost world with our music, as well, without having to compromise the message. Jesus spoke the language. When He was speaking to fishermen, He spoke about fish. When He was speaking to tax collectors, He spoke about money. For this generation, we want to be able to say, “Hey, this is what God sounds like. He speaks your language,” and to really impact them, to invite them to open up their hearts to receive the good news.

“We want to reach a lost world with our music, as well, without having to compromise the message.”

P H O T O C R E D I T: J E F F C H E N / P L A N E T S H A K E R S M E L B O U R N E AWA K E N I N G 2 0 1 4

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THE LOOMING WORK REVOLUTION COULD THE KEY TO MORE IMPACT BE ACTUALLY WORKING LESS? he idea that everyone needs to work frantically to meet people’s needs is just not true,” Google CEO Larry Page said at a business summit at the end of 2014. “Most people like working, but they’d also like to have more time with their family or to pursue their own interests,” Page added. “So one way to deal with the problem is if you had a coordinated way to just reduce the workweek.” The five-day workweek is only about a century old— a product of Great Depression-era efforts to cut costs during cash-strapped seasons. But as technology has

“T

Experts are suggesting that a shorter workweek would improve productivity.

CREATE. INNOVATE. LEAD.

rocketed forward, ideas about the ideal balance between work and rest have stayed more or less the same. However, a growing number of experts are suggesting that a shorter workweek wouldn’t just improve rest—it would improve productivity, as well. “Better work gets done in four days than in five,” Basecamp CEO Jason Fried told The New York Times. “When you have a compressed workweek, you tend to focus on what’s important.” His company operates on a four-day workweek from May through October. Online education company Treehouse, on the other hand, operates on a four-day workweek year round, and co-founder and CEO Ryan Carson says it’s been vital to their success. “Four days of work allows just enough extra time off for employees to return to work refreshed and excited to get down to business,” he says. “It’s driving productivity and amazing results for our company.”

S H O R T E R H O U R S A few companies that have switched over:

TR E E HOUSE

The startup uses a four-day work week to prevent employee burnout. BASE CAMP

The software company cuts operating hours back every summer. SLIN G SHOT SEO

CEO Jay Love said a shorter work week makes employee retention rates “soar.”

MAKER

A NEW ERA FOR

JESUS CULTURE BANNING LIEBSCHER ON WHY THE WORSHIP MINISTRY IS CHANGING FOCUS

esus Culture started as a youth group. It seems like an unlikely origin story for a group that now has international influence. Jesus Culture has spawned conferences, a record label, campus ministries, and a church plant in California. The group has impacted millions and helped define worship for the global Church. The story of Jesus Culture’s evolution to

CREATE. INNOVATE. LEAD.

worship conference powerhouse is an interesting one, but if founder and director Banning Liebscher is to be believed, it’s not as interesting as the next phase of their ministry, in which they plan to move from encouraging the next generation to actually shaping them. Of late, Jesus Culture’s focus has been on finding and raising up leaders—not for the Church itself, but for the places the Church wants to influence throughout society. They’re not changing their mission so much as they’re expanding their vision for what worship means— and that it can include more than just

music. Music, of course, being where Jesus Culture cut their teeth. In 2005, Jesus Culture started to expand beyond its home base at Bethel Church in Redding, California to become a notable force in the thenexploding worship music movement. “We recognized there was something significant about the worship,” Liebscher says. “Even when we were doing cover songs, we realized the Lord was really encountering people in worship.” At the time, Liebscher was the head of a movement that was only just starting to be called a movement. He also

DARREN LAU P H O T O C R E D I T:

had two teenagers in his group, Kim Walker and Chris Quilala, who would go on to become significant leaders in not just Jesus Culture, but the worship movement at large. But at the time, all Liebscher really had was a sense of calling. “I think the Lord began to speak to us really clearly that we had a mandate in the nation, and we believed Him and we started really going after it,” he says. “Even when we’d go to England and we’d have 125 [people] show up to our conferences, 300 in Atlanta, we just really believed the Lord had spoken to us, and we wanted to serve the Body of Christ at a larger level with what He had talked to us about. I’ve felt that call in my life, and our team believed what the Lord told us, and worship obviously is the thing that opened the doors.” Until recently, you could be forgiven for thinking worship was the only thing Jesus Culture was interested in doing. And while worship music certainly gave the group its traction, Liebscher is interested in inspiring people to do more than come and worship: He wants to start sending people out. “We have a very consumer-not-contributor type concept,” Liebscher says, referring to the American church at large. “You show up to church, you eat, then you leave. We’ve got to change and go, ‘No, you’re coming to contribute. This is a family. And then you’re going back out in the city.’” Liebscher is a quick and articulate speaker with a teacher’s mind for explaining abstract concepts in concrete terms. For him, the idea of shaping leaders has less to do with what’s going on inside the Church than it does with what’s going on outside of it. “We have a concept in the American church sometimes that’s almost like, ‘If you bring people, we’ll do the rest,’” he explains. “You bring them, we’ll share the Gospel with them. You bring them, we’ll disciple them. You bring them, we’ll put them in community.” He’s quick to say this all stems from a good place, but it’s exactly what

Jesus Culture’s new mission is trying to reverse. “I don’t think it’s the corporation’s job to do that,” he explains. “I think it’s your job to do that. It’s a tough one, but we’ve got to get rid of that type of thinking. “I don’t even know if I want a new believers program,” he admits, laughing. “Because if I’m telling you you’re a leader and you brought your neighbor to church, then you should disciple them. I want to equip you to be an effective discipler.” In order to do that, Liebscher says, the Church has to expand its vision beyond just raising people to lead in churches, and start thinking about raising people to lead in communities “Early on, the story of Jonah was very important to us,” Liebscher says. “When you look at the story of Jonah, it’s not really even about Jonah. It’s about Nineveh. God had a heart for Nineveh. And so, because of God’s heart for Nineveh, He raised up and anointed Jonah even though Jonah ran from Him

says. “I want you to lead in the city. My goal is that you will contribute to the family and lead in the city. My goal is that you’d go find the leadership position God has called you to in this city and you would lead effectively in this city because that’s where we’re advancing the Kingdom.” Liebscher references the old big tent revivals of the 1950s as an example of where, in some cases, things started to go wrong, pointing out examples of how different revivalist preachers would market themselves according to the size of their tent. “I’m just telling you, for our generation, it’s unattractive,” he says. “We’re not impressed that we have the biggest church. We’re impressed that we’re influencing the city. We want to advance the Kingdom in this city, so we have to bring them in, get them healthy, equip them to … go be a leader somewhere. “There has to be that type of shift in the Body of Christ [to where] success for us is not how many people we gather

“Success for us is not how many people we gather on a Sunday, it’s how many people we send on a Sunday.” and even though Jonah was stubborn. God anointed Jonah and sent him to Nineveh to become the answer to the cry that was on God’s heart, which was to visit Nineveh and to draw those people to Him. “So we knew that whenever God wants to begin to move in a nation or a city, He first calls people out.” The fact that most people think of the story as being about a stubborn prophet and a whale instead of God’s heart to reach a city, Liebscher says, is indicative of where the Church has missed the idea of leadership. “My goal isn’t going to be necessarily to get you to lead in this church,” he

on a Sunday, it’s how many people we send on a Sunday,” he continues. Institutions change, and while Jesus Culture might be a bit too fluid to be properly called an institution, its new direction has made some nervous. Expanding a vision, no matter how vital, is a risky prospect. But Liebscher says the vision isn’t really what’s expanding, just the method. “If you still ask me today what Jesus Culture is about, what I will tell you ultimately is: We are about nations being transformed and cities being saved. We’re still about that. There’s a lot more pieces, there’s a lot more strategy, but that hasn’t changed.”

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MAKER

THE SCIENCE OF CHASING YOUR DREAM SCOTT HARRISON AND OTHER LEADERS ON HOW TO MAKE YOUR MISSION A REALITY BY LIZ R IGGS

ike many organizations, charity: water started as just one man’s vision. It was 2006, and Scott Harrison, a former nightclub promoter, decided to do something unconventional for his birthday. “Day one of charity: water was September 7,” Harrison remembers. “It was my 31st birthday and, at the time, the only idea I had was to throw a party at a nightclub. So I said, ‘What if I threw my birthday party and I charged everyone $20 at the door? And instead of pocketing the money, we took 100 percent of the money and we did our first water project?’ That was exactly eight years ago, and it worked: 700 people came out, and we raised $15,000.”

CREATE. INNOVATE. LEAD.

The organization took off from there. It now employs around 1,000 people in partnerships all over the world. It has funded 13,641 water projects in 22 countries, providing clean drinking water to more than 2.5 million people. There are many reasons for charity: water’s success: Passion. A good cause. In-country partners. A talented team. Harrison’s dedication to giving 100 percent of donations directly to water projects (he raises money for salary costs and overhead from other donors). But even with all the hard work and dedication of those involved,

Harrison’s dream would never have gotten to be as effective and widely known as it is today without the proper implementation of one thing that is often overlooked in the initial stage of chasing your dreams: data.

MONITORING IMPACT “I didn’t understand, early on, the role of data,” Harrison confesses. “Over the last couple of years, it’s really been transformative to charity: water.” One significant role data has played is in informing the team about how to effectively reach people. While drilling crews and experts on the ground implement water projects, Harrison and his team at charity: water’s headquarters in New York City focus on awareness,

brand design and raising money efficiently. And a big part of raising money is simply getting people to take notice. “We test everything,” Harrison says. “We’ll test four email subjects to see what gets more people to engage with a story, we will test colors on donate buttons, we will test every single page in a flow to see what’s not making sense and where people are dropping off.” One such test involved an A/B test on charity: water’s donate page. For years, the page had just featured a single donate button, so the team decided to test giving donors more options: Would people be more prone to give if they could select where their money was going? As it turned out, they would. “For six years, we had been asking people to make a choice in their brain of, ‘Do I give or do I not give?’” Harrison explains. “And by just giving that option of, ‘Do I give here or do I give there?’ it increased conversions by 18 percent.” Charity: water has also begun implementing data from its projects on the ground in order to gauge impact and effectiveness. “We want to make sure these projects are not just serving people long enough to take the photo and send it to the donor, but that they’re continuing to serve people over time,” Harrison says. “So we came up with this crazy idea of a remote water sensor.” With help from a $5 million grant from Google, the charity: water team is starting to install sensors that will let them monitor water usage at their projects. “We’re so excited about it,” Harrison says. “We think it could be game changing. For me to be able to sit in New York and open up my iPhone and see how many liters of water the women and children of a remote village in Ethiopia are taking today, to be able to look at that data over time, even to be able to use that data to predict failure, to inform our implementation of projects—we just think the transparency is going to be hugely helpful to our beneficiaries, the people we’re serving.”

G O

D E E P E R

Gathering data is one thing, but making sense of the numbers is quite another. Here are a few books to help:

DATACLYSM

by Christian Rudder Social media provides a handy key to studying behavior. Rudder explains how Facebook likes, Twitter feeds and Google searches can determine demographics.

DATA SMART

by John W. Foreman Chief data scientist of MailChimp.com, Foreman demystifies the data collection process and teaches readers how to turn information into useful insights.

SETTING PRIORITIES Businesses have long been using data analysis to quantify their impact. But with its rapidly advancing technology, data analytics has become a booming industry, predicted to grow six times faster than the overall information and communication technology market for the next few years. More and more organizations are using data to inform major decisions.

PREDICTIVE ANALY TICS

by Eric Siegel Siegel reveals how companies know when you’ll quit your job, when you’ll get pregnant and more. The accuracy of the predictions is shockingly high.

Consider Teach For America, the educational nonprofit that recruits teachers to commit to at least two years of teaching in a low-income community. The organization is full of people who are committed to a singular mission: that one day all kids will have access to an excellent education. Like charity: water, the organization measures everything. From student achievement, to survey results, to the number of days there were dishes left in the sink at a regional office (yes, even that was measured)—this group is ruthless about its numbers. “[When I first started teaching], it was all about the data. It was so quantitative—it was the only way to measure your outcome with kids,” says Merillat Flowers, an instructional coach at the organization. She’s talking about Teach for America’s interest in numbers—an obsession that has transformed, but not relented, over the years. “I’m in my second year of teaching, and now, I’ve seen a much greater organizational shift.” In and out of classrooms, Teach For America has moved into focusing both on quantitative and qualitative measurements: “What are the qualitative ways—and what are the quantitative ways we can measure the qualitative things,” Flowers says. Instructional coaches like Flowers use data every day to help teachers move students forward academically, socially and emotionally. At the top of the organization, Co-CEOs Matt Kramer and Elisa Villanueva Beard use data and stories from students, teachers and alumni to help share the narrative of the organization. In fact, Miguel Rossy-Donovan, Teach For America’s CFO, shared some of Teach For America’s numbers in a blog on the organization’s website. “This year, we’ll spend $350 million to operate programs in 48 regions of the country across 35 states. We support 11,200 active classroom teachers and, in different ways, 32,000 alumni. Our corps members will teach over 750,000 students this year.” Those are just a few of the big numbers that share a small piece of the organization’s narrative. Donovan doesn’t even go into the way the organization uses survey results after “Professional Saturdays” to improve learning for their teachers or the annual survey they send out every year to their 32,000 alums asking about their satisfaction with the organization. “We use so much,” Flowers says about the organization’s relationship with hard

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David Kinnaman has been working with Barna Group since 1995

numbers. “[We’re] very guided by data. We’ll hear back on surveys from principals, surveys from listening tours Matt and Elisa did [the Co-CEOs traveled the country to hear feedback and input from thousands of alumni of the program], I think all of those things really informed the overall direction we take and the priorities we set.”

“We’re trying to help people discern this overload of information they’re given and make sense of it,” he says. “Human beings, especially millennials— who are connected in with a lot of different tools—are absolutely deluged with information and data and advice and input. Part of what we’re trying to do is to give people

“Find a way of making sense of the data and using the wisdom provided through it to become the kind of Christian you’re meant to be.” —David Kinnaman BALANCING INFORMATION Flowers hits on something key about data here: The numbers tell a more specific story that propels these organizations forward toward greater efficiency, larger impact and more transparency. They don’t rely simply on faith, good ideas and hunches—at least not for big shifts and transformational changes. David Kinnaman is the president of Barna Group, a research company that helps organizations utilize data and information to make the best decisions and changes possible.

CREATE. INNOVATE. LEAD.

an effective filter, in some way, to make sense of that.” The Barna group works with churches, nonprofits and businesses, and their approach is rooted in biblical teachings. Especially as a Christian organization, there is some tension in providing advice based on numbers, Kinnaman says, because, as is true with anything, the numbers often don’t tell the whole story. They can shed light on things we know anecdotally to be true, but they can also be misleading. They can be informative, but not decisive. And there’s always room for interpretation.

“Even as we provide our information to organizational leaders, they have to take input from a lot of places, just like any individual,” Kinnaman says. “Our data—first of all, it rarely proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that any particular course of action, any particular calling, would be a complete waste of time. “In fact, this is why being a theologically oriented research company matters,” he continues. “I would never suggest what we’re trying to do is create a mass-production approach to discipleship. Inefficiency doesn’t mean a bad idea. And I think, in some cases, we’re called to be more faithful and not necessarily more productive as disciplers.” Data can reflect the facts of how many people an organization has reached, how a nonprofit uses its money or how effectively a school has taught certain concepts, but it doesn’t always reflect the depth of impact or tell exactly what the biggest priority should be. For charity: water, even as the company tests the performance and efficiency of things such as email subject lines, they still realize the most efficient way to tell a story isn’t always the best way. “We will often choose a subject line that slightly underperforms another one, because we think it tells the story better,” Harrison says. “But it’s really helpful having that data and knowing the decision you’re making.” Kinnaman agrees. “Just because our data says a particular kind of thing doesn’t work as well, it doesn’t mean people should not go down that path,” he says. But, he says, it’s still important to make informed decisions. “If there’s a sort of a blind rejection of the data, then there’s a matter of stewardship that comes with it,” he says. “We’re driven by the notion that a good leader, a good Christian, has to define their reality accurately. Find a way of making sense of the data and using the wisdom provided through it to become the kind of called Christian you’re meant to be. That’s the way I would sort of hold both of these things in tension.” LIZ RIGGS is a freelance writer in Nashville, Tennessee. Follow her on Twitter at your own risk @riggser.

