Album #2 Studio Updates

For those of you who have been looking for an update on our progress for the new Twenty Committee album, here are a few belated snapshots of our progress to date.

We came home from New York at the end of May with finished drum tracks and plenty of scratch material to build off of in order to track the other instruments.  For a few weeks, we listened back to rough board mixes, getting our bearings and formulating the direction we wanted to go.

In mid-June, Richmond began re-tracking bass parts.  The perfectionist in each musician always says, "Let me play it again -- I can do it better!" but there were also some really great bass tracks from our NY sessions that would have been difficult to top.  Some of them we cut again anyway, in search of more pop or resonance, and the results sound great.  However, some of what you'll hear on the final record is Richmond playing live at Rave's while we were also laying down the drum takes we wanted.

Through the rest of the summer, Geoff reworked his established keys.  He also began addressing some introductory and postlude content, and introduced some new layered synth ideas to the mix.  FYI, Record #2 is another concept album, so there will be recurring musical themes and sounds that we want to incorporate throughout its duration.  Some of this we'll still have to wait for the final mixes to be complete, in order to properly layer the effects and ideas during post-production.  But we can't really help ourselves from fooling around with ideas that we'll revisit later!  Geoff and I have also been occasionally trading lyric ideas for the songs that were last written as we move steadily toward recording vocal parts.  Some big themes the lyrical content of this album will address are as follows: human creativity and its purpose in relation to societal advancement, the ethics of conformity/nonconformity, true productivity, the relationship of individual parts to the whole, human pride and ambition, the quest for self-perfection...

In short, the record will cover life, the universe, and everything.

Joe's mostly been in an observing, cheerleading role, since he did the lion's share of the recording work in NY.  His performance truly shines on this record -- there are so many cool rhythmic things he does that I can't wait to hear with the final mixes.

In the last few weeks -- since the end of August -- it's been my turn to plug in and tune up my guitars.  Some of my parts I'd primarily worked out on the electric in the rehearsal space, but we'd always envisioned them on the acoustic.  So I re-recorded some of the things I did at Rave's on the electric, this time using both regular 6-string tuning and also "high-stringing" a second acoustic guitar to create a more nuanced 12-string sound by blending the two together.  While this method is less efficient than just playing a 12-string guitar, the approach creates dynamic sounds with far more voicing clarity than a traditional 12-string can provide.  The strategy also gives us greater ability to mix and manipulate the final takes.  I still have some more electric guitar work to do on a few of there complex passages of "Forevermore" and "Sparks in the Mind" as well, but other than that it's almost time for me to move on to my auxiliary keyboard sections.

Once we've completed all the instruments, it'll be time to move on to the vocals.  We've (I've) gotten quite a few chuckles from the scratch vocals that Geoff put down to simply direct traffic while we were in NY.  I might actually miss him saying, "Coming up on double chorus!" in the final mix...  That said, I can't wait to start working the actual parts.

Yes, we're taking our time with this project -- in part because we can (I mean, it's been eight years since we released A Lifeblood Psalm, so why rush now?), and in part because all of us are insanely busy.  I'm thankful for Jeff Bishop's expertise at the console, the modern technology that allows us to punch and splice takes without having to endlessly repeat the whole song until we get the perfect take, and for the amazing experience of writing and recording music.

Looking forward to the final product!

The three legs of faith-deconstruction stories

A few months ago, I finished a little book by Shane Pruitt called Nine Common Myths that Christians Believe (And Why God's Truth is Infinitely Better).  It was short and conversational, certainly not exhaustive or scholarly, but still helpful to address fluffy Christian jargon that means well but misses the mark of theological accuracy.  Because it was targeting the average church-goer's vernacular and not necessarily that of pastors/teachers, it was soft instead of indicting in its approach to these harmful ideas.  Nevertheless, it had some great points to chew on, not the least of which is the one that I earmarked to write this post.  Here it is:

Self-righteousness leaves a wake of people who are either so arrogant they don't need God anymore or so burned out they don't care about God anymore.  And whether they realize it or not, it all started from a place of wanting God to like them.  Self-righteousness becomes its own form of religion, and religions are built on what mankind can do for their god or gods.

The Christian theology of God's initiating love is so different from the concepts of other religions.  Jesus condescended to meet us where we are.  He willfully became something less than He was, a servant sacrificing His own righteous life for the undeserving beloved.  He did something for us, not the other way around.  That's the beautiful truth of the gospel.

So why, then, the growing trend of "faith deconstruction" stories we hear today -- the testimonies of  individuals, formerly self-identified as Christians, who are redefining themselves as "exvangelicals" or agnostics?  Why would someone move away from the notion of undeserved, unmerited grace, payment in full for a debt they could never afford?  These tales are complex, unique, and deeply personal.  They also share many common themes of pain, disappointment, and disillusionment.

Before I unpack my thoughts, I understand that you may be reading this at a time in your life where you are questioning or redefining your faith.  What I want to talk about here concerns your story, and I don't mean to imply by a summarizing approach that your experience is a cookie cutter, no different from anyone else's.  You aren't so easily labeled.  I want to humbly ask that you journey with me through the next few paragraphs and promise to help me better understand where you are if I've missed the mark on any of these things.

