Friday night was our annual "Battle of the Bands." This is the third year Anchor has hosted it. We had 12 bands of the Christian "hard-core" variety--lots of screaming and wild antics. Each had 15 minutes to do their very best stuff. Tony, our concert guy, has the system down pretty well. It only takes about eight minutes between bands--time for one band to tear down its stuff and the next one to set up.

We estimate the crowd at 600 kids, maybe more. We parked people at an old Ekrich factory and shuttled them to the church, so kids wouldn't make our neighbors mad by taking all the parking spaces in front of their homes. That worked well. This year, too, we hired two off-duty cops for the whole event. But there were no problems. Well, one window in the sanctuary got broken from the outside--we don't know how--and some band member had an eyelid split open (it happened while they were performing--probably hit by a flying guitar from a fellow band member).

We stack up all of the sanctuary chairs against the walls, since the kids always stand throughout the concerts. Stand, and bang around, and do their little hardcore jigs, which I find fun to watch. Flailing arms and legs, wildly thrashing the air. Banging into each other. A space in the center of the sanctuary cleared out as the makeshift mosh pit.

Most of the bands sounded pretty much alike to me. And to others. While I enjoy these concerts, I'm not a discriminating listener. Others can tell the difference between (I'm using terms here in ignorant ways) metalcore, hardcore, emo, and other types of music. I can't. But I can, at least, tell if they're together, if they need to be musically tighter, if the bass player knows more than three cords, etc. In other words, I can tell if the band members are musically good. Some are. Most are average.

Six hundred kids. They come from all over the city. We're about the only place left in Fort Wayne that allows this type of music. I'm proud of that. Other places would get hung up about finding gum in the sanctuary carpet, about breaking windows, about people smoking outside, about T-shirts with unChristian things written on them, about all kinds of things that go on at these concerts. But it's extremely easy for church people to communicate non-acceptance to kids. Many of these are already out of the mainstream, and they're expecting church people to be non-accepting. Which is why I think they find Anchor to be a breath of fresh air. We like our building, but it's not more important than people.

I think we have four windows to fix right now. Three were broken as a result of ministry events. We need to buy ash cans for outside, so kids have a place to discard their cigarette butts. The gum in the carpet is really difficult to get out. But hey--all of this is just the cost of doing business in our part of Fort Wayne. If the cost is too high, we need to get out and let somebody else give it a shot. But thankfully, we're okay with it. And that makes me very proud to be at Anchor.