salvation coming to a punk rock scene near you!

That's right. The light of Christ is shining in the punk rock subculture and it just got three times brighter! Look forward to seeing dirty, bearded, mohawked, plaid, pierced and tattooed young people in your congregations soon! (Maybe start showing some slides or something to prepare people ...)

Color me psyched. Let me start at the beginning. If you're on Battle Cry, you know this already, but just be excited with me again. For purposes of brevity I won't explain "zine." If you don't know what a zine is, wikipedia actually has a really good definition.

I started a zine before I got saved that was met with very good reviews. I had fans, man. My mailing list extended to the Philippines. No kidding. That's not to put my hand to the plow and look back (Luke 9:62), but just to say I know how to stinkin' zine. (Ya, it's a noun and a verb for those of you who are new to this.)

So then I met Jesus, and He has a way of changing things ... even zines. The new, resurrected zine was not met with ... well really anything. It's been written about in review zines, but I wouldn't call them reviews because the writers don't actually analyze the zine at all. They just harass my faith for a few sentences and put my POB address at the end. Marketing rule #2: There's no such thing as bad publicity.

I got a couple letters, mostly from prisoners, but not nearly the response I was used to. It's easy to get discouraged. Monday, though, that discouragment was banished.

I had to go to the post office anyway, so I thought I might as well cruise by the box. Not one, but TWO packages waited to greet me. They sat on my passenger seat for the 30 minute drive home, and I admit I wasn't excited yet. It wouldn't have been the first time I'd gotten a "shut up and die" letter. Not this time. Both were very excited Christian ziners who had also been searching desperately for other Christian ziners. Every time I meet a Christian ziner (I've met three now, which is still "every time") there's (1) the expression of relief to have found kinship and (2) the inquiry for more. "Do you know anyone else?" Now I can say Yes!

If you're natually skeptical - like I tend to be - you're wondering how Christin these zines are. I wish I had the copy of Scallywags that matte sent so I could quote verbatim, but one of the stories was about a small troup of people presenting the gospel via puppet show in a brothel in Brazil. After each performance one of the guys would speak a little about Jesus' love. The second time, as he took the "stage" he wrote, "I felt the Holy Spirit come on me so strong." I was elated to read that in a zine. Dozens of prostitues (and a few pimps) came up for prayer with lots of crying, by the way. That's a good zine.

I'm so excited. Now I have this huge vision for a Christian distro. Four zines and one button machine is enough to start a distro I think. And with the kind of favor and grace we've got - shoot. In no time at all it's going to be so un-punk to not love Jesus. Jesus and plaid will go hand in hand. Basements will be packed out with dirty teenagers singing painfully simple songs about Jesus completely out of key. The pro-choice movement will come to a screetching halt as half its supporters slap red tape over their mouths instead

Mark my words. You heard it here first. Five Stones Printing is bringing the real Jesus - in glory and power - to punk houses everywhere!