Hillsongs

Look at this picture. Enough said.


(Sorry this post is late, Blogger was down for a whole day before I could get to it.)

Actually, read more about my personal thoughts here:
I am not a great fan of Hillsongs. I'm one of the people who's absolutely annoyed that all the songs we sing at church are a product and commodity (almost) of this one band. I was one of the people who turned up wondering why the eff I was there in the first place. It may be a product of thinking from hipsters, and if hipsters ever heard of Hillsong they will probably make vomit gestures over the place. C'mon, a band that makes money from Christian music that sounds like the same post-rock year after year? And no, I'm not a hipster (and no I'm not being ironic, I am actually a bit too FOB to be hipster, and the act of giving Hillsongs a go really just disproves the claim).

But I know that there's another reason for that thinking. I have a father who doesn't believe in Christ, a sister who I don't want to talk about, and all my good friends are not Christians. With the people I hang out with, I literally hang in the blood bath of the world; I get to hear stories of sex, stories of getting drunk out at that party, and stories close to condemning Christianity all the time; if not by voice, it's by Facebook. And hanging out with Hillsongs will make me look 'uncool'. I know that is a very stupid thing to do for Jesus Christ (see Mark 8:38), but it is definitely in my subconscious. I feel all the time my father, my sister, and my friends are looking at me when I speak about Christianity.


As much I hate to let go of who I am, I found it incredibly hard to let go of all that pre-positioned thinking about Hillsongs. I was almost to the point of standing there and not being moved. But eventually I got into it, and it came from constantly thinking that God's presence was there, that the people on the left and on the right, down and up  had come for Jesus, and if everyone else around came for Jesus, naturally I would be too. It was a great night I do have to say. I got excited like a giggly child again. I sung at the top of my lungs when Hillsongs for their last encore decided to play a old favorite 'One Way' and as much as I really couldn't jump because I was at the top of the stage and I could fall down and trip on the people below, I felt like it what it was back in the early days of the youth being no more then twenty people. The powerpoint slides had those cheesy pictures of 'One Way' road signs all over them, Jon will be playing keyboard drums and singing while everyone clapped and jumped for joy. The track listing for the concert was brilliant too; Hillsongs mixed their songs in ways I couldn't have conceived would work, as well as using different synthesizer patterns for other songs (shame my short term memory can't conjure up any examples, otherwise I would be all over the worship team on them. Never mind, Sarah was there so I think she might have got ideas).

Sure it felt weird being in a stadium setting. But now I can boast that I've been to a live Hillsong concert to all my Christian friends who haven't seen Hillsong. And in fact, eventually it felt like I was in back in the days of youth where I didn't even know what Hillsongs was but damn, that music was great to jump and worship to.

After the concert, all of my Christian friends that attended posted up on blogs, on Facebook, invaded Twitter feeds to proclaim how awesome the concert was. I have to admit I wasn't as enthusiastic as them. I really just wanted to hit the bed, and worry about the lost time I could have done doing a multitude of sections that the whole student body of 3rd year architecture already had done.

And as much as I think that Hillsongs wasn't a great deal at all, that attending one Hillsongs concert is not going to change my life unlike the way it impacted on my other Christian friends, it probably will stain my memory for a while. I'm not at the stage anymore where I would be sitting in a class and when I close my eyes, the lights, the raised hands and the drum beats would come back to me, and I would stretch my arms and wish I was there again. I never will be. Life has damaged my appreciation for any worship session. It's so sad that it's come to this, that I have to resort to nostalgia to bring back the energy of worship.

I am probably so far and distant from Jesus, as far and distant as half my non-Christian friends that I know. I've been so disappointed and drowned in failures. I've tried to justify my living by trying to devote myself to my studies, trying to play kind to my parents, trying to provide help to friends in need, trying to get a job and moving on. I have such difficultly pulling myself to believe that Jesus is all I need. There are so many questions I have and so many things I know that contradict Christianity.

But they've told me I need to hang on. All that jazz of my mum dragging me to church to make me believe, all that trouble of Jon and his youth committee to bring me up in Christ properly, and finally all that effort that Jesus made himself to die on the cross to save my sins is absolutely becoming useless to me now. Why don't I leave the church now? I have every reason to. But it's because I'm aware of my friend's efforts, and even if they were tiny, or even if they were large, it is too big to back away from. It's because of Jesus, long story short.