JESUS SAID WE’D FIND HIM AMONG THE LEAST, THE LOST, AND THE LAST.

“That’s why Crossroads loves to partner with our friends at World Vision as we blaze a trail to those in greatest need.” —Phil Print, Senior Pastor, Crossroads Church, MN

We believe Jesus calls the church to take on the greatest needs of our day. Join us in the margins.

Visit 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.

THE JAW-DROPPING TRUTH ABOUT AMERICA’S TEEN BIRTHRATE ere’s the good news: the teen pregnancy rate in the United States is declining. Here’s the bad news: Even so, about one-third of American teenage girls have gotten pregnant. Let that sink in. One out of three. In fact, studies suggest about one teenager gets pregnant every minute in the U.S. There is no shortage of theories about why this happens. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have found an alarming number of teenagers didn’t think they could get pregnant from having unprotected sex. In fact, the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy found 18 percent of men believed that having sex while standing up could help prevent pregnancy. Believe it or not, despite the numbers, teen pregnancy rates have not only declined in the past 10 years—they’ve plummeted. In 1996, more than four in 10 teenage girls in the U.S. got pregnant at least once.

SUSTAINABLE CHANGE. SACRIFICIAL LIVING.

Things are improving, but the problem is hugely disproportionate for teens of some ethnic groups. The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy found that half of all African-American teen girls and 52 percent of Latina teens become pregnant before they turn 20.

America’s teenagers are getting pregnant at a rate three times that of Spain and 15 times that of Switzerland. Curiously, this is a uniquely American problem. America’s teenagers are getting pregnant at a rate about three times that of Spain, five times that of France and 15 times that of Switzerland. Whatever is happening, it is not a problem just with teenagers. It is a problem with the United States.

T H E

N U M B E R S

3 IN 10 American girls are estimated to get pregnant at least once before they turn 20

50% Of teen moms never graduate high school

750,000 Estimated number of teen pregnancies in America every year

25% Of teen moms have a second child within two years of their first

SOURCES: U.S. CEN T ER S FOR DISE A SE CON T ROL A ND PR E V EN T ION, T HE N AT ION A L C A MPA IGN T O PR E V EN T T EEN A ND UNPL A NNED PR EGN A NC Y

THE TEEN PREGNANCY CRISIS IS WORSE THAN YOU THINK

THE RELEVANCE OF THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION TODAY APPLY THE TRUTH OF SCRIPTURE TODAY As every new generation raises its own social and cultural questions, it will also question the relevance of Scripture. The Bible is true and authoritative, but only with clear understanding can it be applied as it should be to any modern issue.

BECOME A SHEPHERD BY LEARNING FROM ONE Academic study only goes so far. Students are placed in holistic and intensive personal mentoring relationships with professors and other Christian leaders.

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REJECT APATHY

STATEMENT

WHAT WE GET WRONG ABOUT SE X TR AFFICKING BY LISA THOMPSON

gruesome account of sex slavery from Cambodia in 2009 revealed that a girl named Long Pross was trafficked to a brothel where she was subjected to electric shock and had her eye gouged out, ostensibly to ensure her obedience and acquiescence to a life in prostitution. The headline declared: “If this isn’t slavery, what is?” Stories such as these grab our attention. They are the stuff of nightmares, the kind of material well suited for adaptation into a docudrama or some B-movie horror flick—an entertainment diet many Americans consume with ravenous regularity. But, as it turned out, the account mentioned above is not true. The battle to abolish sex trafficking and sexual slavery competes with countless worthy causes to garner the attention of a general public that—even while it is transfixed by tales of horror—suffers from acute apathy and information overload. In an ends-justify-the-means stratagem, some activists have resorted to exploiting, even manufacturing, shocking survivor stories to convince the world it should care. A case in point: Somaly Mam. Mam was a darling of politicians, philanthropists and celebrities seeking to support her efforts to combat sex trafficking. The stories she told about herself and those in her charge were the stuff of a best-selling autobiography (The Road of Lost Innocence), lush fundraising banquets and elite editorial pages. However, in a recent Newsweek article, the validity of her story as a sex

SUSTAINABLE CHANGE. SACRIFICIAL LIVING.

trafficking victim—which she leveraged to not only promote her cause but to also promote herself, her nonprofit and her foundation—comes into serious question. The article reveals that Mam pressured young girls under her care, including Long Pross, to manufacture stories of exploitation in a so-called effort to strengthen the fight against sex trafficking. These horrifying accounts, which were splashed across the pages of newspapers and became the subject of television programs, are now known to be completely fabricated, but to the countless number of individuals who read or watched them, they were consumed as fact. An unintended consequence of this fiction is that it serves to set a norm to which other cases of sex trafficking must measure up. Shocking sex trafficking and slavery narratives elevate people’s “compassion meters” to an unrealistic threshold of what it takes to be a victim. “What, you didn’t suffer electric shock? You didn’t have your eye gouged out? You weren’t chained in someone’s basement? You weren’t a virgin? Well! Will someone bring out the real victims please?” Such is the effect of sensationalized storytelling. In the real world, many individuals do not fit the prevailing sex trafficking victim profile that has been manufactured—one of childlike innocence destroyed by savage brutality. For individuals such as these, recognition as a survivor of sex trafficking can be a long time coming. Fabricated stories of sex trafficking rob real victims of their voice, plunder their suffering and exploit them yet again. Broadcasting the details of the most gruesome and disturbing trafficking cases (whether real or fiction) does little more than numb the public to human suffering. Rather than feeding our appetite for salacious details of abuse, anti-trafficking efforts should focus on stories that tell of humble efforts, celebrate the unsung, discuss meaningful efforts to prevent human trafficking, and expose those who exploit instead of those who have been exploited.

LISA THOMPSON is the director of anti-trafficking for World Hope International, a nonprofit working with vulnerable and exploited communities worldwide.

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J 46

THEY ASKED JON WEECE TO TURN THEIR FAILING CHURCH AROUND. THEY GOT A REVOLUTION. on Weece is the first person to admit that “The Dollar Club” is “a terrible name” for a charity initiative, but he defends its purpose as “a clear expression of love.” “Every week, we collect

SUSTAINABLE CHANGE. SACRIFICIAL LIVING.

12,000 one dollar bills, and every week we call someone in need and let them know we have some money we want to give them,” Weece explains. “We’ve paid for surgeries, wheelchair-accessible vans and adoptions. It is so fun watching people who can’t afford what they need get

overwhelmed by the same love that overwhelms me: God’s love.” Weece is the pastor (or, to use his term, “lead follower”) of Southland Christian Church in Kentucky, which he almost always refers to as “we.” He doesn’t fit the usual pastoral model—he’s

gentle, possessed of an inviting meekness that makes many of his ideas sound less radical than they actually are. Nothing about Weece strikes you as the stereotype for a pastor but, then, nothing about Southland strikes you as the stereotype for a church. The Dollar Club is just one example of the church’s mission. “We decided to launch a series of free medical clinics throughout our city,” Weece says. “We are now the primary care provider for 3,500 people in central Kentucky who can’t afford to visit a doctor or fill prescriptions. It takes an army of volunteer doctors and nurses and a lot of donations from major pharmaceutical companies to make it work, but all the effort is worth it.” Southland has a school lunch program. They run a community garden. They provide tutors for local students. They run a prison care ministry for inmates. They even run a garage to provide cheap auto care for those in need. The church’s total impact in its community is difficult to overstate—a lot can happen when a large community decides to focus its considerable resources on meeting needs. But it’s a focus that isn’t without controversy, both currently and historically. It’s one that goes well beyond thinkpiece fodder and theological inquiry, and right into the heart of what exactly the Church’s mission on earth is supposed to be. Southland’s service-oriented identity is the outgrowth of an season of intense churchwide soul searching Weece instigated after he became pastor. He says he rose to leadership of the church in the midst of an “identity crisis.” “We decided we needed to take a season, read through the gospels and the book of Acts, look at the pattern of Jesus and the first church and pray and say, ‘God, what are we uniquely created to do in the Kingdom?’” The process took a year and a half, and Weece admits it was a difficult season, fraught with layoffs and some disillusioned families. But the church’s mission became clearer for it. “We started focusing on people outside our four walls, and we found our niche. It was a catalytic season for us in that we determined we’re here in

central Kentucky to love people that no one else in our church community was paying attention to.” Weece is candid about this identity, to the point of drawing lines in the sand. “People come in and we just tell them, ‘You know, we don’t offer a lot internally for Christians. We’re focusing on the people Jesus would want us to go after,’” he says. “And that doesn’t mean what other churches in our community are doing is wrong. We need them to do what God has called them to do, and we’re going to do what God has challenged us to do.”

THE SOCIAL GOSPEL Critics have a name for Weece’s brand of ministry: social gospel. The term is a holdover from early 1900s Protestantism, when preachers like Walter Rauschenbusch and Richard T. Ely wrote that the Church needed to involve itself in fixing social ills. The movement was perceived as progressive and heavily criticized by the likes of Dwight Moody, who believed the

theology. Many prominent evangelicals were not opposed to racial equality in theory, but failed to see the matter as a spiritual issue. A great part of King’s legacy lies in insisting on the moral imperative of the Civil Rights Movement. Nevertheless, for many Christians, the idea of “doing good” still involves a sort of balancing act. Meeting people’s physical needs is in tension with spiritual development. It’s a tension Weece frequently hears expressed as Southland’s mission has turned outward. “The most common pushback was, ‘What about me? What about my family? What are you going to do for us?’” he says. “It was a very consumeristic mindset. It’s, you know, ‘What can you do for me?’ as opposed to ‘What can I do for the Kingdom? What can I do to enhance what Jesus is doing in the city?’” Weece spent much of his childhood in Haiti, where his family worked as missionaries. It grants him a unique perspective on church. He’s uncomfortable with the pulpit, and he doesn’t seem to feel at

“THERE’S NOTHING DEEPER THAN THE LOVE OF GOD. I WANT TO TAKE THAT LOVE IN VERY SIMPLE, TANGIBLE WAYS AND EXTEND IT TO PEOPLE AND LET THEM EXPERIENCE THE DEPTH OF THAT LOVE, AS WELL.” Church’s mission on earth was a particularly spiritual one. The Social Gospel suffered twin public perception blows: its close identification with socialism, which was becoming a dirty word among the middle class; and the first World War, which infused the country with a sense of pessimism about ridding the world of evil. By contrast, Moody’s sermons about escaping this troubled world for a better one were hugely popular, and many Protestants set their sights beyond earthly wickedness and on Heaven. The Social Gospel became associated with a radical niche segment of evangelicalism that nearly disappeared from public discourse until the 1960s, when Martin Luther King, Jr. incorporated many of its ideas in his own liberation

home in the common American interpretation of “church.” He says the thing he misses most about Haiti is the lack of suspicion around love. “There’s something wonderful and beautiful about living in a place like Haiti where you don’t have to jump through all the hoops,” he says. “You don’t have to have all the processes and systems to love your neighbor. The needs are so significant that you go to bed exhausted, because you tried to love them and you just run out of time.” Years after leaving Haiti, that ethos continues to haunt Weece: The idea that loving people ought to be a normal obsession of the Church. “After studying the life of Jesus, I realized Jesus was criticized for loving people,” he says. “You’re going to receive

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REJECT APATHY

Pastor Jon Weece of Southland Christian Church

criticism for something. So why not receive it for loving someone?”

THE TENSION Weece is familiar with the tensions between meeting people’s physical and spiritual needs, but he’s not particularly concerned with them. For him, there’s not so much a balance between feeding the body and the soul as much as there is a necessary relationship. “When we read Matthew 25, the conversation Jesus has with an audience about loving the least of these—I think it had a lot to do with meeting physical needs, because it seems to open a door in a very tangible way for us to address their spiritual needs. “Two things happen when we express love to someone in need,” he continues. “The person we love is more open to the love of Jesus and so are the people who watch us love the person in need. Our expressions of love come with a ‘so that’ attached to them. We love people so that they will understand the love of Jesus.” That may sound a bit simplistic—a criticism Weece is used to hearing—but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. “I’m very comfortable with simple,” he says. “I think simple can be deep. I don’t think deep has to be complicated. And there’s nothing deeper than the love of God as demonstrated through His Son to a fallen world. I want to take that love in

SUSTAINABLE CHANGE. SACRIFICIAL LIVING.

very simple, tangible, memorable ways and extend it to people and let them experience the depth of that love, as well.” For Weece, that means finding simple ways of measuring the results of the love the church shows. “The metric we use is connectivity,” he explains. “If someone goes from being unconnected to the body of Christ to connected, and they go to connecting unconnected people to the body of Christ, that’s how we measure growth in our church. “It’s a very simple metric,” he continues. “So if we’re meeting someone’s physical needs and we’re not seeing people come to Christ, if those numbers start to dip and we don’t see life change happening in people, then we begin to evaluate is that really effective? Or are we creating a dependency like a lot of other social programs out there?”

FEEDING THE BODY TO FEED THE SOUL “I’ve gotten comfortable with being criticized for meeting people’s physical needs,” Weece says. When churches push back on his model, he has a ready response. “I would say, ‘Can I share with you our journey and our story and how exciting it is?’” he says. “Because I think in every believer, when we sign up to follow Jesus, the idea of salvation and forgiveness of sins is so great. But … that flame kind of flickers out, and I think that happens in a lot of churches. I love going in and just kind of lighting a little fire under them and giving them some simple stuff that they can potentially try or do. I’ve yet to see a church or group of leaders that hasn’t been willing to try something in their community.” And for those looking to find something to do in their community, Weece has another piece of advice. “Always look for dirty feet to wash and you’ll never lack for ministry,” he says. “It’s not about something big. It’s the simple, small, beautiful acts that keep you going and make dying on that cross worth it. Jesus says pick up your cross daily. He started that process by washing the dirty feet of his close friends. I’m always daily looking for opportunities to do that in my own family, in our staff culture and in our community. If you look for dirty feet, you’re going to find them.”

GO DEEPER C OMPASSION, J U STICE AND THE C H RISTIAN LIFE

by Robert D. Lupton As Christians called to serve, we must do our due diligence in discerning the most effective way to minister to “the least of these.” Lupton contends that as the urban landscape changes, so must our strategy in ministering to the poor.

MAKING NEIGHBORHOODS WHOLE

by Wayne Gordon and John Perkins Perkins and Gordon lay out the keys to successfully engaging cities with the Gospel. They give examples of how certain core principles have helped empower communities and how they can transform churches’ urban ministries. THE HOLE IN OU R G OSPEL

by Richard Stearns Stearns—the president of World Vision U.S.— shares how his encounter with a Ugandan orphan changed his life. He challenges readers to examine the whole Gospel as it was meant to be: a worldchanging social revolution.

WHE N HELPING HU RTS

by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert Jesus’ call to care for the poor can lead well-meaning followers to attempt to minister impulsively and sometimes even harmfully to those in need. This book investigates the ideas of empowering those in poverty to help themselves and to create sustainable change.

Powerful.Flexible. Flexible.Practical. Practical. Powerful.

Doug Fields, M.Div. Doug Fields, M.Div. Author / Youth Leader Author / Youth Leader

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Master Arts Youth Ministry Master of of Arts in in Youth Ministry Following God’s call to serve today’s and their parents is a great privilege and responsibility. Following God’s call to serve today’s youthyouth and their parents is a great privilege and responsibility. Prepare for it with Azusa Pacific’s Master of Arts in Youth Ministry program. Prepare for it with Azusa Pacific’s Master of Arts in Youth Ministry program.

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Study under thought leaders in youth and family ministry asBurns Jim Burns and Doug Fields. Study under thought leaders in youth and family ministry such such as Jim and Doug Fields.

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WILLIAMS HAS OVERCOME A LOT ON THE WAY TO BECOMING ONE OF HOLLYWOOD’S MOST SOUGHT-AFTER ACTORS. NOW, HE’S READY TO HELP OTHERS OVERCOME, TOO.

