MAAP

Kairos is the greek word for God’s perfect time. It’s like an eternal moment in our chronological experience here on earth. It’s what I like to call a Flyleaf moment… A moment of clarity.. A moment where we somehow touch eternity and the eyes of our hearts open up to something beyond our earthly human experience. It’s funny to think my husband was in a band called Kairos before he knew who Flyleaf was. We were both in bands named after a moment with God.

My husband Josh and his brother Jason realized something while playing in a local band a few years ago. Many times, when you’re in a local music scene, you see another band play, and immediately thoughts of comparison and competition flood your thinking. If you can’t relate to this, then girls, we know how this happens when we get ready to present our pretty side to the world at school. We finally arrive on campus, after all our hard work, and immediately begin to judge the appearance of the first girl we see. Even ones we call our close friends.

There is a great line from John Mellencamp’s song ‘Wild Nights’ that I think of whenever I’m getting ready to go out with girlfriends..

‘All the girls walk by, dressed up for each other.’ he sings.

Its true. A lot of our presentation has to do with the fact that we know we will be judged by the girls. But of course there is always that wildcard girl that no one really understands. When you talk to her, she has this mysterious ability to just be herself. You know she is not concerned in the least with your opinion of her. She doesn’t notice your disdainful eyes staring at her weird shoes. If you make a comment about them, she laughs and says something like, “Yea I guess they are kinda weird.” Then she looks up like she is proud of her weirdness. She either has a lot of random friends from every click, or she doesn’t have many friends at all and doesn’t seem to mind. There is no judgement in her for others, so she has a hard time receiving judgement from others.

In the music scene, you rarely come across a band brave enough to be themselves. But when you do, as an artist you are either intrigued, inspired and convicted, or you are condescending and critical, calling your criticism contructive… “If they would only stop twitching like that, and change that stupid shirt then maybe I could listen to their music.”

When we started Passerby as a local band I was always haunted by these words from Jesus:

“You will be treated as you treat others. The standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged.” (Matthew 7:2)

I always thought, “If I trash talk a band, somewhere there will be a person trash talking us.” So I always tried to find good things to think and say about the local bands in our area.

Josh and Jason saw all the competition in their local music scene. They had it in their hearts to start a group that would foster local unity and inspiration. They would call the group MAP, the Music Alliance of Pittsburgh. MAP would commit to going to each others shows, supporting each other however they could, and meeting together regularly to be build relationships. When their band broke up a while ago the idea sort of fizzled out. But recently we have picked the idea back up and started a similar version of this calling it MAAP, the Music and Art Aliance of Pittsburgh. We meet once a week, have a meal together and talk about what God is teaching us as artists and musicians. We pray for each other and have become a sweet little family. I’m so proud of the artists in our group and I can’t wait to see all that God will do with these talented, humble leaders.