The usual trajectory for members of Christian rock bands goes something like this: Musically gifted youths with a passion for religion, often stronger than they first realize, cut loose with unconventional songs about God’s love that listeners find inspiring yet still don’t expect to hear in traditional worship services.
There’s a mix of youthful rebelliousness and profound respect, a sound that’s contemporary and edgy without going overboard.
Bread of Stone, though, which performs a free concert at 6 p.m. Sunday at Proclaim FM Event Center, 7112 Angola Road, Holland, is one popular Christian rock band in which the message came before the music.
And the idea for the band didn’t even come from any of its members.
As co-founder and lead vocalist Ben Kristijanto, 33, tells it, he and the other co-founder, his older brother, Bill Kristijanto, 36, were as surprised as anyone when their father came to them years ago with the idea of forming a band, claiming he received a message from God to have his two sons start a music ministry.
Neither were musicians, nor was anyone else in the family.
Their father, who is of Chinese descent, and their mother, who is Iranian, are both lay preachers unaffiliated with any single church. They emigrated from Indonesia to the United States in 1992 when, according to Ben Kristijanto, God urged his father to leave that country as it was becoming more politically unstable and violent.
The message about forming a band came not long after the family relocated to Sioux City, Iowa, a city they knew nothing about except that another relative was living there.
“When I was in high school, the Lord spoke to my dad again to have us start a music ministry,” Mr. Kristijanto said.
Guitar and keyboard lessons followed. Bread of Stone began in 2004, and has undergone some personnel changes.
Its current bassist, Tim Barnes, 28, came on board in 2008. The group went through seven drummers before settling on Jason Ferris, 25, a West Toledo native and 2010 graduate of State Line Christian School in Temperance who joined the band 3½ years ago.
The group has five albums, has toured abroad, and is featured on dozens of songs and interviews on YouTube. It has opened for Petra, Newsboys, Sanctus Real, Seventh Day Slumber, Superchick, and Building 429. In 2015, it held the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s Christian Rock Charts with its song “Porcelain.”
“Year after year, the Lord just kept opening more doors for us to do more and more touring,” Mr. Kristijanto said.
Bread of Stone gets its name from the belief that people are metaphorically as useless as stones until they accept Jesus Christ, at which point they are like bread for hungry souls in need of spiritual nourishment.
Mr. Kristijanto chuckled as he recalled the group’s early days during a telephone interview this week.
“We were not good at all. We were horrible,” he said. “People saw beyond music and got to the heart of what we did.”
Bread of Stone tours almost constantly now, both across the United States and as far away as Indonesia, where it has had a ministry called “The Light Project,” lightourworld.org, since 2009. With that project, the group spreads messages of hope to people so impoverished and destitute they have resorted to scavenging.
“The goal of this ministry is to empower those who are not afraid to carry the light of Jesus into the darkness, even when faced with persecution,” the group’s website states.
Unlike the Kristijanto brothers, Mr. Ferris got involved with music at an early age. He said he started playing drums at age 4.
Being part of Bread of Stone has “been a cool life experience for me,” he said.
“My relationship with the Lord has grown with them,” Mr. Ferris said, adding that he looks forward to reconnecting with Toledoans and playing in his hometown again.
Mr. Barnes, who grew up in Sioux City, lives in South Dakota. He said he learned music from his father as part of his educational and spiritual home-schooling.
“Dad blessed me with such an amazing childhood life,” he said.
Mr. Kristijanto said he’s inspired by the perseverance of street people they meet as part of their music ministry.
“Within their hearts, within their souls, there’s overwhelming joy and hope because of Jesus Christ,” he said.
Regardless what type of listener is drawn to them, there’s a common denominator in the human experience, he said.
“We all seek the same thing,” Mr. Kristijanto said. “At the core of it, we desire love. When you take love out of the equation, that’s when things start to fall apart.”
Contact Tom Henry at thenry@theblade.com, 419-724-6079, or via Twitter @ecowriterohio.
First Published October 20, 2017, 3:00 p.m.
