Keep in mind that I have no idea what KMax’s spiritual status is right now, but.. if only his early work is worth listening to, then is only Bach’s church music worth listening to? His Coffee Cantata is a great work and greatly shows the sense of humor of a very devout Christian man.

There was “Christian” music long before there was ever a concept of what we today call Evangelical Christianity. Much of it was never conceived in an evangelical notion as though its only purpose was going to be to reach the lost. And, Bach’s overtly religious music and his secular work will always be “Christian” music because of who he was, and I promise you it will outlive DC Talk in the annals of musicology and human culture. I already run into young Christian people who don’t know that there ever was a DC Talk, but they know the name Johann Sebastian Bach.

I think it’s great DC Talk has touched people, and I will always love a lot of their music, but people need to get out of the realm of modern society to make their judgments on things because I can count on one hand the number of shows on TBN that have anything to do with the reality of what God really is in context with Jesus, the Apostles, and early Christians. If we think Constantine’s popularization and proliferation of Christianity is at the heart of what we are, then we have a long way to go. Does that make the modern church irrelevant? No. But the modern church sure is doing about all it can to make itself irrelevant by focusing on modern culture and modern ideas of what Jesus is.

I am not talking about universalizing theology. I’m not talking about any idea goes, or breaking molds to reach new realms of Christian spirituality. I’m talking about the fact that Christianity has been both the creater of culture and supressed by it in history and limiting Christian expression to what DC Talk was is being ignorant of history, and handicapping what any given Christian human being is capable of doing in regards to affecting those around him or her.

I don’t understand where K Max is… from what I’ve read, I don’t see how it makes a bit of sense… but, I’ve not talked with him, and I don’t know how he fits in right now. But, if his music is valid and quality, it is worth listening to. AND, if he was still overtly evangelical (which wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense to me either since I think the results of D.L. Moody make little sense anyway), he would likely still be referring to his “early work” in terms of something he’s progressed and grown from.

“At the end of it all, it’s all about winning souls for Christ…”

I was going to stay away from this comment, but since I’m already here… we’re here to engage our world, to prepare for a better way of living, to revolutionize how we think about love and loss and politics and human sexuality and economics and everything else under the sun. We’re here to perpetuate a different shade of thinking in society, to make Jesus’ idea of how the world is supposed to spin come about. And he, in turn, is getting things ready to create a new society here for us as well.

My point? If this whole Jesus thing is about making a new world, then it seems a given that shades of this new world should come about in our artistic expression, and when an artist attempts to break out of his mold, do new things that he hasn’t tried before, made a creative palette that is consistently unique, he has every right to contrast his current image with his former one.

At the end of it all, it’s about winning souls for Christ, that is the only legacy we leave after 3 decades, nobody will remember Kevin Max, but the revolution of DC Talk – that will be remembered, especially by a 30 year old Pastor, who got saved at a youth meeting listening to Jesus Freak when he was 17.

God bless the early works, they are the only ones worth listening to in my opinion…