Christian Music. (Part 2 of 2)

Arena shows, CCM, and paying for Jesus

C.S. Beaty

Feb 25, 2025

“I don’t want the spirit, I want the kick drum

I don't want the spirit, I want the kick drum

I know how it works, oh I'm not dumb

I don't want the spirit, I want the kick drum”1

-Derek Webb

They say your music taste doesn't change after high school, but the ways I thought about music certainly did.

I went to college on a really good scholarship. The kind of scholarship where all financial concerns were removed and all I had to do was focus on my studies— just focus on my studies and save the souls of all my classmates. It was nice not having to worry about money.

I knew two others from my hometown that had the same scholarship. One was an odd kid from my church that drank spoonfuls of colloidal silver each night to protect him from the flu, the other was a football player that moved from California whose dad was my freshman year English teacher. I loved my freshman year English class. Mr. Zach would lead wholesome class discussions, and then show movies to get caught up on grading. When we were working through The Odyssey, he found a 70s era film adaptation and replayed a scene where someone was eaten by a water monster roughly nine times.

“Wait for it… Wait for it… BOOM! That guy just got munched, let's watch that again… Ok, here it comes… And…GOT HIM! One more time…”

The peanut gallery groaned in annoyance with each additional viewing, but I thought it got funnier each time.

Exploring Hollywood's Masterful Practical Effects: From Anti-Gravity Dance to Terrifying Monsters - Digital Studio India

Before he started the Romeo and Juliet movie, Mr. Zach made a disclaimer.

“Ok, here's the deal. There's a point in this movie where I'm going to tell everyone to look away. Just please, let’s all be mature, and do me a favor and just look away.”

When Juliet's perky nipples flashed across the scene after a romantic evening with Romeo, Mr. Zach looked up from his grading.

“Whoops.”

And he went back to work.

Romeo and Juliet Original 1968 U.S. Half Sheet Movie Poster - Posteritati Movie Poster Gallery

Mr. Zach had a son a year older than me, a daughter my age, another son two years younger, and a gaggle of other children yet to reach high school. I got to know Sharon from class and Phil from drumline, but I didn’t cross paths with Tim the oldest. Tim’s status as an athlete isolated him from just about every social circle I swam in, particularly because when Mr. Zach encouraged me to join the Fellowship of Christian Athletes each year, I'd avoid the topic by simply saying, “I’m not an athlete.” Mr. Zach was insistent that it didn't matter, and I believed him, but I still didn't think I would fit in. I was more of a Christian musician. Those were my people.

I knew I liked Mr. Zach. I knew I liked Phil. I knew I liked Sharon. I even liked Sharon’s boyfriend that was recently given Mr. Zach’s permission to date his daughter. I figured if I wanted to make my first college friend, Tim would be an obvious place to start. I sent Tim a Facebook message before moving to Omaha to ask how the textbook reimbursements worked for our scholarship. He offered to sell me his old books at a discount, and on dorm room move-in day, I found his room on the second floor of the Scott Hall dormitory to collect my bounty. Tim gave me the textbooks, handwrote me a receipt on notebook paper to turn in for reimbursement (which was later denied), and asked me a simple question that changed our friendship forever.

“Hey, do you have a car?”

●●●

Tim had four cousins in a Christian rock band called Remedy Drive, and they were playing a show later that week 45 minutes away in their hometown of Lincoln, Nebraska. Tim really wanted to go, but he needed transportation. I was eager to make an impression and accepted the invitation to be his personal chauffeur on the spot. A couple days later, during my first-ever week of college, in the middle of my first-ever month of living on my own, Tim and I drove for a week-night show that a year ago I would have never been permitted to go to on a school night. But my parents were no longer in charge of my concert schedule.

Tim's family had just moved from Grand Island to Lincoln after his dad got a job as the Principal of Lincoln Christian Elementary School. It was a dream job of sorts, and as Tim knocked on their door to greet his family ahead of the concert, I wasn't greeted by my old English teacher Mr. Zach.

But by Rod. My friend’s dad.

And he was just as happy to see me as I was happy to see anyone familiar after a week of homesickness.

