Day 7

Welcome back!

I am currently in the midst of a 30 day challenge to listen to only Christian music, and I have just completed my first full week. It has been a crazy wonderful week, and been very fulfilling so far! If this is your first time reading my blog, then I suggest you go back to my first blog and discover why I am taking this challenge. And if you want to know about whether this has done anything in my life yet, then I suggest you go read any of my other blogs. Anyways, let’s get into today’s blog.

When I first accepted this challenge, I was obviously excited about the potential of what listening to only Christian music could bring to my faith and my life, but I would be lying if I didn’t have a tinge of worry about how I was going to be able to do it when I listen to as much music as I do at a school. Because you see, for those of you who don’t know me, I am an elementary PE teacher. And as part of being an elementary PE teacher, I like to play music for the students while they do their running during warmups or during any games that we might be playing. So when I decided to only listen to Christian, I was a little worried about the prospects of only playing Christian music in a public school setting. However, I am happy to say that I have played *mostly* Christian music throughout the school day (Yes, I will admit that I have not only played Christian music throughout the school day, but that is because I am technically not allowed to play Christian music in school) and I have been pleasantly surprised by the response that I have gotten from the music!

Now, I don’t like the term “pleasantly surprised” here because I don’t feel like it accurately describes how awesome the response has been to the music I have gotten! For you to fully understand why a few students responding favorably to a few songs that I have played has taken me by so much shock, you need to understand the environment we have at our school. The school that I teach at is actually a charter school, meaning that students have to apply to get into it, and they can come from literally anywhere. They are not restricted to living in a certain area in order to attend our school. On top of that, the kind of people who send their kids to our school are usually a bit different from the types of people who send their kids to a standard public school. Our parents are very particular about the kind of things that they do and do not let into their kids lives, which is not necessarily a bad thing! But for some of those parents, one of the big things that they restrict for their kids is the idea of any other religion or belief system being introduced to their kids. So when I got my job at my school, I was warned to not bring any kind of religion into anything that I do because it might offend someone.. That is why the idea of playing Christian music in school was such a scary idea for me at first. I wasn’t sure if I was going to offend someone so much that they might try to get me fired! However, that has not been the response that I have gotten at all, and the only reason I can think of for that is because God has his hand on this. God is in control, no matter the situation, and no matter if people believe that he exists or not.

As I have alluded to, the response that I have gotten from the students about the songs that I have been playing has been extremely positive, and I think that has happened because of 3 things. The first reason that I think I have had a significant number of students coming up to me and asking me about the songs that I am playing is because I have been able to play the kinds on music that many of these kids want to hear, but otherwise wouldn’t be able to hear in school. What I mean by that is I have been able to play more hip-hop music and more EDM style songs this week than I would have been able to previously because those types of songs typically do not have messages that can be played in school. What I have found is that many of the students, especially the boys, love the beats that come in those types of songs. They love the way the bass rattles your bones, and the love the way the music gives you a bit of an adrenaline rush. However, because those songs typically come with words that bring death, they unintentionally allow death and destruction to be spoken into their lives. But with the Christian Hip-Hop, I have been able to give them the beats and the flow that they have been looking for without having those toxic messages being poured into their lives. And the response to that has been beautiful. The next reason that I think that I have had a lot of kids enjoy the music is simply because the songs are really good. Just because a song is Christian does not mean that it is automatically going to be the slow gospel song that many people think of. And I spoke at length about this exact topic in my second blog post. So if you want to read more about the depth of the Christian music genre, then I suggest you go read that blog. So I definitely think that the depth of the genre has been part of the reason that the students have enjoyed it. And then the third and final reason that I think the students have enjoyed the music is because there is a lot more students than I originally thought who listen to Christian music outside of school. Before I started to play these songs, I didn’t think that anyone would know any of the songs. But to my surprise, when I was playing Lauren Daigle before school one day (And it wasn’t even You Say that I was playing!), one of my 4th grade girls literally RAN up to me to say that this is Lauren Daigle and she loves her music! Hearing that honestly made my morning, because I wasn’t expecting anyone to know who I was playing, but not only did this girl know who she was, but Lauren Daigle was her favorite artist! This story gets even better though because this same girl then proceeded to tell me about how her family always listens The Message (The Sirius XM Christian Channel) every time they are in the car. She also proceeded to tell me about how she is going to a TobyMac concert this weekend, and the church that her and her family goes to. And all this came from one of my more shy students! Just hearing Christian music brought all of this out of her, and she then wanted to have a conversation about her faith with me! Now, I don’t know about any of you, but that is something that I can only pray for to happen, because I don’t really know how to bring up the topic of faith in school. But here we are talking about it! That is literally the definition of a God Thing! That is only something God can make happen, and he made it happen through the use of playing his music. So I think it goes without saying, but I am going to continue to play *mostly* Christian music at a school, because I am starting to see that this challenge of mine, might just be changing more lives than just mine. Thank you for reading, and I hope that you have a blessed rest of your day.