Greetings from Keynote!

Thank you for your prayers for our international trips that took place in India and Central Asia. Keynote's aggressive rock band, Giants of Silence, returned this week from their four-week outreach tour in India. The band performed 21 concerts in 13 different cities for over 10,000 people. While the band was able to share the gospel at each of their events, only 13 events allowed an opportunity for a response card. At those 13 concerts, almost 800 people indicated a decision to begin a relationship with Jesus Christ!

One story in particular stood out to me as I read updates from the band:

In Hubli, the concert host found out that a permit was needed for the concert. Securing a permit wasn't as easy as just filling out some paper work. After numerous vists to the police station, the permit was granted with the stipulation that there would be no "dancing, praying, converting, etc.".

The host informed the band that although they couldn't ask people to pray from the stage, they could "inform" them of what words they could use if they chose to pray at another time. He also thought jumping would be okay because it isn't dancing!

So, a few minor adjustments were made to the band's normal set, and they shared the gospel with the 300 people in the audience. Three police officers were there and they didn't seem to have any problems with the program. The concert host apparently made an impression on the police by his persistence and unwillingness to compromise to secure a permit.

Through all of the visits to the police station a relationship began between the concert host and one young officer. Vellu, the concert host, shared the gospel with this young man and he accepted Christ. He would like to meet further with Vellu to learn more about his new relationship with Jesus.

As you can imagine, the cost of following Christ in India can be far greater than doing so in America. Many of these new believers are likely from Hindu or Muslim backgrounds. Please continue to pray for these new family members as they learn more about knowing God and walking with Him.


Thanks for your prayers! We're so grateful for your continued interest in this ministry and your partnership with us!

Hey all!

This is from our partner ministry, ForeRunner, in Singapore. It's encouraging to read some of the stats from their summer project!

Just as a quick report... from my recent mission trip in South Thailand & Bangkok from June 10th to 22nd.

13 Days
10 concerts
2 States (Bangkok & Nakhon Si Thammarat)
1486 heard the gospel
595 prayed to receive Christ
61 interested to know more

Would you rejoice with us, together with the angels in heaven for the many who entered the kingdom of God! =)

Our lives have been greatly enriched because of your friendship & partnership.

Thanks....
Simon & Lillian Seow
(Joshua, Emily & Zachary)

Greetings from Keynote!

Last week, we wrapped up our 14th annual Keynote Summer Project. As I sat at the closing dessert and listened to the testimonies of the students, I was amazed by the ways that God worked in and through these young men and women.

I know for many of the students, this was a life-changing experience. They got a glimpse of the ways that God can use their unique talents, gifts, and stories to take the gospel to a lost world. Students who had histories of health concerns (including an amputation), depression, and poor life choices were able to use the concert stage to share the way that Jesus redeemed their lives and their personal circumstances. The vulnerability of these students led to many rich, spiritual conversations following their concerts.

In just under three weeks of touring, the five Summer Project bands performed 57 outreach concerts to a total of nearly 6,000 people. They performed on military bases, in homeless shelters, on beaches, and in many other settings. And those outreaches resulted in at least 248 individuals indicating that they invited Christ into their hearts!

Please pray for these students as they return to their families, friends and campuses. Many of them are going back to situations that are less than encouraging as it relates to ministry and their spiritual life. Our desire is that these students would be use the things they learned on this project to walk with God and minister effectively for many years to come. You can also pray that many of them would return to work with us as interns or full-time staff!

Thanks again for your partnership with us!

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. -Marianne Williamson

Hey Keynote!

This is Amanda again. Before we left Daytona Florida for Tennesse, we had a chance to go to church on sunday! We all decided on a drive in sunday morning service! Let me tell you it was an experience! When we arrived there, we had someone meet us at the drivers side door asking if we wanted to take communion, and we were handed little cups of grape juice and bread. When we found a spot to park, we tuned our radios to 88.5 and listened to the preacher. We could see him move evey once and a while from the church balcany he was preaching at. It definately proved that you can worship God anywhere!

***THAT IS HILARIOUS!***

We are now in Tennessee at a kids camp minustry. These kids range in age from 8th graders to seniors in highschool. During the day all of the kids are gone working on fixing up broken down houses and things like that. There are two different sites for this camp. Last night we performed for the kids on the campsite 45 minutes away. It was really laid back and half of the kids went to bed or something like that. Im not gonna lie, it was a little discouraging to see, but after the concert we had plenty of kids that were excited to talk to us. I think we all realized that its not the size of the audience that matters, it is the amount of people that we touch.

