Although I’ve never been in a group that labeled itself a “Christian band” (as I’ve never quite figured out what that label means anyway), I’ve played a fair number of churches, youth groups and camps in my day. As a Christian involved with music, I’ve never found a shortage of places to play. In my experience, “church gigs” are usually great. Typically, the event staff and audience are very courteous, respond well to good music, and don’t steal your stuff or pour beer in your monitors. Also, churches often pay performers, not always a lot, but most clubs don’t give you squat, so…

All that said, unfortunately, these gigs are often hosted by people who don’t know the first thing about hosting, promoting, controlling, booking or doing production for a live show. They are people with the best of intentions, who want artists of their same faith to provide entertainment that expresses that faith. I have no problem with that, nor do I have problems expressing my faith, however, I feel that sometimes a show should just be entertainment. Even if there are goals of reaching an audience at a spiritual level, usually the best way to get through to that audience is to itch them where they scratch.

Case in point:

New Years Eve 1995; my band was invited to play at a large church for a group of “locked in” high schoolers. No problem, we did this kind of thing all the time, and we were looking forward to not only playing the show, but also getting a chance to hang out with the kids afterwards, something we didn’t always get a chance to do. The evening started out well enough, with the youth leader informing the masses of the few simple rules: no stage diving (for insurance reasons), no drinking, no explosives, etc.

Then the first “act” was introduced. Let me clarify, this was not so much entertainment as it was…well…ah…a multi-media juggling mime act. Yes you read that correctly, a multi-media juggling mime act. A man in his early 40’s with a beard, a comb-over hairdo and white face makeup introduced himself as “Dr. Gordon” or something equally underwhelming, and proceeded to set up his own brand of “special entertainment” for the lucky audience members.

The first phase of his attack consisted of the multi-media portion of the show, a 20-minute “silent movie” style video of cheap magic tricks, shown on a large screen. Now, I’m not P.T. Barnum or anything, but it seems to me that the worst way to get the attention of a crowd of high school kids is to dim the lights and show them black and white home movies. After the completion of this cinematic masterpiece, the lights came up to reveal the stunned faces of 500 teenagers. Many were slumped in their seats (nicely padded pews really), and some were already in the early stages of planning their escape.

What could possibly be next? Yep, you guessed it, juggling. It really wasn’t so much juggling as it was synchronized dropping. At one point Dr. Gordo attempted to balance a metal folding chair on his face, ending in what must have required stitches after the show. It was at this point that two thoughts popped into my head – “this can’t last much longer, and this couldn’t get any worse.”

I was wrong on both counts. At this point the good doctor had been on stage for 40 minutes, and when all was said and done, his special brand of performance art would last well over an hour. Remember, we hadn’t gotten to the mime part yet!