I also want to make it clear that I am not writing this to defend Christians keeping the "evangelical" label.  Like the banner of "fundamentalism" before it -- which, prior to its pejorative use, stood for a positive theological movement seeking to preserve critical components of orthodoxy from encroaching liberalism -- the "evangelical" title has outlived its usefulness, especially if it carries a lot of baggage in the eyes of the unbelieving community.  Many people assume that an "evangelical" is simply a right-wing, red-blooded, Christian Nationalist Trump-supporter.  If that's the association the evangelical title holds, then it truly should be retired, because it is actually hindering gospel efforts!  However, before we assume that we should all jump on the exvangelical bandwagon, let's differentiate between wanting to faithfully represent the gospel of Jesus Christ to the world and actively deconstructing our faith from a place of hurt, skepticism, or -- as Shane Pruitt argues -- self-righteousness.

My working theory of the exvangelical movement is based on the image of a stool.  The arguments of "faith graduates" stand on three legs.  One leg is righteous anger against very real and very ugly hypocrisy in evangelical Christianity.  This is the most powerful leg, because it it has a strong basis in truth and experience.  The second leg is a greater alignment with modern textual criticism than with the inerrancy of Scripture.  This is a position that casts doubt on the Bible's accuracy and ability to speak to a constantly evolving human race.  The third and final leg is embracing lifestyle choices and theological positions that are irreconcilable with "evangelical morals."

Without all three legs, the individual is likely trending exvangelical but isn't fully ready to abandon everything he or she has grown up believing.  However, once all three legs are firmly anchored, suddenly the decision to abandon or reinterpret Christianity makes a whole lot of sense, and the faith deconstruction truly begins.

Leg 1: Evangelical Hypocrisy.  As stated, many suggest that the "evangelical" label carries too much baggage to be useful any longer to Christians who are truly striving to live out their faith.  That opinion doesn't just come from exvangelicals.  They aren't the only ones seeking to distance themselves from cold religiosity or nationalistic faith.  The sobering reality is that qualms with evangelicalism aren't unfounded.  Historically, it isn't just the Catholic church that has hidden abuse scandals or turned a blind eye to clergy padding their pockets with donations.  The most recent evangelical scandal involving RZIM ministries is an all-too-revealing example of how power and a lack of accountability can lead even a supposed "champion" of the faith to abuse the privileges afforded by his affluence and ultimately travel a lonely road of spiritual self-destruction.  Many individuals who are moving away from evangelicalism have personal stories of pastors and church leaders who have committed similar egregious acts, unbecoming their role or the Savior they claim to worship.

Lest we think this is a modern evangelical issue, however, let's not forget the litany of prophetic diatribes against Israel's priests in the Old Testament.  Isaiah railed against the entire congregation, likening them to a collective snake -- the "elder and honored man" being the head, and the lying prophets being "the tail" -- that was leading the people astray into all manner of oppression, violence, and immorality (9.15-17).  Jeremiah lamented that, "from the least to the greatest, everyone is greedy for unjust gain; from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely" (8.10b).  Ezekiel demanded judgment for the priests who "misled" God's people, and for the prophetesses who "hunt[ed] down souls" while keeping their own souls alive (13.10, 18).

The point is this: at no point in the history of mankind have spiritual leaders been sinless messiahs who are above corruption.  The religious institutions that commission and empower clergy of any denomination, at any point in human history, are likewise fallible.

However, for every pastor or organization that has fallen, there are two others that have lived above reproach -- not perfect, but taking sin seriously enough to recognize the potential pitfalls of abuse and temptation, and building accountability into their leadership paradigm.  The exvangelical solution to the abuse of power and scandal in the church is problematic because it is enmeshed in a cancel-culture mentality: if it's broken, scrap it.  No second chances.  The faulty assumption -- that because some churches are toxic, all churches are toxic -- is misguided and tragic.  Churches and institutions that are willing to recognize the dangers that sin poses, not assuming they are above its influence, are able to handle error with grace, tact, and love in humility.

Maybe you -- or someone you know -- were a victim of church discipline that was cold, unbiblical, or incorrectly administered.  If that was the case, I am deeply sorry for the pain to which you were subjected.  However, let's be careful not to confuse biblical church discipline with gossip, judgment, or power tripping.  The process outlined in Matthew 18 and 1 Corinthians 5 is a stern but necessary practice for a) the protection of the Body, which suffers when unrepentant sin is left to fester, and b) the restoration of the sinning brother/sister, who is being subjected to the type of compassion prescribed in Galatians 6.1-5.  It is intended to be a humble entreatment of a spiritually endangered individual to turn from what might destroy them.  If you or someone you know was subjected to a process of church discipline that any of the following bullet points describe, then you were subjected to a sinful and unbiblical method, not in any way prescribed by Jesus:

• an impersonal letter announcing the revoking of your membership without any personal meetings or discussion prior to your excommunication
• a process that did not follow the clear and necessary steps of Matthew 18, and that did not err heavily on the side of grace and time
• a proclamation of your sin that went beyond the privacy and safety of your church family
• a process that was intended to shame you, rather than entreat the congregation to go to you personally, humbly, and in love

What sin is worthy of church discipline?  In a way-too-brief answer for this space...  It's not about categories or tiers of sin.  It's about a heart that is unrepentant.  Do we all have sin?  Yes.  But what do we do when confronted with that sin?  Do we harden our hearts and refuse to change, declaring that sin to be our personal choice and no one has the right to tell us how to live our lives?  Or do we acknowledge that we were wrong and receive wise counsel on how to do better next time?  The existence of sin in our lives is not grounds for church discipline.  What we do when confronted with sin is another matter.