WOR DS BY T YLER HUCK ABEE

ack in 2012, President Barack Obama went on Grantland’s B.S. Report podcast and was asked about his favorite character from The Wire, HBO’s landmark television series. “It’s got to be Omar, right?” Obama said. “That guy’s incredible. I mean, what a combination. That was one of the best shows of all time.” Michael K. Williams remembers when he heard about that exchange.

P H O T O S B Y S T E V E N TAY L O R

“I did something that warranted the president of the United States’ attention that didn’t involve jail time,” he says, incredulous. “That’s very humbling.” Obama isn’t alone in his esteem of the show or of Williams’ portrayal of the cunning, brutal Omar Little, one of the most nuanced, fascinating characters in television history. It was Williams’ breakout role, and he has parlayed it into a long career of outstanding performances—from the shrewd, charismatic Chalky White on Boardwalk Empire to Robert, Solomon Northup’s confidante in 12 Years a Slave, to a Black Panthertype named Tariq Khalil in Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film Inherent Vice—the

Joaquin Phoenix-starring adaptation of the famed Thomas Pynchon novel. “I’m more happy about the quality than the quantity,” he says of his upcoming work. And he has plenty of reasons to be happy about both—particularly considering how much he had to survive in his journey to success.

TOUGH VULNERABILITY Growing up in Brooklyn, Michael Kenneth Williams was a sensitive kid who found a creative outlet in dance. Because of that, he had to learn to develop resilience early on. “In my neighborhood, being sensitive was equated with being soft or weak,” he

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“BEING EMOTIONALLY VULNERABLE HAS HELPED ME TO CONNECT WITH MY CHARACTERS. I THINK THAT’S THE REASON MY CHARACTERS RESONATE SO WELL WITH THE PEOPLE WHO WATCH THEM.” The movie changed Williams’ chief vocation from dancer to actor, and he brought the same kind of emotion he had poured into dancing to his acting roles. For him, acting is sensitivity. You see it in his roles—he has an interesting way of finding the gentle side of hard-edged characters, because he has endured some tremendously difficult experiences “Being emotionally vulnerable has helped me to connect with my characters,” he says. “I think that’s the reason my characters resonate so well with the people who watch them—they see the human compassion. They may not agree with my character, they may not condone a certain lifestyle. But then today, they understand the process it took for one to get there, and they empathize with their pain and they walk away knowing that individual is a human being like everybody else.” In the years after Bullet, Williams booked a few parts, but went through a dry spell that

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almost caused him to quit acting. “I had pretty much hit a wall,” he says. “I was depressed for all intents and purposes. Up until that point I was pretty much booking every audition I went to. And the phone just went dead. I couldn’t get a role if my life depended on it. I was going into these auditions like I would die if I didn’t get [the role of ] ‘Thug Number Three.’ “There was a part of me that thought maybe the ride is over and I should probably look for other means of supporting myself,” he continues. So he went to work in his mother’s day care in Brooklyn as—he coined himself—her “administrative assistant.” He did that until the end of 2001, when, he says, “I just got an itch like ‘I gotta give this thing one more shot.’” That one more shot ended up being The Wire.

WALKING THE WIRE It’s difficult to overstate the influence of The Wire on modern television, or just how vital Williams was to The Wire’s success. The show is about a lot of things but mostly, it’s about the role crime plays in different communities—from the wealthy and affluent to the desperate and hardened. Williams’ Omar is the show’s mass-murdering, greatly feared source of vigilante justice. Marked by his signature whistling and cries of “Omar comin’!” whenever he appears, he throws the show off-balance and reveals just how hazy the lines between order and chaos can be. It’s an iconic role, and Williams nailed it after only one audition. It seemed like Williams had made it—he had come from being a sensitive, teased kid in Brooklyn to a star on what many critics hailed as the best show on TV. But getting the job turned out to be the easy part. “The Wire was definitely tough,” he says. “We busted our butts in Baltimore. But I wouldn’t trade it for all the money in the world. The amount of lessons I learned are paramount to me. I equate my Wire years to being in college. [I did] a lot of growing up on The Wire.” Some of that growing up was professional—learning skills for his craft as an actor. Some of it was personal—wrestling with some serious personal issues off the set that continued to haunt him when the cameras turned on. Williams had taken to the partying lifestyle before The Wire (his distinctive scars are the result of a bar fight he got in when he was 25), but a few years into the show, he had developed a serious drug problem. Spurred on by what he has called an “identity crisis,” Williams used his Wire character as a street name to get ahold of drugs. He would slip away from being Michael K. Williams and become a

S T Y L I S T: J O S E P H I .

says. “It’s ironic that I make a living at something I was made fun of for growing up. “I’ve had to get a thicker skin just to survive in life. As I got older, I had to learn how to not take things personally. People’s opinions are just that: people’s opinions. They don’t really have any bearing on how I view myself or what my self-worth is. “That’s something I had to learn on a personal level more so than on a professional level. That concept bleeds into both aspects of my life—getting a thick skin and being comfortable in my own skin.” Williams made brief appearances in music videos as a background dancer, but his first chance to act came from Tupac Shakur, who was working on Bullet, a little-remembered 1996 film starring Mickey Rourke. “[Tupac] saw a Polaroid picture of me and, in his words, he thought I looked ‘bad enough’ to play his little brother,” Williams says. “He had Julien Temple, who was the director, scour the streets of New York for me. And I came in and I auditioned, booked the part, and that kind of changed the trajectory of my life.”

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version of Omar, living a double life in which he went on days-long cocaine binges before returning to work. Through it all, he never missed a table reading or an acting call. But his friends started to worry. Eventually, one of them convinced Williams to seek help from the Rev. Ronald Christian, a former addict who had found new life as the pastor of Christian Love Baptist Church in Irvington, New Jersey. Williams was impressed by both Christian’s credentials and his kindness. The two struck up a friendship that helped pull Williams out of his nosedive. The pastor helped Williams get clean and introduced him to Jesus. After that, Williams started taking his career more seriously. Now, more than ever, he isn’t just a performer—he is a spokesman for the Omars of the world. “There’s an Omar in every city,” he says. “A misunderstood guy with all this potential and no opportunity. I think every hood has an Omar, someone who can identify with that.” Williams’ own experiences and pain shaped how he views the role of characters like those on The Wire. In his mind, shows like The Wire are just as much about educating people as entertaining them. “I call it ‘educainment,’” he says. “It’s there to educate us on a society or a part of society or a part of our culture—to show how people are living in our country, in our world. And you know, people are hurting. These shows are about people who are in pain, and I would hope that mankind would want to not have any more Omars running around, no more cities to make a Wire in.” That’s an interesting position of Williams’. Essentially, he sees it as gritty, realistic television’s responsibility to work itself out of a job— that the hard, ugly truths these shows reveal would inspire people to take action. “We don’t need no more Wires, we don’t need any more Breaking Bads,” he continues. “Let’s not forget the fact that these people, these characters are in so much pain—so much pain— they’re struggling so hard with addiction or living lives of crime, feeling like there’s no other way out other than to sell drugs, or coming from broken families or being born addicted to drugs. These shows are based on people’s real lives, and we can’t lose sight of that as a society.”

PAST PERFECT Williams isn’t proud of his past, but he hasn’t forgotten it. In fact, he’s used it as fuel for his artistry. “It’s not negotiable for me to forget where I came from. That’s not part of the plan,” he says.

“THESE CHARACTERS ARE IN SO MUCH PAIN. THESE SHOWS ARE BASED ON PEOPLE’S REAL LIVES, AND WE CAN’T LOSE SIGHT OF THAT AS A SOCIETY.” “The characters I play are a reflection of where I came from. My childhood plays a part in how I push my characters, so for me to forget where I came from would be to forget how to empathize with or how to bring humanity to the characters I play. Forgetting where I came from is not an option for me.” And it’s not really enough for Williams to remember where he came from. When asked what he hopes his legacy will be, he doesn’t miss a beat. He doesn’t want it to be for what he does on screen, but off of it. “I’m at a point in my life where, no, I do not want to run for office, or I don’t want to be

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“I HOPE TO USE THE PLATFORM THAT’S BEEN GIVEN TO ME AS AN ENTERTAINER TO SHED LIGHT ON CERTAIN WALKS OF LIFE, TO SHOW PEOPLE IN PAIN AND TO HELP.”

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anybody’s role model, per se,” he says. “But I do want to go back to my community, and all underserviced communities of this country, and just ease the pain a little bit that I grew up in. I hope to use the platform that’s been given to me as an entertainer to shed light on certain walks of life, to show people in pain and to help.” These aren’t empty words. He’s taken the first steps to start a nonprofit company called MKW (which stands for “Making Kids Win”). “My goal is to see community centers all around the country set up, where kids can go chill after school or on their way home—go do their homework or go shoot hoops, sit down with Carmelo Anthony or Denzel. That’s my dream, to have community centers in Inglewood, Compton, Baltimore, Brownsville, Brooklyn, Chicago and Detroit.” He admits it will take “concrete baby

steps” to bring his dream to fruition, but Williams’ life has been a series of baby steps. And he says starting small is the key to making a positive impact in life. “Start in your community,” he says. “Start small. It could be something as simple as going to your local public school and finding a kid that’s on the fence and mentoring them or helping them with their homework. Or if that’s not your thing, maybe every other week grab the local neighborhood kids and take them to the movies or take them to a ball game. “You’d be surprised how much a few hours out of that environment can do for one’s state of mind. You don’t have to change the world. If you could change one person’s life, your job is done.” He’s firm on this point: He wants his new organization to be about fostering community, not fixing people. He says he has seen enough people swoop in with a

savior mentality, only to find that people are rarely looking to be saved—they’re looking to be heard. “People in my community, we’re not looking for handouts,” he says. “They’re proud people. People just want to feel like they’re loved and not forgotten and that they’re thought of. And people want to identify. “When people in my community see me in a television show or film, and they just saw me walking down the street the other day, they identify with me. That puts hope in someone’s heart. I’m by far no one’s savior. I need saving sometimes.”

FINDING POTENTIAL IN AN OUTSIDER Williams is busy, and his storied career is only going one direction. The list of directors he has worked with serves as a list of some of the finest filmmakers at work today. Paul Thomas Anderson, Martin Scorsese, Steve McQueen, John Hillcoat—people seasoned actors would stalk at a restaurant just to get an introduction. “I would hope to say they see potential in me,” Williams laughs, when asked what it is about him directors flock to. “And they want to give me a chance to prove that I can carry a film, that I can be in the company of more famous actors.” There’s another possible answer: Williams is disciplined. He’s a man who values preparation, taking days to write lengthy, detailed explanations of seemingly irrelevant information about his character. “I like to give my character a back story— where he comes from, how many siblings he put up with, what his relationship was like with his family,” Williams says, laughing. “Because all of that shapes a human being.” He does this for characters as prominent as White, a heavy hitter on Boardwalk Empire, and Robert—whose screen time is brief but heavily felt in 2013’s Oscar winner for Best Picture, 12 Years a Slave. For all his lauded work on television, Williams has been slow to transition to film (until recently, anyway. In 2014, he appeared in seven movies). But he says, through it all, Omar is the character he identifies with most. “If you really look at Omar, he was an outsider,” Williams says. “He was not the cool kid on the block. He didn’t sell drugs, he didn’t use drugs, he didn’t drive fancy cars or wear fancy clothes. Those are all things that make you cool in the hood, and he was anti-all-ofthat. I identified with all of those things.”

He admits being an outsider has been a double-edged sword, but while his identity may mirror Omar’s, their journeys look very different. They both had their share of lows, but only Williams has been able to reach a place of redemption.

MAGIC MIKE

A FOOT IN TWO WORLDS Next up for Williams is Captive, in which he’ll appear alongside other fast-rising stars Kate Mara (House of Cards) and David Oyelowo (Selma) in the true story of a woman who was taken hostage by an escaped convict and convinced him to let her go by reading passages from Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life. His star is getting brighter—something that surprises him as much as anyone—but that has just recast his determination to keep his feet planted in the same place they’ve always been. “I still go to my community, I still walk the streets, I still spend time,” he says. “I’ll go to the hood right now and sit down on the stoop and talk to some kids. We ain’t got to talk about anything serious, just the fact that I make myself tangible. I can see the look on their faces and connect with them. “I don’t let them think that I’m better than them or I’m doing them a favor. Nah, we’re just chilling. I’m not trying to say, ‘I’m a TV/ movie star and you’re going to be one, too.’ It’s not about that. It’s about that I dared to dream and I didn’t forget where I came from and I’m no different from you.” Despite being an actor who has worked with the best directors in Hollywood, starred in some of television’s most important shows and drawn praise from the president of the United States, when Michael K. Williams says “I’m no different from you,” you actually believe it. He had to rely on faith when addiction became a reality. He had to embrace his outsider status in his journey to fame. And he has recognized that finding his purpose isn’t about landing the next important role or becoming a leading man. It’s about something much simpler than that. “You may not be on television; your purpose in life may not be entertainment,” he says. “But you do have a purpose. We all do. So that’s how I do it. I keep it real simple.” T YLER HUCK ABEE is the managing editor of RELEVANT magazine. Find him on Twitter @tylerhuckabee.

IN HE R E N T V IC E

Williams plays Black Panther affiliate Tariq Khalil alongside Joaquin Phoenix in Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation of the trippy Thomas Pynchon novel.

THE G AMB L E R

Williams plays one of many loan sharks after Mark Wahlberg’s character—a college professor with a gambling problem—in the remake of the 1974 drama.

B OAR DWALK E MP IR E

Williams’ portrayal of Chalky White, the leader of the African-American community in 1920s, has been lauded as one of the most memorable TV roles in recent years.

THE WIR E

Williams’ role as Omar Little kickstarted his career and played an integral part in making The Wire largely hailed as one of the best shows in TV history.

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P H O T O C R E D I T: G A B R I E L G R E E N

B Y J AC K R I G G E N S

THE COOLEST BAND IN INDIE ROCK ON GROWING CONFIDENT, MANAGING SUCCESS AND STAYING GROUNDED IN THE MIDST OF FAME here’s not much in alt-J’s origin story that hints at greatness. At least, not at first glance. They met as four ordinary blokes (and make no mistake, they are blokes) at Leeds University who shared a love for the guitar. They practiced in their dormitory and, to keep from upsetting their neighbors, played without drums or bass. Since they couldn’t play loud, they decided to play weird, relying on staccato guitar lines and hiccuping melodies to make up for their lack of volume. It’s an odd recipe for success—how many hundreds of ventures started the same way, only to fizzle out after graduation? But those bands lacked two things alt-J has in spades. The first is tenacity—in talking to the guys, you get the sense that this is a hard band to keep down. The second? Being really, really good. “We did a show in Kansas City, which we recorded for our live film, and we all got the perception—a real genuine feeling—that there was a lot of love for our music. You know, right in the heart of America, people came to watch our show and hear our music. That was a realization.” Gus Unger-Hamilton is recapping some of the highlights of his time in alt-J. He’s the band’s vocalist/keyboardist, and he has a sense of level-headedness about his band’s ascension. He’s subdued and thoughtful about alt-J’s dizzying success. They won the coveted British Mercury Prize in 2012. Their debut album was BBC Radio 6’s album of the year. Their latest album, This Is All Yours, debuted at No. 1 on U.K.’s Billboard charts. “It just seemed like it was never going to stop,” UngerHamilton says of his band’s good fortune. “We kept on thinking, ‘It must be going to level out here. Surely, we must have reached our ceiling of success by now.’ But it kept on going. It was unbelievable.”

All of this is made doubly curious by virtue of alt-J’s oddness. They don’t have the sugary palatability of other U.K. imports like Coldplay and London Grammar, much less One Direction. They get some Radiohead comparisons (Unger-Hamilton calls the allusion “a bit weird”), but even that feels like a stretch.