I met the rest of Tim's family. It was great to see Phil again and Sharon was there with her boyfriend Seth, but Tim’s mom and the nest of Von Trapp siblings were just as welcoming. The youngest of the family was Joel, a little tough guy that Phil and Seth loved to tease and who had a wall of Remedy Drive posters— each one autographed by his four cousins and inscribed to “Cool dude Joel.” Joel had been a fan since day one and had the posters to prove it.

Remedy Drive was performing their first concert in Lincoln after being signed by Warner Brothers music and releasing a studio album. It was their big break and their big homecoming, and the Zach family couldn't wait to see their freshly famous first-cousins. The show took place in the cavernous gym of a Lutheran church. Tim met up with his cousin Paul, the guitarist, ahead of time and asked him about the acoustics. He said he thought it would be ok, but it would be hard to tell until the gym was filled with people. It wasn't ok. The sound bounced off the walls, like, well, a rock band in a church gymnasium. But it was of little consequence. I had never heard of Remedy Drive, and I certainly was hopping on a bandwagon by ignoring their music careers until the Warner Brothers release of the album “Daylight is Coming,” but I liked what I heard. Liked it. Didn't love it. But I liked it. The songs were catchy, and the show was entertaining. They let us know they had been nominated for a Dove Award— which is like the Grammys, if the Grammys were just for Christians, and has nothing to do with soap. It seemed like I should have been impressed by this, the room certainly was, but I needed to have the award explained to me a bit more first. But either way, I hoped they’d win. They were good dudes. This seemed important to them.

Remedy Drive Interview, Remedy Drive 2008 Jesusfreakhideout.com Interview

Tim stuck around at the merch table after to say hi to each of his cousins and asked if I wanted to see the inside of their tour bus. Without an escort, Tim walked me straight into the mobile home and pointed to a note they had taped to the fridge:

“How good and pleasant it is when brothers live in unity.”
-Psalm 133:1

●●●

“Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles' hands, he offered them money, saying, “Give me this power also, so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.” But Peter said to him, “May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money! You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God.””

- Acts 8:18-21, ESV

Tim invited me to attend his church, and since I didn't have any other leads on churches in Omaha, I accepted. Tim seemed to have a slew of friends, and they all were Christians. They took being a Christian seriously. Real seriously. More seriously than anyone I had ever met back in my hometown. And I found it refreshing. They took the Bible seriously, they took going to church seriously, they took evangelism seriously. Real seriously. And they took the consequences of failure in any of those areas seriously as well. I felt a growing cloud of conviction hang over me throughout the day. I started culling the songs in my iPod, deleting the gangsta rap I had been given on a burned CD as a graduation gift from my middle school band director. I went to the Omaha-based Parable Christian Bookstore for new song choices. I bought a Newsboys Greatest Hits album.

Christian music celebrity Chris Tomlin was playing a concert in the nearby Mid-America Center across the Missouri River in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Tomlin’s tour promotion claimed the show was in Omaha, but the rent in Iowa must have been cheaper for mid-sized arenas and you’re more likely to attract a crowd by saying you’re playing in Omaha rather than the town locals refer to as “Council-tucky.” My new college church was going as a group and announced the event from the pulpit. Tim and I rode together.

I was high at the end of the show. All of God's love and choreographed laser lights made me really full of Holy Spirit, and full of desire to buy a band t-shirt. The line for Chris Tomlin merch was insane afterward, and his $35 tour shirts with a stylized heart on the front were flying off the wire racks that they were clothes-pinned to. I had to get Tim to talk me into buying it given the stiff price and my lack of income as a college student, but I asked for a medium and was handed it over the top of the tip jar stuffed full of $5 bills from convicted teenagers.

