Sometimes a song becomes more than a song. It turns into a manifesto for an entirely new way of seeing and living in the world. It becomes the arms that hold you up in the midst of bad times. It’s the thing that gives you the words or the prayer that you couldn’t find or utter on your own. It becomes the driving, pulsating thing that pulls you out of depression or complacency and plants joy down deep in your bones. My friend Troy got married a few weeks ago, and his 80′s cover band Pleasure Towne did the reception. It was so stunningly joyous. Everyone was on the dance floor singing themselves hoarse and dancing. My wife broke a sweat. My wife. I had to run to the store the next morning and could still feel the bounce in my step and the joy reverberating in my chest cavity.

So this year I’ve come across some musicians who’ve made music for the Church that has me believing again that it’s possible the Church could be the first place in town people would look to find music like that.

My friend Aaron Niequist immediately comes to mind. He’s been working this year on what he calls A New Liturgy. The video below describes some of the angst that I think a lot of people feel about music for the Church. So Aaron has been collaborating with friends, creating these liturgical musical sets around themes like the Love of God or Blessed to be a Blessing. The music weaves in and out of prayers and readings and spoken word. I find myself saying to everyone, “I’ve got this friend, you’ve got to hear what he’s doing.”

There’s also The Brilliance. Someone gave me their self titled cd, and I put it in while my wife and I were working around the house. It wasn’t long before we were standing in front of the ipod station just kind of looking at the floor. “Are you hearing this?” My wife asked. They’re singing the prayers of St. Francis of Assisi and St. Patrick with a string quartet. It’s gorgeous music, but the words are rooted and feel fresh in a way that makes you think, “Man, that’s my life.” Their most recent cd is an Advent Volume with some really compelling songs on light and a great song about Mary.

Crystal Davy is a musician from Lincoln Nebraska that I’ve had the privilege of getting to know over the last year. She’s a mother of two, and she’s got soul and some serious pipes. I remember walking into the shed at Mars Hill on a Sunday morning during rehearsal and thinking, “What is that sound?” Nobody in the building could seem to get ready for the service because they just stood there listening, transfixed. She and her band did a version of Pierce Pettis’ That Kind of Love that was really powerful. Crystal recently released a cd, Immigrants and Strangers, and the first song, The Length of It, is like a prayer from a parent to a child about making it in a broken world. Here’s a clip of another song on her album.

Brie Stoner is a Grand Rapidian who makes really beautiful music. She recently wrote a song called Spirit Speak that I’ll listen to several times in a week. It’s based on the passage in the Bible that says the Spirit groans in prayer on our behalf. As such the chorus’ are wordless. Here’s a rough demo of the song.

Spirit Speak

A genius sermon. Wish I had been there when it went down.

This short reflection captures his thoughts on becoming stewards of our pain.

Meditation_ _The Stewardship of Pain_ – Frederick Buechner