The reality is that church leaders who sin must be held to this same process!  However, many churches have historically failed to remember the admonishment of James 3.1, that those who teach and lead will be held to a greater degree of accountability.  If church leaders are above discipline, above accountability, or in any way considered holier than the congregation, you have the makings of a toxic church culture where sin will be hidden, abuse will be rampant, and people will leave (if they can escape!), disillusioned with the sham of "Christianity" they witnessed.

If you've witnessed any of these types of things, you aren't wrong to be angry.  God Himself is angry at the injustices, abuses, and sinful choices of people -- especially those perpetrated in His name.  However, exvangelicals would do well to acknowledge the universal integrity of the Church, the global Body of Christ, as a mixture of wheat and tares (Matthew 13.24-30).  Even if some specific local churches have proven to be hypocritical or even cultish, the Invisible  Church will prevail to the end of the age.  If we neglect our responsibility to the Body, even because we are rightly angry at injustice and sin, we risk putting ourselves on a self-righteous pedestal above other Christians, or marooning ourselves on an island apart.  By remaining committed to the Church, despite its imperfections, we leave room for God to be the Judge, and trust Him to finish the perfecting work that He began in each true follower of Christ.

If your church let you down, find another one -- albeit, not one that proclaims a different gospel, but one that more closely adheres to the truth and practice of God's Word.  There will never be a perfect local church, unfortunately, but it is far better to labor alongside fellow imperfect believers than it is to languish in spiritual isolation and leave ourselves open to worldly vices and ideologies.

Leg 2: Textual Criticism.  There is no possible way that I can fully address this topic in a single post (if you're so inclined, I've written more on it here and here -- again not exhaustively).  But let me make a few comments on why acknowledging the inerrancy of Scripture might not be as much blind faith as you think.

The concept is often rejected because it sounds naive.  How could an ancient text written over centuries by different authors and translated from an ancient language be without error?  Modern textual criticism has the weight of scholarly authority, intellectual giants who question the ascribed authorship of many Scriptural texts, the dates of writing, and authorial intent.  The treatment of Scripture is highly skeptical, viewing theological paradoxes as contradictions, and attempting to contrast Pauline doctrine with Jesus' teachings rather than trace the symmetry between them.  In all, when you begin from the position that an ancient text is a flawed, manmade document, then all the conclusions drawn will likely match the premise.

On the other hand, inerrancy is simply the belief that the Holy Spirit accurately and organically led the original writers of Scripture to preserve God's own words in written form.  It differentiates God's perfect and authoritative truth from the imperfect written form.  It is believing that God sovereignly transmitted and sovereignly protected His writings, even through gross Latin mistranslations that fostered belief in penance (thank you, Jerome) and periods of time when the very words of Scripture were deemed too lofty for the eyes of common people to read and became twisted by high church tradition.  Inerrancy fully acknowledges textual challenges of various types while still trusting in the power of God to accurately communicate to His people.

The assumption that the Bible is riddled with errors and contradictions is simply misplaced.  Ancient Bible scholars across eras have been able to triangulate incredibly accurate translations from an overwhelming amount of source data.  Belief in inerrancy doesn't (or shouldn't) deny the "errors" or differences of translation from ancient to modern languages, and it doesn't pretend that there aren't manuscript issues where copyists made mistakes or age has obscured certain pieces of text.  In fact, the best Bible translations are those that make a point to show where original wording is difficult to translate, or is missing.  However, the Swiss cheese picture that many people have of the Bible's composition, as well as the "whisper-down-the-lane" theory of oral biblical transmission, are simply the result of scholarly doubt unfairly cast upon the single most influential book in human history.

Many exvangelicals are diving deeply into Greek and Hebrew in order to uncover the "real" meaning of the texts, a meaning that they believe has been obscured by decades -- if not centuries -- of Christian mishandling (at best) or tampering (at worst).  The problem with this is not the desire for deeper study, but the motive.  Evangelicals aren't innocent of sometimes making the Bible say what they want it to say, rather than allowing the power of the text to speak for itself.  But exvangelicals are only replicating the same error.  Studying the original languages is an undeniably valuable pursuit, but the complexities of these ancient tongues means that zooming in too closely on individual words and phrases can be a little like missing the forest for the trees, or pixelating a picture because you're after individual specks of color and not the whole hi-res image.  Context is everything!

One of my fellow elders at Fellowship Bible Church has quoted his father's pastoral wisdom on more than one occasion: "If the first sense makes sense, take care lest you come to nonsense."  While there are plenty of challenging passages in the Bible that we would do well to read far more carefully than traditional handling of the text has done, sometimes the plain meaning of the text is often not difficult to discern.  In fact, the whole Reformation concept -- that everyone should have access to reading the Bible in their own language -- implies that the average layperson is capable of understanding the plain message of the gospel via the illumination of the Holy Spirit.  It is not the clergy with advanced degrees in linguistics who have special access to unlock the real truth of God's Word.  Plain and powerful truth can actually be obscured by drilling in too deeply without discretion, in search of the meaning you want to be there.

