The first time I saw Vance I was afraid. He’s a big man with a shaven head, tattoos under his black t-shirt, long gotee tugged at often in conversation, a voice like a lawn-mower, a face like a bulldog and a neck the width of my body. Vance looks more like a Hell’s Angel than the sound engineer for Jars of Clay on the Eleventh Hour Tour. I didn’t expect people like Vance to be mixed up with Christian musicians. On the outside he’s the exact opposite of what my mother wants me to be. I even suspected that roughness of his exterior ran deeper, but instead discovered gentleness, brilliant intellect and humor and fatherly kindness. The man is more like Christ than most "pretty" people I know.

I bring up Vance because he didn’t meet my expectations and my expectations have gone unmet all week. When I meet people I tend to judge them as good or bad, Christian or not, strong or weak, smart or dumb etc. It’s a horrible habit that I took up early in life to avoid wasting myself on those who may not be up to my standards. It’s sick really. The older I get though the more my expectations and predictions are proved wrong and the more I’m convinced that getting to know people by spending time with them works far better than clairvoyance - and no one is a waste of time.

Still, I started this tour with a few predictions - expectations. For starters I just knew the Jars of Clay guys would be these deep intellectuals who would sit around on the tour bus reading Thoreau to each other while incense burned nearby. They’d love music and movies I’ve never heard of – probably foreign, French perhaps. I figured I would have a hard time breaking into their social circle of four. I can’t tell you exactly why I thought these things and many more - but I did and I was wrong.

Friday I met the bus at a Kroger parking lot in Nashville to head to Chattanooga. Soon after getting on the highway one of the guys confided in everyone on board about a friend who was going through a very hard time. Immediately another person on the bus suggested we stop and pray - we did. Four guys close enough to be brothers, their drummer and bass player, their road manager and me (a complete stranger) prayed to the same God for healing and peace. In the days that followed I talked with Dan and Charlie about their kids and their worst gigs ever, to Matt about U2 and the evolving purpose of the band, and laughed at Steve’s remixes of old Jim Baker sermons he made using his new turntables and some vintage funk records.

In place of Thoreau Dan was reading U2 at the End Of The World. Instead of incense there was popcorn and laughter in the air. Instead of foreign music their was old Culture Club, PM Dawn and, of all things, Jim Dean’s "Big Bad John." There was no French - just Steve’s horrible butchering of Spanish. And instead of a family too tight to take in outsiders I found acceptance and the beginnings of friendship founded on a common love of music and God.

Which brings us back to Vance. As I ate dinner with Vance and the guys last night, what I saw around our table was a picture of acceptance, which I’m learning is a cornerstone of who Jars of Clay and Jennifer Knapp are. They play music without boundaries for people with and without faith. They play for people who look like you and people who look like Vance. They play for many who do not know God, who expect to be judged or ignored by those who do. They expect to be unloved and left out by people of faith. Like me, they won’t get what they expect from those on the Eleventh Hour Tour.

Talk to you again soon. Shaun