I was going home for the weekend, and the highlight of the short trip back was playing a round of roller hockey at my old church. Church roller hockey was something my old youth pastor Mark had started. Mark had grown up playing ice hockey in Colorado and wanted to bring an equivalent to the barren plains of Grand Island, Nebraska. Lacking any proper ice rinks in town, Mark made boards out of plywood that could be placed in the corners and gaps of our carpeted church gymnasium, and spent a considerable amount of his lucrative mega-church youth group budget on purchasing roller blades, hockey goals, sticks, and helmets. Every Tuesday night, kids that were usually absent from the normal Free Life Youth Group meetings would carpool to the Grand Island Evangelical Free Church gym to play a couple of rounds of pick-up roller hockey. During my high school years it was my favorite night of the week, and Mark was organizing a game in conjunction with my short college homecoming.

Mark was the first person to teach me to think critically about music. When I joined the youth group worship bard, Mark had just returned to Grand Island after a multi-year hiatus. He was re-hired as a young adult pastor, but when the high school youth pastor quit at the end of my junior year, Mark agreed to fill in with the youth group on an interim basis. The two of us grew close. Mark once told me, "there's no such thing as Christian music, only music by Christians." He made fun of the weird grunting noises contemporary worship singers would make as if they were constipated or having an orgasm. During a road trip to Chicago to visit Christian colleges, he told me about his favorite example of the weird Jesus sex grunts. It was a live recording where the lead singer tried to capture the feelings inside of him during an extended interlude that was most likely followed by an altar call.

“mmmmhhhuuuhhhh… Jesus… mmmmuuuhnhhhhuuu… Come all over me…”

Mark would challenge us with guidelines for the songs we chose for our worship band sets. Guidelines like, “none of the songs should have the word ‘I’ in them. If the point is to worship God, you shouldn't be talking about yourself.” I learned a ton during these years, and my worship of God grew as a result.

I wore my new Chris Tomlin t-shirt to roller hockey that night. On purpose. I felt like Mark needed to see it. I felt like God would want me to wear it in front of Mark.

To be bold.

To witness.

To not be ashamed.

I knew Mark had once protested a Chris Tomlin concert. He stationed his car in the arena parking lot where Tomlin was playing and made a sign that read, “you can worship with me for free.” He brought his acoustic guitar and handed out printed-off lyric sheets to anyone that cared to join him. A few did. They sang worship songs from the back of his car while Chris Tomlin had his laser light show inside the arena.

I don't know if Mark noticed my t-shirt. He never said anything about it. But he said he was happy to see me. I really enjoyed playing roller hockey with my friends that night.

●●●

Cornerstone Music Festival's practice of overspending on top-line acts and losing money in the name of fun finally caught up with the Jesus People, and in 2012 they shut the festival down after an impressive 28-year run. I didn't go to the final festival. They still charged full admission prices but the lineup was terrible since they were trying to recoup some of their substantial losses and asked most bands to play for free. Most bands didn't.

Tim and I left our college church within a week of one another and worked together to find a suitable replacement that didn’t give us cultish vibes or forbade dating. After our previous experience, we set the bar fairly low. In the process, I spent more time with his family since Tim still didn’t have a car. I never minded. In fact, I loved it. Despite living 45 minutes away, I spent so much time at the Zach household that Rod insisted that I help clean up the table and dishes after dinner like the rest of the family. When Phil protested that I was a guest, Rod gave his son a steely glare and said, "I think we're past that point with Beaty."

I sat in on a family meeting where Rod challenged his family to “be friends with the Whitney family.” The Whitney family was Dan Whitney aka Larry the Cable Guy. Dan had relocated from Florida to Lincoln and sent his kids to Lincoln Christian Elementary. In conjunction with enrolling, the Whitneys made a sizeable donation to the school, enough to earn themselves their own reserved parking spot. Dan's celebrity status was hard to normalize when he hung around the school or toured the gym that he paid for by telling jokes about biscuits and gravy flavored edible underwear. Rod was troubled by the attention Dan was getting from the teachers fawning over him. Rod thought the Whitneys could use a family that treated them normally. The Zachs got plenty of opportunities, Tim let me know about watching Husker games in Larry the Cable Guy's suite and going to his Super Bowl Party. I never got invited to come along, but then again, I would have been pretty star struck. That's not really what Rod was going for.