Unger-Hamilton admits he’s not sure how to answer people when they ask what type of music he plays. “I generally shuffle my feet and look awkward and say, ‘I don’t know,’” he says. “I think it’s classical music, electronica and folk. They’re kind of the big three things that are pushed into the mix.” According to him, the band’s uniqueness lies not so much in the finished product as it does in the creation process. He’s quick to admit it’s an elementary approach, but it clearly hasn’t hurt them in any commercial sense. “We just try to make our own approach to writing songs, which is probably quite unique,” he says. “We’re not professional songwriters. We don’t know much about how to write songs in the traditional sense. But we like the way we do write our songs. So we try to write songs like ‘Breezeblocks,’ and approach it in the same way, and the results were different.” “Breezeblocks” has become alt-J’s calling card, the sum of their best parts. The trippy chorus and its Where the Wild Things Are-aping refrain of “Please don’t go, I love you so” has been lauded by everyone from David O. Russell to Miley Cyrus. Cyrus even played an alt-J song in her live show, a favor the band repaid by sampling her on This Is All Yours. Whenever a band has a smash breakout, the follow-up becomes a difficult trick. You want to evolve your sound enough for people to know you’re not lazy, but not so much that you alienate fans. The sophomore slump has become the most famous of music’s curses, but it’s not something Unger-Hamilton is sweating. “I think there’s actually less pressure,” he says. “With the debut, we didn’t know how people were going to take it, if they would like our style or not. Having a successful debut album made us feel more freeTHIS IS ALL YOURS dom with this album.” Alt-J’s sophomore Freedom is something alt-J album debuted at No. has never been shy about 1 on the U.K. albums expressing (this is a band Billboard chart.

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P H O T O C R E D I T: M A R C U S H A N E Y

SYMBOLIC Alt-J is not the first band to brand itself with a symbol.

L-R: Thom Green, Gus Unger-Hamilton, Joe Newman

!!!

This one’s pronounced “Chk Chk Chk.” The more you know ...

†††

Also known as Crosses, this is an electronic rock side project of Deftones singer Chino Moreno.

UUVVWWZ

Named after the structure of one of the “avant-blues” band’s songs.

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named after the symbol a computer makes when you hit the “alt” and “J” keys, after all) but there is a new, maybe even more important gift the band brings along to This Is All Yours: experience. “We’re more streamlined,” Unger-Hamilton says. “We know how to achieve what we want to achieve. It’s less messing around now.” And it’s not just adding more efficiency to the process—it’s doing so on the go. “This album, more so than the first one, we were writing as we were recording,” he explains. “It was more of a sense of liking the studio this time. It was like sort of seeing stuff growing, sort of like a plant that grows before your eyes. You can barely keep up with its growth, it’s so fast.”

Only slightly less famous than the sophomore slump is another, more subtle fallout of success, and it’s a little hard to pin down. But it’s a disquieting of the band’s status quo and an upending of the relationships. It famously beat Guns N’ Roses and the Pixies, and it threatens any band

that experiences early success. Alt-J had a small taste of this last year, when bassist Gwil Sainsbury decided to leave the band, but it was more for personal reasons than a true falling out, as Sainsbury is still on good terms with the rest of the band. Still, Unger-Hamilton is familiar with the dangers of fame, and he’s frank about the temptations. “We’ve had to work hard to keep each other grounded,” he says. “And you know, I think if it were just one of us in the band, it’d be easier to tend to get kind of uppity, but we’ve known each other so long—we’ve kind of gotten good at watching out for each other and making sure nobody gets too big for their boots.” He also says the band was given the benefit of a slow-burning success—not the sudden burst of fame that can swallow some egos whole. “Things have changed over a long period of time,” he explains. “We didn’t have overnight success. I think if you have overnight success, it’s probably very easy to lose your footing and just get sort of sucked up in the pull. There hasn’t been too much change too quickly.”

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INSIDE THE CHURCH’S GROWING CULTURE OF HYPERMASCULINE FAITH

B Y E M I LY M C FA R L A N M I L L E R

Last September, filmmakers Daniel Junge and Bryan Storkel released the documentary Fight Church, following several pastors who moonlight as MMA (mixed martial arts) fighters. Some of the featured pastors host fight ministries at their churches, and they’re not alone: More than 700 churches have some sort of martial arts ministry, according to the film. Micah J. Murray didn’t grow up in one of these “fight churches,” but he did grow up in a church that very much promoted masculinity. He was part of Bill Gothard’s Advanced Training Institute from first grade on. There, emphasis was placed on men filling the role of “leader, provider, protector and of almost, like, prophet, priest and king of your own home,” he says. It was the same kind of message former Mars Hill Church pastor Mark Driscoll preached, Murray says: If you couldn’t provide for your family, you were a “man fail.” And it was a message that appealed to him when Driscoll became popular around 2008. At this point, Driscoll’s proclivities for Fight Club-y rhetoric are well known. He wrote that the modern Church has

transformed Jesus into “a Richard Simmons, hippie, queer Christ.” He has said the American Protestant culture is populated by “chicks and some chickified dudes with limp wrists.” He told his congregation that he asked an “Ultimate Fighter” for advice on how to respond to an employee who was pushing back against orders. “His answer was brilliant,” Driscoll said. “He said, ‘I break their nose.’” This sort of thinking had an effect on Murray. “It was right before I got married,” he says. “He had a lot of macho things to say, and I thought he was edgy. At the time, there was something about that that was appealing to me.” This past fall, Driscoll—who has invited controversy with his smackdowns on “boys who can shave” and insistence he “cannot worship a guy I can beat up”—stepped down from his position at Mars Hill after being investigated for charges of misconduct brought against him by former elders at the Seattle church. In the wake of his resignation, the once thriving, influential church disbanded. Around the same time, pastor Heath Mooneyham stepped away “for a time” from Ignite Church in Joplin, Missouri, after he was arrested and charged with driving while intoxicated. Ignite had grabbed national headlines earlier in the year after giving away two AR-15 semiautomatic rifles for Father’s Day. All have sparked a conversation about the Church’s efforts to reach men—or, depending on your perspective, find an excuse to indulge their own hypermasculine impulses. It has also re-ignited a conversation about the belief shouted from some corners of Christianity that the Church has become “feminized”—and what that says about what we believe about Jesus.

of a Man’s Soul, is still Amazon’s No. 1 bestseller in Christian men’s issues—and, the author says, “I’m honest enough to say that’s not just good writing.” At the time he wrote the book, Eldredge says, “Church had really become effeminate in its soul, and I think part of the indication of that is men weren’t coming. They weren’t attending, and if the Church wanted to get anything done, it had to look to women.” In Eldredge’s opinion, “It was a sign of a deeper illness in the church, and it was a loss of appreciation of masculinity and a loss of the masculinity of Jesus.” At least in terms of numbers, Eldredge isn’t wrong. In 2007, the Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project found a sizeable gap between men and women on a number of religious indicators: More women than men said religion was important in their lives. More women than men said they were affiliated with a religion, prayed daily and were absolutely sure about the existence of a personal God—or any God or “universal spirit,” really. And 44 percent of women said they attended a worship service at least once a week compared to 34 percent of men, according to Pew. When Church for Men director David Murrow started to look at church through the lens of his career as a television producer, he says, he realized, “My church would be on the Oprah Winfrey Network, not ESPN.” For both Murrow and Eldredge, the “loss of masculinity” seems to revolve around an aesthetic. Although about 95 percent of senior pastors in America are men, they saw what seemed to them to be an encroaching femininity in style, if not substance. There were fake flowers and doilies and banners homemade by previous generations of church ladies, Murrow says. The hymns described Jesus as “lover of my soul,” and ministry meant small groups and talking about feelings. ”Men did not find church an invitation to come and be men; they found church an invitation to come and be nice,” Eldredge says. “That was 14 years ago, and a lot has changed since then.”

THE CHURCH NEEDS MEN

A ‘FEMINIZED’ CHURCH

There’s a reason John Eldredge’s 2001 book, Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret

The idea of churches being “feminized” is hardly new, according to Nate Pyle, lead

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‘MANLY’ CHURCH There is certainly a place for messages about “biblical manhood,” but opinions about what that looks like differ, and some expressions of manhood have gotten churches and pastors in trouble.

HEAT H MO O NEYHAM

The pastor of Ignite, “America’s manliest church,” stepped down in September after being arrested for driving while intoxicated. Mooneyham has become known for his controversial, often aggressive, messages about manhood.

FREEDOM BI K ER C HU RCH

On its website, the church, started in Virginia Beach, says it’s a “brotherhood of bikers bound by a faith relationship in Jesus Christ.” Its pastor, Rusty Rawls, describes it as “a biker bar for Jesus.”

G UT S C HU RC H

The church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, recently settled a lawsuit with the family of a man who died after participating in an illegal boxing match that was part of the sixth “Fight Night” event held by the church’s youth program.

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pastor of Christ’s Community Church in Fishers, Indiana, and author of the upcoming book Man Enough: How Jesus Redefines Manhood. It goes back to the beginning of the Church, to patience and gentleness being listed in the New Testament as fruits of the Spirit, Pyle says. These traits weren’t considered to be particularly masculine by the culture then, either. Pushback surged in the 1800s with what was called the “muscular Christianity” movement and the foundation of the YMCA. It reared its head again in the 1990s with Promise Keepers, he says. A decade later, Wild at Heart—with its message that, at a soul level, men need a battle to fight, an adventure to live and a beauty to rescue—struck a chord, Eldredge says. He and his son, Sam, recently published Killing Lions: A Guide Through the Trials Young Men Face, a book meant to help millennial men navigate the questions of adulthood. The fact that women were stepping up and getting things done in the Church wasn’t a bad thing, he says, but, “Masculine and feminine are both needed to show what God is like.” “In Genesis chapter one, when God announces the human race—da dada daaa!—He announces the human race male and female,” Eldredge says. “I don’t think we’ve appreciated how significant that is.” Murrow says research shows the churches that are growing fastest are the ones with the smallest gender gap, with near-equal numbers of men and women in their congregations. When men come to church, he says, they bring their families. He points to pastor Jen Wilson’s work earlier in the decade at Grace United Methodist Church in LaSalle, Illinois. Grace’s membership grew about 10 percent each year roughly between 2002 and 2012 and its giving doubled over that period. In a denomination that was twothirds female at the time, the church’s congregation was more than half men. All this because Wilson tried to put herself into the shoes of the men who attended the church and tried to choose series topics that would speak to them, she says. She painted over the pinkishbeige walls and swapped out the pictures of gardens and flowers on the projector for mountains and sky.

“We didn’t go over the edge, and I don’t think most guys want over the edge. They just want normal,” she says.

‘CROSSING THE LINE’ The Church’s response, the feeling it almost has to “prove” its masculinity, has been “largely anxious,” Pyle says. After all, he says, it’s natural that the Church would be more feminine than the culture at large: “Part of that is the teachings of Jesus, and part of it is the Church is half female.” He wonders if some pastors get so caught up in trying to prove their churches’ masculinity that they end up crossing the line. “I think when men feel the pressure to prove themselves, they almost go to reckless extremes to do it,” Pyle says. “It’s like a frat party.” But it doesn’t have to be. “The answer isn’t to artificially masculinize the faith. The answer is to allow the Gospel to be what it is. Any artifice will be exposed,” Murrow says. That includes the fight churches and the gun giveaways—things Eldredge says are “stumbling in the right direction” but likely won’t last. In the years since Wild at Heart was published, he’s heard the stories of thousands of churches that are simply allowing men to assemble in the ways they feel comfortable. That may be a discussion in a small group or Bible study. That also may be a cookout or basketball night or whitewater rafting trip, whatever makes sense for their men and their location. It’s simply removing any barriers that might keep someone—man or woman, black or white, young or old—from coming to Jesus, says Wilson, who is now pastor of Wheatland Salem Church in the Chicago suburbs.

WHY MEN ARE LEAVING CHURCH In the past year and a half, Murray has blogged about his struggles to find a church, even to call himself a Christian. But that’s not because of banners or paint colors. It’s not because the hymns felt like love songs or because there wasn’t a Ultimate Fighting Championship night in the parish hall. It’s because he feels the Church’s message has shifted from the Kingdom of God to morality, he says. He began to question the messages he had received about masculinity from his church after he was married and became a father and

men are not interested in these tropes of masculinity. It can have “a shaming effect” on men who don’t share those interests, or who express sensitivity and feelings and passion—things that “make for being a bet-

we know of Jesus here on Earth. This is also the man who says, ‘Turn the other cheek,’ and, ‘Lay down your life for your enemies,’ and submitted Himself to demonstrate His love for humanity.” This is the man who chose poverty, who

P H O T O C R E D I T: W I L L F O S T E R / T H E R E S U R G E N C E . C O M

saw how those messages impacted his relationships with his family. Curious about so-called “millennial migration” away from churches, Murray went online and invited others to share stories of why they left. A year and a half later,

Mark Driscoll, the former pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, has played a large role in sparking conversation about “biblical manhood.”

he’s collected hundreds of stories and, “I can’t think of anyone that left because the church was too ‘girly.’” “I think that whole version of masculinity is not really masculinity,” he says. “It’s a cartoon, and it’s an unhelpful cartoon. “It plays into a lot of ideas that being a man is wrapped up in a lot of aggression and violence.”

DANGEROUS MESSAGES It’s all UFC and guns and blood and swear words and beer and whiskey, Murray says. Those aren’t necessarily bad things, he says, but they’re “so cartoonish, it’s to the detriment of being a well-rounded individual.” They also aren’t necessarily biblical, says Dianna E. Anderson, author of Damaged Goods: New Perspectives on Christian Purity, due out in February. “They’ve taken this cultural idea of masculinity and made it biblical,” Anderson says. That can have dangerous implications, she says. Because, the truth is, many

ter human, not to mention being a better spouse and father,” Murray says. It communicates to women that they need to accept violence as part of masculinity, that they need to take up less space, Anderson says. Or simply that femininity is bad, something to be avoided. And it masks the love of God. “When John Piper says Christianity has a masculine feel, does that mean Christianity is violent? I think we see a lot of that in Fight Church and in connection with guns,” she says.

A WELL-ROUNDED HUMAN There is some biblical precedent for Driscoll’s characterization of Jesus as “a prizefighter with a tattoo down His leg.” Revelation 6:2 describes a rider on a white horse who “held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest.” But, Anderson says, “I think it’s important to balance things from Revelation with what

relied on others for support, who ministered to the least of these in society, He didn’t exactly fit the Greco-Roman idea of masculinity, either, Pyle says. Rather, he says, “He embraced humanity and being human in a much more full sense than what we typically expect from our men. This was a man who was fully human in every sense of the word.” And maybe that’s what the Church should be embracing, too. “I wonder sometimes if our strong emphasis is on, ‘This is what it means to be a man,’ and, ‘This is what it means to be a woman,’ rather than, ‘This is what it means to be a well-integrated person,’” Murray says. “I feel like we would be a lot better off talking about how to be a fully-engaged, holistic human.” EMILY MCFARL AN MILLER is an award-winning journalist and truth-seeker based in Chicago. Connect with her at emmillerwrites.com.

