Page 2382 – Christianity Today (2024)

Style: Quiet, contemplative rock

Top tracks: “Fill Me Up,” “How He Loves,” “Glory of God”

In a nutshell: Having penned a handful of the modern church’s most sung worship tunes, Desperation Band founding member Jared Anderson tempers his artist persona with his associate pastor duties at Colorado Springs’ New Life Church. Corralling his home church folk for support, the personality of Anderson’s first live venture is undoubtedly congregational, with plenty of choir and crowd voices present in the mix. While his own vocal is distinctive enough to solo, its passionate delivery aids Anderson in the call to worship the greatness of God rather than man. Featuring ten new tracks alongside Anderson standard “Glorified” and John Mark McMillan’s “How He Loves,” Live is a worthwhile complement to any believer’s private worship time.

Copyright © 2009 Christian Music Today. Click for reprint information.

Style: Quiet, contemplative rock

Top tracks: “Lift Me Up,” “The Presence of Love,” “For You Lord”

In a nutshell: Though she fills a fresh spot on her label’s teen roster, Lara Landon’s depth immediately stands out for the serious listener. Avoiding the attention-grabbing tricks of her peers, her worshipful debut is dense and subtle, packed with scriptural truth about God’s love with revealing lines like “I’ve seen the sun rise in your eyes but turned away/No reason why” (“Lift Me Up”). Rich, throaty vocals, on par with Cindy Morgan and Sarah McLachlan, effortlessly soar over the album’s quiet balladry. Unfortunately, the strings and piano that dominate the aural landscape result in an AC sound that may be lost on younger audiences. But with a confident magnetism rarely found in young artists, Landon effectively portrays her own love affair with Christ and calls others to the knowledge they are his beloved.

Copyright © 2009 Christian Music Today. Click for reprint information.

Style: stadium-filling rock ‘n’ roll; compare to U2, Switchfoot, Dandy Warhols

Top tracks: “Stones,” “Broken Man,” “One More Time”

In a nutshell: Dreampilots could very well put Norway on the faith-based music map thanks to an anthemic sound that falls somewhere between 1980s-era U2 and the current sounds of Switchfoot. Like those key influences, the band weaves in several moments of introspection ranging from soul searching, to pleading for forgiveness, to picking up the broken pieces of life. A handful of awkward word pronunciations may distract American audiences, but the group’s instrumentation and sharp songwriting skills are sure to connect with believers around the globe.

Copyright © 2009 Christian Music Today. Click for reprint information.

Style: Hard rock mixed with the pop sensibility of groups like Kutless andBuilding 429

Top tracks: “Fire on the Inside,” “Whatever It Takes,” “Lose It All”

In a nutshell: Some tracks on Pillar’s sixth studio album, Confessions, rock so hard that you can’t help but picture a high-speed car chase, or the climax to an action flick. “Whatever It Takes” and “Lose It All” are standouts with their hooky choruses and driving momentum. But other tunes feel uninspired and become filler between the better songs. Pop rock ballads “Better off Now” and “Will You Be There” don’t sound completely thought out and are a little more cookie-cutter than what we are used to from these veterans, who could have taken a few more risks on this album.

Copyright © 2009 Christian Music Today. Click for reprint information.

Last year, The Myriad crossed over from the Christian scene to the mainstream when the band beat 4,000 other entrants to win the “MTV2 Dew Circuit Breakout” competition. Their videos were spun in regular rotation, they scored a series of “Discover and Download” and “Artist of the Week” segments, and they earned a soundtrack slot on Xbox’s Rock Band.

But the band got some bad news when drummer Randy Miller was diagnosed with cancer. They took the last eight months off, and while Miller is still fighting stage four of the disease, his doctors just him clearance to return to the road this fall, touring with Tyrone Wells and Matt Hires to benefit The Humane Society’s “All Creatures Great and Small” campaign. The group also hopes the dates will give Miller (who returns to chemotherapy treatments the day after the tour) a new lease on life while inspiring fans.