In sum, textual criticism is doomed to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, due to the preconceived notions that scholars and exvangelicals alike carry into their research.  Belief in the inerrancy of Scripture doesn't mean using the Bible to proof text for your personal values -- which, to be fair, many evangelicals have likewise done.  It means holding the Word of God in high esteem, and giving it the authority -- as the divine self-revelation of God Almighty -- to speak real truth into our modern lives.  The alternative is to place myself above the truth of the Bible.  This is what textual criticism does.  Suddenly, when I move myself out from under the Bible's authority, I have the theological impetus to believe whatever I want.

Which leads us to...

Leg 3: Lifestyle & Theology.  Maybe you are having a hard time seeing how churches can justify maintaining a 501c3 status.  Maybe you associate evangelical theology with racism.  Maybe you can't stomach the idea of a wrathful God who judges sinners, and instead embrace the "love-wins" theology of Christian universalism.  Maybe Christian counseling denied that your depression was a chemical imbalance and instead labeled it as a lack of faith.  Maybe you are divorcing your wife, or deciding your sexuality is deviant from traditional evangelical norms.  Maybe you simply see yourself as an Ally for someone else who is doing one of the above.  Whatever your reason, the irreconcilable differences between personal choices and evangelical ethics often becomes the impetus for redefining one's faith.

Exvangelicals follow typical Western thinking that emphasizes the individual over community, and the self as actuating truth.  If how I view myself is incompatible with another system of thinking, then I must be true to myself.  Particularly with regard to sexual identity and interpersonal ethics, the modern American is unwilling to allow any tradition, norm, culture, or belief system to dictate his or her personal choices.  As usual, the heart is king: what I feel, what I believe, and what I want are paramount.

That logically means that an archaic text like the Bible, with its black and white treatment of human sexuality and gender, must be irrelevant.  Dangerous, even.

It's important to note that you can be an exvangelical and still claim to live by the Bible.  This is done by embracing a different hermeneutic or interpretive principle than evangelicals.  Of course, reading the Bible this way also makes a lot more sense if you're also leaning on the leg of textual criticism.  While evangelicals interpret the Bible via a literal hermeneutic, whenever possible, exvangelicalism embraces symbolism and subjectivity.  If much of the historical narrative (especially of the Old Testament) is allegory, then the commands therein are merely principles given to emerging communities of faith that no longer speak directly to the modern iteration of the Church.  And if Jesus is really just a good teacher, then the entire gospel message can be summarized in one misappropriated and misdefined word: love.

At the risk of making a sweeping generalization, here is what I have found to be the single common thread of those claiming to be exvangelicals: lifestyle choices -- especially pertaining to sexuality and gender -- that are unable to be justified in evangelical theology.  Homosexuality.  Physical boundaries for dating relationships.  Cohabitation.  Appropriate grounds for divorce.  Gender roles in marriage.  As our culture redefines and then redefines its own standards and definitions for these things, the evangelical crowd continues to hold the longstanding and prevailing positions on these issues, as defined literally by the Bible.  To a world driven and tossed by the various winds of philosophy and theology (Eph 4.14), a rock in the midst of the current is a danger, not a refuge.

So.  Those are the three legs of the faith deconstruction stool.  Evangelical hypocrisy, textual criticism, and lifestyle choices/theological differences.  Certainly, greater weight can be placed on any of the above.  Sometimes individuals start with Leg 3 and then find the more or less sinful reactions from individuals at their home church to provide them the grounds for Leg 1, and then they are forced to establish an alternate view of the Bible (Leg 2) in order to defend their position.  Others begin at Leg 2 because they have serious doubts about the harmony of the gospels, or they have embraced the evolutionary theory and can't rationalize it with Genesis 1-2.  Not everyone's journey toward faith deconstruction will have all the exact same earmarks

Maybe you're reading this and finding yourself growing increasingly disillusioned with Christianity, struggling to find reasons to recommit to a church and doubting the efficacy of prayer or the necessity of reading the Bible.  Maybe you've wrestled with the problem of evil and found evangelical theology to be full of stale platitudes on the topic.  Maybe someone or some organization has tragically let you down.  Maybe you're reading this because you're chosen a walk of life that has led you to completely rejecting Christianity, and you are mildly amused by my attempts to define your faith journey.

If any of the above is you, here are a few pleas.

Don't place your faith in people or in a system.  Place your faith in Jesus.  Reaffirm your confidence not in fallible people, but in the infallible Christ.  The entire narrative of the Bible is that people aren't good enough!  No one person or institution can break the cycle of sin.  When we allow people to become our access point to Jesus, we will always be disappointed.  The author of Hebrews contrasts the Levitical priesthood with that of the Messiah, arriving at the conclusion that Christ's priesthood is superior, because He never has to offer sacrifices for His own sin (see Heb 7.17-28).  Ultimately, clergy cannot make intercession.  Only Christ opens the Holy Place to us once and for all.

