Today I want to tip my hat to a friend I had a chance to catch a brief chat with this morning. Strahan Coleman is one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s amazing, yet understated, musicians. He oozes talent, but also humility. With his music, Strahan captures a timeless feel because it’s in his bones, not because it sells albums or packs people into shows. My guess is that he’s probably more at home performing to a group in a living room than he would be on a big stage.

Strahan and I were chatting this morning about his passion for the big story of life and taking people on a journey. You see, Strahan has been doing stuff with TEAR Fund and during a trip overseas recently, touring the US and Germany, he had a chance to visit Uganda and meet his sponsor child. His reflection on it is honest and moving, mirroring much of my own experience when I visited Nairobi, Kenya and one of the biggest slums in the world there.

Strahan’s passion to engage God in a deeper, more meaningful way through the whole of his life is inspiring, and his ‘need’ to challenge others towards a bigger embrace of how our whole life connects with God and the world around us will be worth connecting with. It’s worthwhile sitting down and listening to him, not just for the great music that’ll transport you to another place, but also to hear about whatever is going on in his life, and to catch some of the thinking going on in his head.

Simplicity is something Strahan and his family have been embracing, coupled with a developing critique of the dehumanisation going on in the world around us that affects us all in profound ways. I look forward to seeing where that thinking and embrace of humanity as it was meant to be, goes.

If you’re not familiar with Strahan’s music, his album, Posters, is worth getting hold of.

Posters channels the vein of the old folk sage, the spirit-man who looks to the ancient roads for a map of the human heart. We lean on the people who write these songs, for they have found a way to peddle proper truth. There is brokenness in these verses, rusted tracks of imperfection, but as with the old psalms, there is always hope at the end, like the prodigal’s dawn.

And here is the man himself, singing Your Kingdom Come (live)