Tour Day 14 – Clarksville, TN to Decatur IL

It has been an interesting tour thus far now that we are on our penultimate day. Sorry, that is a word I use when I could use a more common phrase and blend in, but it makes me think I’m smart, even though I’m talking to many who are way smarter than me. Regardless, if you’ve never heard it before, penultimate means next to final. Ok, I’m done being condescending now, I’d like to apologize on behalf of my brain.

In choral sets the penultimate song is called the setup. It’s job is to provide a reprieve for the audience for a moment before the energy of the closer knocks them out of their seat. It’s the eye of the storm that provides contrast so that all of the emotion of the set can come to a peak.

And so today sets as the perfect setup. We have had a lot of different types of churches this tour and, in general, the crowds have been pretty generous in size.  Some have been really big and may even rival homecoming in attendance (though not in energy – not. even. close). All of that energy that we have been accustomed to so far died down a little on the penultimate day. There was nearly no crowd that New G itself didn’t draw.

I’ve gone on 11 tours with New G now, and I’ve been in a lot of powerful performances, but the most powerful was in front of a crowd of three people. It was at 16^th St. Baptist Church in Birmingham back in 2017, poetically on the same tour as this one. It came out of nowhere, the kids just picked up on something ineffable (doh! I did it again) and it just couldn’t be contained.

This performance wasn’t like that.  The difference is that there is a surgical precision to this sermon and this group of kids. They are just consistent, professional, and give the same amazing performance every single time regardless of the size of the audience. I am convinced they believe that it is worth it to give that quality of performance to even just an audience of one person, to just lavishly pour out God’s love. So if this is the calm before the storm…

I’m a little concerned.

Well, we’ve had our setup performance. Get ready for a barn burner.  We all are. We love you all!

Signing off, Joseph