I was working on the new book, specifically the chapter for Kris Klingensmith (drummer and lyricist for Barnabas) this morning, when I had to stop for a moment, gaze out the window of the commuter train, and compose myself.  I wasn’t crying or anything like that.  Rather, I had to calm down.

After all these years, I’m still angry.

I’m angry at the way the Christian music industry used and abused these artists.  I’m angry at the way it’s pushed them to the side as if they never existed.  But above even these, I’m angry at the ministerial opportunities that were lost because so many who held positions of power were either unable or unwilling to wrap their little heads around the truth.

The truth was, and is, your personal opinion has nothing to do with the validity of any given ministry.  It’s doesn’t matter whether you like a given style of music.  Or understand it.  Or for the life of you figure out how God could possibly use it and/or the people presenting it to bring people to Him.  It absolutely does not matter.  Why?

The Spirit is not subject to your definition of what or who it can work through.  It is not bound by your frame of reference.  Your tastes are meaningless.  Your opinions are dust.  The Spirit is not bound by you.

Lives were changed by these artists, changed in ways that reverberate through those touched even today.  Souls were saved.  There is no denying the hand of God worked, and to this day is working, through the ministry and lives of these people who to a one sacrificed greatly for the sake of what they believed.  Yet even with all this, how many more could have been reached had their music been played on the radio.  Or had they been allowed to play more concerts by people booking them.  These things didn’t happen.  Why?  Because of those who recoiled in horror at what they saw as too loud, too fast, too much hair, and on and on.  Their entrapment in cultural bigotry and fear of what was not their own mirror image kept the music unheard.

And that’s why I’m still angry.

Hopefully in some small way the book will redress these egregious mistakes.  You can’t go back; you can’t undo what has been done and do what should have been done but wasn’t.  However, our God is a mighty God.  He can and will speak to those who should have been spoken to twenty years ago.

If we let Him.

And since the music’s still out there, waiting to be shared…