There I was at college about an hour and a half away from home and as soon as I was settled in I wasted no time meeting and joining an on-campus group of charismatic believers that were mostly all attending the local Assembly of God church.
I started attending the same church and it wasn’t long before I was even playing guitar on the worship team. The worship leader there was a musical genius who had played with a pretty well known christian band at one time. I learned so much from him and from playing on the worship team during those years while I was in college.
It was during this time that the Brownsville Revival in Pensacola, FL was the hot topic. Several from my home church had gone and experienced ‘revival’ and were hoping to inject the same thing into our little church. The church I was attending while in college was no different… the crazy Holy Spirit moments were getting crazier and crazier. The spirit of laughter, someone randomly speaking in tongues, shouting, dancing, shaking, flag waving, falling down and worse… it was all happening. It was all pretty new but I was generally okay with it since everyone also seemed to be. I was not wanting to be too negative about something I didn’t quite understand but I was actually still a bit leery and remained somewhat reserved myself. I was mostly focused on the music during the worship times and we would quite often break out into an improvised ‘jam’ that was not rehearsed. I really enjoyed those moments and learned a lot about timing, how to play ‘appropriately’ and how to improvise.
One memorable time while at college a self-professing “prophet” came and spoke at the church. He made a big impression on me and my roommate. Years later I would end up playing guitar for this “prophet” at his new ministry center in the Twin Cities where more “outpourings of the Holy Spirit” would happen during 3+ hour long services. They went as far as to even host something called the “School of the Prophets” to teach anyone and everyone how to prophecy. I played guitar there every week during the weekly “prophetic” meetings for a couple years after college.
The last 2 years of college I led worship for our little christian group and increasingly took on a “see a need, fill a need” approach which inevitably found me leading worship on Sunday mornings back home. I was never really a singer, nor intended to be. I didn’t even really like to sing but both at college and at home I suddenly became the only one that could and/or would play guitar and was also willing to sing and lead worship… no matter how bad I was at it. I did this for a couple years and also invited the worship leader from the church I went to at college to come lead once in a while as well.
During the final years of college and the first couple after graduating, me and a couple friends from our church would drive 8 hours out to Illinois and spend a hot summer 4th of July week at a huge Christian rock festival called Cornerstone. All of our favorite “Christian” bands would play there every year (Adam Again, the 77’s, The Prayer Chain, The Violet Burning, Cush, Mike Knott, Over the Rhine, Havalina Rail Co., POD, etc.). There would usually be around 10-20,000 people there and quite a number of bands that would play all thru the day and nearly all night. Just about every type of music was represented and just about every type of person would attend. Typically the music and audience was skewed toward the harder/heavier types. It was always interesting to see so many “christians” that looked and acted just like the rest of the world did with tattoos, spiked hair, black clothes, painted faces, colored hair, piercings, smoking, swearing, etc. Of course I was generally cool with it all even tho I was not that way myself. I tried not to pass judgement on anyone and just assumed they were immature Christians, or recent converts or maybe would be soon at least. We camped out in the middle of what used to be a corn field every year and every year the festival was hot, loud and dirty. We usually came home sunburned and exhausted with our ears ringing for weeks afterward.
It was at this Christian music festival, 8 hours away from where I lived, that I would end up meet my future spouse. We were camped next to each other one year and hit it off. She happened to only live about an hour away from where I lived and so we continued to keep in contact after the festival was over…
to be continued…