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WHEN A HIPSTER DARLING BECOMES A BONA FIDE POP STAR

JAN_FEB 2015

P H O T O C R E D I T: J E S S E J E N K I N S

B Y L AU R A S T U DA R U S

ouring with Katy Perry, duetting with Iggy Azalea, and landing a plump spot on the soundtrack of 2014’s big tween romance box office hit, The Fault in Our Stars— it has been a good year for Charli XCX (otherwise known as Charlotte Emma Aitchison). Some eight years after she made her debut as a performer at a warehouse party (parents in tow), the hairswinging, dancing pop star seems to be everywhere these days. But all the year’s highlights have been a prelude to the main event—the release of her sophomore album, Sucker. “I don’t really want to belong in any boxes right now, I don’t think,” Charli muses, acknowledging the impressive scope of what she’s accomplished to date. “I try and write as much as possible whilst I’m feeling creative. I’m trying to write every day at the moment.” It’s the same rule-free, creative bender Charli has been on since the beginning. Anxious to begin her career, she recorded her debut album, 14, at the age of 14 with money borrowed from her parents. That effort, featuring lyrics about both dinosaurs and Darth Vader, went unreleased, but managed to catch the ears of a music executive on Myspace. Two years later, just shy of her 16th birthday, she was signed to Atlantic Records. In 2011, she released her first two (re-recorded) singles, “Stay Away,” and “Nuclear Seasons.” The rest, as they say, is history. Well, not exactly. It was more like a strong first act. Charli’s official debut full-length, True Romance, crammed an album’s worth of evolution into each track,

and a career’s worth of ideas into its 45-minute running time. Its electronic tracks underscore tales of love, infatuation and heartache. The album was dark and emotionally messy. But, most of all, it felt real, the work of a teenager who had figured out pop hooks but was still working on that whole growing up thing. Balking at the idea of releasing another hipster-leaning electro-pop opus, Charli stripped down her sound for Sucker, relying more on a live band and guitars rather than a fleet of synths.

notably, she penned Icona Pop’s breakup anthem, “I Love it.”) “With people requesting me to write songs for them and asking me to be involved in their projects, it makes me feel like I’m considered as a serious songwriter, and that gives me the confidence to say ‘no’ to whatever I like,” she says. “This record is 100 percent me. I wrote it to please myself, not my record label or anyone else—and it feels really good. “The record is different from True Romance in many ways. It’s definitely more guitar-led. It also was inspired by

“I FEEL LIKE I’M 100 PERCENT MORE CONFIDENT IN MY OWN VOICE, AND I ALSO FEEL LIKE I CAN SAY THINGS NOW THAT I WAS AFRAID TO SAY BEFORE, WHEN I WAS YOUNGER.” Gone are the dance club tunes, replaced by songs influenced by British punk heroes and the unabashedly girly aesthetic of 1960s Yé-Yé pop. Tracks range from brash (“London Queen”) to playful (“Need Your Love”) to downright anthemic (“Boom Clap”). But at the center of it all is a larger-than-life version of Charli XCX, clearly having the time of her life. “I feel like I’m 100 percent more confident in my own voice, and I also feel like I can say things now that I was afraid to say before, when I was younger,” she says of the shift in tone. Charli credits part of her growth to working as a songwriter in addition to her career as a performer. (Most

punk bands, like The Vibrators and the Sex Pistols, that I’ve translated in my own way. Whereas True Romance was quite a shy and unsure record, Sucker feels very in your face. I never want to do the same thing twice.” It’s surprising to hear Charli call anything she’s done “unsure.” Clad in her near-ubiquitous buffalo shoes and tartan skirt uniform, she comes

SUCKER Charli XCX worked on her second album with Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo and Vampire Weekend’s Rostam Batmanglij.

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P H O T O C R E D I T: B E L L A H O WA R D

YOUNG FAME Getting a young start (like Charli XCX did at 14), seems to be a new trend in pop music.

B I RDY

The singer won the world’s heart at 14 with her cover of “Skinny Love.”

ELLA EYRE

The 20-year-old won the BBC’s Sound of 2014 award.

LORDE

The mopey-pop queen bee started performing when she was 12.

JAN_FEB 2015

across as the ultimate cool kid, the leader of every high school clique. Charli downplays the assumption. Why can’t someone be both glam and approachable? “I think people are always surprised when they meet me because they think I’m going to be, like, a diva or something, which I’m just not,” she laughs. “I’m kind of chill, actually. I’d rather be your friend than be mean to you. It’s just more fun. “The dark pop thing—I feel like that was something that was thrown around at the beginning of my career. Songs like ‘Stay Away’ and ‘Nuclear Seasons’ were definitely darker songs from my first record. But I think that was just a stylistic phase I went through when I was younger. Elements of this record are dark in some places in their lyrical content, but [they’re] set over more angry and aggressive music.” It’s a theme she brings up over and over again: change. Expectations are boring. Follow your bliss and listen to your impulses. From her musical inclinations to even the way she behaves on stage, Charli’s is the only vote that matters to her. If one thing endures from album to album, it’s her sense of independence. “I just go in and do my thing, and if I

think it’s cool, I’ll put it on an album—and if not, then it won’t see the light of day. I think I’m good at dancing—in my own way—i.e. a not very coordinated, kind of freak-out sort of way. But I think that’s pretty cool.” Having successfully proved she can hip, skip and dance over genre boundaries, it’s hard to say what’s next for the British musician. Charli demurs to give specifics, noting that there are still some things she needs to keep secret for the time being. But she does admit that it could be in your face or playful, rock or pop. “I want to straddle both worlds, for sure,” she confirms emphatically. “As long as the music I make is interesting and clever pop, I’m happy. Of course, the singles I’m releasing right now are the most pop things I’ve ever released, but that’s because they’re a vehicle to get people to the album, and the album definitely has some of the most ‘un-pop’ things I’ve ever done on there. “I’ve always been a fan of pop music and I’ve always just done it my way. That’s what I’ll continue to do.” L AUR A STUDARUS is a writer living in Los Angeles. She’s a regular contributor to Under the Radar, Filter, eMusic and RELEVANT.

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JAN_FEB 2015

BY ROB FEE

he Sea of Forgetfulness. Partaking in Christ’s body and blood. Dying to yourself. The mark of the beast. Getting caught up in the air.

Out of context, some of the language used regularly in church sounds more like it belongs in some sort of weird horror movie. As a kid listening to the sermon every week from my wooden pew (that, no doubt, caused a great deal of scoliosis to invade my back), I would constantly hear phrases I didn’t understand at all—but that didn’t stop them from terrifying me to the core of my tiny being. Some strange church sayings are direct quotes from the Bible, but to someone not familiar with the whole story of the Bible, they’re mind-boggling. For example, I understand the term “born again” is in the Bible, but maybe preachers should just take a moment to explain it? I mean, it’s not like you’re going to casually mention the seven-headed beast rising up to eat the newborn baby in Revelation, so why are we so casual with other confusing terms? Here are a few that kept me up at night and what I thought when I heard them:

THE LAMB THAT WAS SLAIN Every church nursery has one of those murals on the wall of Jesus talking to kids while holding a baby lamb in His arms. I didn’t want that lamb to die. Sunday night services ended right around my bedtime, so the last thing I needed was to have the mental image of a sweet lamb being brutally slaughtered by demons. As a kid, when I heard everyone celebrating the murder of sheep, I really began to get nervous about taking friends from church to the petting zoo.

WASHED IN THE BLOOD If you tell a 10-year-old that he should be washed in blood, he’s probably going to imagine something closer to the opening scene of Blade than a loving Jesus who wants him to be happy forever. I pictured Jesus standing next to a giant bathtub that He was bleeding into while trying

to make me dive into it like a Steven Curtis Chapman song in ’99.

ON FIRE FOR GOD This one is still used quite a bit when describing those who are passionate about Christianity and/or wear a lot of Christian parody T-shirts. The problem is that we were taught to avoid fire from Hell, so why is God’s fire so much better? Can you guys just not burn me? Is that an option? One time I tried to start my dad’s propane grill and it blew a giant fireball into my face. Please don’t make me experience that again. I’ll never flirt with girls in Sunday school again, I swear.

THE HOLY GHOST The first time I heard this, I didn’t think, “Oh, it’s a comforting spirit.” All I heard was, “Casper is real.” My mom tried to explain it as part of the Trinity, but that definitely didn’t help. “You see, honey, God is the guy in charge, Jesus is His son, and the Holy Ghost is, uh, their pal. Technically, God is Jesus’ dad, but they all join forces to become one. It’s kind of like Planeteers from Captain America, except it’s not a sin to watch TV shows about them.” Got it!

BORN AGAIN I honestly thought I was going to be a baby all over again, but I would have my current thoughts and knowledge without being able to express them. That was some next level Twilight Zone stuff. When I was told I had to be “born again” to get raptured, I seriously had to weigh the options between the tribulation and becoming one of the babies on Rugrats.

JESUS IS KNOCKING ON THE DOOR OF YOUR HEART My heart has a door??? This sounds like a serious health concern, and I can’t find any evidence of this in my health books. Do I control how this door opens and closes? Should I lock it? Can other people get in there, as well? The questions were unlimited and equally terrifying. I just thought that if a grown man was beating his fist against my chest like Marky Mark in Fear, surely I would notice.

I’M NOT OF THIS WORLD I blame Skillet and their Alien Youth album for perpetuating this saying into every youth group in America—but the album was just so catchy. The problem is that when you tell a kid in 1996 that you’re not of this world, the first thing that comes to mind is The Monstars from Space Jam, and that is definitely not something you should be associating with.

THE LAMB’S BOOK OF LIFE Is this the same lamb we killed earlier? Now it seems as though murdering him wasn’t enough, we’re also going to take his books. How about we just leave the farm animals alone for a bit, OK, pastor? It’s making me legitimately sad.

THE DEVIL IS A ROARING LION SEEKING SOMEONE TO DEVOUR Great, not only does he control fire like one of the X-Men, he also may or may not be Scar from The Lion King coming to murder me. Can we please just get a flannelgraph and stop giving me night terrors?

THE SEA OF FORGETFULNESS So you’re telling me there’s an ocean where anything that falls into it disappears forever and is forgotten by even God Himself? Yeah, that’s not going to make me want to learn how to swim. I’ve seen 300. I know what happens when someone falls into a hole of forgetfulness. No thanks.

GUARD YOUR HEART Is this something I should have been actively doing? Because I haven’t purchased any form of security or protection, so there’s a good chance I’ve already been invaded. You told me earlier that Jesus was knocking on my heart’s door, so I left it unlocked. You never told me there were goblins and cretins trying to get in there as well. Now I’m having a full-on panic attack. ROB FEE is a writer and comedian best known for writing and telling jokes. You can follow him on Twitter @RobFee to read more jokes or go to Del Taco. He’s probably there.

RELEVANTMAGAZINE.COM

WHY THE RAPPER DECIDED TO STOP PREACHING AND GET REAL

JAN_FEB 2015

BY T YLER HUCK ABEE

P H O T O C R E D I T: N AT H A N M I T C H E L L

here’s an element of nervousness and excitement to it. It’s my baby that I’ve been working on for so long.” Trip Lee is talking about his latest album, Rise. It’s the fourth album he’s released since 2008 and, in his mind, the most unique. He spent the weeks after its release hosting listening parties all over the country, and he admits he was excited about the finished product, but also a little anxious about how it would be received. “I am glad that I’m finally playing it for people, because I put four years of my life into it. I hope they think it’s as good as I think it is.” He had good reason to be confident. Lee’s past successes have proved his fan base very open to new ideas as they’ve watched Lee’s creativity evolve. His 2008 album, 20/20, was his first to crack Billboard’s Top 200. That album’s 2010 follow-up, Between Two Worlds, debuted at the No. 5 spot on iTunes’ hip-hop chart. And Rise was no exception, hitting No. 1 on the iTunes hip-hop charts and No. 16 on the Billboard 200. But Rise does represent a new era for Lee—one in which it’s not just what he’s saying that’s challenging listeners, but how he’s saying it. “I think there are benefits to approaching things more artfully, and I think I’ve been able to grow in that,” he says. “And I think it shows in how the music connects.”

acted as Lee’s spiritual and musical mentor, discipling him and signing him to his hip-hop label, Reach Records. That led to Lee’s debut album, If They Only Knew, and he’s refreshingly candid about its merits. “I was in high school when I made it,” he explains, laughing. “So I’m in high school, a newer believer—probably been a Christian for three or four years at the time. I love Jesus, I love theology, and I want to say everything in every song. There’s a way that really connected with folks

“[MUSIC] ALLOWS ME TO CELEBRATE CERTAIN TRUTHS AND NOT FEEL LIKE I HAVE TO TIE UP EVERY LOOSE END AND SOLVE EVERY PROBLEM IN A SONG.” because there are people who had never been exposed to any theology before they heard a rap record. That was a good thing about me packing all that content in it. But when I listen back I do think...” Here, he pauses for a moment, showcasing the caution that has served him well as a songwriter. “I think I could have been better in my craft as an artist,” he finally says, “artfully approaching these topics in a better way. I could have connected with human experience more.”

PREACHER ORIENTED

PAST THE PREACHING

Along with being a successful rapper, Lee also aspires to be a pastor. A few years into his rap career, he started attending Boyce College—Southern Baptist Theological Seminary’s undergraduate wing. He also started working as a pastoral assistant at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. Lee plans to plant a church in Atlanta in the near future. He says he’s “very preacher oriented” and it shows. He has a preacher’s cadence and commanding tone. He has a preacher’s knack for making every sentence sound like a pronouncement. If all that makes him cut out for the job, it also makes him one of the very few Billboard-charting rappers interested in moving into the pastorate. It’s just another interesting wrinkle in a life full of them. Trip Lee was born William Lee Barefield III. Raised in Dallas, he’s always been an avid fan of the Southern rap he’s known for today. “I rapped about random stuff,” he says. “How hot I was or how many girls I could pull.” He had a change of heart shortly before 2004, when he saw Lecrae perform live and ended up meeting him after the concert. The two struck up a friendship, and Lecrae

That was in 2006, so Lee has grown since then. On his new album, Rise, Lee feels re-energized. It’s different for him, both musically and lyrically. The entire album was produced by his longtime friend and collaborator, Gawvi. It’s the first time he’s ever used a single producer for an entire album—a choice he calls “one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.” He also says he’s drawn inspiration from influences as disparate as John Mayer and Kanye West. “I’m going to listen to a little bit of everything and find little pieces,” he says. “I like to study stuff that really inspires me, and I think it helps me RISE to be more well-rounded. If I After two years out of the only listened to hip-hop, then spotlight, Lee released my music sounds like whathis fifth full-length album, ever’s hot right now—which which hit No. 1 on the iTunes hip-hop charts. I don’t like. I want it to feel

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PASTOR RAP Being a rap artist and an ordained minister may seem like a strange combination, but Trip Lee is in good company. Here are some other notable rapping men of the cloth.

MC HAMMER

K U RTIS B L OW

REV RUN

The “U Can’t Touch This” rapper traded his Hammer pants in for a pastor’s robe in the late ’90s.

In 1979, Blow became the first rapper signed by a major label. In 2009, he founded The Hip-Hop Church.

One of the founding members of Run-D.M.C., Joseph Simmons is also a Pentecostal minister.

relevant but also trailblaze a little bit and feel different than the normal stuff.” That different feel extends far past just how the album sounds. Lee is also exploring new possibilities for the sort of topics and feelings he can explore, and how he can express them. “It’s always trying to find a balance,” he says. “I think a lot of people love the directness of my music. But if I’m not careful and I try to just pack it full of too much content or not be very creative about my approaches, then it doesn’t feel like a song anymore. It doesn’t tug at your emotions, it doesn’t tell a story, it doesn’t do the unique things

button and keep saying ‘I’m going to live for God for real when I’m 25 or 30 or 40.’ Stop hitting the snooze button and rise from your slumber, get up now and live and rise above low expectations. The book is aimed more directly, getting all that content out.” And because he can use the book to get all of his ideas on paper—to ask questions he can answer and provide some concrete bullet points, he feels more free to use songwriting as a more intimate, vulnerable expression. “[Music] allows me to celebrate certain truths and just talk about life stuff and not feel like I have to tie up every loose end and solve every problem in a song,” he

“DON’T PROCRASTINATE AND KEEP HITTING THE SNOOZE BUTTON AND KEEP SAYING ‘I’M GOING TO LIVE FOR GOD FOR REAL WHEN I’M 25 OR 30 OR 40.’ GET UP NOW AND LIVE AND RISE ABOVE LOW EXPECTATIONS.” music is supposed to do. So because I am a preacher and an author, as well as a rapper, I have to think about what are the benefits to those different mediums and what I’m able to communicate within them.” Mastering different mediums is the next box Lee is hoping to check off. He’s publishing his first book this year, Rise: Get Up And Live in God’s Great Story, and he gets visibly excited when he talks about the concept. “It’s about basically getting up and living your life now,” he explains. “That’s what rise is: Rise from the dead and live. Don’t procrastinate and keep hitting the snooze

JAN_FEB 2015

explains. “I can celebrate different aspects and write about different stuff. That’s part of what inspired me.”

HEALING UP On Rise, Lee talks about raising children and growing into adulthood, but he also addresses his honest frustration with chronic fatigue syndrome—a significant disorder that can have a crippling effect on his energy level. “It’s very unpredictable,” he says. “I’m tired all the time, and when I sleep, my body doesn’t quite recharge like it’s supposed to.

