Bivocational Pastor at a Bad Religion Concert (+ ministry thoughts @ end)
I was on the guest list for the inaugural show of Bad Religion’s 2022 world tour. My wife and I chose the front row balcony seats at Tucson’s Rialto Theater because…we’re 39. We could have fought our way to the front row on the floor, but that looked painful. There was a mosh-pit. I believe I saw someone pushing 60 years old in there. Brave soul! That’s no longer me. Been there, done that. We took our friend and business co-owner, our teenage girl, and her teenage girl. It was their first cussing concert. My daughter had been to the Rialto for Switchfoot. Cool, but not the same vibe.
For me it was tons of nostalgia. I’ve been to more shows than I can remember. I was not a punk rock kid, but I knew a lot of them and was always down for live music. Between my friend groups we went to major venues, house shows, and a ton of small venues to see everything from the Aqua Bats to K-Ci and JoJo. We saw Listener’s first live performance with Deep Space 5, when he was a rapper. We went to the local water park for a giant show with a band that talked almost exclusively about smoking weed. Everyone was screened at the door to make sure the kids didn’t actually bring in any. Some made it through. So when someone lit up at the Bad Religion show it felt like the scent of a candle in a church, it finished out the experience. My daughter rolled her eyes and said something about how they were going to get into trouble. I knew they wouldn’t.
I didn’t grow up on Bad Religion, but I knew they were a big deal. I’d seen the shirts and the tattoos for years. Being put on the guest list sent me down the rabbit hole. I started digging into their backgrounds and music catalog. I discovered that they weren’t as anti-Christian as they appeared. Greg Graffin was interviewed about atheism and the writer hardly referenced him at all. He apparently isn’t devoted enough and seems to not really even apply the term to himself. Other band members are theists I hear. They named their band when they were young, and it really had more to do with being anti-establishment and dumb rules than being anti-Christian. They thought their “cross-buster” logo was awesome just because it would piss people off.
As I dug into their music for the day, I began to think they might have more faith in God than some people I know from church. They were angry at how Jesus had been co-opted by people with nationalistic motives. Why would that matter to someone who didn’t at least entertain that Jesus may actually be someone who lived and stood for something else? They also were very aware of the concept Christians call sin, and almost to a further degree than some Christians. In Infected they sing of a disease that infects us all, that causes us to affect one another. They don’t try to soften that truth, they just confess it openly.
The song that stood out to me the most was Sorrow. I first experienced it in the music video. Graffin looks up to heaven as he begins to sing to “Father” and express his complaints about the long suffering present in the world. The chorus moves you through a process of thinking about the brokenness (war, crooked authority) and what it would be like for it to cease, declaring there will be sorrow twice, and then concluding the thought in a way you don’t expect the first time you hear it…”there will be sorrow, NO MORE!” It moved me at first hearing, but more so in person. The whole vibe of the concert changed for this song. The moshing turned to elated communal singing, with arms and firsts held high. The two older fans next to me were visibly moved. One pounded his fists on the balcony ledge as he screamed out the chorus. The other had his eyes closed and gripped his chest as he rocked back and forth crying out the hope that, one day, there would be sorrow no more.
I had a full Sunday the next morning, including a twice a year community event our church volunteers for, and I was preaching that night. It was hard to not worry about how tired I was going to be as we hung out with the tour manager after the show. My sermon that week was on sin and I’d already concluded that I wanted to point people to two facts. First, the Bible says sin is something that’s passed down to all people in the world from the first man. Second, this is a hopeful thing to believe in, because if sin can enter into the world through one man, then one man can save the world. Every once in a while, as a pastor, God just gives you your sermon. This was one of those weeks. Seeing a room filled with people who are squeamish about religion sing with all their hearts about the infection they all have, and scream out with all of their energy in the arising hope that one day there will be “sorrow no more” gave me all the inspiration I needed.
So, how did I get on the guest list you ask? Well, I sell Desert Dust. I own a retail store in a beloved shipping container shopping village in Tucson and one day a customer told me that he made a delicious and versatile new spice he’d invented during the pandemic. He sent me a sample home, and I loved it. We have re-stocked twice and can’t keep it on the shelf. It turns out, that customer also is the tour manager for Bad Religion. When they came to town he brought them by our store to check out the first place in Arizona that carries his product and drop off a box of it.
I know what you’re thinking now. “So, you met the band!?!” Nope. I actually was supposed to be at the store, but passed on my weekly shift because of my busy weekend. Our employee met them and told me about it and then I got invited to the show later in the day. At the show it didn’t seem like any of them were free to hang out as they had to get packed and off to their next destination. Truthfully, I also needed to go home and collapse in bed.
This moment though, is similar to many others I have experienced over the years. Owning a business as been one of my best strategies as a pastor. I used to work in “full-time” ministry that kept me tied to a church office for the majority of the day. I slowly began to feel more and more disconnected from the lives of the people who came to the church. I would find myself annoyed that they seemed distracted from what we were all about and disinvested in knowing good theology. These days I feel far more connected the people of my church and am often invited in deeper to the experience of believers and unbelievers in my city.
This tour manager would never have looked up a pastor to meet when he went to town. We are getting to know each other because I like his product and want my store to help him sell it. I offer a service that he appreciates and we have a connection over that. On the flip side, my sermon that week would have had about a quarter of the inspiration that it ended up having due to his generous gift of placing us on the guest list. Being invited into his life and the life of Bad Religion fans for a night profoundly shaped me and made me a better minister. It taught me that sin isn’t a concept to shy away from, but reinforced and invigorated me to cast a vision for hope that people deeply long for. It showed me that our theology can still connect to the experiences of our neighbors. The trick is, keeping your life connected to theirs.