“We had no idea that Randy would actually prove to be a better drummer than we had ever seen in the past,” frontman Jeremy Edwardson blogged about the rehearsal sessions. “He was secretly immersing himself in drummer videos and practicing at least an hour a day. He later told us his fight, his battle, was more than beating cancer. He wanted to come out a better husband, father, drummer, and ultimately a better man of God.”

Hillsong United hits the silver screen

Hillsong United fans can do “Wednesday night church” on Nov. 4 when the Australian worship group hits 500 movie theaters in a live telecast. The program includes a screening of Hillsong’s social justice documentary We’re All in This Together, plus a live introduction by Hillsong United’s lead singer Joel Houston, along with taped concert footage from the group’s home church Sydney. For a trailer click here; for a list of participating theaters, click here.

FFH returns

Three years since its last studio CD, pop group FFH returns with Wide Open Spaces on November 10. The project follows a sabbatical when frontman Jeromy Deibler and his wife and fellow group member Jennifer moved to South Africa to mentor worship leaders. Their recent journey is all chronicled on the album. “The time away has been anything but routine,” said Deibler in a press release. “Since our departure in 2006, Jennifer and I have moved to Africa and back, welcomed our second child, and dealt with my MS (Multiple Sclerosis) diagnosis. … The waiting has been hard, but the Lord knew we needed a break to deal with some deeper issues, both physical and spiritual, that just couldn’t be dealt with while on the road. We now feel like it’s time to renew our connection with our audience and start telling them about this chapter in our story.”

Chynna Phillips on

Oprah

Attention continues to mount behind Chynna Phillips‘ upcoming Christian debut. The 10 million-album selling member of Wilson Phillips recently appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show to plug her new duo, Chynna & Vaughan, and their CD One Reason, which streets October 5. Groupmate Vaughan Penn is also known for her soundtrack contributions to The Hills and Grey’s Anatomy, plus extensive mainstream touring.

Songwriter turned solo star

His songwriting credits include Point of Grace, 4Him and Avalon (to name a few), resulting in six gold records and two Dove nominations. But these days John Mandeville is going the solo artist route, releasing the CD We Belong To Heaven and finding additional success at radio. The album’s lead single “Glorify” is No. 5 on Billboard’s Soft AC/Inspirational chart, its fourth consecutive week in the top 10.

Double dose of Tim Hughes live

After introducing songs like “Here I Am To Worship” and “Beautiful One” to churches all across the globe, Tim Hughes turns in his first concert collection. Happy Day hits both CD and DVD October 20, featuring guest performers Martin Smith and Stu G (both of Delirious), plus four new songs recorded exclusively for this project. The DVD includes an hour-long “story behind the songs” interview with lessons for worship leaders.

Kierra mixes it up

Grammy-nominated gospel favorite Kierra Sheard just dropped an EP featuring two new tunes and remixes of old ones. Kiki’sMix Tape includes production from Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins (Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston) and Tommy Sims (Amy Grant, Bruce Springsteen), plus a duet with soul star Marcus Cole.

Copyright © 2009 Christian Music Today. Click for reprint information.

I might as well admit it / like I even have a choice / The crew have killed the captain / But they still can hear his voice / A shadow on the water / a whisper in the wind / on long walks with my daughter / who is lately full of questions about You
(from “In Stitches”)

You can’t envy David Bazan for the scrutiny he faces from his Christian fans. Bazan, a fairly soft-spoken songwriter, was thrust into the limelight of the Christian indie rock scene in 1999 when his band Pedro the Lion made a great little record called It’s Hard to Find a Friend, featuring some gut-wrenchingly honest songs about faith like “Secret of the Easy Yoke.” As Pedro’s acclaim grew in both Christian circles and the rock press at large, Bazan became almost a symbol of what Christian indie rock could be: artful, honest, cool, doubting, faithful—a lot of labels were pinned on Pedro the Lion, and a lot of hopes. There was hardly anybody invested in faith and music who didn’t see Pedro as some kind of sign of the times, whether it was a youth pastor who could finally turn his students on to a Christian band that voiced the doubts they felt while still sticking with the faith, or a jaded Christian music fan who rediscovered that Christian rock didn’t have to be sub-par. Presumably, Bazan’s career trajectory also set off alarm bells for those who believe in the inherent wrongness of “crossing over” from the safety of the Christian subculture to “the world.”

