I’m going to let all you nonmusicians in on a little secret: We musicians never stop being musicians. We might stop releasing new music, and we might stop blessing (or spamming) your timeline with our gigs and merch. But a musician never stops making music, thinking in music, and living in music.
Most of us who pursue music as a career, however, do at some point stop—because of finances, because of fear, because of a lack of momentum, because something else requires more of our time. (Note to musicians: Please don’t blame your family for the fact that you “didn’t make it.”) There are plenty of reasons to quit.
Should I keep trying? I’ve been asking this question a lot lately, about my career as an indie rapper but also about other things: pastoring, building community, defying capitalism. In an era when we seem to be following opposite impulses as a collective, the question of whether to stop or not feels urgent for the church—not because we don’t know the answer but because the energy level required to express some coherent, uniting, moral vision of the gospel feels higher than ever, almost Bonhoeffer-esque, and many of us are feeling the cost. It’s one thing to promise God you’ll run through a brick wall for the kingdom—however you imagine it—but running into a brick wall, over and over again, is a different exercise.
