What Was It Like Playing In A Secular Band?
March 2, 2025
Bodi-wan
When people find out I used to pay in bands, it opens up all
sort of great conversations. I’ve been a Christian who has played in secular
bands and Christian bands. I’ve mostly sung, played guitar for a time in one
and bass for once for a band.
Were any of my bands famous? Nope. Not at all. Our biggest
crowds rivaled about 400-500 people a few times, but otherwise, we would often
play in front of crowds of 100 or so. They
were fun gigs and I loved performing and interacting with so many people and
signing autographs and talking music. Our recordings have largely been subpar
with little experience or lack of decent recording equipment in those days.
As a Christian singer, I tended to control lyrical content
of our original music which gave us a clean lyrical composition—for the most
part—unless a song was written specifically by another member—then we often
battled over certain wording. Nevertheless, I tried to be honorable when covering
secular songs or working with secular artists who were members of the band too.
I wanted to do them justice but would sometimes improvise certain words when singing
live if it were blatantly anti-Christian.
I’ve often been asked about nature of the secular scene by
Christians. And I’m right up front about how bad it can be. It wasn’t always
bad of course, but when you have people getting drunk or high at your shows—dumb
things happen. For example, I’ve had people throw beer bottles at me on stage.
I’ve had girls flash me, when I’m trying to sing, or ask me to sign parts of
their body that were questionable. Of course, I tried to avoid such situations
and sign in more respectable places while other band members didn’t! I’ve had to
deal with people yelling at me and threatening or intimidating me while on
stage.
I’ve been behind the science where bands that we played with or were hanging out with are doing lines of
drugs or smoking things they shouldn’t and I would always pass and say I’m the
singer and try to avoid those situations as well. But the fact is that in secular
venues, these things can and do happen—not a lot—but they do.
This is why, as a Christian, I’ve always looked at these things as teaching points and encourage other Christians not to get caught up in secular music. It’s not all that it’s cracked up to be. If you can do Christian music—do it and avoid these scenarios all together.
So I want to encourage Christian artists to be God-honoring
their music. And that is why I finally just starting doing music on my own so
that I could honor and glorify God with it.
