Not To Us.

So the other night, I went with Aaron and Brandon into the Sparks Christian Fellowship for a concert. Aaron warned me beforehand that the bands weren't screamo, but they "crunched guitars.*" I was a little skeptical, because I'm not into the whole yelling-at-the-top-of-your-lungs-into-a-microphone approach to music. But I decided that I wanted to go just to hang out anyway.

The night started out super fun - we spent like half an hour driving around Sparks looking for the place, because the Mapquest map was way wrong and the GPS in Brandon's dad's car kept leading us to random shopping centers. It was hilarious because Brandon's dad is a super cool dude and we were all joking around and having a lot of fun... we didn't even care that we missed the first band.

We showed up at 7:30 (it started at 7,) just in time to see the second band's** set of songs. Their lead singer was awesome! He crowd surfed and threw water bottles into the masses and got everyone super riled up. Aaron, Brandon, and I made our way to the front, packed in elbow-to-elbow with some sketchy looking characters. It was awesome.

The second band, Fireflight, came on and things calmed down a little bit. (Their lead singer was a chick, so a lot of girls crowded forward and so we guys didn't want to get super crazy.) Fireflight had a mellower set than the first band, but they were still the crazy, shredding guitars, screaming into the mic, double-bass pedal type of band. It was kinda offsetting at first, but man can you get into that music!

Then finally, Disciple came on. They're apparently pretty well known, although I'd never really heard of them. (For the record, the only 'hardcore' Christian band I'd ever heard was Skillet.) But oh, man. Theses dudes knew how. To. Rock! The lead singer was jumping around, hair flying everywhere, the guitarist was bellowing into the mic and thrashing his head to the beat, the drummer was a madman hopped up on the Holy Spirit, and the bassist was practically a brooding vortex of head banging.

Everyone in the crowd was going nuts, with people jumping all over the place, smaller people getting crowd surfed - a mass of shoving, sweating, yelling, cheering and thrashing people. There were strobe lights, smoke machines, spotlights, the whole nine yards. The music was super loud, the temperature was super hot. I couldn't even understand what the singer was yelling, but the driving beat and wailing guitars were good enough for me. There was even an encore at the (rather animated) request of all of us in the crowd.

It was so amazing - I found myself jumping with the beat, yelling with everyone in the crowd, and just plain going crazy. A quote from Donald Miller comes to mind - "Sometimes you need to watch someone love something before you can love it yourself. It's as if they are showing you the way."***

It was officially my first ever concert. No offense, Campaign, but after last night, I can see that while your Wednesday night shim dig at Hume was fun and all, this was truly a concert.

But wait! The best part has yet to come! On the last note of the encore, with the crowd going 100% insane and the drummer flogging the cymbals and the guitarist thrashing his strings in a mind-blowing cacophony, the singer is down on his knees holding out the last word. The crowd's message is clear "You rock!" And the lead singer points his finger up into the air and calls over the sound system, "Give Him your praise!"

Not to us,
But to Your name
Be the glory!

I was seeing those lyrics being acted out right before my eyes. This guy and and his band, who could have so easily been like, "That's right Reno, give it up! We rock!" Were instead using their amazing talents to point to God. "Worship Him. Give Him your praises. Jesus is King."

Dude.

Then after the lights had come back on, and people around me were apologizing for any elbows to the face they might or might not have thrown during the guitar solo, the lead singer came back out and read us some sweet Scripture about how God wants no one to perish. He concluded by basically giving an alter call. "Who out there wants to say 'yes' to Jesus? Who out there knows that He hates your sin, but loves you? Who out there wants to be saved?"

Oh my goodness. I have to do that again sometime. but for now, I gots to scoop some ice creams.


Thanks for reading!

-Daniel

*For the record, I had no idea what Aaron meant when he told me that. I just kinda nodded.
**I don't actually remember their name... my bad...
***Blue Like Jazz, by Donald Miller.