Lost & Found can hold a crowd in the palm of their hands—not in some star-struck cult of personality, but rather in a way that serves the Word of God. As they played for a crowd of mainly students at Concordia University—Wisconsin in Mequon on Sunday, February 26, they showed that through all of these years of playing together since the 80’s they can continue to break down our defenses through humor and then bring it right down to a song like “Baby,” the most tender, at-risk, outreach, Gospel song there is. God’s Word reaches out to soothe hearts and inspire mission through those chords and harmonies—and then Michael Bridges and George Baum are ready to take us back to the hilarity through a song like “Famous Lutherans”—using that humor to get us to explore our hearts for our imperfections and need for Christ.
“Famous Lutherans” is clearly modeled after the idea behind Adam Sandler’s famous Jews songs. Bridges and Baum are very proud of being Lutherans, and so this song looks at how many different celebrities have Lutheran backgrounds, studied Luther’s Small Catechism, and sing the liturgy. However, rather than being Lutheran Christians for the sake of being Lutheran, Bridges and Baum very clearly through their music emphasize a Lutheran understanding of Scripture which points to the importance of knowing the difference between God’s Law (His commandments and judgment on sin) and God’s Gospel (His Good News which offers forgiveness and life after death as a gift to us through Jesus).
Bridges explained this in a brief, helpful way before playing “With You” from the new album, Pronto. Asked to contribute to a publisher’s request for songs about Matthew 28:19-20 (Jesus said, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (ESV)), instead of making their song be focused on “go” and “make,” words of action on our part, Lost & Found wrote “With You” which instead makes the primary message of the song that Jesus promised to always be with us. That’s a Gospel focus which shines through on this bouncy, folk-soul, praise song.
Lost & Found’s set began without fanfare but a processional of sorts instead. “Easy Love,” a song originally included on Our Third Album (1989), was re-recorded for Pronto. It’s good to have the song available on CD, and as an opener, it really showed the chops of Bridges on guitar and Baum on piano.
Quick wit means that a song like “Saskatchewan” came with a special edition lyric: “Saskatchewan rhymes with rockin’ on/But so does Mequon.” The evening closed with the traditional spontaneity of “Slide Girl,” which works like a Whose Line Is It Anyway? game as Bridges begins each verse about someone in the crowd and Baum has to finish the lyric. It’s a way to use humor to draw together the community that’s created in the room for that one evening—a community centered on faith in Christ.
Actually, “Slide Girl” was an encore of sorts, but rather than following convention by walking off after a final song, waiting for the applause, and then coming back on stage (as if the band wasn’t really planning on playing one more song unless we all stood and cheered and acted like silly people saying, “One more song,”), Bridges and Baum stayed on stage for an extended question and answer period—never quite answering questions seriously and catching us off guard with their regular-guy approach to being Christian leaders. Again, these guys can teach churches a lot about how to create community besides through coffee and cookies.
Finally, there’s a sense that Lost & Found are the Veggie Tales of Christian rock. Not in the sense that the guys are talking vegetables who don’t have arms, but in the sense that a crowd of many ages can enjoy their music, but sometimes the humor is lost on younger generations. As I sat there among the college students and with our youth group, I realized that some of the cultural referents in their humor were there just for those who are thirty-something or older. Just like the jokes for parents in Veggie Tales, Lost & Found include something for those of us who have been following them since the early days (for me, it goes back to the 1989 LCMS National Youth Gathering in Denver). This is a treat, and another way that Bridges and Baum show themselves to be incredible performers—which as always enables them to share the Gospel in a powerful way.
One last kudos to Bridges who played the last third of the show with just five strings on his guitar. He broke a string, lost the peg, but continued on—and it sounded great!
Thank you to the Lost & Found for the review copy of Pronto–which is another great collection of fun, rocking, and honest folk-balladry from Lost & Found. It also includes a video of the ever-popular “Lions.”
