A Playlist and a Story

I’ve had the privilege of serving as an adult leader on three mission trips - we call them “Work Tours” - in the past two years. A group of twenty or thirty high school kids (and six or seven adults) pile onto a bus and drive a couple dozen hours to some (usually rural) community in need. The bus ride is wonderful and uniquely torturous. You can’t help but be impressed by the boundless enthusiasm of those young folks. You can also barely keep from throwing yourself under the bus after the fifteenth a capella rendition of “I Gotta Feeling.”

Music, usually awful music, plays a huge part on the trips. Bon Jovi, Disney soundtracks (*shudder*), just about anything in the top 40: all fair game to be played to death. But what high school kid can resist a score of his buds belting out “Don’t Stop Believing” without a shred of irony or self-consciousness? I remember songs by Outkast, Dispatch, even, hell, Juvenile taking on revelatory significance just because they were on a “Work Tour Playlist.”

But I’m an adult now, or at least I have to act like one. No more fist-pumping to “More than a Feeling.” No more losing my voice to “Bad Romance.” Adulthood means sincerity isn’t in the cards anymore.

So I come up with my own Work Tour playlists. Because while I can be with the kids, I can’t be one of them.

We were in the hills of West Virginia, surrounded by what’s truly the music of the country. The playlist unfolds accordingly.

These are the songs I listened to as I watched a group of kids trying to find something they could believe in. Can’t say I wasn’t doing the same thing.

 

Jordan Pedersen mostly doesn’t write about God. Mostly. But he does write about pop culture over at “new millennium culture blog” Charge-Shot!!! Don’t ask him what his dream job is.