It was past midnight when I parked my car across the street from Hell, a nightclub downtown. As I crossed the street to enter it, two prostitutes standing near by started to tease me. A guy from our church lined up the concert for No Longer Music in that club and I had never been there before. About 200 middle to upper class young people filled the place. Looking at them I thought some were way too young to be out partying, smoking, drinking heavily, using drugs and disappearing in pairs into one of the dark slots in the upper room to do who knows what. When the opening act started playing their first song most of the crowd pressed to the front of the stage to see their concert.

Using a biblical character for their name, this band had an androgine singer wearing red high heels, his finger nails polished red as well, moving his body like a serpent as he sang some 80s style rock that appeared to seduce the kids. As the band played with energy and the crowd got crazy with their music, I could feel a tension forming in the air. It happened many times before in situations like these, almost as if a spirit of fear was trying to take hold of me. Standing in the left side of the stage, I was watching and thinking what would happen when NLM took the stage after this band. Would the crowd mock us? Would they walk away? Would they throw their beer cans at the band and act violently? This was the first time ever a Christian band came to this club. To make things worse most people in the audience did not know NLM was a Christian band. Maybe it was not a good idea to have come here in the first place.

I met David Pierce in Amsterdam in 1989. At the time, I was serving with OM and helping renovate the Logos II ship docked in the canal not far from the Steiger 14 where David and NLM did their wednesday night Rock'n'Roll Bible Study. I attended it almost every week during the time I was in Amsterdam. When the Logos II sailed on its mission around the world, I lost touch with David and NLM. Ten years went by until one day a friend who lived in London visited us in Sao Paulo and told me he had seem a folder about Steiger and had an e-mail address if I wanted to write. I decided to drop a note just to get in touch and thought it would be nice to invite David to come and play in Sao Paulo.

On that same day, David had been on a prayer walk on the beach in New Zealand and had said something like this:"Lord, I would like to play in Brazil. Please open the doors for us to minister there." As soon as he got home, he openned his e-mail and saw my message. A few months later, David landed in Sao Paulo with his band to a series of concerts that were amazing opportunities to see God's glory shinning in dark places. The band played in places such as the Blood Coven Bar, Madam Satan and Tribes (a male-strip club that allowed us to do concerts and even hold follow-up/worship meetings). In each place we saw God's love breaking through and melting hard and cold hearts.

So I had been through this before, almost choking in a room filled with cigarette smoke, fighting to stay awake at 2:00 am, wondering what in the world I was doing in a nightclub instead of being home with my wife and children. And now that the openning band was finishing their act, the tension had increased inside of me to a point that I had to do something about it. Since going home and leaving the band and church kids behind was not an option, I decided to pray. Taking advantage of the dark room and extremely loud music, I just began to pray out loud, asking God to be with us and protect us from getting beat up by this crowd that did not seem very open to the Gospel.

All my fears dissipated once NLM started to play. To my surprised, most of the people in the audience seemed to enjoy the show, even when the message got serious and clearly Christian. As usually happens, we could hear some obscenities and see some not so friendly fingers up when David said the forbidden word "Jesus" at the end of the concert. But there were also a lot of teary eyes and people who wanted to talk and learn more about the band and its message. For over an hour after the show you could see people getting prayed for or praying with band members, hugging and crying as if that place had turned into a church.

The sun was almost up when I finally got home that night. I was tired and all I wanted to do was to lie down and go to sleep. But as I lay my head on the pillow and said a prayer of gratitude to God for his protection and grace, I could not help but think that it was such an irony that some kids left home that night to party in Hell and ended up meeting Jesus. Grace shows up in unusual places.

Sandro Baggio is an elder and the pastor of a church called Projeto 242. He and his wife, Mara, and two kids serve the Lord in the concrete jungle of Sao Paulo, Brazil.

The views expressed in this blog entry are those of the author. For Steiger’s Statement of Faith and Values, please reference the ‘About Us’ section of the Steiger website.