Don't abandon the Church.  A church can (and probably has) let you down.  Maybe even multiple churches have.  Maybe your parents, the figureheads of your faith, let you down.  But THE Church has not.  The true Body of Christ is a real and powerful entity that truly exists, even in a world where heinous groups of people calling themselves a church ruin everyone and everything within their reach.  The individual components of the Church certainly have work to do, but the Bride of Christ prevails, because her Husband promises to present her blameless and without spot or wrinkle (Eph 5.27).

Don't trust your heart.  It's deceitful and desperately wicked (Jer 17.9), capable of all manner of wickedness and self-deception.  Unless truth has a firm anchor outside of yourself, you will never stop oscillating in your beliefs, the same way your feelings about things change from day to day.

Don't stop asking good, hard questions.  The problem is not doubt or your desire for answers.  In fact, one of my favorite moments in the gospel records is when a father asks Jesus to heal his son of a demonic oppression that has lasted all of the boy's life.  From a place of despair and hopelessness, he cries out, "Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief." (Mark 9.24)  This heart-rending moment shows us the necessary relationship between skepticism and faith.  When everything our senses and reasoning are telling us screams that something is impossible, Jesus changes the equation.  He is willing to meet each of us in our own places of doubt and uncertainty.  I say again, the problem is not doubt.  It's when doubt gives way to a cold, proud certainty that deems faith a meaningless, childish, perhaps even dangerous exercise, that you move to a hard-hearted place that becomes impervious to truth.  Balance your skepticism, your experience, and your history with the necessary questions that faith prompts in each of our hearts.

If you're in the process of deconstructing your faith, maybe the most critical thing is for you to ask yourself whether or not Jesus was ever truly the Lord of your life.  Not just conceptually, but truly.  He can't just be your friend.  He IS the believer's friend, but He is also so much more.  Does He love with an everlasting love and lay down His life for us?  Yes, and amen!  But He also is the eternal Son of God, the King of kings and Lord of lords to whom every knee must bow and every tongue must confess His right to rule.  Far too many exvanelicals have never truly submitted their hearts to Christ, perhaps because of doubts, or perhaps because sin distorts our motives.  Wholeheartedly receiving the free, radical gift of grace as the undeserved pardon for our personal sins means we owe Him everything.  On some spiritual level, none of us whats to make that commitment -- we want to maintain our sense of personal autonomy.  The only way we can embrace that reality is if we truly see the depths of our own depravity, acknowledge the grace of Jesus as the only thing that can atone for our problem, and wholeheartedly submit ourselves to Jesus' divine rule.  Totally, completely His.

I started this post with the quote from Shane Pruitt's book.  The repeated word in that paragraph is one that we most fervently deny when it is the most applicable to us: "self-righteousness."  Like many other sins of the human heart, self-righteousness can manifest in a number of different ways.  But the common thread is the simple notion that spiritually, intellectually, morally, I am better.  Superior.  It often germinates from a good seed -- for example, anger at hypocrisy in the church.  Justification starts sound, but skews sinful: "The people of Christ should be better than this.  Why aren't the people of Christ better than this?  Why aren't the people of Christ seeing this problem like I am?  Why aren't the people of Christ like me?"

Here's my fear for individuals who are deconstructing their faith.  One, they are pointing the finger of judgment at evangelicalism and missing their own self-righteousness in the process.  Exvangelicals, hear me: no one is arguing with you that the Church should be better.  The magnificent Pauline prescriptions of the Body are a far-cry from the sad reality presenting itself, especially in America.  But the solution to this discrepancy is not to point fingers or to burn the whole Christian movement to the ground in order to start your own better, "more mature" version of faith.  The solution is to humbly entreat, humbly teach, and humbly lead by example.  When Frederick Douglass was vehemently attacking white southern preachers who used the Bible to defend the institution of slavery, he argued via a significant rhetorical question:

What do you do when you are told by the slaveholders of America that the Bible sanctions slavery?  Do you go and throw your Bible into the fire?  Do you sing out, 'No union with the Bible!'  Do you declare that a thing is bad because it has been misused, abused, and made bad use of?  Do you throw it away on that account?  No!  You press it to your bosom all the more closely; you read it all the more diligently; and prove from its pages that it is on the side of liberty -- and not on the side of slavery. -- Frederick Douglass, "Baptists, Congregationalists, the Free Church, and Slavery: An Address Delivered in Belfast, Ireland, on 23 December 1845."

If you are fed up with Christian hypocrisy, the solution is not to forsake Christianity, its theology, or its promises.  The solution is to "press it to your bosom all the more closely" in order to prove faithful to the high calling of Christ -- even though every other man prove to be a liar (Rom 3.4).

Two, while exvangelicals may claim to be rediscovering God independently of the Church, the reality is that they are recreating God in their own image.  While the Church may be guilty of failing to fully live up to the standard of identifying love to which Jesus called them, they have been the guardian of orthodox Christian theology since Pentecost.  Shane's quote argued that self-righteous individuals (people too proud to need God or too burned out by their religious efforts) abandon the gospel of grace to worship or serve something else.  The self-righteousness of exvangelicals has led them to serve their own ideals or personal values -- causes that can be wholeheartedly served, but which can do nothing to save the individual.  The God of the Bible is not your crusade, social movement, perfect society, or accommodating divine grandparent.  He is the immutable, holy, and transcendent God who sovereignly, graciously chose to draw near to weak and weary sinners, and who will one day judge all human beings, declaring to be justified only those who are covered by the freely given blood of His Son, and all the rest as condemned for their self-righteous rejection of so great a salvation (Heb 2.3).

