Review: Rock of His Soul

What does it take to get through to kids who have rock music blaring in their ears half the time? For starters, try more rock. At least, that’s one approach taken by Kenny Marks, called the leading Christian “American roots rocker.” But if you listen to his work, especially his latest album, Another Friday Night (Day-Spring), you’ll find he is up to more than just a rowdy time.

“When people catch onto the context of my music,” Marks says, “they find it’s not just rock for rock’s sake. I’ve always had a vision of taking an energetic medium, like rock music, and using it to communicate to kids something really good and powerful, which is a relationship with Christ.”

While rock and Jesus may not be new, Marks’s focus is. He zeros in on relationships—with our friends, with ourselves, and with God—and he sings to teenagers in their own language. Imagine a Jackson Browne who has seen the light, and you have Kenny Marks on Another Friday Night. In fact, the first song begins, “I was runnin’ on empty—Now I’m runnin’ on love.”

The album’s message of hope emerges powerfully from solid imagery and nondidactic lyrics. The song “The Threshold of Regret” tells about a crack in a window pane that no one has fixed for 20 years, a crack caused by a fight between a mother and father.

“I’m trying to point out how many of us as adults leave things unrepaired,” Marks says. “Nobody ever took the time to fix the crack, and I see that in a lot of our lives: We break things, and they need somebody to take time.”

The third song in a trilogy about two high-school kids is typical of how Marks likes to touch on touchy subjects. Johnny and Jeanne must deal with the reality of their sexuality, their unwanted child, their rocky marriage, and their isolation in divorce. As Jeanne tucks her son into bed, she hears him pray: “The next time you see Daddy,” he says to Jesus, “tell him I’m all right.”

“In the area of sexuality,” Marks says, “we really need good Christian models to say, ‘Let’s talk about it, so that long before the issue of abortion comes up, we’ve spoken about the issue of sexuality, and then when these other issues are brought up, we have established in some sense a right to be heard.”

To help earn that right, Marks has produced video versions of “The Next Time You See Daddy” and “The Party’s Over,” the second song in the Johnny and Jeanne story. He also participates in outreach events that have included tours with Billy Graham crusades. “If someone says, ‘Hey, Kenny, we’re doing a three-day event building to a presentation by Josh McDowell and we want you to kick it off right for us,’ I’m glad to help. My goal is to be a servant and be adaptable.

“I want to write about things that Christians and non-Christians—people who struggle—all deal with. I would love to be thought of as a communicator who took a chance.”

By Dan Coran.

ARTBRIEFS

Life Inside

Imagine: You’re a teenager, you’re black, you live in a housing project, and your family barely scrapes by on Mom’s paycheck. Where could Christ possibly fit into the scene for you? That is the question explored in Making It Through the Cracks, a video drama by Urban Ministries, Inc., of Chicago.

The video tells the story of two teenagers who deal with life in the inner city. One admires a character who calls himself Crack and talks about his future to his English teacher: “Take a look at the top spots in every major corporation,” he says. “Do you see any black faces? You see, I’ve got it figured out: I can get rich right here, right now.”

The other teenager attempts to deal with his problems through hard work—and Christ.

Making It Through the Cracks offers a glimpse at different influences on these teens: parents, teachers, friends, pushers—and even Jesus, who compels a kid to “just say no.” There is also a rap testimonial, complete with choreography and strobe photography.

The action-packed video already has garnered one award: It collected a Chicago Emmy for Excellence by an Independent Producer in October 1989. The occasional rough spot in the production only serves to remind viewers that life in the city is not all Huxtables and Jeffersons.

Making Progress

Do you ever get a bit squeamish when talk turns to an important literary work you’ve never read? For many of us, the problem with many classic works is their archaic language and obscure allusions. So for those of us whose seventeenth-century English is a bit rusty, Discovery House Publishers has produced a revised edition of John Bunyan’s classic allegory, The Pilgrim’s Progress.

Complete with extensive footnotes by Warren Wiersbe, this 217-page paperback in modern English removes any plausible excuse for not reading this Christian classic. All biblical allusions are explained, and two additional essays at the end help place the work in its cultural context. Also included are some pen-and-ink drawings of Christian—in Eddie Bauer outdoor wear for his trip to the Holy City.

This book is writ in such a dialect

As may the minds of listless men affect:

It seems a novelty, and yet contains

Nothing but sound and honest gospel strains.

So wrote Bunyan, and Wiersbe has helped to make these strains more audible to the modern ear.

Picture This

Anyone who takes a look at Guido Rocha’s Tortured Christ will realize that the familiar cross we see above the church altar every Sunday is not the only way to depict the sacrifice of Christ. In his book Seeing the Mystery, William Taylor attempts to show us how artists worldwide, and from all eras, have portrayed the life of Christ in art. A quick flip through this thin paperback will be enough to catch the unsuspecting browser by surprise.

Everything from Michelangelo’s Florentine Pietà to Dali’s The Sacrament of the Last Supper is here, including Taylor’s helpful hints as to what to look for in each work. Taylor is a theologian and artist who was a missionary in India for 17 years, then principal of the United Church of Canada’s theological college in Vancouver for 24 years. He developed a collection of over 3,000 slides of religious art, some of which found their way into this 96-page, full-color book.

More pictures and a more nuanced theology would have made the book even better, but as Taylor writes in his preface: “This is not a book of theological theories.… It is an adventure in which each reader is invited to see what the artists may say to him or her.”

By Dan Coran.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.