I’ll never forget how proud I was of my dad as he sat on the stage in front of our church congregation, guitar on lap, ready to begin the song he had been rehearsing at home all week. He had performed and recorded in a band before I was born, so I rarely had the chance to see him play and sing in a setting with an actual audience.

Every week our church of a few hundred members invited someone with a gift for music to present a worship song during the offering collection. Usually it was some woman with permed hair and a dress down to her ankles who vibrato’d out a modernized hymn, standing behind a microphone like a stone pillar, accompanied by a piano or a track played over the speakers, her notes always a bit flat. My dad was a musician, so I was raised to be a little critical of tone-deaf singing. Listening always felt more like an obligation than a gift to receive.

But not today. Today my dad was going to share both his gift and musical taste with my church friends and family.

As he began to strum his guitar, the atmosphere in the church changed—you could feel it as the music washed over you. First of all, the notes were in a major key, upbeat, fast-paced, something you could bob your head to. Already he had everyone’s attention. The anticipation built with a repeat of the intro notes. This was not your grandma’s offering song.

Then, as my dad tapped his foot on the stool to the beat, he began the first verse of Phil Keaggy’s “Strong Tower.” Wrong thoughts and emotions / have blinded the eyes of faith. If you didn’t hear the lyrics, you might think you’re hearing a classic rock tune in a small town bar. If you were a more traditional church-goer, your toupee might have been blown back by the hard rock seemingly blasting from the stage.

Just beyond your back door / Waiting for your decision you live and learn. The end of the first verse begins to pick up, the strumming growing more insistent, making you think this is building to something loud and uncontrollable—something more powerful than televangelists shoving people to the ground in the name of the Holy Spirit. Something that might make you run out of the auditorium, or might just fixate you in your seat.

But then the intro melody repeats, and a new verse is born. Deep in the valley caught / a glimpse of the morning star / If we could just reach you / Get to know who you really are / Where does one go, where do you turn? / There’s a place, a fortress high / Just beyond your back door / Waiting for your reception when you arrive. “Arrive” is strung out, and my dad hits the strings of the guitar into an uproar of worship, flooding into the chorus that is both sung and shouted, jubilantly, as it should be.

The name of the Lord (run now) / Is a strong tower is repeated twice with a heavy emphasis on the STRONG TOWER. You really can’t help but furrow your brows and purse your lips in agreement and nod along to the strong beat. The Laughlin boy with bleached hair was full head-banging. Were people clapping to the music? I was beaming. I felt the adrenaline of watching a loved one in the spotlight, nailing what they do best. Dad’s voice growled run now and hit the soulful high notes of Where you’ll be safe, yeah! just like Phil Keaggy would have wanted.

Then it ended—where had the time gone?—to applause.

Dad stood up from the stool and exited the stage. The head pastor took the microphone, bewilderment shown on his face with blinking eyes and a slight frown, “Well, that was…something.”

But it was more than something. A moment where joy filled faces. Where the anticipation as the song built and the sharp guitar strumming made you feel that longing for a God experience, and the victorious message you could stomp your feet to made you realize how easy it was to receive gifts and grace, and it didn’t have to be heavy in a dreary way. It captivated us all, I could feel it. For some, that captivation was fear that rock and roll led to drugs and Satanic worship. But for the rest of us, it was a celebration. A righteous rebellion, maybe. It was Christian and cool. And it was my dad, right where he needed to be.