Michael W. Smith - Its Time to Be Bold

ITS TIME TO BE BOLD

MICHAEL W. SMITH

ITS TIME TO BE BOLD
Copyright 1997, 2003 by Michael W. Smith.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Smith, Michael W. (Michael Whitaker)
Its time to be bold / by Michael W. Smith.
p. cm.
Originally published: 1997.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-8499-4435-X (pbk.)
1. Christian life. 2. Smith, Michael W. (Michael Whitaker) I. Title: It is time to be bold. II. Title.
BV4501.3.S653 2003 248.4dc21

2003007738

Printed in the United States of America

03 04 05 06 07 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

Dan Haseltine, Jars of Clay

by Dan Haseltine, Jars of Clay

Someone recently asked me if I thought the church had become cold to the practice of love. Mostly, I found the question to be a valid and good one. I have seen the church struggling to get free from the tangled web of fear, insecurity, judgment, tradition, and religion. I have been part of that web, and I know that it can ultimately be paralyzing. I think mostly we have forgotten what real love looks and feels like, and what it provokes us on to do and to be.

This year was a busy year. Jars of Clay spent most of it in different cities playing concerts. The beginning of a tour is usually the most exciting and the hardest time of the entire experience mostly because there is such energy about it. What will this tour be like? Who will we meet? Where will God show up, and how will it change us? Along with the profound questions are also the deep, deep sorrows of saying goodbye.

As with many artists who travel, the worst part of my life is disconnecting myself from my family and friends while Im on the road. There are seasons where I am so interwoven into the life I lead at home, away from the stage and surrounded by my wife and son, that I almost forget there is another side of who I am: a side that drinks deep the power of the stage, that sucks the very marrow from the performance and the passionate song. There is a sense of almost total fulfillment from the experience of community within a family.

But work is also a part of the fabric of life, and so I am committed to the thread-life of Jars of Clay. The very nature of performance and travel has a definite side effect. It happens gradually, almost undetected. Like slowly falling asleep in front of a late night TV show. It is a kind of trance. I never intend for it to happen, but after a little while, I settle into the routines and the petty satisfactions of road life. The immediate love of a family is swapped for something far less noble and yet, in a strange way, fulfilling. I settle into a mostly uncomfortable bed, unfamiliar cities, and shallow conversations. Love is replaced by flattery and unfortunately, the richness of being known in true community and loved for all the right reasons becomes only a faded image. In fact life on the road is often quite toxic. It can be ingested in powerful doses, and it can leave an artist wandering in a fog of lowered expectations and skewed perspectivetravelling far, far away from meaningful relationship.

It is usually midway through a tour that I start feeling my confidence waning and my purpose fogging over. I start spending less and less time reflecting on the real and noble reasons for singing songs. I even start to forget why I should be concerned with loving and serving the people I meet night after night. It can become paralyzing.

It is usually Gods grace that brings me back to my senses. There was a moment on the last tour when my wife and son flew out to meet me. It was a reunion of profound importance. We were walking down an old historic street in some nameless city when the fog lifted. I felt again what it was like to experience the transformation that moves my settled heart away from flattery and back to honest love. As I looked back and forth between my wife and my son, I had a revelation that I was once again with the people who, by Gods design, made me feel most complete. I experienced the wave of memory that brought me back to a place where the things I had settled on, or even chased after in city after city clearly became vain pursuits. How could I have been so disillusioned? How could I have crawled so low as to gaze upon the crumbs below the table and give them the prominent title of main course, as the ultimate feast I had tasted and known, spread out just above my sight line?

How could my image of love become so feeble, so finite, so cheap? How did I let this kind of fickle love from strange audiences become the object of my desire?

I was distracted from the experience of real love and so I forgot what it felt like, I forgot how powerful it is. I forgot that real love is potent, and vital, and the only thing that will breathe life into an otherwise walking pile of bones. Because of this amorific amnesia, I lost both the confidence and the freedom that love alone cultivates.

I have often wondered if the Christian community has been lulled into a similar kind of existence. There has been a gradual shift in the focus of the body of Christ. From my perspective, the new church seems to have developed its own kind of identity crisis. As the world becomes more cynical and non-absolute, the church becomes more and more obsessed in its need to feel relevant to this culture, so much so that the church has been swayed in the very conversation about gospel relevance to the point that the compelling characteristics of the gospel have become centered more and more around appearance and image. As a result there seems to be a gradual disconnect between the church and those seeking for something more real than the other noises in their heads. The love of the Savior has been replaced by a variation on love that leaves those wanting it unsatisfied and unconfident. The ripple effects are catastrophic.

The most profound ripples show up in the foundation of our relationships. Because the church is concerned with outside appearances, the motivation to dig deep into the hearts of people within the body of Christ has been short-circuited. We have come to the conclusion that knowing someone genuinely and building true community is not what makes us relevant. So it is also true, we do not feel it necessary to be known.