Mike Rimmer goes to Memphis, Tennessee to see first hand a very special school of rock, VISIBLE MUSIC COLLEGE

Visible School in winter

Just outside Memphis you'll find an establishment where "things that ought not to be together are together." Those three things are God, rock 'n' roll and school. Visible School (later to change its name to Visible Music College), a thriving college situation in Lakeland, is a small community a few miles from Memphis city centre. Memphis, the deep south city which gave the world WC Handy, Elvis Presley, Stax Records and BB King, seems a particularly relevant place to establish a Christian school of rock particularly as its founder is Ken Steorts, one of the original members of one of modern Christian rock's most popular bands, Skillet.

I'm here on a sweltering afternoon. The Waffle House at the other end of the street shimmers in the heat and across the road students walk out of the Days Inn where some of them are living and head for lectures. The school has been here since 2000 when it started with 21 students and it shares its building with Lifelink. Skillet originally came out of this church and Lifelink's pastor Rick Miller was the band's original manager.

The seeds for setting up the school were sown during Ken's time with the band (he played guitar on Skillet's first two albums). Sitting in his office, I am perched on a chair which looks like a futuristic design made in the '60s. I could almost hear a voice saying."in the 21st century, people will have furniture like this!" Hmmm.my mind is wandering and Ken is talking about the original idea for the school. "Well," he says, "it really was the experience of seeing the opening bands on tour being either people with a lot of talent or have a great heart for ministry but seldom both together. And so I saw a need for a place where people could come, be pastorally guided in community and in the Word and in the disciplines of being a Christian, but also serious about music study. It was about creating a place where new Skillets could be formed because I saw those opening bands with a lot of need and no school or any kind of place to feed them."

I first met Steorts when he was on the road with Skillet. Initially we had a memorable phone conversation where he had to pull off the road when the band were touring and call me from a roadside diner. Over the next few years my respect for him grew as first the band combined rock and ministry and then he decided it was time to get off the road, concentrate on family and church life and start Visible School.

His life on the road with Skillet gave him some rich experiences to pass on to others. One of the biggest challenges for those who are interested in doing any kind of Christian music is trying to get people to wake up to the toughness of the realities of ministry and the day to day struggles of being in a band. Steorts observes, "On the spiritual side, the life on the road of touring and writing music together is like being married to the other five members of the band. It's a hard life for which one needs to prepare spiritually. You have to be able to take care of yourself, to be able to find ministry for yourself. Even though you were connected with a local church back home you don't make it back very much. It's important to have mentors in your life and to keep that connection with people back home. It's important to have discipleship relationships that you're involved in rather than just think 'hey, I'm gonna witness to people at the show'. There has to be a real connection with a pastor discipling me."

Steorts is convinced that his time with Skillet showed up some of the business side of things. "I found out that it's a lot of business work. So I believe that our students need to know how the business works and how to handle their money and how to find the right people to trust and work with and the right labels. To be honest, I miss touring and playing. I guess I don't miss the work of being a band at that level. I really love my work being more home based with my family and my church, and I like people coming to me rather than me coming to them!"

Walking into the school, I'm greeted by the receptionist who is one of the school's students. Working for Visible is one way to pay off some of the fees for classes. This is not my first trip to the church or the school since I've been visiting Memphis since 2000. I wander along the familiar halls of the school and pass an open studio door where sounds of recording come through. In various offices tutorials are taking place. I walk past the office of Paul Criss, director of academic development, and hear him teaching students on the grand piano in his office. Students are chatting and laughing by the drinks machine. The place has a good vibe.

Steorts explains the courses on offer at the school. "We have four primary majors; Music which includes all the band instruments and worship leading and songwriting. There's Media Production, which is audio and digital film. There's Modern Music Business, and then there's Ministry Praxis, which is practical biblical ministry. So at the school you can study subjects as broad as music theory, aural theory, promotion and management of artists or recording techniques. Then all the students take Old Testament, New Testament, Christian Doctrine, Christian Perspectives and Worldview, History of Worship; and everybody's part of a band or managing a band or recording a band, so everything's worked out in the context of rock bands. They have private lessons and they have to play juries for grades, and make recordings for grades, and rock 'n' roll for grades! The pastoral people in the Practical Ministry do Preaching and Apologetics and Exegesis, and your typical Bible college courses. On top of all that we're a full college with Batchelors degrees here in the States so we're required to do general education, so we have a palette of gen ed courses. There are things like History, English, Math, Sociology, etc. So it's a full college with the major focus on the outworking of the music and creative courses in a rock band and creative context."

Staff members

I am about to lecture to the whole school in the main hall. On Sunday mornings, Lifelink Church uses this for their meetings and I preached here on the Sunday. The stage behind me is permanently set up ready for live music but I have a lectern down in front of the stage on the same level as the students. There are rows of them all with Apple laptops, ready to take notes. Or maybe they're playing patience whilst pretending to listen to me! No, on second thoughts, they look attentive enough. I am here to talk about media and music business and to try and inspire these guys spiritually in a short lecture series. Or maybe I'm here to try and break down some of the misconceptions about Christian music ministry. The students in front of me look like a mixed bunch with perhaps a few more tattoos and piercings than average!