Three (and finally), in some part, we all wrestle with wanting God to like us for "who we are" -- that is, our own self-conception with all our quirks, beliefs, and preferences intact.  That, as opposed to truly embracing the identity into which Jesus wants to transform each of us.  One again, the beauty of the gospel is that we desperately need what God offers us through the person of Jesus Christ.   There is no other name by which salvation may come (Acts 4.12).

In our self-righteousness, we human beings are more inclined to deny that we have a need, to insist that we are fine the way we are.  The very notion of needing something is denies me human agency, my right to choose, my self-worth, etc.  But the gospel message is unwavering on the fact that it is only through death to our old self and spiritual transformation through Christ that we become people truly accepted by God.  Jesus said we must be born again, through a radical faith in what He alone can achieve (John 3.3).  Paradoxically, the Bible holds both the lowest view of human depravity and also the highest hope for human potential -- far more radical extremes than any other faith or ideology in the world.  It is not in ourselves that we find hope, however.  It's not in defining our own identities.  It's found in reclaiming the idea that we are made in God's image but broken by our own sin, and allowing Him to transform us into human beings fully realized, fully free, and fully satisfied.  And it all hinges on losing our independence, becoming completely dependent on the person of Jesus Christ.  Not on an institution.  Not on a system of theology.  We must be purely defined by the Jesus of the Bible.

Sadly, that is impossible for a heart that is "so arrogant [it doesn't] need God anymore or so burned out [it doesn't] care about God anymore."

Let each of us carefully and humbly examine our own hearts so that this description of self-righteousness never defines us.

Album #2 Recording, Day 3

Today, with the drum work finalized, we listened back to all the work we'd done Friday and Saturday and spot-checked for errors in the bass and my guitar parts.  Since replicating the sounds we were getting on those instruments with different mics and equipment back home would be particularly challenging, they became our final area to focus on here at Rave's.  For most of the day, Richmond and I sat in the main recording area, listening back on headphones, in order to punch in fixes on the fly.  Joe, Geoff, and Jeff sat in the control room with Rave to observe overall and take production notes.

The note detective process can be tedious and frustrating.  In addition to having to zoom in on individual notes being played, you also have to manage a precarious balance between making necessary fixes and getting inside your own head.  Live takes have such a distinct character to them, and you don't want to lose the human element in your record.  You run the risk of lobotomizing your tracks if you make them too perfect.  But, of course, the perfectionist in each of us wants every element of our individual parts to be completely professional and without error!

We started the day listening to the big epic numbers, since they contain some of the most complicated sections.  Following that, we took a break to get some drum samples for later editing and production.  Joe sampled each one of his drums (including each of the 5 total snare drums he used during different songs over the weekend) so that we can use them for any necessary edits later in the production process.

After a minor heart attack where we thought we'd lost an entire song file (!!!), we packed Joe into his car to head home (he has an early start for work tomorrow), then dove back into the final tracks.

Not all of you will care, but what follows are notes I was taking for my own sake during the production work we did today.  Instead of deleting them, here they are, preserved for posterity:

• "Timepiece Creator," Part 1 -- several minor bass correction
• "Timepiece Creator," Part 2 -- bass correction on the final note to fix a crackle, cleaned up a transition lick, addressed a questionable note
• "Timepiece Creator," Part 3a -- re-addressed some of the bass passages on the verses
• "Timepiece Creator," Part 3b -- pure awesome, no changes needed
• 5/4 Monster ("The First Song") Part 1 -- spliced a couple of different takes to get the sustained forward momentum we wanted, and added a sweet bass slide
• 5/4 Monster Part 2 -- fixed one guitar chord, a few crackles in the bass, and re-tuned a couple notes
• 5/4 Monster Part 3 -- fixed a few bass notes, added a second sweet bass slide for symmetry
• "Embers" -- reworked the first verse on the guitar, and eliminated one noisy crackle on the bass
• "Forevermore" -- corrected the pitch on several slightly out-of-tune notes on the bass; lead part, chorus 2
• "Robot Death" -- to be addressed later
• "Sparks in the Mind (You Wasted Life)" -- bass: a few riff adjustments; guitar 2: first chorus hiccup; second chorus hiccup; bridge hiccup; intro/interlude riff
• "Star in the Eye" -- guitar 2 parts will most likely be replaced with acoustic at home; bass is good to go

With our edits completed, we packed the gear while Rave began exporting the files to take home.  Homeward bound, we are listening to Kansas, breathing another sigh of relief that Rave found the WAV files for "Embers," and talking guitar tones.

We can't wait to get this album finished and into your hands!

Final quotables:

"Match that same level of depressiveness." - Rave

"Oh, no -- I'm drinking decaf." - Geoff

"Hooray for subtle mistakes." - Richmond

"A drum well-done." - Joe

Scenes from our auditory escapades today:

Nigel, the note-taker

Drum sampling.

Carlton bros in the office.

Packing for home.

Album #2, Recording Day 2

We got back to Rave's at 9:00 this morning, reestablished our headphone mixes, and officially launched into the home stretch of the album around 10:00.  The two epics we worked on today have a lot of cool pieces that interlock.  Playing them live, we have the luxury of eye-contact and spontaneity, but for studio purposes, we had to record them in smaller chunks and will later stitch the segments together.

