Inspirations|December 04, 2014 01:17 EST
Tenth Ave North's Mike Donehey Says America's No. 1 Goal Should Be to 'Make Disciples' Not Gain Success [INTERVIEW]
Tenth Avenue North reached the No. 1 spot with their highly-anticipated fourth studio project, Cathedrals on both iTunes and Billboard's Top Christian Albums Charts. BREATHEcast caught up with the band's frontman Mike Donehey about the album and the importance of modeling after Jesus instead of culture or religion.
Donehey maintains that based on scripture God's people are cathedrals and meant to be a safe haven for sinners. The singer believes the American church has not done a good job at doing that.
"When I look at Jesus, he just seemed to always be available and he was always interruptible," he explained, "He had a ministry of interruption to build a place of community. One of the important things about that is that people have to be more important then your plan, and all of us in America especially a capitalistic society your going, 'no your dream is the most important. You climb your way to the top, you push who ever you need behind you,'" he continued mocking the popular teachings of western culture.
"Even on social media you block who you want to block you follow who you want to follow, you get online when you want to get online," he explained, "We're creating this paradigm where we can completely dictate what our community looks like and how involved we are."
The Nebraska native maintains that with Jesus it was very different. "You see him walking along and constantly being interrupted by peoples needs and constantly stopping what he was doing, where he was walking to," he said.
Donehey referenced Mark 7 and Romans 12 to support his statements. "Isn't that cool how before Jesus fixed us, he felt it for 30 years?" He asked, "Jesus is our model. He's out forerunner so whatever I see Jesus doing I say that's what I need to be doing."
The young musician, noticeably immersed in the word of God and wanting to follow in Jesus' example, continued to advise that people must be concerned with what God wants for people to do and not their own self ambitions.
"We're so obsessed with ambition and success in our culture even in ministry, he said, "Jesus in today's terms was an absolute failure, I mean he only had 12 disciples. If we had 12 Twitter followers we would consider ourselves a disaster."
"Obviously Jesus had more followers then that because he spoke to thousands on the hillside but my point is 'what did Jesus say our calling was?," he continued, "We throw that around a lot. 'I'm called to do music, I'm called to be a lawyer,' I go 'no you're not' our calling if you're a Christian is to go into all the world and make disciples.' That's your calling and that kinda frees you up when you realize 'well now what do I love to do?'"
During the course of promoting their album Cathedrals, Donehey and his band were intentional about openly sharing their faith. "Oh you love to be a lawyer, your called to be a plumber, you love to do music?" he asked, "Ok well go do that now while you go do that, go into all the world and make disciples."
"I love writing songs I love playing music I love playing concerts," he declared but said he is always keeping in mind he thought "'how can I do that in a way that helps make disciples?'"
Although his desire is to do what is right Donehey does admit that he to is still a work in progress. "We have mixed motives but hopefully God is purifying them daily," he concluded.
Cathedrals can be purchased on iTunes HERE. The group is currently on its national Cathedrals headline tour circuit wrapping it up December 5, 2014. Read part 1 of our interview with Donehey HERE and visit tenthavenuenorth.com for more tour dates and information.