A Pastor's Soundtrack

My friend Jon Coutts and I studied at Briercrest Seminary together. He graduated a year before me, and before he left to pursue God’s next thing in his life, he gave me a special Mix-CD that he called “The Seminary Soundtrack.” It was a collection of songs that had been meaningful to him during his time at school. Many of them were songs we had enjoyed together in some way or another; a number were written by friends of friends; and even a few of our own compositions made the cut. I found it in my CD compartment in the car the other day and gave it a fresh listen: what is it about music that unlocks the floodgates of memory the way it does?

Mix-CDs are a dying art, I think. Time was the care and patience that went into making a Mix-Tape (only later a Mix-CD) made it necessarily a labor of love. Achieving the right progression from hard-to-soft or vice versa, the perfect blend of eclecticism in genres, a tasteful degree of self-expression in the song list, what Davis from Corner Gas calls “the aural journey of the Mix CD”—it doesn’t happen just for wanting it.

I’ve been thinking about this all today because this August marked the start as my fourth official year as pastor of the FreeWay. If we had space enough and time, I might hash out the many lessons and diverse challenges these last three years have given me; but in lieu of a more detailed memoir, I was thinking about what the “Mix CD” of my first three years might look like. These are the songs that got me through: some coming like god-sends at just the right moment of spiritual exasperation; others drowning out the chaos in my head when the inner-talk got too frenetic; others still articulating the ache in my gut for hope when words alone couldn’t do it.

If I were to make a soundtrack of my first three years pastoring, these are the songs that would make the list. It says more, perhaps, than a detailed memoir ever could.

1. “Chicago,” Sufjan Stevens
I made a lot of mistakes in my life

2. “I’ll Go Crazy if I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight ,” U2
It’s not a hill, it’s a mountain when you start out the climb

3. “Let Down,” Radiohead
One day I am going to grow wings / A chemical reaction/
Hysterical and useless / Hysterical and let down

4. “Bigot Sunrise,” Tonic
I’m not alone, but I’m far from home

5. “The Medicine,” John Mark McMillan
... with a hole inside your chest the size of a city block...

6. “Exit,” Radiohead
Breathe, keep breathing, don’t lose your nerve

7. “Nadir” (Me)
When you reach the nadir of the heart I’ll be there

8. “Between the Cracks,” John Mark McMillan
He’s raising the dead in the graveyard, we’re we’ve laid down our dreams and his name is hope

9. “Welcome,” Hey! Rosetta
Sorry, this is it: it’s cold and hard and badly lit

10. “Winter Winds,” Mumford & Sons
And my head told my heart let love grow, but my heart told my head, this time no

11. “Breathe,” U2
Every day I die again and again and reborn /
every day I need to find the courage to walk out into the streets

12. “Chester Munday,” Brock Tyler
Just like Chester Munday I’m a prairie boy forever