A Crowder Concert and a Guy Named Colton

All of creation groans…

Back in the Year of Our Lord 2021, as COVID restrictions had finally released long enough for concert tours to start up again and humanity to start enjoying life once more, our family went to Columbus, OH to see David Crowder.

Crowder sings about Jesus. Apply whatever stereotypes you like. I may love him most for the fact that, years ago, he found a taxidermied arctic fox, adopted it and named it Kenny Rodgers, and now has it at every show. There was even a short-lived series of 42-second videos capturing their shopping adventures together. It just makes me happy.

So anyway, we went to a Crowder concert in October of 2021. We were early. You know how it is - you glance around and make polite eye contact with the people seated near you. You’re about to experience a thing together. Something compels you to see who you’re going to be with on the journey. Or maybe you’re just making sure no one near you is an obvious terrorist. Whatever.

So sitting in the row right behind us was this young man (maybe 15 years old, maybe 25 - I’m not really sure) that I’ll never forget. His name was Colton. I know because I heard the people sitting with (parents or caretakers or church people?) call him that.

Colton, you see, had special needs. And - I don’t know if I’m using the term right - he was nonverbal - as in he made lots of noise but none of those noises were really words. It was more of a guttural groaning thing. And you could tell the people with him knew what he meant and, in general, it was sort of a heartwarming thing to be near. He would create some full-throated groaning - almost like someone was doing a veiled imitation of a roaring lion - and they would respond sweetly and gently, seeing to his needs.

So the night was a banger, as the kids say, and we’re enjoying the concert. And then, right when you’d expect the big hits to come out, Crowder and the gang played the opening chords to THE hit song - like hearing that opening piano riff of “Don’t Stop Believin’” at a Journey concert. I mean, this song is big enough that Justin Bieber is now covering it. Everyone there knows every word and everyone has been low-key waiting to sing it with thousands of other people all night.

The lights are low. The bass notes thrummed deeply throughout the gathered hearts. The crowd was one mass, swaying and singing along. The band dropped out at the climactic chorus and there we all were, alone together with a moment of meaning and transcendence - just the voices and the Spirit in the room. And then…

RAWWWWWWWRRAGHWAWA

Colton, right behind me, was singing, too.

Now, can I be honest?

This is not what you hope for at a concert. You want to experience the artist in a sort of time-absent, one-on-one bubble. The rest of the audience is there as your personal atmospheric support - to cheer and sway and sing-along while you commune with the songs and the evening on some other transcendent plane. It’s an illusion, but a lovely one to inhabit for an evening.

You know that there are thousands of people there with their own problems and issues. You know that someone in the crowd is fighting with their spouse and some kid really needs to pee and that someone got dragged to the concert by their friend only to belatedly realize it was Christian and really they just wants to go home.

I knew all of that in the Palace Theater that night.

But I still imagined I could find that sweet spot where it was just me and the music. And since the music carried my faith in its words, it somehow seemed even more precious. Like it was just me and God.

And then Colton broke that illusion.

He bellowed out.

As the collected masses sang How He Loves Us!, Colton strung together about 73 dissonant consonants.

And for a brief moment I was crestfallen. My moment, my experience, was gone.

Until it hit me.

Colton wasn’t ruining my experience. He was explaining it. Opening it up. Teaching me. Holding a mirror up to my soul.

I started crying. Just openly weeping.

Because the truth of the moment just pummeled me.

It was as if the Spirit of God was warring against the brokenness of Colton’s body.

The guttural moans weren't a distraction. They were a reminder that the songs and stories we sing - songs of healing and freedom and forgiveness and heaven - are not distant ideas but beautiful, living Spirit moments unfolding in our presence.

Colton was not failing to verbalize what he was feeling. He was actually the perfect vocal embodiment of every struggle churning through the thousands of hearts in the room. His groaning was the physical manifestation of our spiritual reality. Of my spiritual reality.

Because what sounds like brokenness leaving my body is received and translated into angelic songs in the heavenly places. My soul, feeble and meek and incapable of beauty, is invaded by the Spirit of God. And, as the battle ensues, melody and harmony and holy rhythm appear where I have nothing but prideful stumbling and hopeless groans.

The Spirit of God is warring against the brokenness in me. Right now. Today. In this moment. I am being repaired. Renewed.

My life isn’t pretty. My days are messy and my thoughts are too often of lesser things. Still the active and apparent Spirit works. There is a Ghost in the room. Translating. Reforming. Guiding. Restoring.

The Bible tells us that all of creation groans for the glory of renewal. We cry out. We are desperate. We long for transcendence. For hope. To be known. To be loved. To be redeemed. You see, we know that there is more to life that the broken vessel we inhabit and more than the imperfections and wounds that make up our stories.

So we groan for that more.

That night, weeping in the midst of a couple thousand people, I was an inarticulate, groaning mess.

And sitting in the row right behind us was this young man (maybe 15 years old, maybe 25 - I’m not really sure) that I’ll never forget. His name was Colton.

He was just like me.

- KB

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For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. - Romans 8:19-23 NIV