I’ve had it for seven years, and there have been different seasons where it has been more difficult than others. In the past two years, it’s been difficult for my wife and me. It does drastically affect our lives. “One of the things I fight with is feeling like, ‘God, just take this away, because this standing in the way of all the things I’m supposed to do!’” he says. “But I think that’s a lie. In Scripture, God doesn’t withhold anything from us that is ultimately good for us. He gives us all good things, Scripture says. So if there is something God hasn’t given me, which in this case would be perfect health, then He’s giving it to me for my good and for His glory.” He pauses a little again and seems to reflect on what he just said. “That is really hard to believe,” he admits. “It sounds really good in my head, and I know it’s true, but that’s one of the things I really have to fight to believe week to week.” Believing life’s little lies is something Lee comes back to a lot. In his mind, the truth is often counter-intuitive. Choosing to believe it takes a deliberate act of will—particularly when it comes to choosing to live like a Christian instead of the alternative. “There’s always those lies in our minds when we look around at the world and we think, ‘Man, if I could do things the way they did then I could enjoy my life a lot more,’” he says. “I think that’s one of the things that keeps us from running hard after God as we believe those lies. “We’re just so distracted,” he continues. “It’s hard for us to sit and think. Especially in college when so many things are pulling at us. There are things that seem more appealing than God, often. It seems like

P H O T O C R E D I T: N AT H A N M I T C H E L L

following God is actually missing out on lots of stuff. In college, it’s missing out on the party, missing out on those relationships. As we get older, I think it’s like I would rather be more cut throat in a way and go about my business.” The lie there, Lee says, is the idea that people who aren’t following God are actually living a better life. In his mind, they’re the ones missing out. “They aren’t in the game,” he says. “They are actually sitting on the bench. But here we are as those who have been saved, and we’re in the game but we’re looking at them, wishing we were doing what they’re doing. Let’s flip that. Let’s understand that those of us who have been put in the game, we’re actually living for what God intended

us to live for. So let’s embrace that, let’s continue to rise and get up and live.”

THE RISING “Everybody has to decide, ‘How am I going to approach my music?’” Lee says. “I know dudes whose songs sound like a systematic theology book on a record,” he laughs. “And there are people who love it! That’s the kind of stuff they do!” Lee is also aware that he’s not on an extreme side of either spectrum: There are musicians far preachier than he is, and there are some who are far less. In his mind, neither side has a monopoly on “the right way” to rap. “There are different ways to approach it,” he says. “What the artist has to really

think carefully about is, ‘Am I saying true things? Is the motivation of my art honoring God? Is what I’m saying honoring God?’ Also, ‘Am I making excellent music that also honors God with my creativity?’” The answers to those questions probably vary from artist to artist, and Lee seems OK with that. “There are all kinds of things going on in the mind of an artist, and all artists are going to approach it just a little bit differently,” he says. “The more we artists allow there to be variation in how we approach our music, it’s just a good thing. It’s good to have different artists who approach stuff in a different way because you’re going to connect with all kinds of different people, and I think that’s a good thing.”

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BY JESSE CAR EY

That’s more than triple the median household income around the globe. It’s enough to buy a brand new BMW, start a retirement account or put a down payment on a house. And according to recent government financial data analyzed by student aid advisors at Edvisors, it’s also the average amount of debt a recent college graduate is carrying. Over the last 10 years, the problem of student loan debt has escalated so rapidly, millennials are now one of the most indebted generations in history. Large student loans are a reality for many recent college graduates, but they’re only part of the new financial landscape young adults are navigating. The credit report firm Experian found that the average millennial also carries $2,700 in credit card debt. And though that number is actually below the national average, their research found that millennials tend to be poor money managers when it comes to paying high-interest consumer debt. When compared to other generations, millennials were found to have “the worst credit habits” and are “struggling the most with debt management.” The debt is taking a toll. Though Pew Research Center’s Millennials in Adulthood study determined that millennials tend to be optimistic about the future, debt is starting to cast a shadow over their outlook. A recent report from Wells Fargo found that 40 percent of millennials said their debt was “overwhelming.” The report’s author, Karen Wimbish, the director of retail retirement at Wells Fargo, noted that mounting debts may be eating into millennials’ ability to save and invest. “While student loan debt may feel like the greatest concern to many millennials, it’s third on the list after credit card and mortgage debt,” she wrote. “For about half

of those we surveyed (47 percent), debt eats up more than half their monthly earnings.” Chuck Bentley, the CEO of Crown Financial Ministries—an organization that offers courses that combine biblical teaching and financial guidance—has observed how debt is dramatically affecting many in the generation during one of the most pivotal points in their lives.

Proverbs 22:7 reads, “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.” In the years after a mortgage crisis that saw families lose their homes to bank foreclosures, not only is the passage pertinent for literal applications, but the idea of being free from bondage is a key element of the Gospel. Romans 13:7 underscores the importance of paying someone what they’re owed, while putting things like revenue and taxes in the same category as respect and honor. “Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.” Caryn Rivadeneira, author of the book Broke: What Financial Desperation Revealed about God’s Abundance, which outlines her

“THE BIBLE SAYS WE SHOULD BE VERY CAUTIOUS WITH DEBT, AND WE SHOULD LIMIT OUR USE OF DEBT. BUT IT NEVER DESCRIBES DEBT AS A SIN THAT IS ABSOLUTELY PROHIBITED.” — Chuck Bentley “They’re starting to have to orbit their life around the management of a large amount of debt very early in their life,” Bentley says. “Often, instead of pursuing what they’re called to do or what they’re inspired to do—to go out and change the world and do something they think is right in their design, in their calling—they end up defaulting to a career or profession or a job simply to pay off the debt.” And for Christian millennials living with debt, the reality of having to borrow to make purchases, get an education, drive a car or own a home isn’t just causing tension in their financial lives—it also represents a spiritual conflict.

A SPIRITUAL CRISIS The Bible has a lot to say about debt. Scripture frequently draws a spiritual connection to the issue of being in debt to others.

family’s battle with debt, even sees power in the phrasing of the Lord’s Prayer, in which believers ask God to “forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors.” “When you’ve experienced that crushing debt and you imagine then what it would be like to have someone just say, ‘I’m taking it all away’—that’s been really powerful for me in my own life as the understanding is, ‘That’s my sin,’” she explains. “I don’t think I’ve always been that great about understanding the depths of my sin. I don’t think a lot of us probably are. But when you finally have that tangible thing of debt, which is used as a metaphor for our sins, it makes me understand in a whole new way.” In the Bible, debt is used as a metaphor for spiritual needs and is referenced as a reallife financial concern for members of the Church, but there are still misconceptions as to what the Bible actually has to say about

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COLLEGE GRADUATES WITH LOAN DEBT

71%

“WHAT DOES IT MEAN WHEN [GOD] DOESN’T PROVIDE THE WAY WE THINK HE WILL? WHAT I DISCOVERED IS THAT GOD’S IDEA OF PROVISION IS VERY DIFFERENT THAN WHAT WE THINK.” — Caryn Rivadeneira

2014

66% 2004

49% 1994

> source: national center for education statistics

borrowing money. “I think we need to have a biblical view of debt, but that doesn’t mean we avoid it altogether. I think that’s bad information,” Bentley says. “The Bible says we should be very cautious with debt, and we should limit our use of debt. But it never describes debt as a sin that is absolutely prohibited. “To understand it from a biblical standpoint means to develop a very healthy regard for it, to use it only when absolutely necessary, and to minimize the amount of debt we take on so we can manage it and fulfill our personal obligations. It becomes a sin when we borrow and don’t repay.”

A BIBLICAL DISCONNECT? Part of understanding what the Bible actually says about debt—and how we

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can use its principles to not become consumed by it—means seeing how it applies to post-recession America. Living in an era of easy credit, when access to massive home or student loans is afforded to almost anyone, our understanding of debt is dramatically different than that of the original audiences of Scripture. Like many aspects of understanding the Bible, knowing the cultural and historical context of the teachings is key. According to Mark Scandrette, author of the book Free: Spending Your Time and Money on What Matters Most, God’s original model for borrowing didn’t involve an incentive for lenders to make money off of debtors. He points to the idea of debt forgiveness every seven years that’s commanded by God in Leviticus 25 and the communal emphasis on giving based on helping your neighbor. “No one in the Hebrew culture gets ahead by loaning any money,” he explains. “You’re only to loan at a no-interest rate, without usury. And people were very cautious about borrowing money—it was usually only for survival. Our current economic system is a culture where the banks make it very easy for us to borrow. But what that means is that because they’re doing it at an interest rate, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. I don’t think just because we live in a debt culture, we have to follow the main prescription.” Bentley says the easy debt culture can also undermine our calling to be patient and reliant on God for the things we want or need. “Debt becomes a form of instant gratification,” he says. “We will say God is our provider. We will say we trust Him. We will say we will wait on Him. Then, if He doesn’t deliver something we want on time, we always have the fall back to a credit card or to borrowing money and getting it right now.” But if unbiblical patterns have led to a disconnect between how God wants us to view debt and our actual financial practices, is there a way we can get back on track?

COURSE CORRECTION Every day on more than 500 radio stations around the country, listeners tune in to listen to the financial advice of an individual who once had to file for bankruptcy after lenders came calling. Today, Dave Ramsey, a former brokerage firm owner, has built a media empire teaching others the principles he learned rebuilding his own financial life. Along with Ramsey, groups like Crown Financial Ministries, Abundant Living and countless churches across the country offer courses and teachings that blend Christian values with principles to get out of debt and avoid it in the future. Sure, not everyone agrees with the exact methodology each of the financial ministries employ, but countless families credit their guidance—which often involves aggressive budgeting—with helping them become debtfree. The very existence of massive organizations solely devoted to helping Christians with their debt is evidence that a course correction may be taking place. Rivadeneira first found herself in debt after the economy slowed her and her husband’s professional lives and medical bills began to add up after the birth of her children. She says, in her experience, debt can be a challenging scenario, but also one that allows us to re-evaluate our relationship with money—and with God. “We have all these plans and financial courses that churches teach, and they are very well-intentioned,” she says. “But we get this mixed notion that we are in control, that we will be fine because we are doing these steps. I guess I learned the comfortable and easy life isn’t necessarily what God is going to have for us.” Obviously, getting out of debt takes time, discipline and patience. But for millennial Christians, beyond instilling principles that can help them in their future financial practices, it can also be a lesson in reliance on God. Rivadeneira says the experience of dealing with debt actually helped her recognize

things that made her faith stronger. “Going through our own financial desperation was this huge wrenching away of so much materialism that I wasn’t even aware of,” she says. “I wouldn’t have described myself as a materialistic person, and yet, as soon as I didn’t have the means to pay for things, this panic rose in me. Through that, I realized it was really God chipping away all of that for me, saying, ‘Your focus is on the wrong thing instead of on me.’” Millennial Christians—who are uniquely dealing with the combination of consumer, student and mortgage debt—may feel overwhelmed at the prospect of overcoming it, but the debt crisis is also an opportunity for them to cast a new direction not just for themselves, but for the Church.

THE POST-DEBT CHURCH If there’s one thing the availability of credit has given American consumers, it’s independence (even if it is just temporary). Instead of living with family members, we can take out a mortgage and purchase our own home. We can sign a car loan to be able to travel without relying on rides from others. We can afford to go to the schools we want, eat what we want and do what we want— without the help of friends or family. For a generation that values community—both in the Church and in our personal lives—the catalyst for changing the culture of debt might start with how we think about relationships. “I wonder if some of what drives our economic choices is that we don’t want to have to depend on other people—we want to be independent,” Scandrette says. “And maybe we don’t want the accountability that would come from truly being known by others.” Scandrette suggests this idea of being known by others isn’t just about transparency—it’s about vulnerability and reliance. Moving in with parents or a roommate, carpooling, sharing homemade meals together with friends or staying in instead of going out to a fancy restaurant all promote a more economical lifestyle, and they also reinforce our ideas of community. “If life isn’t sustainable with the current economic system, then we just are

going to have to find more inexpensive and shared ways to live,” he says. Because of the reality of debt, figuring out these patterns of sustainability, community and generosity may help millennials redirect the Church to a truly biblical model. “If you look at the patterns for the Hebrew people, you don’t spend everything you earn and more,” Scandrette says. “You actually live on 50 percent from what you earn: There’s some tithing, there’s some festivals, there’s planning for the year—basically living with much more margin in terms of finances.” The implication is clear: If we make the changes to eliminate debt in our own lives— by living sustainably, relying on community

[ A V E R A G E

$12,850 $17,550 $19,750 $23,450 $29,400

“I would set up a budget that allowed me to contribute a disproportionate amount of my surplus toward the reduction of that debt,” he explains. “That’s a very simple plan of cutting back on your expenses so you have a gap between what you’re earning and what you’re spending. Then you begin to apply a principle reduction rapidly to your student loan debt.” Living generously while also spending responsibly to get out of debt may not always be easy. But for millennials who still maintain a desire to impact the world even while tackling their own debt, learning through the challenge might just be part of a bigger plan.

S T U D E N T

L O A N

D E B T ]

1996

2000

2004

2008

2012

> source: project on student debt

and depending on God—the Church as a whole will soon follow.

THE STARTING POINT Anyone who has lived under the pressure of mounting debt knows how dramatically it affects everything in their lives—their outlook on their own calling, saving, giving, spending. Applying principles of community and sustainability can help establish healthier habits moving forward, but the reality is overcoming debt takes time. And that’s OK. “It usually took a long time to get in debt, and there should be a long-term view of having a plan to work out of it,” Bentley says. “Most people can get out of debt in about five years if they really apply themselves. On a five-year plan, you can still give.” Bentley says that with the right plan, even a seemingly insurmountable amount of debt can eventually be eliminated.

“There were all these faith-shaking experiences. We were wondering, what does it mean that God is our provider?” Rivadeneira says, remembering her debt struggles. “Christians throw that around all the time: that God will provide. What does it mean when He doesn’t provide the way we think He will? What I discovered is that God’s idea of provision is very different than what we think. “So many of us we think we are in control of our financial situation, so it was a sort of sweetness in entering that time of total dependence on Him.” For millennials living with debt while also striving for a life of purpose, the key isn’t just relying on community, sustainable living habits and budgeting to become more prosperous. It’s realizing that community and relationships are what prosperity is supposed to look like in the first place.

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CHRISTIANS AGREE THE BIBLE IS VITAL TO THEIR FAITH. BUT AGREEING ON WHAT IT SAYS IS ANOTHER MATTER.

JAN_FEB 2015

BY PR ESTON SPR INKLE

other words, there is no such thing as an unbiased interpretation, an approach to the Bible (or any text) that has no presuppositions, no precommitments, no cultural, familial and personal assumptions that steer the reader’s eyes to see certain things and avoid others. Yes, God said it. And certainly, Christians can believe it. But before its truths can be accessed and applied, they must be interpreted. And everyone brings something to the Bible when they seek to interpret it. Family upbringing, church background, social status, ethnicity, gender, age, nationality and many other personal and cultural narratives have been trafficked into every person’s mind and heart (often unknowingly) and form interpretive lenses as thick as coke-bottle glasses. One simply can’t read the Bible as a neutral observer.

TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL grandma used to say: “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” And most evangelical Christians agree. The Bible is their authority. It’s the rule for life that forms their beliefs. In debates, the Bible is the referee. The Bible permeates the homes of Christians. Pieces of it get plastered on magnets that hang on refrigerators. It gets stuffed into plastic bread loaves to be devoured one verse at a time. Enter the house of a Christian and you’re bound to see the Good Book lurking behind every corner. Christianity is a Bible-centered religion. Or so they say. My grandma was right—but only partially. She was right in what she affirmed, but wrong (unconsciously so) in what she left out: that sticky, debated, often unnoticed problem of interpretation. Every Bible-believing Christian by definition says they believe the Bible. But no one reads the Bible without bias. As philosopher Thomas Nagel used to say, there is no “view from nowhere.” In

Take angels, for instance. When you read about angels, what do you envision? Large, white, glowing figures with magnificent wings hovering over their heads? In reality, angels are never described in the Bible as having wings. Cherubim have wings (Ezekiel 10:3-22). Seraphim have wings (Isaiah 6:2). But Cherubim, Seraphim and angels are different types of spiritual beings. The Bible never equates angels with Seraphim or Cherubim. And whenever angels do appear in the Bible, they are never depicted as having wings. Usually, when angels are described, they simply look like men. Probably MiddleEastern, dark-skinned men. If they had fluttering wings, they probably would not have been mistaken for men (e.g., Genesis 18:121). Still, when most people in the Western world read about angels, our interpretive lenses are colored by other pictures and paintings from our culture. Or what comes to mind when you think of Jesus? According to Google, most Americans think of a white, physically fit,

long-haired man with a thin beard. But this picture comes from modern culture and not the Bible. The Bible gives scant physical description of Jesus. The clearest depiction comes from Isaiah, who says He was not very attractive (Isaiah 53:2). Jesus may have had the toned abs of Hollywood’s depiction, but perhaps He was pudgy or, more likely, knee-knocking thin. In any case, the Bible does not say. Modern presuppositions don’t allow for a pudgy, non-attractive (by Western standards) Jesus, even if the Bible does. And, in all likelihood, Jesus did not have his trademark Jared Leto hair. Jewish men didn’t have long hair in the first century, so Jesus almost certainly had short hair. And being Middle-Eastern, His skin was probably darker than the pasty representations of Jesus in Western art and on the Internet. These are just a few examples of how culture can shape perception and imagination, but gender also steers our reading of Scripture. I’d read through the book of Exodus dozens of times before I noticed all the heroes in the beginning of the book are women—the Hebrew midwives, Moses’ sister Miriam, Pharaoh’s daughter, Moses’ wife Zipporah (who circumcised Gershom with a flint rock and saved her husband from instant death). The only ounce of testosterone in the early chapters of Exodus is bound up in a tongue-tied murderer who forgot to carry out the most basic Hebrew command of circumcision on his son. Still, as a man, I thought Moses was the hero of the book. And yes, it was a woman who pointed out to me what was broadcast by God across the first four chapters: God used women to pave the way for His people’s redemption from slavery.

A VIEW FROM SOMEWHERE One way to expose the political and cultural biases that fog various interpretations of Scripture is to raise a hot-button ethical question and see how “Bible-believing”

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Christians respond. Take immigration, for instance. Most Christians, especially those in the border states, have strong opinions about immigrants coming to America, especially if such immigrants lack the proper documentation. Most Christians (statistically) vote for higher walls and stricter laws. But the Bible is actually saturated with radical, counterintuitive and economically demanding commands about caring for foreigners living among believers (Leviticus 19:10; Deuteronomy 24:19-22; Jeremiah 22:3; Ezekiel 22:29; Malachi 3:5, to list only a few). Throughout the Bible, God aggressively encourages Israelites to be a foreigner-loving, immigrant-welcoming, others-embracing people. The prophets considered caring for foreigners to be evidence of true faith

interpretation come from? Was it from a long, neutral, unbiased study of the Bible? Or from somewhere else: family, theological tradition, political affiliation or personal aversion? The possibilities are numerous, and often, the answer may be something as simple as “I’ve always believed this.” That, of course, is not submitting to the Bible as the ultimate authority, but submitting to “what you’ve always believed” as the authority.

BEING BIBLICAL Knee-jerk responses to hot-button issues are often produced by influences other than the Bible. All controversial questions require much study and resist simple answers. But if Bible-believing Christians don’t know what the Bible says about a certain issue, they ought to, by definition, pause and say, “I’m not sure how I should

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN UNBIASED INTERPRETATION, AN APPROACH TO THE BIBLE THAT HAS NO PRESUPPOSITIONS THAT STEER THE READER’S EYES TO SEE CERTAIN THINGS AND AVOID OTHERS. (Jeremiah 7:4-8; Ezekiel 22:7; Zechariah 7:8-10). Jesus Himself proclaimed that caring for immigrants is so fundamental to the Christian faith, those who say they believe in Him but don’t care for immigrants are not genuine Christians (Matthew 25:35, 38, 43; Luke 10:25-37). There are other biblical questions to consider, of course. Paul says Christians are to submit to the state (Romans 13:1-4), although Peter believed obedience to God trumped allegiance to Rome (Acts 5:29). Clearly, there is a discussion to be had, but that’s the point: There should be a discussion, preferably a biblical one. Quick and aggressive answers driven by economic and political concerns—salted with a pinch of biased news reports—are in and of themselves not biblical. Still, this is frequently the knee-jerk response of “Bible-believing” Christians. It would behoove those who believe the Bible clearly weighs in on complex, modern day issues to ask themselves why, exactly, they believe this. Where did this

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respond. Let me study the Bible and think about it.” Claiming to be biblical, going to a biblical church and listening to preachers who saturate their sermons with Bible references does not ensure that one is actually biblical. Even within “Bible only” Protestant churches, doctrinal statements often carry more authority than the Bible. And sometimes, one’s preconceived opinions on certain topics remain fixed in stone regardless of whether there is a biblical reason for their view. Pitch a hot-button issue at a Christian and watch him swing for the fences. Follow it up with a curveball, “Where does the Bible teach that?” and he’ll often be caught looking. Everyone brings baggage to every text, biblical and otherwise. But that doesn’t mean all is lost. There’s hope for “being biblical.” While there’s no way to approach the text neutrally, it can be approached fairly. The famed Protestant theologian Karl Barth used to say ecclesia semper reformanda, or “The Church is always to be

reformed.” That is, Christians must always re-examine their doctrine and beliefs in light of Scripture. The assumption, of course, is that over time, certain cherished doctrines will become crusted over with repetition and could become cut off from their Scriptural roots. In order to prize and prioritize Scripture, certain beliefs need to be regularly brought before the Bible for a sort of theological tuneup. Theologian Alister McGrath said it well in an essay: “Reformation, rightly understood, is not a once-for-all event whose ideas are to be set in stone, but an ongoing process of re-examination and reconsideration, forced upon us by the priority of the biblical text over our provisional interpretations of that text.” Re-examining doctrinal statements, for instance, is “forced upon us by the priority of the biblical text.” McGrath goes on to say, “The price of being biblical is to constantly return to the Bible, sometimes with anticipation and at other times with trepidation, in that our present ideas may find themselves rendered questionable.” A truly biblical Christian is one who recognizes their presuppositions as a woman, or a man, or American, or black, or white, or politically conservative or liberal, or as someone who had a terrible father and therefore shudders at the thought of God being our heavenly Father. A biblical Christian doesn’t deny these biases, but admits and embraces them, then holds out the assumptions with an open hand and invites the Bible to critique such presuppositions. A biblical Christian ought not to approach the Bible from a posture of control—collecting verses that seem to support certain beliefs. But rather, they should approach Scripture from a posture of excitement, mystery and humility. Perhaps the saying, “God said it. I believe it. That settles it,” could be adjusted to “God said it. I believe it. Let’s talk about it.” Instead of falsely believing a particular interpretation has settled the truth, perhaps Christians can seek it out together—as iron sharpens iron—and wrestle with the beauty of God’s unchained word. PRESTON SPRINKLE is the vice president of Eternity Bible College’s Boise extension. He’s the author of Charis: God’s Scandalous Grace for Us and blogs at Theology in the Raw.

COMING FALL 2015

Welcome to Seminary 2.0 Seminary Reimagined We’ve reimagined seminary education at Denver Seminary with the most extensive enhancement of our Master of Arts (50 hrs) and Master of Divinity (78 hrs) programs in over 60 years. The design will provide superior flexibility and personalization to match your interests, learning styles, and vocation. You’ll be able to go deeper into the areas that match your gifts with the agility to move into ministry faster, adapting to the challenges and opportunities of our rapidly changing 21st century culture. And you’ll continue to receive the academic integrity, mentored learning, and meaningful missional engagement that have been the hallmarks of Denver Seminary since 1950. Think you can’t attend seminary? Think again.

Learn how Denver Seminary is reimagining seminary.

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T H E M I S S ION OF

JAN_FEB 2015

THER E’S MOR E TO THE DUDE THAN HE LETS ON

P H O T O C R E D I T: S A M J O N E S

BY JESSE CAR EY

here is perhaps no character in the history of American cinema more committed to personal comfort than The Big Lebowski’s The Dude. Though it sailed under the radar at the time of its release, the 1998 Coen brothers’ comedy turned Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski—played perfectly by Jeff Bridges— into a cult hero devoted to laid-back attire, avoiding work, tournament bowling and sipping White Russians. Bridges’ iconic creation even spawned a semi-ironic religion known as “Dudeism,” a philosophy dedicated to values like “going with the flow” and “taking it easy.” Even in real life, Bridges, with his shaggy hair, tendency to punctuate sentences with the word “man” and overall Dude-like disposition, has come to embody the same mellow vibes as his best-known character. But there is an irony that comes with being known as The Dude—a persona Bridges happily embraces (Last year, he even co-authored a book with Zen Buddhist Bernie Glassman called The Dude and The Zen Master). Because even if his demeanor suggests Bridges has a lot in common with the comfort-obsessed Coen-brothers creation, for the last 30 years, Bridges has been committed to getting out of his own comfort zone in an effort to help change the world. “I know that I certainly have a relationship with comfort,” Bridges says. “I love being comfortable. But it’s costly. There’s a price to our comfort.”

FINDING HIS CALLING The son of acclaimed actor Lloyd Bridges, Jeff Bridges has been a staple of the Hollywood scene since he was a teenager. He earned his first Academy Award nomination at just 22 (Best Supporting Actor in The Last Picture Show), and has gone on to star in a string of major blockbusters (Iron Man, Tron, Seabiscuit) and critically acclaimed films (American Heart, Crazy Heart, True Grit) dating back more than four decades. Along the way, he’s been nominated for six Oscars in total and won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 2009 for Crazy Heart. But even though he found success on the big screen at a young age, something changed for Bridges in the 1980s when he learned about Ethiopia’s devastating famine. It was then that his work as a famous actor became more than just his career path and a way to carry on the family’s filmmaking legacy. It became a platform for his new calling: Fighting hunger. “I found out the reason hunger existed was not because we didn’t have enough food or enough money or enough knowhow on how to end it—countries had ended hunger—but what was missing was the political will,” Bridges explains. “Well, I realized that, of course, politicians are supposed to represent us, so it got down to the individual will. And now that I knew these facts, what was I willing to do?”

WHAT ARE WE WILLING TO DO? The experience of grappling with the Ethiopian famine changed Bridges. He says instead of just deciding to donate money to “scratch the guilt itch,” he wanted to use his growing platform to tackle the problem head-on. “What was I willing to do that kind of fell naturally into my life to get the job

done of ending hunger?” Bridges says. “So I formed an organization called the End Hunger Network. And we did things like writing a lot of the copy for Live Aid and we produced movies and so forth.” About 10 years after forming the organization, Bridges shifted the group’s focus because of problems he saw in his own backyard. Despite all of the resources of the richest—and most comfortable—country on earth, kids were going hungry in America. He changed the organization’s focus and renamed it Share Our Strength. “One in five of our kids struggles with hunger,” Bridges says. “We like to think of ourselves as a wonderful, perfect society, but the fact is that there are these kids who need food.” For the last three years, Bridges has served as the national spokesperson for

“We all have strengths. I’ve got a certain degree of fame. I’ve got platforms. But we all have something we can lend to creating a better world.” Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign, and today, his organization connects hungry children with meals provided in their areas. For Bridges, even the name of the organization has meaning: We all are busy in our own comfortable lives—but that doesn’t mean we can’t work together to make a difference. “I love that title, Share Our Strength,” he says. “We all have strengths. My strength is, you know, I’m a celebrity, I’ve got a certain degree of fame, I’ve got platforms like I’m doing with you right now, spreading the word. But we all have something we can lend to creating a better world.” For Bridges, using that fame means more than bringing awareness to an

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Jeff Bridges as Bad Blake in Crazy Heart, the role for which he won an Oscar

THE DUDE THRIVES

C R A Z Y H E A RT

Bridges won a Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of down-andout country singer Bad Blake.

T H E M E N W H O S TA R E AT G OAT S

Bridges hilariously plays the leader of a secret Army unit of “psychic” soldiers.

important issue or even launching an organization. It means setting aside the Dude-like nonchalance of living an easy life and getting out of his comfort zone to help others in need.

THE BOOK THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING Challenging the status quo—and challenging others to question it—is the primary reason Bridges embarked on a nearly two-decade-long journey to turn the award-winning young adult novel The Giver into a major Hollywood film, which hit theaters this past fall. The film marked a career milestone for Bridges: It’s only the second time he served as a producer since 1996’s TV movie Hidden in America (the first was 2009’s acclaimed Crazy Heart). Sure, the young adult genre is a big screen cash cow, and The Giver’s dystopian setting and dark plot made it a perfect addition to the new blockbuster landscape made up of Hunger Games sequels and literary adaptations like The Maze Runner. But for Bridges, the career turn had a deeper meaning. “I was very interested in this theme of comfort and perfection and trying to get rid of suffering and desensitizing ourselves to it or denying it,” he explains.

ASKING DIFFICULT QUESTIONS

TRUE GRIT

Bridges’ role in the old-western reboot earned him his sixth Best Actor Oscar nomination.

JAN_FEB 2015

The Giver tells the story of a future society that has drugged its citizenry to rid their lives of emotion and depth in an effort to eliminate the suffering that led to forgotten wars, death, violence and famine. The story’s young hero, Jonas, is selected to inherit the true knowledge of humanity’s rich intellectual and emotional capacities from The Giver, an elder who also

JESSE CARE Y is RELEVANT’s web editor and a mainstay on the RELEVANT Podcast.

P H O T O C R E D I T: D A N N Y C L I N C H

shows him the dark side of the government’s enforcement of cultural uniformity. The book takes the concept of comfort— and the idea that ignorance is bliss—and pits it against the personal responsibility to fight injustice. What happens when we are finally exposed to a social evil that may be too difficult, dangerous and uncomfortable to fight? The novel is one of the most popular works of young adult fiction in the last 30 years, but its difficult themes, dystopian metaphors and discussion of shocking issues like infanticide has also made it one of the most controversial. “I saw the Newbery Award stamp on the book and I found out it was being taught in schools and over 12 million copies had been sold in 21 countries. I thought, ‘Oh, this is going to be a cinch to get made,’” Bridges says. “But then I also found out it was on the list of banned books, so it wasn’t that easy to get made after all. It took me 18 years of having the rights and losing them and getting them back again.” The book asks difficult questions of its young readers: Is a willingness to be ignorant of suffering worth the cost of a painfree life? What is the price of our own comfort? How much are we willing to distract ourselves in order to avoid difficulties? These are all questions Bridges himself has long dealt with. “That’s one of the questions I think the movie and the book ask,” he says. “What are we willing to pay? And what are the true costs of being comfortable?” Almost 20 years after encountering The Giver, Bridges finally brought it to audiences. And in many ways, the story has become a metaphor for his own calling. He has used his success not as a way to secure comfort, wealth and fame, but to create a platform to make a better world, and tackle injustice—even if it’s not easy. “The Giver asks Jonas in the film, ‘This is the situation, now what are you going to do?’” Bridges says. “Now that you know the facts about the way things are, what are you going to do about it? What kind of actions are you going to take? Because my own view is that we’re all in this together— we’re all connected. When there’s something lousy happening to our neighbor, that’s going to affect us.”

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B Y E D D I E K AU F H O L Z

there’s one value many young Christians want to enact in the world around them, it’s justice. It’s a concept pastor and anti-poverty advocate Eugene Cho has thought a lot about. Along with leading Quest Church in Seattle, Washington, and founding the anti-poverty organization One Day’s Wages, Cho is also the author of the new book Overrated, which tackles this generation’s propensity to value

JAN_FEB 2015

the idea of changing the world over actually taking action to do so. We recently spoke with Cho about the Bible’s call for social justice, the role organizations play in enacting change and what taking action really looks like. CAN YOU DEFINE WHAT JUSTICE IS?

The most simple, basic way I try to define justice is to restore that which is broken in the manner of how God intended it for

P H O T O C R E D I T: E R N I E S P I R O

ON W H AT J UST IC E SHOU L D R E A L LY LOOK L I K E

the world. I think about Genesis chapter 1 and all the good, all the peace, all the flourishing and shalom God intended in our relationship with God, our relationships with one another, our relationship with creation—[that’s all broken] because of sin, depravity, rebellion. WHAT IS THE BARRIER TO DOING SOMETHING? WHY ISN’T AWARENESS ALWAYS MOVING TOWARD ACTION?