What a journey it’s been since then. According to a recent cover story in The Chicago Reader, one observer at this summer’s Cornerstone Festival noted as Bazan walked off the stage, “People used to compare him to Jesus, but not so much anymore.”

It is worrisome to think that Bazan’s new record, Curse Your Branches—the first full-length under his own name and probably the best he has ever made—could cause those people to feel justified. Sadly, it seems inevitable that someone will point to a series of steps Bazan has taken away from the faith—first he left Christian record labels, then stopped playing churches. Then came the drinking, and the swearing, and the doubts, and before you know it he’s made an anti-God record.

Except that is simply not true. It’s clear that Bazan’s struggle with the conservative Pentecostal faith of his upbringing has been important to his music—and in recent interviews, he describes himself as agnostic—but Curse Your Branches is the first Bazan album to be wholly concerned with God. It’s also his most musically accomplished, with Bazan playing most of the instruments, and singing with a new confidence in his always-weary voice. The music of Curse Your Branches owes a lot to ’60s pop-style arrangements, and even a song like “Lost My Shape” is more full fleshed out, with acoustic guitar and pedal steel, than the stripped-down ballads of Pedro the Lion.

From the first track, Curse Your Branches is a challenge, if not to the entire biblical narrative, then certainly to traditional evangelical interpretations of that narrative. “Hard to Be” starts off with a bouncy pop account of the Fall, and then a pause; the music stops for just a split second, and Bazan sings, “Wait just a minute—” as the music kicks in and the rest of the record follows from those four words. The songs, for the most part more energetic than Bazan’s last few offerings (thanks in part to the creative lead guitar of Josh Ottum), challenge a number of theological concepts, from original sin to the existence of God himself.

All this plays out without delving into heady philosophy or devolving into angry ranting; it’s an intensely personal record. Song after song intertwines theological paradoxes with Bazan’s descent into alcoholism and his alienation from his family, like “Bless this Mess,” which rewrites the Beatitudes to apply to the singer’s own life. The album’s final track, “In Stitches,” connects all the pieces of the record: faith, family, doubt, and drinking, and its two final verses go a long way in articulating the difficulties of belief: even when it seems not to make sense, as God’s response to Job’s suffering, for some of us it remains unshakable. As Bazan told Paste magazine recently, “I’m cutting strings with that version of God, only to find out that there could be another version of him that is truer or something.” This may be disturbing for some Christian listeners, but Bazan has made a brave, true, and personal album that bears witness to a struggle as old as Jacob’s wrestling match with the angel.

Copyright © 2009 Christian Music Today. Click for reprint information.

I like to call you the “Jay-Z of gospel”—you announced you’d retire from music, yet you have kept as busy as ever. What’s the deal?

Donnie McClurkin: Well, I had planned to leave all of this music behind in 2008. Thework of pastoring our ministry in Perfecting Faith Church in New York is a full-time responsibility with over 2,800 members in our brief eight years. I tried my best to retire from the music, but I had a contract that I had to fulfill with Verity Records and I couldn’t just walk away. So God gave me songs for this last CD, We All Are One (Live in Detroit). But it’s still in my plans (laughs).

You’ve always kept your music varied, yet We All Are One is one of your most eclectic discs yet. Why do you keep diversifying?

McClurkin: With this last CD, God had to minister to me and reveal many things to me that would affect my songwriting. The title We All Are One is really the theme of my ministry. It’s just stating that we’ve been too divided in Christianity. Christ prayed that we would be one as he and the Father are one. God began to give me so many songs that were not exactly the norm for me, yet they minister to me more than any of my prior recordings. It wasn’t my contrived plan of action to be diverse—it’s just the way the Holy Spirit wrote the songs and gave them.

Your sister Olivia lost her battle to cancer while you were doing prep work for the new album. How did her passing affect the creative process?

