Last night Rabenstrange, his sister, cousin, and I went to Mars Hill’s Rain City Hymnal Concert. The concert was a launch off party for Mars Hill’s first studio-release cd in several years. Containing many songs sung by Ex Nihilo, E-Pop, and The Northern Conspiracy, all bands that play for the various Mars Hill’s campuses and services. There are I believe over thirty different bands at Mars Hill and they all rotate within their respective campuses. For those that don’t know, Mars Hill is based off of a multiple campus model united together by a videocast of the actual preaching. Which works out really well.

Anyways, I had seen Ex Nihilo play at the Ballard ("main") campus but not E-Pop and The Northern Conspiracy. The bands are really great. I really love how Mars Hills have multiple bands that they rotate through. This enables them to use their gifts and talents to bring glory to God. It is very awesome. The opportunity to see some of the bands from the other campuses was very cool.

And you know it’s a Mars Hill concert when you see little children running around, dancing and playing in between the legs of the more traditional concert goers. They were so cute.

The style of music varies per band but essentially they take old hymns and contextualize them into a more modern format. I really love old hymns. The lyrics found within are very strong and profound. Alone they still hold weight but revitalized in this fashion… oh wow… so awesome. I first attended Mars Hill during the Christmas season and when the worship segment started… a big smile formed on my face as they were rocking out to Emmanuel.

The concert was held at the new Mars Hill campus in downtown Seattle. The story behind the campus shows how God can take what man has used as a bastion of sin and redeem for His glory. The building used to be the Tabella’s nightclub where they would lavish in the trade of shadows. They proudly proclaimed their Sunday opening as Sin Sunday trying to openly mock God. Well… God cannot be mocked. Mars Hill will be retaining the Sin Sunday title but will be portraying sin a different light. It is just amazing to see how God works out His will.

They did a "soft" launch a couple weeks ago with members with their "hard" launch being on the 16th. They’ve been hard at work transforming the building for the big release. It is still a little rough and you can tell it’s past looking at it. But they’ve made excellent work. It already has the feel and demeanor of Mars Hill. It very strongly reminds me of main campus when I went to the Kutless concert there oh so many years on that fateful night.

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