David Pierce: a different light
Musician brings Christian Music into secular places

David Pierce believes in God.

He also believes in the occult, a supernatural force that destroys people's souls.

Pierce and his wife, Jodi, have dedicated their lives to combatting that force. That battle, which has taken them to Europe, the Middle East and South America, brought them to the LifeLight Christian music festival during the weekend.

It was a quiet interlude in a raucous ministry. For Jodi Pierce, it was a return to her roots. Relatives farmed near Alcester, and her parents, Cliff and Marge Smith, have returned to that community.

Most scathing is his disdain for Christian bands that deny the label, preferring the less-direct "musicians who are Christians."

Commercial success can be a sign of failure, Pierce charges, a sign a Christian musician has sold out. But off stage, Pierce seems concerned that he has been unkind. He doesn't, he says, want to say bad things about others.

"(But) I think people are hungry for directness," he says. "I don't want to be direct in the wrong way, but I think people are hungry for truth. When there's no compass, people are desperate to know there's truth, especially when it comes to God."

The Pierces met in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, although they had tenuous connections before that. In his book "Rock Priest," Pierce says when they met, he learned they had attended the same Brooklyn Center, Minn., church. She sat in the front; he headed to the back.

But their lives were intertwined from that first meeting. And their joint life has taken them to dark and scary places.

It began in Amsterdam.

"Every day I would see people killing themselves, literally," Pierce says. "When we would walk from our apartment to the grocery store, we would see people shooting up on the street."

Rather than minister to the meek, the Pierces decided to immerse themselves in a world populated by punks and anarchists.

Pierce and his band depend on the visual, such as a drama that shows him emerging from a coffin, rather than virtuoso musicianship.

"God, I am not a great artist, but you give me the venue, and I will give you the glory," Pierce remembers praying.

"We need to cry with them, know what they're feeling, understand where they are," Pierce says.

That need to understand is why Pierce finds himself in dangerous situations. Sometimes the danger comes from an unexpected source.

Then a man grabbed his microphone and took it away. Undeterred, Pierce jumped off the stage into the crowd. Around him, fistfights broke out.

"But it was the people that called themselves Christians that wanted to beat us up, and the Muslims were the ones defending us," Pierce says.

SOURCE: ARGUS LEADER - SIOUX FALLS, SD