McClurkin: Thank you so much for asking about her. The first thing that I want to clarify is that Olivia didn’t lose her battle with cancer; shewent to heaven victoriously—touchingdoctors, nurses, and others with (her struggle) and showing us how to live by faith and trust God.She taught us all faith. Even on her bed for days before she passed, she prayed for all that came in. She would have us constantly sing “The Blood Will Never Lose Its Power” by Andrae Crouch.

She came to the studio while we were working on some of the songs and sat and prayed with her oxygen tank. She’s been on just about everything that we’ve done, musically. Our family is extremely close, so her leaving hurt badly. But God does all things well. Not a day goes by nor a memorable moment that my family and I don’t think of her and say, “Oh man, Liv should be here for this.”

Humanly speaking, how hard did her death hit you? What have you discovered about your own faith journey in the process?

McClurkin: The death of a close family member is inexplicable. We are all stairstep babies. We cry—I cried last night while talking about her. We laugh over things she did and said. It’s not been a year yet.It’s all so fresh and the void is so gaping. Butshe left us a great legacy of faith.I found that she had the kind of faith that was so extreme that it kept her alive for nine years after she was told that she had six months to a year to live back in 1999. Shekeptthat faith and increased all of ours.

You also got really sick leading up to your current project. Tell me about that.

McClurkin: Man, doeseveryone know about that? (laughs) I’ve been diagnosed with diabetes for the last 3½ years, and just before the project I had a horrible bout with some of the side effects that come along with this disease.I’ve had to change my diet and medications from pills to insulin injections twice daily, andchange my life dramatically.I’m feeling and doing wonderfully now.I have a few more medical procedures to undergo, but for the most part, I’m doing great. No tears, people!

Mainstream media and gay groups got you into a bit of hot water as you campaigned for Obama in 2007. How did you end up reconciling your past struggles with hom*osexuality and the president’s liberal stance on the issue?

McClurkin: You know, thisis a story that everyone has heard now and I’ve moved on to much more. President Obama and I have no outstanding grievances and I was and still am proud of my involvement in his historic campaign and election. But much more than any partisanship, I am in love with Christ and holy living. Political liberalism orconservatismall takes a back seat to holiness.I’ve sung for President George H.W. Bush, President Clinton, several times for President George W. Bush, and twice for President Obama. Not as a Republican or as a Democrat, but as a Christian singing about the Kingdom of God.

Do you know if the president is still a fan?

McClurkin:He, his wife, and mother-in-law love our music and gospel music on the whole.He’s a great man. Let’s all continue to pray for him and his family.

What song off We All Are One is your current favorite and why?

McClurkin:The song “We All Are One” gives me the opportunity to use my music to bring out the truth—simplythat we were never intended to be classified by denominations.That was the greatest accomplishment of Satan: divide the body of Christ.Jesus stated that a “house divided against itself cannot stand.” Paul asked the question in 1 Corinthians 2: “IsChrist divided?” He said some were saying that they were of Paul and others were saying they were of Apollos, someof Cephas, others of Christ. We’re much worse today.

Baptist, Methodist, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Anglican, Catholic, Roman Catholic, Assemblies of God, Church of God, Church of God in Christ, Wesleyan—and the list is hardly over with these. It’s chaotic.But this song allows me to reiterate what Jesus declared and wants even in today’s church: unity. The song ends with adult voices transforming into the voices of children—driving home the point that unless we become as innocent as children in our worship and beliefs, we won’t see heaven or God.

Copyright © 2009 Christian Music Today. Click for reprint information.

