Christians in punk-rock scene reach friends for Christ through relationship-building

Awhile back, 16-year-old Seth Landerfelt went to court for being caught out past the 11 o’clock curfew in Moody.
   
“They told me to take out my piercings and cut my hair,” he said with a smile. “I went then and got my first tattoo.”
   
After the addition of several more tattoos, a few more piercings and some crazy-colored dyes mixed into his past-his-eyebrows hair, Landerfelt fit right into “the scene” — the crew of teens and young adults who sport similar styles and follow punk-rock and hardcore-type bands.
   
And according to Landerfelt, that’s a very good place for him to fit in — the scene is where he found Christ.
   
“They let me be myself,” Landerfelt said.
   
Churches didn’t accept him, he said, but the Birmingham-based band Fixed til Tuesday did. When Landerfelt replaced his brother as the band’s manager recently, he found a lot more than good music and good friends, he said.
   
“Christ is my Lord and Savior now, and it’s a much greater life,” said Landerfelt, who before falling in with the band dabbled in drugs and was “just trying to please everyone else.”
   
“It was just about me before. It was bad,” he said. “Now it’s about God — my friends, my band and God. These guys (in Fixed til Tuesday) grew me up, and Paddy taught me how to scream and sing, too.”
   
Paddy, or Patrick Schefano, is the lead singer of Fixed til Tuesday, which plays post-hardcore style music, an offshoot of the hardcore punk movement. He subscribes a good bit to the throaty screaming sort of vocals Landerfelt alluded to, though his sound is more melodic than many bands like his. 
   
The “scene kids” who know the band’s music scream right along and mosh (dance while slamming against each other) in the area known as the pit right in front of the stage.
   
The lyrics would surprise anyone not in the scene — if they can understand them.
   
“We gather today, in the name of Jesus. We’ll throw him (Satan) into the abyss and lock hell shut,” Schefano screamed at a recent band CD-release party.
   
More than 400 scene kids were there that night — Feb. 17 — at Covenant Life Church in Pelham listening and cheering as Schefano told the audience, “If you haven’t met Jesus Christ, He loves you more than anyone on this planet ever will — I swear to you.”
   
Graham Kelly, a member of a hardcore band in Nashville called Muzzle Mouth, said evangelism is all relational among scene kids.
   
“They are strong-willed, stubborn kids just like me,” said Kelly, who attends College Heights Baptist Church, Gallatin, Tenn. “If, say, my parents hated my music, hated the way I live, hated it that I went to shows, when you tell me I need Christ, that’s going to roll off my back and not even faze me.”
   
But most shows in local scenes attract the same several hundred people each time, and because of that — unlike any other type of music scene — everybody knows everybody, he said.
   
“It’s got a completely different feel — the bands are more personable. So you have to set a good example. I look like a hardcore kid and I talk like a hardcore kid, but if I can get these kids to see that I’m a good person — loyal to my friends — then relate to them that I’m made by God, maybe they will listen,” Kelly explained. “I’d be down and out like every other hardcore kid if it wasn’t for God.”
   
When Kelly was younger, church people didn’t accept him much of the time, he said. “People complained about the way I dressed. They seemed more worried about that than where I am with my walk with God.”
   
These days, some churches seem to be more open to attracting a totally different crowd of people than churches normally draw in.
   
“Some of them support the heavier music scene, hold shows and build skate parks,” Kelly said. “This shows kids that not all Christians are the same. Some Christians send the wrong message, but we should want them to realize that there are Christians who do care and we’re trying to save your soul here.”
   
The crowd he’s talking about — what do they look like? 
   
“Black band T-shirts, camo shorts, tattooed sleeves (arms) … boys wear girls’ pants and girls have shotgun-blast haircuts,” Kelly said. “A lot of them have tattoos and piercings.”
   
Kelly himself has 13 tattoos  — from an eagle that covers the entire top of his head to the words “amazing” and “grace” inked on each of his hands. And another one he said is significant — “straight edge” — is emblazened across his shoulders.
   
Straight edge, a counter-cultural lifestyle closely associated with the scene, has been around since hardcore band Minor Threat spearheaded it in the early ’80s. Scene kids who adhere to straight edge commit to abstain from alcohol, tobacco, drugs and, in many cases, promiscuity. Although not all who adhere to straight edge are Christians, the idea meshes well with Christianity, Kelly said.
   
“In the sixth grade, when I had just started checking out the punk-rock scene, my friend Luke explained straight edge to me — it sounded completely retarded,” Kelly said with a laugh. “But I thought about it, and it actually made a lot of sense. Those things were never going to be a part of my life anyway, so why not have a conviction and a commitment about it?”
   
Straight-edgers sometimes use “X” as a symbol, taken from the “X” drawn on the hands of those at concerts who aren’t of drinking age to show that they can’t have alcohol. Some, like Kelly, have “XXX” tattoos and others, like Schefano, sign their name surrounded by “X”s, like “xPaddyx.”
   
“Christianity has somewhat faded itself out — or blended itself in — with non-Christians who are straight edge,” Kelly said. “It’s important that we don’t tone ourselves down just so we don’t tick people off.”
   
Eric Anderton, bass guitarist for Fixed til Tuesday, agreed that the example and the relationships are all-important.
   
Before the CD-release show, he walked through the line of people waiting to get in, calling nearly every person by name and greeting each one with a hug or handshake.
   
“You don’t reach them by inviting them to a Sunday morning service — most of them don’t respond to that,” Anderton said. “These kids are looking for someone to look up to and someone to take notice of them,” he said. “Just love on them — there’s nothing more to it. This is where the biggest part of our ministry comes from.”
   
After you’ve built that relationship with them and they trust you, then you can invite them to that Sunday service, he added.
   
Jeremy Folse, guitarist for the group, said a window is opened to relate to scene kids through a type of music that is stereotyped as the music of the unsaved.
   
“It is a type of music that the younger generation is wanting to listen to, so I believe if they or we want to listen to that type of music, it should be about God and our inspiration to live for Him,” Folse said, adding that many of the band’s lyrics talk about victory over Satan.
   
“Worship is not a certain genre of music — it is an expression of love for our God,” Anderton said. “On stage, that’s all we do — we worship God and the kids join in with us.
   
“We are simply a loving worship band that plays a different style — one that is more appealing to these kids than that acoustic guitar could catch.”