Living for Jesus during the long summer vacation away from college or uni, away from church and CU and all the friends that keep pointing you to Jesus, can be difficult. So I chatted with a couple of professional musicians to ask how they do it.
Matthew Featherstone, a member of Highfields Church in Cardiff, is the Principal Flute for the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and is also on the staff of the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama.
Phil Short, a member of Christ Church Mayfair in London, is a freelance electric guitarist who, alongside regular function work and session work (touring with pop acts such as Chipmunk and Westlife), teaches and lectures at the BIMM Institute in London.
What are the best things about the summer season for you as a musician?
Matthew: Summer can be really busy! The term beforehand often involves auditioning potential wind players in the orchestra, which can be tiring. But also exciting to see the new talent that's out there! We can also be doing lots of recording too, and there are festivals and Proms, many of which are amazing experiences. I recently did the Aldeburgh Festival - it's always nice to go there and spend some time by the sea!
Phil: The highlight is the performing, obviously! And if you go somewhere abroad - I went on tour to Germany a few years ago, and that was great - you get to see a bit of the country, and have the food and go out to restaurants and stuff like that, which is cool!
When touring, what opportunities do you look to make the most of?
Matthew: I think touring is always great for building friendships with colleagues. It's a time away from friends and family, so people are generally relaxed and want to invest in friendships.
Phil: On any tour, regardless of how much time you're going to be away for, when you're able to talk, in rehearsals or perhaps beforehand when you're just chatting with people, keep dropping in stuff about church - not in a weird way, but in a really normal, natural way, and then that could lead to conversations - 'oh, what do you do at church?' I always lead with the fact that I help out a lot with music at church, which sort of keeps it on subject and feels like a natural way in.
What is the hardest thing about touring as a Christian musician?
Matthew: I think being away from church and your spouse (if you have one) is hard. Also, usually your routine goes out of the window and making time for quiet times is hard. There is also a very strong drinking culture on tour so making sure you're distinctive whilst being sociable can be tricky.
Phil: Not being around your church family and not being at home. When you're away, the temptation is not to pursue maintaining obedience in your godliness. For example, that might be joining in with drinking too much - so yes, peer pressure and going along with what everyone else is doing - I would say they're the things that are generally hardest.
Also, it can be quite stressful. Certainly from my pop touring experience, there's a lot of travel, and then there's limited time for sound checks and you've got to go on and play everything perfectly, and you don't have the comfort of being able to just practise and stuff like that, and I think the easy thing to do in that situation, especially when you're not touring with other Christians, is to forget about God. So not praying and just stressing - that's not great!
What advice would you give to a student who was the only Christian on their music tour?
Matthew: Open your Bible!! Have people back at home praying for you who know what you're up to. Online sermons are great or try and visit a local church. Enjoy the tour and the sightseeing that you'll get to do. Get some sleep. Exercise helps jetlag!
Phil: Have a friend who you trust who keeps you accountable, maybe someone who you can phone every few days and who will ask you the hard questions when you get back - 'Did you drink too much?' 'How often did you drink?' 'Did you flirt / do anything inappropriate with someone you shouldn't have?' - someone who will ask you questions that you can't wriggle out of. If you know someone is going to ask you 'did you have an affair with the backing vocalist while you were on tour?', you know that accountability is there, and it's much easier to resist those temptations if you know that someone's going to ask you. Whereas if in your head you think 'oh, no-one's going to ask me about anything here, and they're just going to assume that I've been good - I can kind of get away with this', it's going to be much easier to give in to those temptations. And if you feel like you're in trouble, have someone who you can text to say 'I need you to ring me!'
Also, we have the privilege of being able to pray and bring all our stresses before God, whereas our unbelieving friends don't know that they could do that, so they're just relying on themselves - and that's a lot of pressure and very stressful! My advice, then, would be to be prayerful and to maintain being prayerful, and that's hard when you're away on tour and you're not at home and surrounded by church family etc.
What advice would you give to a Christian student at home alone over the summer?
Phil: Be sociable with people! Don't just lock yourself in the practice room all day long. Sure, take advantage of that time that you've got to work at your skills. But when you're on holiday, it's always easy to feel like you're going to have a holiday from spiritual things as well - not praying, not reading the Bible - so try and maintain that as much as you can. And if you find that hard to do on your own, do it with a friend. I do this over the phone - a friend and I just look at a small bit of Scripture together, chat it through and then we pray, and that normally takes about 20-30 minutes.
Also, particularly when you're at music college, there's always a small handful of people that seem to get the lucky breaks really early on, and are off working and doing tours before they've even left, and it's really easy to get really jealous and to covet their lifestyle - so don't get sucked into that; be thankful for what you do have, and trust that God has His timing around it and if He wants you to be on a particular tour, He'll put you on it!
Of course, that's all assuming you're working hard and actually pursuing those things. If you're just sat around and being lazy, well that might be the reason you're not getting anything! But if you are doing everything that you can reasonably be expected to do to be getting those opportunities, and it's still not happening, well God is sovereign and He's in control, and you need to trust Him.
And it's hard at the time! I can think of auditions for gigs that turned out to be huge that I didn't get, and I can remember being really angry and resentful at the time, but five years down the line, I look back and I can see how it was a good thing that I didn't get that massive gig that basically went on tour for ten months of the year for five years straight, because spiritually for me personally, that would have been an absolute disaster, and so I can see God's sovereignty in knowing what was good for me.
Matthew: First of all, after the end of term, take a week off practising. Then practise as efficiently as you can throughout! Concentrate on your own development and career, not your colleagues', knowing that God is ultimately the One in control. Get out of your practice room and do other things. Perhaps serve on a summer camp, and/or in your church. In short, see your free time as a great opportunity!