“Yes, I think they should be church plants. I don’t think there is the ability to bear one another’s burdens when you never meet in the same location. And when you’re showing a pastor on the screen yet have a campus pastor: is the campus pastor not fit to teach? If he is, then why is he not teaching? A church plant would be better.”Thomas White, associate professor of systematic theology, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

“I’m not sure that multisite is helping church planting. My concern is that pastors may opt for a multisite approach instead of church planting. Multisite addresses the geographical limitations of a church. But a planted church is more contextually relevant. We really need to do some research. Multisite is too new to know the impact yet.”Aubrey Malphurs, president, Malphurs Group

“It’s a both/and world. We need church plants and multisite. Multisites are a great way for churches to reach a broader geographic or demographic area by changing worship and ambience. It depends on leadership. If I have a gifted communicator, I tell them to plant. If I have someone who is a good shepherd, I suggest a multisite.”Larry Osborne, teaching pastor, North Coast Church, Vista, Calif.

“Theologically, I am not sure that those satellites are NOT churches already. They can be churches but still be connected. Either way, in many cases, churches once engaged in church planting have transitioned to starting sites. I believe that if they are going to do multisite, they should do both—start sites and start churches. There are some good examples doing both.”Ed Stetzer, president, LifeWay Research

“We draw too solid of a line between what is a campus and what is a church plant. Seacoast has a campus 200 miles away with a pastor, small groups, children’s ministry, etc. They are resourced and governed differently, but I don’t see a distinction between the two.”Geoff Surratt, pastor of ministry, Seacoast Church, Mount Pleasant, S.C.

“Multisite is a step towards church planting. We can develop leaders in all areas of ministry while maintaining a smaller gathering size. It gives us all the benefits of a church plant without most of the risk. It’s something new in a new space, yet doesn’t have to be instantly self-sustaining.”Bob Hyatt, pastor, the Evergreen Community, Portland, Ore.

“We see multisite campuses as another form of church planting now. If the goal of a church is to make disciples and to multiply, then we can do that in a number of ways. Planting from a respected network or from a known church as a multisite gives them credibility, which allows leaders to make and gather disciples more effectively. Disciples gathered will become a church.”Scott Thomas, director, Acts 29 Network

“They are not mutually exclusive strategies. But some churches are doing multisite rather than church planting because younger pastors express a very deep desire to do life and ministry together. They feel a multisite structure enhances that, and church planting detracts from that. When a church spins off a plant, almost inevitably that plant will sever many relationships with the mother church as it becomes autonomous.”Gregg Allison, professor of Christian theology, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

“Many multisite churches actually do both. They have campuses and they plant, usually based on geography. If beyond a certain distance from the original campus, it often makes better sense to be a plant. The benefit of a campus is on-going support and investment. The stats on planting are not great in terms of experiencing long-term growth and health. The success rates of campuses are strong.”Greg Ligon, vice president, Leadership Network

“Multiplying campuses is not an alternative to church planting; it is an alternative to multiplying services, building a larger building, or turning people away. And it actually fosters church planting by providing a leadership pipeline for church planters. For us, the argument comes down not on whether you do multi-campus but how it is done. Many multisite environments encourage consumerism, foster anonymity, and are built on a cult of personality. We believe there is a way to do it, however, that is God-honoring and that conforms to the highest ideals of what the New Testament says a local church should be.”J.D. Greear, lead pastor, The Summit Church, Durham, N.C.

Copyright © 2009 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

Christianity Today earlier covered satellite campuses in 2005, and recently profiled one of its most prominent proponents, Joel Hunter.

Out of Ur, the blog of Christianity Today sister publication Leadership Journal, has publishedseveralposts on multi-site and video-venue churches. Leadership has also publishedseveralarticles on the subject.

When Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz was edited to become a movie, Miller decided to make some edits of his own—to his own life. He begins to apply some film narrative techniques—for instance, a character needs to do something good before an audience will love him. Miller writes about hiking the Inca Trail in Peru, bicycling across the country, finding his father who he hadn’t seen since childhood, and creating an organization for the fatherless in Portland. Before he began a 65-city book tour in September, Miller spoke with Christianity Today about creating a better story for himself.

In A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, you write about making better stories for ourselves. Do you think that’s a Christian idea?

No, that is just a good idea. The agenda behind this book is to help people understand how story works and how that could affect your lives. It’s more universal. I mean it would be kind of like saying if you wrote a book about how to fix a television. As a Christian, how do you bring the gospel into that? Well, if you brought the gospel into that, you’d be just annoying because people want to know how to fix their television. I try not to spiritualize things that don’t need to be spiritualized. And yet, you know, it is written from a memoir perspective, and I’m a Christian, and so that comes into this book.

