Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other.  Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky.
Psalm 85.10-11

It requires a stretch, I know, but try imagining me in high-school.  I was all of 6 feet tall and 160 lbs. I’d worn glasses from the 2nd grade.  I was the school photographer, stage lighting operator, and Audio-Visual assistant.  Yes, I was a geek.

Steven, from my church youth group, was my inspiration.  A farm kid, Steven knew how to weld, work with wood, fix a combine or grain elevator, and wire just about anything.  He got me excited about Hi-Fi stereos.

I think the first time I heard his new sound system, it was a religious experience.  I’d never heard cymbals clashing so clearly.  I’d never felt a kick drum on a cassette pound me in the chest.  Sitting in between his speakers, I closed my eyes and the it was as if Billy Ocean, and his whole band were with us in the room.  Get out of my dreams…get into my car….  And I heard the car drive across Stevens basement.

From that day, I became obsessed with audio equipment.  I read everything I could get my hands on.  I wanted to know about the latest technological breakthroughs.  I picked through garage sales looking for old equipment that I could buy and have Steven help me repair.  When I got to college, I put all of my spare money into trading equipment and re-creating that religious Hi-Fi experience for my friends.

I think something happens to us when we experience something in a fuller way than we’ve ever before imagined.  It’s as if our minds are exploded with the awareness of new possibilities, whole new universes of possibility.

I can’t look back and point to a day that ‘the possible’ became my life’s pursuit.  But there it is.  Possibility is my passion.  It’s why I am a morning person.  It’s why I like to go on adventures without itineraries.  It’s why I like to cook without recipes.  It’s why I love the process of preparing a sermon, of laying bare the possibilities that await the faithful.

The psalmist imagines the meeting of steadfast love and faithfulness, and the love which flows between righteousness and peace.  And to modern minds that ask, “How do we do it?” it seems impossible to imagine.  Sure, we’d like to imagine an end to the war, a Congress united in diligent work on behalf of all the nation’s people, a president utterly devoted to the welfare of the poorest of all nations, but does imagination or hope do a thing to bring that day closer?

When ‘High-Fidelity’ was coined as a term to describe audio equipment, it was grounded by a commitment to reproducing, with the highest possible degree of faithfulness, a sound’s source.  Furthermore, it was driven by an ever growing understanding of what was possible for the human ear to perceive.  And practically, the commercial goal of ‘High-Fidelity’ became the living room encounter with real-world sound, something quite remarkable to those who had grown up with wax cylinders and Victrolas.

The ‘Church of High-Fidelity’ is the way I like to describe the church awakening fully to the true nature of the New Testament church, and utterly committed to the faithful pursuit of the possibilities which emerge when followers of Jesus bring the Gospel’s promise to bear on the powers of this world.

Just as the emergence Hi-Fi audio technology  required and inspired  the collaboration of theoreticians, engineers, musicians, and composers, the Church of High-Fidelity is the church of scholars and schoolchildren, pastors and poets, secretaries and social workers, custodians and cooks, midwives and fishermen, fathers and mothers, each with their unique ability to perceive the reality of divine love as no one else ever has.

The Church of High-Fidelity is where the dream of a world of peace gets lived out, where Democrats and Republicans figure out how to set aside their individual biases and pursue policies that lower the cost of health care and reduce the number of abortions and deaths from hunger and preventable diseases and make sure that those who can work have jobs and those who do work do not live in poverty.

The Church of High-Fidelity is where the Christians, Jews, Muslims, pagans and even atheists are able to  affirm a common commitment to the care of the earth and all of her creatures and to living simply so that future generations might also know the joys of the natural order.

Above all else, the Church of High-Fidelity is the body whose senses are saturated with Love’s spirit and surrendered to Love’s leading.

The Church of High-Fidelity: Faithful to the source, full-spectrum in its response.