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.

Well, blue sky nine is done with our spring tours, and I am already shifting through gears pretty quickly getting ready for Keynote’s Summer Project.

Summer Project is where we bring students in from all over the country to do an internship of sorts. They’ll get put into bands - and they’ll also get training in public speaking/communications skills and a ton of other stuff, along with rehearsals. Then, they do 3 week concert tour where they will get to play music, tell stories and share how their relationship with Christ has changed their lives. 

It’s a whirlwind, for them and for us!

I’ll be serving as music director/producer for one of the bands, which means selecting music, charting it out, running rehearsals, and everything else it takes to transform 7 complete strangers into a road-ready band.

Even as the Summer Project ramps up, the blue sky nine fall touring calendar is coming together. We’ll be out west (Colorado, Arizona, etc.) for a while and then in Romania (no kidding!) for most of October. That will be cool.

Finally… we’ll do a showcase concert at East Street Studios as part of the Summer Project. So, if you’re in the Indy area, swing by for that. But if you can’t make it, it will be webcast live – so keep an eye out here, or at the blue sky nine website for details.

Been on tour with blue sky nine a lot this spring, and most of our shows have been on college campuses.

But… this last weekend, we played for the Aruna 5K event in Cincinnati. The Aruna Project is an organzation that rescues young girls (some as young as 10 years old) from the sex trafficking industry in Mumbai, India. check out the event website for more details.

The event raised $14,000 towards helping girls find their freedom. We’re planning on helping them do it even bigger next year – LOVE that we can help out with stuff like this. Don’t think it’s really an issue, or that it’s relegated to brothels and sleazy dance clubs? Better read this article.

From there, we headed to Ft. Knox in Kentucky and played for about 650 soldiers in basic training there. We had a blast playing music and sharing stories with them – and about 60 guys came forward when they were invited to begin a relationship with God. It was a complete privilege to go and serve these guys who will be shipping out all over the world to serve us. Hooaah!

Check the photos page for a couple of new shots.

This week, we’re off to play a prison in in Indianapolis on Wednesday, and then down to a prison in Birmingham, AL this weekend. And then, another prison in Arkansas as well as some colleges as we finish up this spring’s touring.

Stay tuned!!

blue sky nine just got back home (in time for Easter weekend) from our Northeast tour, which had us playing shows in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. As usual, we did shows at a bunch of colleges, but we also did a show for an ethnically diverse inner-city church in Lancaster, PA (which was a ton of fun!).

We did a benefit show called ‘Hope for Haiti’ with a humanitarian aid organization called Global Aid Network. We even got to spend an afternoon helping process donations in their warehouse. They send food, medical supplies, clothes and water treatment systems all over the world, and it was awesome – and humbling – to get to help them out.

We had a great time, and I’m already hoping next spring’s tours take us back out that way!!
Click the photos below for a larger view.

Next Saturday, March 13th, blue sky nine will be performing at East Street Studios in Westfield, IN.

We’d love to see you there – here’s the link to the Facebook Event with the address and other details.

If you can’t make it in person, you can catch us live online – click here for the live streaming event!

The event starts at 7:30 EST with our friend Dave Fladung opening the evening, then we’ll play around 8:00. Catch us if you can!

To borrow a quote from Tim Hawkins, “We ain’t no rock stars”.

blue sky nine heads out on tour again throughout this spring, and even though we aren’t huge or famous, we get to have some pretty cool experiences as we travel. Here are some things you may never come to know until you tour the world with a band:

Recently, while discussing our work and music and travel and everything, an old friend made the comment that in a lot of ways, my life had been leading up to this for a long time.

Hmmm. Was it that obvious? Because for most of that time, it really wasn’t to me.

I can look back on life and easily point to many ‘defining moments’ – moments where something really interesting or challenging or confusing took place, and I got to be or do more than usual. They were not so much moments where I defined myself, but moments when the things that are true of me (and how I was created) poked through and revealed something bigger.

As I ponder those moments, some common themes emerge. Music, spirituality, and relationships always seemed to be at the center of what was going on. Some of those moments were much more radical than others in terms of the life-change that they caused. Some were very painful and revealed things that needed stripped out of my life; others were joyful and showed me what to focus on.

What they really had, though, is a trajectory. They were leading somewhere; pointing to something.

The first 30 years of my life were more defined by the in-between moments. Days, months, or years of ‘day-in, day-out’ living that did nothing to show me any greater sense of identity, purpose or mission. If I look at those years in general and try to guess what I should do to find the next ‘defining moment’, I might as well throw $500 on 21 and spin the wheel.

But if I look at the trajectory, I get a pretty good idea of the sorts of things I am wired for; the sorts of things God has built into me that need to come out. It seems to me that’s one of the big ways God speaks our calling to us.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that it will probably line up with your passions, talents and spiritual giftings. It’s not an ‘easy’ button; you’ll still need to actively trust God and depend on his word to instruct you and his Spirit to guide you. But those moments are a pretty good start in figuring out what direction you’re supposed to be heading.

So. What’s your trajectory?

I work for an organization called Keynote. We do a lot of stuff involving graphics and art and music and technology and we use it to help people understand that God loves them.

Wanna know that looks like? Watch this.

In my more honest moments, I realize that I have a great job and an awesome wife and family, and I really have no idea how I ever hooked that up.

But most of the time, when I’m not being that self-aware, I make it through the day/week/month feeling like I’ve got it pretty well figured out and I can navigate my tasks (including the ones that involve ministry) with nothing by my intuition, experience, and considerable wits.

In short, I have delusions of adequacy.

Well. Midway through the blue sky nine Asian tour, I got really sick. Not H1N1 sick; but it was the mother of all head-colds. Right in the thick of this particluar misery is when we had to play our first gig in Seoul. And I’m praying that my nose wouldn’t drip DURING the point in the concert where I share about how people can begin a relationship with God. (It’s a serious moment and I didn’t want to punctuate it by blowing my nose.)

Before we went on, I felt awful and wasn’t thinking clearly – and truthfully, just wanted to lay down and pray for the relief that only death could bring. (I said I wasn’t thinking clearly…) But instead, I prayed that God would give me strength and clarity enough to get through the music and message. I knew in that moment that I was not (and never could be) equal to the task I had before me.

So, I prayed for clarity and relief. And not really believing any of that would actually happen, I loaded up my pockets with tissues and walked onstage.

Because that’s the kind of giant of the faith that I am sometimes.

So I grabbed my guitar and walked out to an energetic crowd of 400 or so, and began to play the set. And something cool happened. The sinus pain subsided and my thoughts actually congealed in a meaningful way. I felt better – a lot better. Between the translator and I, I think a coherent message actually got communicated. And I might have played guitar pretty well – as far as you know, anyway.

If I’m really honest, that happens to me more than I’d like. The delusions of adequacy part, not the debilitating headcold part. I’m always sort of glad when those moments happen that kneecap me and remind me who’s really doing the heavy lifting.

Hopefully next time I won’t have to get the Asian sinus ick to remember that.