I bought a Christianity Today magazine subscription from “Cool dude” Joel when he was doing a school fundraiser—pining over the “Is MuteMath a Christian band?” article and sharing it with Tim. I was on a first name basis with Philip Zach, the Remedy Drive bass player. Well, I suppose more of a last-name basis since the whole Zach family just called me “Beaty.” Philip loved teasing his younger cousin Phil who shared his name. When Phil subbed in on the piano for the Lincoln Berean mega-church worship band, he commented how “it felt so amazing play in front of such a big crowd.” Philip went in for the kill.

“How amazing it felt? Because that's the point of playing worship music, right? To make you feel good? To make everyone appreciate how good you are and see you play?”

Phil told Philip that he knew what he meant. And I think Philip did know what he meant. And I think that’s why he was pointing out the dangers of thinking about worship in the manner his little cousin was describing. At least that’s what it seemed like.

I really liked Philip. He never went anywhere without a cool scarf, cut-off finger gloves, or any other number of accessories— but man— he was a good dude. I could see why Tim and Phil looked up to him so much. I saw less of the other Remedy Drive brothers, but I still saw them. I saw them parent. I saw them say grace before meals. I saw them set a good example for their younger cousins that adored them. Guitar player Paul's wife had a face that had been horribly disfigured. I never learned if it was genetic or from an accident, because no one ever felt the need to talk about it. This rock star treated her like the beautiful woman she was. I was always amazed at drummer Daniel’s hair style that stood perfectly on end and— as a drummer myself— was jealous of his Porkpie Percussion snare drum. Daniel’s wife was frequently at the Zach household. Their son was named Noah, which I remembered because they used a German word for “no” because they didn’t want the child to mix up his own name with the negative command. Lead singer David became infatuated with the fight to stop child sex trafficking. After years of trying to raise awareness of the issue, he traveled himself to Asia, posing as a potential buyer of child sex slaves to set up a sting operation and get the perpetrators arrested and the children rescued.2

None of these observations were really talked about in the Zach household. It certainly wasn't bragged about. Members of the Zach family just did stuff like that. It didn’t need to be pointed out.

●●●

Tim invited me back to the Council Bluffs Mid-America Center for another Christian music concert, but this one was a shared billing. I had learned the acronym CCM for “Contemporary Christian Music,” and the biggest showcase in CCM was an annual tour called Winter Jam. Acts like MercyMe and David Crowder Band headlined the tour and smaller bands rotated in. To pack the arena, all tickets were only $10. Remedy Drive was playing.

They didn't win their Dove Award and the trajectory they were on seemed to have plateaued since when I saw them a few years back. They were getting creative to attract new fans, doing a promotion where one lucky person that signed up for this-or-that Remedy Drive mailing-list-something-or-other would win a new fancy contraption called an iPad. I had never heard of the device, but it looked nice from the photos on the Mid-America Center jumbo board. I got a free ticket to the event in exchange for volunteering to encourage people to give money to Compassion International. During the second intermission, the Winter Jam tour Chaplain (because they had one of those, of course they had one of those) gave a “message” with all the familiar build-up to an inevitable altar call. I thought to myself, “oh boy here it comes, the few pagans in attendance will have the opportunity to give their life to Christ.” Except the high-stakes, high-pressure, high-awkwardness didn’t culminate the way I thought it would. Instead of telling everyone to give their life to Jesus, five-gallon buckets were passed so all the church kids could give their spare change to Winter Jam.

Jesusfreakhideout.com Music News, October 2009: WINTER JAM 2010 TOUR SPECTACULAR FEATURES THIRD DAY, NEWSBOYS, NEWSONG, TENTH AVENUE NORTH, FIREFLIGHT AND SPEAKER TONY NOLAN

After all, your ticket was only $10. Don’t you want to make sure others can enjoy God’s love for the affordable price of only $10?

●●●

“You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.”

-Leviticus 19:12, ESV

I got a summer job in Lincoln where Tim and I shared a studio apartment across the street from the Nebraska State Capitol. I needed a place to crash for a few days before our apartment was ready. The Zach family was all out of town, but they gave me their house keys and let me stay in Joel's room. I was surprised by their hospitality and mortified when I had a wet dream in Joel’s bed sheets. I helped myself to their washer and dryer, and did my best at cleaning up before I moved out to become Tim's roommate.