Part one of the album opener (as yet unnamed) is a monster to navigate for recording.  It's only 2 minutes and 21 seconds long, but the tempo and time changes galore meant listening very, very carefully to the click track.  My parts for this section still need some fleshing out, so I took the opportunity as the rest of the guys were working to shoot some video (well, shoot some video, get interrupted by out-of-storage notifications, delete a bunch of stuff off of my phone to make room, keep filming, rinse, lather, repeat...) and also jot down these notes.  It took us a significant number of attempts to get decent takes for part one -- probably 7 or 8 before we had enough quality material to work with.

Part two is a straightforward ballad that we nailed down in two takes.  I love that piece for its simple but compelling melody, shared between Geoff's keys and Jeff's guitar.  We only hiccuped once before going to tape, trying to remember how many passes through a solo section we should go around.

Because we worked out a confusing issue with the click track for the opening section, the third part of the monster -- a reprise of part one -- avoided one potential pitfall, but still had its challenges.  We had to work through overthinking one segment and also blasting through another section that, in a live setting, we would likely play a little faster.

We began part one of the final number, currently titled "Timepiece Creator," at 4:30.  Richmond switched over to the 5-string bass, and I also got to set up the auxiliary keyboard.  Because we prioritized drums and bass for the weekend, we omitted the other keyboard parts I typically play for overdubbing at home.  The final section, however, has an integral Moog lead that anchors a very loose and ethereal section.  We'll still need to address the strings pads I play in Part 2 (maybe tomorrow).

By 8:00pm, we had locked in the final template for Part 3 of the finale.  After that, a certain member of the crew worked for a little bit longer on a special section of the song that we simply can't wait to unveil to the public.... but won't spoil here.

Tomorrow: a 9:00 AM start time to listen back to all the takes in order to identify the keepers, spot-check things we like for minor edits, take notes on what we want to spend special time with in production, and then -- as time allows -- punch in to fix little things here and there that would make more sense to correct with Rave's setup than with ours.  I'm looking forward to sitting in the control room and listening back with a critical ear.  Even if we walk away with finished drum and bass tracks, there will still be tons of work we still need to do at home with guitars, keyboards, and vocals.  But it's amazing how quality microphones and equipment, noise insulation, and experience at the console can create stellar demos that almost... almost sound finished.

Non-contextual quotables:

"You mean after I cradle them against my face?" - Joe

"It was arguably the worst movie of all time, and that's what makes it great." - Rave

"We're just discussing our failures as humans." - Joe

"You've got your blmph.  You got your space.  You've got your click.  And you've got your music.  Or at least your song." - Rave

"The roof of your toe, or just your toe?" - Jeff

"There's this great sense of relief, and also this great sense of 'O gosh, what have I done?'" - Joe

Album #2, Recording Day 1

Eight years and 7 months ago, I set foot for the first time in a professional recording studio (that journey began here).  The Twenty Committee's first album, A Lifeblood Psalm, (check the sidebar) was recorded in the space of two weeks at Radiant Studios in Nashville, and released in 2013.  The drum work you hear on that album is almost entirely the result of one take, recorded live in the space of several hours on that first day as we were laying down scratch tracks.  The other instruments, with the exception of Geoff's keyboards, were all recorded each in a 10-12 hour day.  While we remain deeply proud of that first effort, we are looking forward to a more mature approach to fleshing out these tunes by building them properly, from the ground up, tracking the drums over several days, and then bringing the files home to overdub each instrument in turn.

Today, we began the process, this time with Rave Tesar of Renaissance at the helm.  I think he was excited to start the process, since he told us the night we arrived that he was going to "stay up all night" to get Joe's drums mic-ed and ready for the first session.  Jeff streamlined the process in advance by quantizing practice recordings of all the new tunes and setting them to click tracks (he may have aged several years in the process).  I don't know how we could possibly have worked these complex tunes out with any degree of tempo consistency without that work done prior to rolling the tape.  Even still, there were still some strange moments we needed to work out in the moment, or plan for overdubbing later.

We spent half the day (from 10-3) getting set up.  Anything with a speaker was set up and mic-ed in a separate room for sound insulation.  Geoff's keyboard station was with Rave in the control room.  Once all mics, DIs, and cables were checked, we sounded in each instrument and then established headphone mixes for monitoring purposes.  We took our lunch break standing up, just before hitting record for the first time.  The final take of the day wrapped up around 10:00.

We recorded 5 tunes today in total, each with three takes apiece.  The working titles are "Embers," "Robot Death," "Forevermore," "Star in the Eye," and "Sparks in the Mind (You Wasted Life)" -- all subject to change.  Some of these songs we've been playing/working for years.  Others, we literally were making changes to as of our last practice before this weekend.  We have two monster tunes left to do tomorrow, each broken into 3 parts.  These epics are the most complex numbers on the album in terms of arrangement, tempo variation, and nuance, so we anticipate putting another 12 hours into them -- again, with the primary intent being to walk away with drum mixes (and bass too, if possible).

Rave is a skilled musician and producer.  We are deeply grateful for the expertise, equipment, time, and eagerness he is bringing to the project, not to mention his anecdotes between takes.

