Kristin michele welch

Jon hershey
Josh mcmanness
Jake luhrs christian

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Jake Luhrs: A man with a message

Photos and words by Sean Rayford

Working a home improvement gig in Columbia’s Olympia neighborhood in 2005, Jake Luhrs told his boss he needed to leave early, to try out for a metal band — in Pennsylvania. “You know we’re in the middle of painting this person’s house, right?” Luhrs recalls his boss’s response.

“It was a very emotional period,” says Jake, from a tour bus parked behind the Tabernacle on a 2019 summer night in Atlanta. Black with white flames stretching the sides, the bus bunks at least a dozen on August Burns Red’s headlining tour, a ten year anniversary of Constellations, their third full length and Jake’s sophomore effort with the band.

A consistent stop on the ABR tour circuit, Luhrs is no stranger to Atlanta. Seventeen years ago his old band, She Walks in Beauty, drove from Columbia for a show in a painter’s van. There were two seats up front, and in the back, the remaining band members, one friend, a mattress, and their gear. Their printed MapQuest directions led them to a run down section of town. “A non-e

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Wanna Learn to Judge People? Become Religious

“Come on, tell me!” “Why do you wanna know?” “Call it curiosity. You know mine now.”

I’m talking with my friend Ben over the phone and we’re having one of our late night discussions about life and our own personal struggles. The question I had asked him was, “If the Devil could do anything to really hurt your faith and not love God, what would he do to you?”

When you ask people this question it’s interesting what they come up with. The loss of a family member. A bad break-up or divorce. Getting cancer. Rape. Often times, people will rattle off a circumstance that deals with intense pain and suffering.

But Ben’s answer surprised me.

“He’d make me religious.”

One might say, “What’s wrong with being religious? Helping the poor and going to a church or mosque is a bad thing?” But in today’s world, religious conjures up the image of someone snubbing their nose at you because of the way they live by rules that YOU don’t follow. Religious people are seen as zealots who have life figured out and have the golden ticket to God’s