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Issue date: 2/5/10 Section: Life

"Who cares if they're just stories, what if I need 'em?" Sings Ben Rector Tuesday night at the After Dark event in Taylor Auditorium. Rector finished the night with a wholesome and uplifting performance. His follow-up performance to the main "Sermon" of Joe White, was the main event for many students.

I was honestly surprised at the quality of the performance, especially considering the fact that it was the band's first performance together. After an attempt to involve the crowd in a sing along, Rector interrupted his next song to ask the audience to give him something to sing about. Some goof said basketball and Rector goes on singing, adding funny punch lines about basketball, which I thought was pretty cool.

Rector had a subtle yet moving presence during what a lot of students considered the most powerful moment of the evening. Rector stood on the corner of the stage, strumming and singing a beautiful song of praise while students carried to the stage a flashcard which contained what keeps them from giving their lives to Jesus written on them. The flashcards ("sins") of the students were nailed to a cross, balanced by a group of five or six football players, in exchange for a chain-link that represents their commitment to Jesus.

Joe White began his sermon with a quirky introduction of himself. White then played a video, which to me screamed "propaganda." After the video, a bright light appeared, White was under the light carrying a telephone pole on his shoulder to the stage talking as if he was the man hired to build the cross for Jesus Christ's crucifixion. White and a few stagehands lifted the log onto the stage. White continued on chopping at the log speaking the whole time. After the creation of the cross, White continued his sermon, revealing that he had cancer and leukemia.

He then told the story of a boy with cerebral palsy who can't talk, walk, or even hardly move, he tells how the boy has a computer that he communicates with and how the boy suggests to his father that he should push him in a marathon race to raise money. White told how the father pushed the boy in the race and how the boy told his father that he didn't feel handicapped while he was crossing the finish line. He told how the boy's father loved being able to make his son feel normal and how they raced every marathon they could and how they finished the iron man marathon. White played a video with inspiring clips of the father and son and continued his sermon, explaining how Jesus wants to help you not feel handicapped any more. White also spent a lot of his sermon telling stories of people who were moved to give their lives to Jesus after one of his sermons. White also mentioned the NFL teams he has ministered too.

As for me, I arrived 20 minutes late, right after the performance by THSL. Every student I asked said they enjoyed his performance. I was a little surprised that I had missed it because I figured there would have been some kind of introduction, but oh well. All in all, I left After Dark feeling positively uplifted, and while asking students what they thought of the event, I came across a student named Kendra who said, "It changed my life, it was very powerful."

I'm just curious as to how many of the students who committed their lives to Jesus by literally nailing their "sins" to a cross will honestly make an effort to do so.

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