Exhausted, but pleased, I close this post by delivering to you these quotable moments of the day:

"We all know that all good music is based off of the kick drum." - Rave

"Are you playing guess the guitar sound?" - Geoff

"Rave, if I open this box labeled 'Rave Miscellaneous,' will there be internal organs?" - Geoff

"There's one thing you'll never hear a Russian say..." - Rave

"Drum plop!" - the band

"Follow the click, not the lick." - Joe

"That's the warmth of my sincerity." - Jeff

Things we can't share (and are totally happy about it): AKA 9 Years of Wedded Bliss

Show of hands.  How many of you, like me and Tara, have a running #thingswecan'tshareonFacebook list?

That list includes hilarious slip-ups, memorable comments, and intimate things that -- on one hand -- we immediately want to share when they happen for the inevitable reactions we know we'd get.  But then we remember in the nick of time that we have reputations.

Filters are kind of important.  We use them for drinking water, air purification, and for internet content.  They protect us primarily from bad stuff getting in.  But they can also protect us from overexposing, venting, or damaging our personal image.

As I was working on our 2020 Christmas letter to friends and family this past December, trying to whittle the year down to some of the major events worthy of recounting, I was reminded that there are so many precious moments that Tara and I share.  So many inside jokes and silly memories -- things that still make us belly-laugh when we recall them, but things that only we would truly find funny, cute, or worthy of recounting.  They also happen, in many cases, to be things that would also be deeply embarrassing if they actually made their way onto social media...

And all of them are things we wouldn't trade for anything.

We live in a world that abides by the creed, "Pics or it didn't happen."  So we share everything for the validation.  We overexpose because we live for the likes.  All of our experiences feel more legitimate and exciting when they're community experiences.  We video and share our kids' special and embarrassing moments, because we like to know that we're not alone in our parenting struggles.  We broadcast our "failure to properly adult" to reassure ourselves that other people are lazy and irresponsible too.  Every nook and cranny of our lives, no matter how ugly, can become spotlight avenues for exploring our sense of self-worth.

Thriving off of the opinions and reactions of others might fall into a Type A personality block in the sociologist's book, but in biblical terms it's actually called the fear of man (Prov 29.15) and it can truly undermine our worship of God and our ability to properly love, value, and serve the people God has placed in our lives.  After all, instead of using others to stroke our own egos, our primary objective as Christians is to model the missional mindset of Jesus, which is to serve (Mark 10.45).

This is just a short little post directed to husbands and wives, intended to think together with you about the benefits of protecting certain things and treasuring secret moments with your spouse.  If you're married and reading this, remember that the #thingswecan'tshareonFacebook list is a special thing for you and your spouse.  Not everything in your marriage needs to be proclaimed from the social media rooftops.  There are so many private things between me and Tara, special things afforded to us by our marriage covenant, that are privileged moments.  You and your spouse would be better served protecting those things by sharing them only between the two of you, than by giving other people windows into the special things that should stay between you.

Today, Tara and I are celebrating our 9th wedding anniversary.  Throughout the course of our decade-long relationship, we've been recording our memories and moments -- our road trips, house purchases, and coffee dates -- but it wasn't until 2018 when a certain little boy came into our lives, and then a little girl two years later, that our Photos libraries truly began exploding our cloud storage.  We are certainly guilty of overexposing our kids on Facebook (I mean, who could blame us?  Our kids are darn cute), but even in that realm, we would be wise to beware of how much we conflate real life and social media.  Sometimes the precious moments we have are cheapened by sharing them; sometimes the value of a memory is found in the bounds of privacy.

Maybe at the heart of this post is a statement about maintaining an appropriate level of marital and familial transparency.  On one hand, I believe that Christian marriages and families are called to a community of accountability.  It's called the Church, and being part of it means surrendering my rights to my independence.  It's critical that we are transparent with one another so that we don't fall into undiagnosed or unaddressed patterns of sin.  But at the same time, there is also a sacredness to be preserved in our marriages, a privacy and protection warranted by having and holding none other from this day forward.  Over-publicizing on a public platform is often the natural result of over-publicizing in smaller settings: how much of my marriage am I comfortable sharing with close friends?  Family?  Do I have a tendency to complain about my spouse, our children, the challenges we face as couples, etc -- all without my spouse knowing what I'm revealing, much less being comfortable with that level of detail?  Are our divulgences TMI, or are they sensitive to the fact that our marriages are to be upheld in honor, mutual respect, humility, and propriety?

So here's a post on social media about the stuff you shouldn't post on social media.  What a world we live in.  Would you join me in striving to protect what is precious in your marriage by seeking to love and respect your spouse, preserving your special intimacy and allowing no outside influence or internal friction to damage your unity?

Live together, laugh together, rejoice together, worship together.  Share what's appropriate with others, ask for help when you are lost, and commit to having the same conversation again and again -- if that's what's necessary to persevere.  Relish the things you can share with absolutely no one but your spouse.  Remember the command of Hebrews 13.4, which demands the marital union and all the intimate things that go along with it should be protected and upheld.

That's been my goal for the last 9 years.  Lord willing, Tara and I will maintain that for the next 9 and beyond.

Sweetheart, thanks for laughing at me and with me all this time.  I love you.

February 25, 2012