Tour has definitely been an amazing experience!

Your sis in Christ,

Amanda from Mangofish

Infinit Impact is our Urban Gospel group for the summer!










Impact is Campus Crusade's African-American student movement specifically geared towards ministering to the African-American community. They are AWESOME and wickedly talented this year!

Here's an update from Gabriella, their fabulous drummer this year. Keep in mind that this is a summary of pretty much every show they've played in the last two weeks, so it's a bit long:

Greetings Everyone!

God has been doing some amazing things through Infinit! The tour has truly been a time where each of us have seen God in a new way. I haven't been able to update you frequently on what's been going on so I want to take this time to tell you how the tour has been to this point so please forgive me if this update is a bit longer than you expected it to be.

Our first concert was in Lanham, MD at a a church picnic and God truly moved. We were all a bit nervous and weren't sure of exactly how things would be now that we had left the protective environment that we had at Keynote, but once we got up and began to minister God showed up. We saw eight people give their lives to Christ and although it was a church picnic it was held in a park so many people from the community came over because they heard the music. It was an awesome experience.
















It was the next day that I personally felt like I saw exactly why God had us to be a part of this music project. We had a chance to minister in Richmond, VA. Although we were working in conjunction with a church, we did our concert outside of a recreation center in a housing project. It was so amazing to see how powerful God is and how he truly can use his people to be light in darkness.

Before we performed we were told that we were in the roughest housing projects in Richmond and someone had been shot and killed that very morning. But God gave us the boldness to perform in the same manner that we had rehearsed and people were literally drawn to the area that we were outside. It was about 98 degrees outside so we passed out Popsicles and just believed God to bring people out. We saw many people come to Christ and just saw a greater sense of peace in that area while we were there. That to me was the turning point in tour when we were able to see how God truly wanted us to go outside of the church and minister to all people.


We continued to see the power of God as we went to our next location in Alexandria,VA at a maximum security juvenile detention center. We saw those kids go from looking hard and disinterested to them not wanting us to leave when we finished. Many of them expressed to us just how glad they were that we came, and that they wanted to get involved with us once they got out.


One of the biggest highlights of our tour occurred a couple concerts later in Virginia Beach, VA. We had a concert on the boardwalk at 8:30 pm and 10:00 pm. God truly allowed us to be free in Him. It looked like a party on the beach. People came and were engaged. They gave us energy and were not ready for us to leave. God gave us an awesome sense of credibility with the audience which allowed us to effectively minister to them.

That brings us up to the last few concerts that we did. We ministered at both an all mens and all womens juvenile detention center in Birmingham and once again God gave us credibility and allowed them to receive us and to allow us to minister to them.

We then went to two churches one in Birmingham two nights ago and one in Alpharetta, GA last night. Both concerts were in front of youth and truly allowed us to connect with them. We saw many people come to Christ.


We have two more concerts left. One tomorrow and one Sunday. I can not wait to see how God is going to close out this project. We have all grown so much spiritually and are amazed every time God moves through us and saves his people.

Thanks for reading, we appreciate all of your prayers and support!

Best Regards,

Gabriella Cudjoe (Gabby)

Hello friends!

I write this email with a hint of sadness. We just finished our last show in Indianapolis.

I ended my last email with our show in Las Cruces. The next state we rocked out in was California. We were blessed to be hosted by the awesome kids from the Santa Cruz summer project.

Our first CA show was at a homeless shelter. The residents were so excited. God continues to humble us with His faithfulness. The shelter was very well organized and provided us with tons of yummy hot dogs and hamburgers. After the show, we spent the first night riding rides on the boardwalk...woooot for roller coasters!

Our second show was for the Santa Cruz project kids for an outreach. The students were so awesome, sporting shirts with duct-taped S's on them:). The crowd was very receptive and even moshed a little bit (haha..wooohoo!) The students showered us with food and were a big help loading/unloading the bus.

Eugene scooted us over to Ft. Collins to play at CRU's New Staff Training. The show went well and the CRU kiddos seemed to really enjoy listening! We pray that this show opened the door for more future shows for keynote.

Today was our last show as I mentioned earlier. I have to admit, while Wesley was singing the song Home I kept repeating, "No...I'm not going home, choke back tears, I'm staying at Keynote forever;)."

Swerve has been an amazing experience. I can say that God has blown us away with His love, joy, power and hope.

