Tonight we took some students from our youth group down to Cincinnati for Winter Jam, a huge Christian music tour of ten bands. It only costs $10 to get in at the door, and you can't buy tickets ahead of time. A bunch of other people from our youth group were down there earlier than us hoping to buy tickets for all of us, but apparently you actually don't buy tickets. You just pay when you go into the concert.
We arrived a little bit before the show was supposed to start, and the line to get in was massive. We started to realize pretty quickly that the chance that we would get into the concert was not very good. And we were right.
However, some of the artists decided to be awesome. They set up some sound equipment outside and put on a mini concert for the Winter Jam Rejects, as we were dubbed. Mr. Talkbox from Toby Mac was our host, and we enjoyed music from OBB, Red, Royal Tailor, and Matthew West with special guest Mark Hall from Casting Crowns. The night's speaker, Nick Hall, also spoke for a little while.
Oh and did I mention we were standing about ten feet away from all these guys?
Yeah, it was pretty cool. And these people can SING. Wow. To hear them without all the loud instrumentals and without any editing to their music was pretty incredible. Very talented. Our girls fell in love with the boys from OBB, and they got to meet them and got a picture with them afterwards.
That ended quite a bit before the main concert would have finished, so we headed back to the car and made a stop at Bill's Donuts. We hung out there for awhile and then took the students home.
So our evening didn't go quite as planned. But sometimes you realize that what you were able to experience instead was even better. And we got to spend some good time with three awesome students in a way that we wouldn't have gotten to had we just been in the concert.
So tonight, I'm grateful to be a Winter Jam Reject.