Should Christians latch onto the idea that God works through the stories in our lives?

I wouldn’t go that far. I think this book is much more utilitarian. I think it’s very hard for us, for Christians, to understand that it’s okay to read a book, for instance, on how to manage your time. There’s nothing wrong with that. It doesn’t have to be a Christian message and you don’t have to proof text with Bible verses. You can imagine going on Amazon and seeing reviews on a book on time management that just harasses the author, you know, elevating experience over doctrine. This is just a book about finding more meaning in your everyday experiences.

So you wouldn’t want readers to over-spiritualize what you’re trying to say.

I would beg them not to. I think that because I’m a Christian they’re looking for doctrinal statements, and I don’t give doctrinal statements. So this is a book in that category: this next year you can live a much more meaningful life. Christians might say that you can’t live a more meaningful life without Jesus. Well, that’s absolutely not true. You can. You can enjoy a sunrise whether you know Jesus or not. It’s not wrong for us to take something to somebody who doesn’t know the Lord and show them the sunrise and say, “Isn’t this beautiful?” I think that your audience is going to be the audience that does not understand this book. I apologize for that. There’s nothing wrong with writing a book that’s not overtly spiritual.

I didn’t want to abuse Scripture. I didn’t want to have a really great idea for a book and then go, okay, now how can I bring the Bible into this so it has a spiritual feel? Because we’ve all read those books and we just go you could have left all the Scripture out of this and it would have been fine. In fact, by putting Scripture into it, that’s really not what that specific text is actually about. They’re just making it serve their purpose. So I didn’t want to do that with the text.

Where does Jesus fit into better storytelling?

Well, I think in the grand epic Jesus is the hero of our stories. And our stories, as they were, are subplots in a grand epic and our job is not to be the hero of any story. Our job is to be a saint in a story that he is telling. And that’s a book that I’ll write in the future. But this book was really much more of a practical idea, an introductory idea, if you will.

You use some self-deprecation because you seem to be tired of talking about yourself. Why did you write a memoir?

The reason I like writing a memoir is because it isn’t preachy. You get around that authoritarian Do what I say. Live the way I want you to live kind of voice that a lot of people just can’t listen to. By talking about myself I’m kind of coming through the back door, a sort of Trojan Horse approach.

God gave us the ability, unlike other creatures, to introspect. There’s a lot that we can learn about God by studying the human condition, and we are our best examples of that. Can you be self indulgent? Sure. But I think we can spend so much time analyzing whether or not I’m being selfish that you just become selfish. At some point you just have to live.

I think we elevate this idea that if a person has written a book about their story, they must think that they matter. They must think that they’re better than other people. And the truth is you walk into a coffee shop, you sit down with a friend and you’re just telling your story. If I really sat down and wrote a book about all the things I wanted to talk about, about myself, nobody would read it. So with a memoir, you have to actually sit down and go, “What is the reader going to get out of me sharing this story? Where are they going to find themselves in this story?” And if the reader can’t find themselves in the story, then there’s no reason to tell the story.

Would you say that you’re leading the meaningful life that you suggest people lead?

I like my life very much, and there’s not a whole lot that I would change. It’s been a long time since I’ve woken up in the morning and wondered what life was about. I’m not super excited about all the work that has to be done. It’s very depressing to deal with our crisis of 27 million kids growing up without dads. But at the same time, it makes my life much more meaningful than if I just sat around and watched television.

We have about a hundred kids that we’re mentoring in Portland. We have seven churches that are running our program, and we have about two hundred churches that are on a wait list to start our program. Life is about providing mentors for these kids or wrapping up this book or the richness of friendships. But other people have to take responsibility and figure out their own lives.

When people read parts of the book where you are more self-aware or maybe “meta,” it might lead them to think it’s more postmodern. Would you describe it that way?

