dodging traffic

Keynote’s ‘Summer Project’ wrapped this week. (See my last blog entry for some background on that).

My role in the Summer Project is very different from my normal job, and it really is one of my favorite times of the year. Normally, I focus on leading a team and interacting with a lot of ministries for short-term projects and events. For the Summer, my job is to interact with a small number of student musicians for a much longer period of time. It’s an amazing privilege to get to be part of the process that God uses to stretch them, shape them, and use them to change lives for eternity.

He also uses them to remind me that I am 42. That’s another issue.

Anyway, for the whole project, between Keynote and the Impact movement (who we work together with during the Summer Propject), we sent 6 bands on the road.

• Those 6 bands logged slightly over 20,000 road miles
• They played 79 concert events
• They played for, and shared the gospel with, just over 9000 people.
• 759 of those people said that they were interested in having further conversations about spiritual things
• 1048 of those people indicated that they had decided to begin a relationship with God through Jesus Christ (thus, the shouting.) 

I still can’t believe this is my job.  You can read a story from Young Isaac’s touring here, and a story from another couple of the bands here. For other updates, poke around the Keynote Connection site. There’s usually good stuff out there.

But now, the project is over. The gear is packed up in road cases and stored. The vehicles are all parked. The students have headed back home (and soon back to school), and it is very subdued around the offices.

The rehearsal rooms are silent.

For now, anyway…

I’ve been working with a band called Young Isaac the last month or so. Where did June go, anyway?

Young Isaac is one of 4 bands that are part of Keynote’s Summer Project, which is where we take college students from all over the country, bring them here for training and rehearsals, make them into bands, and send them out on tour for 3 weeks to do outreach concerts.

The members of Young Isaac were complete strangers a month ago, and now they’re a really fun acoustic rock band. They have been through a month of training, classes and rehearsals, and now they are equipped to share their personal stories and get into meaningful and deliberate spiritual conversations with people at their shows, which is the whole point.

You can follow their adventures by checking out their pages on Facebook or Twitter.

My role is to serve as their music director, which means I consume more coffee during any other part of the year as I select, arrange, and sometimes compose music and individual parts for them to play.  I run rehearsals to make sure they’re tight musically, and help make sure that their entire performance (speaking parts, music, etc.) comes off well.  What I like most, though, is getting to influence young believers as they use their passions and talents, and help them dig into to what God may be up to in all of that.

The students themselves don’t always know what to expect in all of this, and sometimes they are surprised at the product of all the training, rehearsals and hard work. After their pre-tour dress rehearsal, JJ (Young Isaac’s violinist) had a sense of bemused resignation to the fact that when she played her solos, people cheered. I think it really surprised her that people loved watching her play.

So, Jess, one of the band’s lead singer/guitarists, made the point that people love violin solos – “They’re like guitar solos, only with class…”. That’s one of my favorite quotes from the project.

So now they are off on tour, and will play 20 shows in 18 days in 5 states. I have no idea when they’ll sleep, but I’ll have some stories and stats to share here over the next few weeks… stay tuned.