Back talking with Ken, I wonder out loud why students come here to study instead of doing a "proper" college education? "Because we rock!" Ken fires back at me with a mischievous grin. "Mike... please! We actually are a proper college. In a way we're forging a new path for rock 'n' roll. I have to just say it's college where rock 'n' roll and God meet. You could take a music class at a "proper" college, it's gonna be taught by someone with degrees from "proper" colleges, propagating one type of educational style or if you go to a music store and take lessons from somebody, they'll teach you the new Metalica song or whatever. What we're doing is meeting three things together and that's our purpose for the school to exist. You get the academic study, the vocational application of those things and then the dscipleship part where the community and the relationships with the staff are crucial. We hope to demonstrate the depth of Christian relationships and discipleship in the school so that it would affect the future way you look at ministry and the future way you do music and what you're gonna accomplish in music. It's not just doing it for a record deal, you're doing it because you want to see people ministered to and you want to see the Kingdom of God come in people's lives. So those are the only reasons we exist and you can't find another college to do what we're doing. And we depend on that mix being dynamic and unrepeatable outside of Visible School."

Having another meander around Visible School later in the day in search of Ken Steorts, I pop my head around the door of the seminar room to find him lecturing a songwriting class. Playing a song on a boom box, he asks the students to deconstruct the structure of the song and make their comments about the songwriting process. I leave them to it and disappear down a corridor of practise rooms where in the distance there's the constant thud thud thud of drummers drumming. In one room a rock band are jamming and next door a girl rock band are having a meeting with their student manager to discuss the future. A guitarist is noodling and doing scales in another room. In the main hall, a worship band have taken the stage and are working on their set. There is music everywhere in this place!

It would be easy to dismiss this place as just a Christian School of Rock and sometimes Ken himself even likes to use the analogy as handy shorthand. "It's the quickest way to say what we're doing," he agrees. "It's a place where three things that ought not be together are together! Basically God and rock 'n' roll and school! We're trying to do the impossible here and have a place where Christian rockers can become great at what they do and impact and change the world. I didn't invent Christian rock, I just said that there needs to be a place to encourage these people to go out and do this. We're re-defining what Christians can do in music business, and we're also not afraid to say that we are Christians."

The school itself has started to release music from Visible but that's another feature! Every year at the school bands form and solo artists get the chance to hone their skills. Worship leaders serve in local churches throughout Memphis and every opportunity is taken for students to develop their gifts. Meeting with the student body while I was there lecturing, it seems that the school does attract students who are a little edgier. The school only lets Christians sign up for classes because of the emphasis on ministry and discipleship and Ken admits, "You'd be miserable at Visible School if you aren't a Christian. So we take care that someone's really serious about their calling to ministry. We are called to equip those who are called, and educate those who are called to be better servants and better musicians."

While there are plenty of places in the UK where ministry and musicianship are taught, Steorts is passionate about what is happening at Visible School. The fact that the school is in Memphis is also a big plus since the city has a huge music history. It's the city where blues, gospel and rock 'n' roll intersect. From the Graceland home of Elvis Presley to the Sun studios where Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash made their first recordings to the soul music of Stax and the heritage of an artist like Al Green, there's plenty going on here. And then there's the excitement of studying in the USA!

Steorts agrees, "There's a lot of musicians here, a lot of history in the area. Some of the cool things Visible School adds to that is Christian musicians from all over the country and from other countries so you won't find this many young American dedicated Christian musicians in a building together anywhere else in the world. If you've looked at different schools and realised you don't fit them but you feel God is calling you to start a band or become a worship leader or even run a venue in your hometown or start a coffee shop. You could come here and do the music business thing for a year. You'll get real experience, real community and discipleship. You'll get real knowledge in the area of study, grounding in the Word and this place is going somewhere, we're doing something and we have a purpose, that you will get excited about and assimilate into your own life."

There's certainly diversity here. Students have arrived wanting to be great guitarists but have found other paths as a result of being at the school. Ken loves the diversity. "A student this semester is gonna be filming a short film in Russian. It's crazy! Another student completed a media and broadcasting internship in England. Through the partnerships with other ministries like Worship Together and labels like EMI, the reputation of Visible School is growing through the work we're doing. It's an exciting place to be! There simply isn't another place like this, that is so concerned with developing a radical, useful, beautiful Kingdom community in this generation of Christian musicians. We're not about teaching in a vacuum, or training without building relationships. From the start you are immersed in applicable, industry-vocational classes and workshops and welcomed into a thriving, close-knit fellowship of students and staff and local churches. If that's your thing, you'll want to come and build with us!"

Mike Rimmer would like to point out that costs for studying at Visible School are around $18,200 a year for a full schedule of classes and accommodation (including everything but food). Scholarships are available for international students. He suggests that you check out www.visibleschool.com for all admissions information.