Sending some Swerve love
Kirsten

I just finished watching "Jesus Camp". VERRRRRYYYY interesting...

I literally just finished watching it, so I don't have a response that is fully formed in my mind yet. Everything is still in "Alphabet soup" stage in my head, swirling around until words start to solidify and make sense.

Anyways, I just started looking up the whereabouts of Becky Fischer, one of the main characters of this pseudo-documentary about a kids ministry she runs that is highly controversial, mostly due to the borderline scary ways of "indoctrinating" children with the gospel and how to be an army of God to "take back America for Christ."

As I was searching online, I came across a blog that mentioned how Becky Fischer had to actually close her Jesus Camp because it was vandalized and harassed after the making of the film.

I found an anonymous comment on the post from a non-Christian, that I thought to be very interesting.

Any comments yourself, and I'm all ears:

Those kids are going to do the work of the Earth, because they're going to realize that they are the Earth...and that sense of spirit and love and beauty is much more powerful than any hateful doctorine they were fed as a kid. And they may even retain their original beliefs, but if they're really smart, they'll catch on pretty quickly that you don't get anywhere by disrespecting another person's belief system and forcibly inserting your own to replace it. They'll realize that when Jesus said "The meek shall inherit the Earth," he wasn't referring to a group of obnoxious, sexually repressed, homophobic racists with unfortunate hairdos in Kansas City who think the entirety of the human population, excepting those who share their beliefs and are not from competing churches, are going to roast in hell. He was talking about the humble who take care of the Earth and work with it, not against it.

Yes, it's a little edgy, but it's probably one of the better apologetic rebuttals from a non-Christian standpoint that I've heard in a long time. And kudos to this person for actually interpreting that scripture correctly!

Now I've perked your interest. Go rent the movie and I'd love to hear your thoughts on it! Comment away!!! Have a good night!

Swerve is our Pop/rock group for the summer!

They've been touring out in towards the west in Colorado and New Mexico.

Here's what Kirsten has to say from the road!

6/15/07: Fort Collins, Co
God blessed us with amazing weather for our first outdoor show in Colorado! A local church sponsored the event, graciously providing us with food and smiles! The concert had a large amount of children, which was very refreshing. A 12 year-old girl started a relationship with God! We were very blessed with wonderful hospitality.

6/16/07: Fort Collins, Co
Wow. God has continued to teach and humble us as we continue our tour. We entered this outdoor concert sponsored by a homeless shelter a bit worried due to limited access to power. The show started out with many shelter residents, but continued to grow as the show progressed. After the show we had the opportunity to chat with many shelter residents. I can say that I was personally inspired and humbled. 8 people started a relationship with God! We are so excited and continue to pray that we (Swerve) continue to keep God as our center:).

6/18/07: Las Cruces, New Mexico
Can you say beautiful?! God's beauty was so breathtaking and majestic. We arrived in New Mexico late in the evening and spent the next morning catching up on much needed sleep while J.J. and Adam drove to Texas to fix Eugene's air conditioner (yippppeeee!) Our show was held outside in a band shelter (way cool, crazy fun paint job). We had some technical difficulties (guitar mishaps,etc.). Aaron, our guitar player, made a good point, reminding us that satan is always ready to attack. 3 people started a relationship with God! Kristin and I had an amazing opportunity to speak to a group of young girls, only one who spoke English. We were blessed with amazing host families and weather.

We are so excited to serve God and thank all of you for your prayers!
God Bless,
Swerve (Kirsten)

Proof of Purchase is our student worship band for the summer!

Yes, that's right! They were in the NYC! They played at an inner city rescue mission and also at the Empire State Building!

Here's a brief update from Corbin (guitarist/vocalist) on what happened at their shows:

Good morning, everyone. Today marks our first full week of touring.

Tonight, we will be worshiping God at a homeless shelter in New York City. We're all looking forward to this because we will be able to spread the gospel to new ears.

To get you up to date, we began our tour in Ohio. Proof of Purchase was able to fellowship with staff at King's Domain Camp.

We joined about 20 staff in the evening, and also after breakfast the next day. After the evening session, one staff came forward to a director and confessed some sin that was going on in his life. He was moved by the Holy Spirit, and didn't feel he deserved to be in this position at camp. The director took this in grace and love, and talked it over with him.

Please pray for all the staff at KD, that they would be open and let the Holy Spirit work through them like this young man. We will be heading back to King's Domain this weekend to join with all the staff and also the campers!


The Second stop of tour was Philadelphia, PA. The Bethel Temple took us in with the most loving hospitality. I felt like family the minute I stepped into the church.