I think awareness in itself is important. I don’t want to discount the significance and importance of that. What we need to communicate is that awareness cannot be the totality of our actions. I want people to realize justice is not some special category that only special Christians engage in. It’s really just part of our discipleship. If we’re disciples of Christ, and justice is the heart of God, the character of God—these things must be reflected in action. It has to be a lifelong thing, it has to be this marathon as opposed to a quick stop, a Facebook post, a tweet. We’re not just doing the work of God, but we need to examine ourselves and how God might be stirring within our hearts. We’re often asking God to move mountains, but I think we need to really be open to the possibility that God wants to move us. WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO SOMEONE WHO HAS AN IDEA FOR A GREAT NONPROFIT OR NGO? WHAT AFFIRMATIONS AND WARNINGS WOULD YOU GIVE THEM?

I would begin by saying, “Don’t do it.” I’m not trying to be funny. I want to push back, because just as it was trendy for people to be in bands in the ’80s and ’90s, I think in the Christian evangelical culture especially, the trend right now is starting your own thing. I would ask that person, “Have you surrounded yourself with people who aren’t just going to affirm everything you’re going to do? Are there people in your life who have the guts to ask you some of the hard, tough questions?” When I started One Days Wages five years ago, I would have wanted my friends and my wife to just say, “Rah rah! This is great and amazing!” It was very uncomfortable to have a couple of close friends, including my wife, say, “Why do you want to do this?” They asked the hard questions about motivation: “Is this really about you? Why can’t you partner with organizations that are currently doing some amazing things?” It really helped me to think through, not just the “what” that I want to do, but the how and the motivations behind it. If a person continues to feel really convicted that this is something they want to do, this is a time when a person needs to go deep, to become an expert. They [need to] really try to glean from the “successes” or failures, experiences, best practices, bad practices from others doing the work, as well. WHAT SHOULD BE THE AVERAGE PERSON’S RESPONSE TO THE BIBLICAL MANDATE TO DO JUSTICE?

When we think about justice or injustice, we’re thinking about these big issues, and I see a lot of people thinking we have to start our own nonprofit, our own organizations. I don’t think

that’s necessarily what you need to do. It may be for some, but certainly not for all of us. There’s something about the way we live justly in the here and now, when we’re not being seen, when we’re not on a platform, when we’re not at a conference. There’s something about how we live justly in the day to day, and part of that involves how we interact with human beings, with those who are often maybe forgotten even in our own lives. I’m trying to resist the temptation of giving you, “Here’s 5 things that people should do,” “Here are five causes,” because I think this is the work we need to be doing on our own. Often, when we do feel convicted, our initial gut feeling is “I have to just get out there and do something,” but I find most of those things are very short-lived. Our responses to living more justly can really be grounded in the spiritual disciplines of Scripture, of prayer, of fasting, of being in community and fellowship. DO YOU THINK CHURCHES ARE COMING TO AN UNDERSTANDING THAT THEY ARE TO BE, IN SOME WAYS, THE TORCH-BEARERS OF JUSTICE?

We need to be torch-bearers of the whole Gospel, not just the work of justice. If we’re not careful, we’re going to end up elevating justice above the response to the Gospel. Even good things can actually become idolatrous. It’s a very seductive temptation for the Church and for Christians, because who isn’t going to like the idea of justice? I want to make sure we do justice because of the Gospel and not the other way around. My hope is that as we collaborate and seek justice not just for Christians, but for all, that also bears witness and testimony to the goodness and glory of God. FOR SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO TAKE ACTION, WHAT WOULD YOU TELL THEM TO DO AS A FIRST STEP?

We need to surround some of our thoughts and convictions with some of our spirituality—to continue to read the Scriptures, spend time in prayer. To say, “God, I want to spend the next month daily seeking you and your heart and what it is that you want me to steward with some of the thoughts, ideas and convictions that might be going through my mind.” I would also challenge that person to share this with a group of people you trust and ask them to come alongside you in some way. I wish someone had told me when I was in seminary to look at it from a 60 year perspective. Look at the big picture. As we’re looking at it from the big picture, we’re going to need more than just a singular conviction that comes our way. It really needs to be massaged by these spiritual disciplines, by the gift of Christian community. We’re called not just to seek justice, not just to pursue justice, but we’re also called to live justly in our lives. So there is this examination of how, on a daily basis, we’re seeing the Gospel and seeing the world through the lens of God’s character. EDDIE K AUFHOLZ is a minister, counselor and writer living in Orlando, Florida. He can be heard weekly on the RELEVANT Podcast. Find him on Twitter @EdwardorEddie.

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CONTENTS

relevant recommends ISSUE _68

MUSIC

BROOKE FRASER BRUTAL ROMANCE [SONY]

In the middle aughts, Brooke Fraser wrote several worship hits including “Lead Me To The Cross” and “Hosanna.” Her guitar-driven solo albums, like the stunningly good Flags release from 2010, showcased her songwriting chops. Now, on what is essentially her mainstream pop debut, she hangs up the Fender and picks up Banks— minus that artist’s indigestible lyrics. “Thunder” has so many danceable, uplifting choral arrangements it’s almost criminal. Her sound has changed, but her central themes are the same—she sings about thinking heavenly thoughts, beyond the temporal.

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JACKIE HILL PERRY

BEN HOWARD

THE ART OF JOY

I FORGET WHERE WE WERE

[HUMBLE BE A ST]

[UNIV ER SAL-ISL AND]

Rapping over a reggae-rap beat, Jackie Hill Perry uses her songs to point directly to the Cross as the remedy for all sin and suffering. On “Dead Preacher,” she raps about materialism and the pursuit of worldly ambition. To say Jackie Hill Perry is the female Lecrae is to undercut her powerful impact and message. The real message? God changes you.

The reverb and delay settings on Howard’s lush guitar work take on their own personalities. They crash like waves on “All Is Now Harmed.” They pierce into your subliminal consciousness on “Conrad” when Howard sings about how he loved “with the good and the careless in me.” On “End Of The Affair,” his surprising acoustic accents almost muffle the misery. Almost.

JESSIE WARE

REMEDY DRIVE

BROODS

JASON BARROWS

TOUGH LOVE

COMMODITY

EVERGREEN

ISLANDS OF MY SOUL

[INTER SCOPE]

[SELF-PRODUCED]

[C APITOL RECORDS]

[NOISE TR ADE]

Listen for the pulsing synths on “You & I (Forever)” off Jessie Ware’s sophomore album. The British soulstress drops out on the heavenly chorus and lets the synths echo into infinity. On “Cruel,” the lights dim and her voice punctures the darkness. You’ll hear hints of the R&B artist Miguel, an Afrojack club vibe, and at least a passing resemblance to the ’80s.

After Remedy Drive’s founding member David Zach took trips to see how counter-trafficking works firsthand, he decided to write songs about topics that really matter: how kids as young as six are sold into slavery, how the cacophony of emotions linger in your memory, and about how the Church often sits idle. The songs have a newfound urgency.

The debut synth-rock album by the New Zealand band Broods is an ocean of sound you fall into with full force. “Sober” loosens up your mental chambers. Singer Georgia Nott and her brother Caleb on keys sing about the cost of relationships and thinking you are invincible and impervious to harm. Hey, the drone will obfuscate the pain, at least for a while.

For most of his musical career, Jason Barrows has been a background musician. He played guitar for Josh Garrels and was in various bands before working on his own album. His debut brings spiritual themes couched in rich layers of guitars and synths. At times almost folk, at others pure rock, it’s a good thing Barrows decided to step into the spotlight.

DHARAMSALA IS A GOOD PLACE FOR SPIRITUAL ENRICHMENT. SO IS NEW BRIGHTON.

Looking for an open, invigorating environment to explore your spiritual side? Learn how theology engages the arts, social justice and spirituality through an interfaith lens. Come discover Education for Transformation. unitedseminary.edu

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relevant recommends

MOVIES + BOOKS

MOVIES

FURY

ST. VINCENT

THE TRIP TO ITALY

THE GUEST

DAVID AYER

THEODORE MELFI

MICHAEL WINTERBOTTOM

ADAM WINGARD

[SON Y PIC TURES]

[THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY]

[IF C FIL MS]

[PICTUREHOUSE FILMS]

Anchored by compelling performances, especially from Brad Pitt and Shia LaBeouf, Fury paints a gritty picture of World War II. Ayer’s gripping film depicts the horrors of war, but it doesn’t leave you in despair. Instead, it points to a living hope, specifically through the experience of LaBeouf’s character, an evangelical Christian.

A struggling man and troubled child form an unlikely relationship that becomes a catalyst for their mutual redemption. We’ve heard this story before, but St. Vincent tells it with such a sweet and sincere spirit—and a refreshing sense of humor—that it works. The cast also elevates the dramedy, making it a cut above the rest.

This sequel to the underrated British comedy from 2010, The Trip, is quick, witty and insightful. Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon play fictionalized versions of themselves on a grand tour of Italy, experiencing the many offerings of the beautiful country. Their hilarious banter shows both the difficulty and necessity of friendship.

It’s hard to put a label on Adam Wingard’s latest. Centered on a strange war vet who shows up at the home of a fellow soldier who died in combat, leading to a series of odd events, The Guest is a mix of action, drama, horror, mystery, thrills and suspense. It’s absurd and unpredictable. It’s also smart and entertaining.

I Do.

I Do

not tell you everything.

Discover hope for your relationship. dhp.org/pure And they lived happily ever after. Well, not exactly. Every couple experiences the ups and downs of marriage, but Jen Ferguson found herself rocked to the core when she uncovered her husband’s porn addiction. Pure Eyes, Clean Heart shares their personal story and offers others encouragement and hope for true healing.

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BOOKS

A GLORIOUS DARK

OUR ONLY WORLD

LIFE TOGETHER IN CHRIST

WE ARE PIRATES

A.J. SWOBODA

WENDELL BERRY

RUTH HALEY BARTON

DANIEL HANDLER

[BAKER PUBLISHING GROUP]

[COUNTERPOINT]

[I V P BOOK S]

[BLOOMSBURY USA]

Reminiscent of the deep, earthy work of Frederick Buechner, A Glorious Dark is a finely crafted exploration of Christian spirituality. Structured around the three days from Good Friday to Easter Sunday, Swoboda reflects on how each of these days contributes uniquely to the work of imagining and embodying our faith.

Even at age 80, Wendell Berry continues to be one of the most compelling social critics of our age. This new collection of essays enhances the themes of his previous work, including local economies, conservation and protection of land, creatures and human life. Berry offers a vision of a rich and sustainable way of life.

Jesus’ call for us to be transformed is clear, but how does that happen? Barton emphasizes that we are transformed in community, providing an alternative to the individualism of our age. Hospitality, listening to one another and to Christ in our midst—these are the practices by which we submit to the transforming power of Christ.

Daniel Handler—better known as Lemony Snicket, author of the best-selling A Series of Unfortunate Events novels—is back with an equally dark and whimsical novel for adults. Featuring two young female swashbucklers who wreak havoc upon San Francisco Bay, Handler’s novel recounts the story of these pirates and their undoing.

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CONTENTS

relevant podcast ISSUE _68 CHECK OUT THESE RECENT EPISODES OF THE RELEVANT PODCAST

ST. PAUL & THE BROKEN BONES

ROB & KRISTEN BELL

JON GUERRA/EUGENE CHO

NEON TREES/ERIC METAXAS

EPISODE 414

EPISODE 417

EPISODE 418

Think what you will about Rob Bell, the popular (and controversial) author and his wife, Kristen, have a lot of good advice to offer on marriage. We talk to them about their new book, The Zimzum of Love, which talks about the give and take that is an important part of any healthy marriage. We also talk to one of our favorite new indie bands, Colony House.

Jon Guerra wears a lot of different hats—singer-songwriter, producer, recording engineer, jingle creator. He also has a passion for worship music, and he stopped by our studio to perform a few songs off his Glass EP. We also talk to pastor Eugene Cho about his new book, Overrated, and wrestle with the idea of being eaten alive by an anaconda. You won’t want to miss any of it.

Neon Trees has been a staple of pop rock for years, and the band’s latest album, Pop Psychology, offers more of the fun, danceable tunes the band is known for. We talk to them about the album, touring and their brand of pop. We also chat with best-selling author Eric Metaxas about his new book, Miracles, in which he presents the idea that miracles are far more widespread than we think.

EPISODE 412 St. Paul & The Broken Bones is new band with a classic sound. The group sounds like something out of another era, with a unique, soul-filled sound. We talk to the band about their origins, religious influences and songwriting. We also talk to Will Bakke, the director of the hilarious new film, Believe Me, and recap Nic Cage’s disastrous Left Behind remake.

800.264.1839 | lpts.edu

Jennine Money, MDiv student Georgetown, DE

Explore these degrees | Master of Divinity, MA Marriage & Family Therapy, MA (Religion), Doctor of Ministry

JAN_FEB 2015

relevant .tv ISSUE _68 CONTENTS

CHECK OUT THESE CURATED VIDEOS AND SHORT FILMS PLAYING NOW ON RELEVANT.TV

“COME AS YOU ARE”

LOVE IS THE KEY

“GOLIATH”

CROWDER

CAITLIN CROSBY AT TEDX

STEVE TAYLOR & THE PERFECT FOIL

David Crowder’s worship songs have been sung in churches around the world for years, and his new solo project features the same beautiful melodies and lyrical richness he’s been known for. “Come As You Are” gives hope for the broken, calling sinners to lay down their burdens and accept the free mercy of Christ. “Earth has no sorrow that heaven can’t heal,” Crowder sings.

A few years ago, Caitlin Crosby was inspired to engrave inspirational messages on old keys and turn them into jewelry. In her TED talk, she tells the story of how that small inspiration turned into her jewelry company, The Giving Keys, which hires people out of homelessness. She offers inspiration for being aware of your surroundings, caring for others and making the world a better place.

After a Grammy-nominated solo career and a short-lived stint with the band Chagall Guevara, Steve Taylor decided to turn to Kickstarter to fund his latest musical effort. The campaign got more than $120,000 in donations, which funded the band’s debut album, Goliath. The music video for the title track tells a story of its own, pairing the song’s catchy beats with animation.

THE MAN BEHIND THE MOUNTAIN BEN STODDARD In the middle of the desert outside Niland, California, a colorful, painted mountain stands out from the barren landscape. Called Salvation Mountain, it offers messages of hope, love and joy to those who pass by. In this beautiful short film, Stoddard spends time with Leonard Knight, the man who spent 20 years crafting the mountain.

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contents

JAN/FEB 2015 ISSUE 73

FEATURES 58

ALT-J Alt-J is one of the weirdest bands in indie rock. They’re also one of the best.

FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING A new movement thinks Christianity is getting too girly, and they’re not taking it sitting down.

CHARLI XCX She’s poised to be pop’s next big thing, and she’s done it all her way.

11 CHURCH PHRASES THAT FREAKED ME OUT AS A KID Maybe we should think twice before telling children they’re “washed in the blood.”

MICHAEL K. WILLIAMS Omar on The Wire. Chalky on Boardwalk Empire. Michael K. Williams has been the best part of two of television’s best shows. But to hear him tell it, from new film roles to a new offscreen mission, he’s just getting started.

TRIP LEE Lecrae’s protege on learning how to balance his dual roles as an emcee and a pastor.

GENERATION DEBT Never before in history has a generation reached adulthood under such a crushing financial burden. Is there any hope?

DO CHRISTIANS BELIEVE THE BIBLE? It’s the cornerstone of the Christian faith. So why are there so many different interpretations of the Bible?

JEFF BRIDGES The Dude is abiding in a whole new way.

84 JEFF BRIDGES

FIR ST WOR D

FEEDBACK

SLICES

What millennials want out of church, 2015: the Year in Preview, celebrity charities that actually make a difference and more.

JAN_FEB 2015

66 CHARLI XCX

THE DROP

The pastor and author on what justice in action really looks like.

R E J E C T A PAT H Y

Changing the human trafficking narrative, a new model for church giving and the unbelievable reality of teen pregnancy.

The Drums, Lucius, Planetshakers, Benjamin Booker, Neulore and more. 34

EUGENE CHO

MAKER

Banning Liebscher on Jesus Culture’s new mission, Scott Harrison on the importance of data, and the rise of the 4-day workweek.

R E L E VA N T R E C O M M E N D S

Music, movies, books and digital media you should know about.