You’ve found Mike Crawford and his Secret Siblings

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In midtown Kansas City resides a church called Jacob’s Well. On the surface, it looks like most other churches; a place where people come together week after week to sing, learn, mourn, laugh and pray. Many things make Jacob’s Well unique; the most obvious, at first blush, is the music that resonates from every corner of the community. This church music is oceanic—waves of lyrics tumbling, beautifully-intricate sounds engulfing and swirling around as you sail out into the deep waters of lived-out theology. On the first album from Mike Crawford, “Songs from Jacob’s Well,” these words and sounds have been captured, written and recorded and are ready to be shared.

Part of what contributes to this CD’s distinctive sound is the sheer number of musicians involved in the recording. Twenty-five people stacking layer-upon-layer of music to create what is more like an indie-rock orchestra than a typical worship band. Lyrically, songs like “The Magnificat” and “Horse and Rider” borrow heavily from scripture, while others like “Holy Lamb of God” are reminiscent of traditional liturgies. Part rock anthem, part ancient hymn, part modern orchestral arrangement, part field recording; the songs on “Even the Darkness” add up to an unparalleled worship (and listening) experience.

Praise for Mike Crawford and His Secret Siblings:

Two CD’s full of creative and textured arrangements and solid lyrics, as sung at one of my favorite churches in the country. The last track, “Words to Build a Life On” is like an anthem. I hope that thousands of churches around the country will start singing this song.

~Brian D. McLaren

Upon hearing the opening segment, thoughts and images and sensations of what the music of the church could sound like were animated. This is the most inspiring (‘inspiring’ seems too clichéd a word, however it is exactly appropriate here) worship music I’ve come across in a long time.

~David Crowder

This album really raised the bar, in terms of both music and art design.

~Mike Hogan (David Crowder Band)

Mike Crawford & The Secret Siblings burst forth in a pageant of extravagance that experiments with the boundaries of what a worship album can be. On headphones, it’s Pink Floyd, Radiohead, and Steve Earle. It’s quite a remarkable accomplishment.

~Don Chaffer (Waterdeep)

Instead of burying his quirky tastes to possibly please an imagined majority, and playing it safe by sounding like other worship records, he has decided to write, record and worship to the kind of music that moves him personally. As a result “Even the Darkness…” is the most creative and relevant worship album I’ve ever heard.

~Lori Chaffer (Waterdeep)

Sunday worship at JW reveals some of what Emergent means by calling itself postevangelical. The music is led, conventionally enough, by a rock band that plays loudly enough to shake the wooden pews. But this is not happy-clappy “Jesus is my boyfriend” music. It’s much more edgy. The lyrics, many written by worship minister Mike Crawford, lift up pain as well as praise: “Jesus full of grace, / the humble you adore. / This world’s a hungry place, / with no justice for the poor. / Jesus full of peace, / yet our hearts so full of war. / We take our pruning hooks / we beat them into swords.”

The songs are new, and the words are flashed up on a plasma screen by PowerPoint, but the language is as old as scripture. Most songs, in fact, are paraphrases of scripture. And as loud as the music is, the singing is louder. Andy Crouch of Christianity Today, who is critical of much of the Emergent movement, praises JW as “the best singing white church I’ve ever been to.” JW’s effort to make music participatory rather than performance-based struck a chord with Crouch, who also signaled his awareness that JW is rooted in its own particular neighborhood and could not be easily replicated elsewhere: “It made me want to move to Kansas City. Really.”

~The Christian Century

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