The church held 2 services Sunday morning in which at least 200 people attended all together.

Also, a large youth group from North Carolina worshiped with us there. Please pray for this group as they complete their mission in Philly. Pray also that God would continue to use Bethel Temple for His glory, reaching out to the community in love. I know He will.


Sunday night we started toward NYC, until some of our housing plans fell through. At that time, we pulled up to a gas station in New Jersey to figure out our next course of action. Everyone thank Tom in marketing for opening his home to our group. We were blessed to stay in his home 2 nights, and then in a hotel 2 nights.

Monday night POP joined with the summer project Tribeca at King's College, located in the basement of the Empire State Building. There we joined with about 70 college age students, or freshly graduated adults. The team took extra time to praise God through the Psalms before leading others in worship.

For the past couple of days, we have taken the opportunity to explore the city. We've met a lot of new people, including past Keynote staff. And through meeting the city and it's people, and think we're better equipped to relate to those at the shelter tonight.

God bless you all, and see you in another week,

Corbin and Proof of Purchase

Young Isaac is our acoustic rock group that just played a show in Medora, ND-a very interesting place!

As some of you may recall, I was in Young Isaac last summer and also played at Medora, ND! It was a really cool concert and I got to share the gospel with four Malaysians in Medora working for the summer! How random is that?! Of all the places to meet Malaysians, North Dakota. Go figure.

Anyways, this is from Ryan, guitarist/singer for Young Isaac this summer:

update three | God wins.

6.23.2007

Howdy ya'll. we're camped in the beautiful ol' Medora, North Dakota, legendary home of president Theodore Roosevelt. It's absolutely crazy; it's as if we stepped onto a different planet, a dying subculture. This is the kind of town where the state flag is worshiped. Where the "cool kids" don't smoke cigarettes and cuss, they suck on straws of hay and polish their six-shooters in public. It's quite alien.

Three people accepted Christ at this show. I don't believe you could base it on the fluidity of my message. This was completely the power of God. Or my fellow band members just have a knack for playing their hearts out. I dunno... maybe the loud train whistle accentuated the points in my message. Just kidding.


Uh-oh, I have to keep this brief (my wireless has a tendency to die abruptly). Long story short... the previous two shows were at homeless shelters. They were amazing... the people were so grateful and encouraging. They were just as much of a blessing to me as we may have been to them. We got to eat "hamburgers" with some of the residents. Sorry, they were not hamburgers. Just call them slop-burgers like they are. Anyway, get this:

Eight people accepted Christ at the Union Gospel Mission in Minneapolis!
Three people accepted Christ at the Churches United Shelter in Moorhead!

!!!

Thank you everybody... if you could pray that we will be filled with energy and joy as we continue the tour, that would be very much appreciated. Miss ya'll.

Ryan

So what's been happening with the Summer Project Bands you might ask? Read below!

Here's an e-mail from Mangofish about recent happenings at their concerts. Mangofish is our edgier, hard rock band that has been touring through military bases and college campuses across the country:

Hey Keynote!

Our last show was at Atlanta Georgia. When we got there, we were told to lock up any valuables because the place we were at was kindof shady. The humidity was INTENSE! After setting up our equiptment, we were told we had an entire air conditioned camper to chill out in until we performed. It was just for us, and there were no other bands that had the same treatment. This performance was a little different as well because it was more of a variety show with multiple gigs of people singing for the Lord. The setting was in a beat up parking lot of a hotel where many drug dealings and prostitution sites were held. Crazy i know.

The purpose of this concert was to bring people that are homeless and have nothing left, to Christ. It was amazing! They had stands where people could talk about God and the Gospel, places were people could get hair cuts for free, close for free, food for free and care packages for free.
And if people wanted to turn their life around, if they wanted, they were provided the transportation to a rehab center immediately! People everywhere were accepting Christ as their savior and i dont think there was a dry eye anywhere! I still think back on that day it was that AMAZING!

In Christ,
Amanda Varnum from Mangofish

The Summer Project is alive and kicking!

We went into full swing last Thursday and had a blast doing it. Going into it, of course, was a totally different story. I liken to use the term "deer in headlights" quite often when I have a huge task that seems overwhelming to me. I can tend to freeze up and feel paralyzed just by thinking about the enormity of the tasks before me.

But praise God things went amazingly smooth-way better than we thought-and the students really enjoyed themselves, which was the main thing we were hoping for all who arrived at the new building.