The studio apartment was difficult. It's hard to be anyone's roommate, and Tim and I were in close quarters at stressful times in each of our lives. Tim had just graduated college and returned from a year abroad working for an engineering missions organization in India. He didn't have a job when the summer started and was trying to navigate what was next for him in life. I was a few months into my first serious relationship and dating a girl several years younger that now lived in a different city and suspiciously seemed less interested in me than I was with her. The cracks in the friendship between Tim and I started to show.

At the end of summer, I moved back to Omaha— getting dumped by my girlfriend in the first week and having a falling out with a few other friends the day after. Tim and I would get together occasionally when he was in town, but those meetings became fewer and fewer as he started dating the woman he married. I was in the wedding party, but as I gave him a hug before I left the reception, I sensed our friendship had changed.

The Christian music scene seemed to be changing as well. Remedy Drive broke up, and then reformed with lead singer David and several replacements who didn’t have the last name of Zach. Bands like Gungor and Underoath no longer considered themselves "Christian bands" and people like Michael Gungor and Spencer Chamberlain no longer considered themselves Christians. As I Lay Dying's lead singer Tim Lambesis went to jail after pleading guilty to hiring a hitman to murder his wife.3 But Kanye West made a “Christian” album. And then Kanye West ran for President, called himself a Nazi, praised Hitler, said the Holocaust never happened, got kicked off of Twitter for using a profile picture with a swastika in it,4 paid a dentist $50,000 a month to move in with him to feed his nitrous oxide addiction,5 got divorced, and then got re-married to an Australian model that routinely went into public topless— or without pants on— or both.6 Christians were really excited about his “Jesus is King” album when it came out though.

Did Kanye West and his wife Bianca Censori get kicked out of Grammys 2025 due to 'naked' appearance, details inside

The term “deconstruction” became unavoidable in Christian circles. The celebrity pastors that I used to download sermons of were exposed as despicable. Instead of deleting gangsta rap from my iPod, I was now deleting sermons from Mark Driscoll and Ravi Zacharias. And even the pastors that didn't get in trouble no longer held the same appeal. In college I listened to John Piper's message of “don't waste your life collecting (sea)shells” and was utterly ruinous with guilt.7 Now when I heard it I thought, “wow, he’s kind of a dickhead.”

I returned to Winter Jam after an awkward guy from my church small group asked for someone to go with him. I had reached the age where I wore ear plugs to concerts. The Newsboys were headlining. They were terrible.

But I still listen to Underoath on my iPod.

●●●

Tim and his cousin Philip were coming into Omaha to see Paper Route open for Switchfoot at the Slowdown. I liked Switchfoot just fine, but I loved Paper Route. I had seen both at Cornerstone. Paper Route played through their new album and blew me away.

As the bands were switching, Philip Zach and I were standing side-by-side. Jon Foreman walked out to mess with his microphone stand and made eye contact with Philip. Foreman smiled and pointed right at him, Philip returned the recognition with a smile of his own and a knowing wave.

I had something on my mind, and going to a Switchfoot show brought it back up.

I needed to better understand something.

I needed to run something by Philip.

“Hey, honestly what's your opinion of the Christian music industry? Don’t you feel like the whole idea of ‘Christian’ music is a little weird?”

I had asked a similar question while crashing on a couch overnight in the Nashville apartment of a woman who worked for a CCM label. She had moved to Tennessee to get a job in the music industry and built a career around ‘Christian’ music.

She was confused by my question.

But Philip understood what I was asking.

He answered quickly. In passing. The kind of answer that you just give instinctively without doctoring it up first. Without pretense. Without disclaimers. Without nuance. The kind of answer you would want to elaborate on if it was brought back up again. Expand. Clarify. But we didn’t have the time to do any of that. He just had to tell me what he thought without trying to represent something other than his own thoughts. The kind of answer that says what we really think even if it’s not what we really meant.