I don’t know what postmodern means. I’ve never been to an emergent church. I’ve never read a book about postmodernity. I’m not just saying that to get off the hook. One of the things that is so frustrating is when readers will use the word emergent [to describe me]. I attend a 150-year-old Lutheran church. We do liturgy. My theology is Reformed theology. I just had a beer with Brian McLaren once and we didn’t talk about the church. I study literature and I read memoirs to figure out how to write a better one, although this will be my last memoir for a long time.

What do you want people to take away from this book?

I guess I want them to have an enjoyable read and really think about the life that they’re living and ask themselves, Am I living a meaningful existence? Am I serving others? Am I sacrificing? When the credits roll, what am I going to feel when it’s all said and done?

Copyright © 2009 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

See also today’s review of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years is available at ChristianBook.com and other book retailers. Tour dates and tickets for Donald Miller are listed at amillionmiles.com. The Blue Like Jazz film project has raised about half of the money needed to start shooting a movie.

Christianity Today profiled Donald Miller and spoke with him before and during the Democratic National Convention. CT also interviewed Miller about his mentoring initiative. CT also interviewed author Susan Isaacs, who will be appearing with Miller on tour.

Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz became a breakout sensation in 2003, for a number of very good reasons. For starters, the memoir—subtitled “Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality”—was splendidly written. But it was also zeitgeisty in the best sense of the word, capturing the emerging momentum of the Christian hipster set: the 20- and 30-something demographic of post-Religious Right evangelicals for whom the hip/irreverent Relevant magazine was launched (also in 2003). The book was a breath of fresh air for many young Christians seeking less corny ways to express their faith. It was a pretty big deal.

It makes a lot of sense, then, that six years, four books, and untold sales later, Miller’s latest—A Million Miles in a Thousand Years (Thomas Nelson)—uses Blue Like Jazz as a starting point.

You see, this book is (ostensibly) about the process of turning Jazz into a movie. Two filmmakers come calling, Miller agrees to have his life scripted for the screen, and the three men collaborate on a screenplay. It’s a chance for Miller to “edit his life,” to make it more structured, compelling, and, well, movie-like. Does his life, like Casablanca, have purpose in every scene and every line of dialogue? Will his life leave observers with a beautiful feeling as the credits roll?

These questions stand at the heart of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, which is essentially a stream-of-consciousness meditation on story, how our lives are like stories, the theory of narrative, God as a writer, and so on. It’s a movie-like book about a book becoming a movie. The prose alternates between episodic, cinematic “scenes” and philosophical ruminations about story. It’s all very meta and postmodern and layered in an Adaptation sort of way.

Gimmicky though it may be, Million Miles feels very much of the times. A central tension is the burden of making one’s life meaningful—meaningful in the sense of living life theatrically, in dramatic ways and for an audience. Meaningful in the sense of cutting out the boring parts and focusing on conflict, climax, and resolution. In the shallow age of YouTube and The Hills, the expectation to live public, drama-filled lives is simply presumed. Miller’s longing to live a more engrossing story is par for the course in an era of digital exhibitionism.

There is a decided undercurrent of narcissism here, but Miller is largely transparent about it. “Who thinks they are so important they need to write books about themselves?” he wonders, later admitting that in writing himself into a movie, he wanted to create the person he wishes he were, the one worth telling stories about—not necessarily his true self. He could just as easily have been describing the “create yourself as you want to be perceived,” avatar world of Facebook.

The particular Donald Miller we get in this book is a mix between Indiana Jones and Forrest Gump. He’s a globetrotting, backpack-wearing, truism-speaking adventurer who always seems to be on a trip, traveling, or otherwise in motion. Travel, as one might guess, is a major theme. The title hints at this, though its origins in the book are a tad less eloquent than one might expect from the author who once described stars as “silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz.” This time, the title comes from a strange description of heaven as a sort of airport, where new arrivals are shuttled by angels who have to drive “a million miles in a thousand years.” I didn’t really get that image.

But whatever, it’s still a good read. As we learned from Jazz, the guy is a good storyteller. Who can forget the reverse confessional scene from that book? It’s a lasting image with significance beyond itself.