With that said, check out some of the pictures from the opening day!

SP2007 Opening Day

It was wild to find myself walking in the streets of Belgrade, Serbia on a mild Spring evening. Never in a million years did I ever think to myself that God would bring me here to serve Him in missions.

It was also sobering to see some of the buildings that were bombed back in the '90s in the terrorist attacks that happened in Belgrade. I can't imagine living in a place where anything like that could happen at any given moment. We live in a country where we are so far removed from that, we can hardly relate at all.

Though in recent years with the number of natural as well as domestic disasters that have happened, America certainly has it's share of scars that can relate with the rest of the world.

Anyways, it was a really neat city and awesome to be there! We almost felt like secret agent spies with a specific mission to infiltrate the country covertly. God's special ops baby. Oh yeah.

Welcome to my Hungarian train ride! This was on our train ride from Budapest, Hungary over to Belgrade, Serbia. There's really nothing spiritual or terribly interesting about the video, other than the fact you get to see a train ride that you've probably never seen before!

Anyways, the spiritual thing about the ride was that God gave us a very smooth ride across the border, and as soon as we stepped off our train, we met our hosts and were on our way into the city! That was totally a God thing. Go God!

This was taken from the lobby of the theater we played at in Budapest, Hungary for the Battle of the Bands the Student Venture high school ministry hosted there!

It was a phenomenal night filled with different bands of every genre with a few winners in different categories of competition. We weren't allowed to enter, of course, since we were the house band :)

We had about 700 students show up and each of them left their contact info and their thoughts about religion and Christianity, so that was huge for the staff team there! Every kid who walked through those doors now had some sort of connection with Student Venture and the staff had an easy way of getting on contact with those who may have been interested in spiritual things. Praise God.

I'll be posting up another short clip of one of the bands that played "Born To Be Wild" as their entry piece that night. Just the fact that they did that song was hysterical. But they did a great job with it and I think actually won a consolation prize! Go them.

It was pretty sweet to go overseas and have this as our first gig. It was a smooth transition into brief life in Eastern Europe. We had a great time :)

Enjoy!

Another video! Finally!

I plan to post one of these up every once in a while. I'm going to keep it unpredictable just to keep you on your toes ;)


A real quick update:

Right now I'm in the midst of Keynote's Summer Project. I'm so excited that we have begun our project and that this year the student's will be able to experience the new building firsthand. That is a really exciting thing and I can't wait until all the rehearsal rooms are full of people and music. PRAISE THE LORD!

I'll be working in the logistics department this summer, taking a break from the road. I am SOOO happy that I can just rest and stay in one place for a few months. PRAISE JESUS! I think if I toured anymore I would literally cry. Don't get me wrong. Tour was amazing, but I need my rest. There is a time to labor hard for the Lord and also a time to rest. So praise God He is giving me rest and stability for the time being.

Thanks for visiting the site, reading what's up with me, and keeping me prayer! Love you all friends.

Have a great weekend!

"You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule." -Matthew 5:3

We usually read this verse in the NIV as:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

Isn't that neat?? Wow...I thought that was way more descriptive for me than the way NIV puts it. Not to knock the NIV, but oftentimes we hear these great verses quoted and really don't have a clue what they really mean until somebody just explains it for you, like Eugene Peterson does!

It struck a chord with me because of how often I've felt at "the end of my rope" these last few months. It's been a difficult time and to hear that I'm blessed because of it is really weird, yet strangely comforting, knowing that what I'm going through is not outside of God's sight. And in fact, it's blessed by Him. Again, weird. But good.

And lastly,

"You're blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world." -Matthew 5:8

Amen to that. Our emotional and mental health is just as important as our spiritual health. I'd like to believe that all of them are linked together and that they are not so separate from one another as we'd like to think some times.

We can develop whole parts of our spirituality while never allowing God to touch the deep inner parts of our hearts where emotions are pent up and locked inside where deep healing needs to take place.

Anyways, thoughts for the day. Thanks for reading. I hope you're blessed and realize that when you feel like you're at the end of it all, that's when you can come to God. 'Cause I guess when we come to the end of ourselves, we come to the beginning of God.

Be blessed today!

Hey people!!!

I actually made this video a few days ago right before we left Sofia, Bulgaria our last day of tour, so what I say in it is a few days late, but better late than never!

Again, it's been hard to get internet access, so I haven't been able to post up anymore videos until now!

I'll be home on the 9th! Taking some vacation time right now!

See you back in the states :)