To be sure, Million Miles has its share of memorable “big idea” stories. This volume’s vignettes include going to find Miller’s estranged father, hiking the Inca trail in Peru, riding bikes coast to coast across America, attending Robert McKee’s screenwriting seminar in Los Angeles (famously depicted in Adaptation), and documenting a failed romantic relationship. And those are just what I can remember offhand.

Miller’s ultimate message is that we shouldn’t be overly concerned about the meaning of life because we should be too busy living it. Nobody gets to watch the parade, Miller writes, but everybody has to participate. We should be active, involved, engaged. We should ride bikes across the country and give our money away to charity. We shouldn’t sit around constantly philosophizing or thinking about who we are and what we mean. We should just be and do.

If only there were more passages of memorable storytelling and less theoretical talking about storytelling. It feels disruptive and unnecessary when Miller follows an eloquent story with a comment like, “And that’s the thing you realize when you organize your life into the structure of a story,” or, “The reason stories have dramatic tension is because life has dramatic tension.” He might have benefited from a more thorough commitment to that maxim of cinematic exposition: “Show, don’t tell.”

Still, the writing here is above average and frequently exceptional. Though occasionally it strains to be clever (like in describing Nietzsche as “the Justin Timberlake of depressed Germans”), more often than not it’s crisp and alive with a voice that fans will recognize and understand. Miller’s tone is earnest, largely lacking the cynicism and snark of most of his generation’s writers (not to mention the incredulity of memoirs like James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces, at which this book’s title possibly winks).

Sometimes Miller’s writing is downright Fitzgeraldian, as in this particularly lyrical description of surveying the lifeless “props” and “stage” setting of his living room:

It’s an odd feeling to be awakened from a life of fantasy. You stand there looking at a bare mantle and the house gets an eerie feel, as though it were haunted by a kind of nothingness, an absence of something that could have been, an absence of people that could have been living there, interacting with me, forcing me out of my daydreams. I stood for a while and heard the voices of children who didn’t exist and felt the tender touch of a wife who wanted me to listen to her. I felt, at once, the absent glory of the life that could have been.

Miller is a good writer who’s at his best when his depth is woven into his descriptive narrative rather than in didactic, on-the-nose obfuscations. Not that his idea-oriented passages aren’t insightful. His treatment of God’s sovereignty, for example, is interesting, especially considering the book’s strong bent toward “we have to live better stories” autonomy. In some spots, Miller seems to suggest that God is the ultimate, sovereign author, orchestrating every scene and setting, saying, “Enjoy your place in My story. The very beauty of it means it’s not about you … .” Miller notes that he “feels written” as a character in God’s book, and that each of us is just “a tree in a story about a forest.”

But elsewhere he puts the emphasis on human agency, writing that God gives us “a little portion of skin and a little portion of time and allows us to tell whatever story we want.” Inconsistent? Maybe, but logical consistency is just a relic of modernism, right?

This is a postmodern book. It loudly proclaims itself as such (if not in so many words). Miller is a Gen-X, pipe-smoking, bourbon-drinking, Annie Dillard-referencing, literary Christian, and he makes it clear that meaning is elusive, rational explanation is a dead end, and that King Solomon was right when he said we should mainly work and find love and not fret too much over the fact that all is meaningless. God does not want us to understand him, Miller asserts, only to know him in a relational way. We can’t fathom much in this world, anyway. Epistemological ambiguity is so hot right now.

Or we should just write books about the importance of all this.

Brett McCracken is a reviewer for CT Movies and author of the forthcoming Hipster Christianity (Baker Books).

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Related Elsewhere:

See also today’s interview with Donald Miller

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years is available at ChristianBook.com and other book retailers. Tour dates and tickets for Donald Miller are listed at amillionmiles.com. The Blue Like Jazzfilm project has raised about half of the money needed to start shooting a movie.

Christianity Todayprofiled Donald Miller and spoke with him before and during the Democratic National Convention. CT also interviewed Miller about his mentoring initiative.