U2 to perform a concert at a Christian Music Festival ?

[U2Soar]

I was thinking of Andy / drummerboy?s post from earlier this week and I thought of the scenario in which U2 decided to perform at one of these Christian music festivals. I wonder what songs would they choose and what would the set list look like for such an occasion and this particular audience ?

Bono addresses crowd, Michael W. Smith covers U2 at Christian Music Festival

Yesterday I was at the Creation festival, a massive Christian Music Festival in central PA. (approx 80,000 people in attendance) The fest runs for like 4 days, but yesterday's main event was a Michael W. Smith concert. Normally I'm not a big MWS fan ( a bit on the esay listening side for me) but he was doing a set of all worship-oriented music that was really, really cool. So, he starts talking about how as Christians, we need to be overflowing with love and pouring our lives into other people, and this leads to a stroy about meeting Bono at this year's Grammy awards. He said that the two of them talked at length about Africa and Debt Relief, and what role christians should be playing. He said that their conversation reaffirmed a lot of things that he had always thought about Bono's faith, and that he felt that God was truly stirring in Him and was going to be doing some amazing things through him. He then said that he had a message from Bono that he'd like to share with us, and up on the huge jumbotrons they showed a video which Bono had shot for the crowd from London, talking about our responsibility as Christians to love our African neighbors as ourselves, and encouraged us to contact our representatives to ask them to support debt relief. The video ended, and MWS then encouraged the crowd to pray for Bono and his efforts as well as for the African people, then said that he felt it would be appropriate to play one of Bono's songs, so he led the crowd in "40" as one of his closing numbers. A very, very cool night that I'll not soon forget...... - andy
btw - I highly recommend checking out creation if you live anywhere on the east coast - they have it the last weekend in June every year. www.creationfest.com

SECTION 1 : The Gathering - Up, up on your feet, celebratory, praise, rejoice
* Scarlet ? pre-concert
1. Influx Mix / Elevation
2. Beautiful Day
3. Gloria
4. Rejoice
5. When Love Comes To Town (Live In The Kingdom Mix)
6. Mysterious Ways
7. I Will Follow

SECTION 2 : The Word Of God - Personal reflection and awareness - faith struggles, doubts, difficulties

1. If God Will Send His Angels
2. Wake Up Dead Man
3. Love Rescue Me
4. I Still Haven?t Found What I?m Looking For
5. When I Look At The World

SECTION 3 : The Word of God - Community reflection and awareness - Societal problems, faith responsibilities in social action and justice

1. Mothers Of The Disappeared
2. One Tree Hill
3. Silver And Gold
4. Bullet The Blue Sky
5. Please

SECTION 4 : The Bread of God ? Passion, Death and Resurrection

1. With Or Without You
2. Bad
3. Where The Streets Have No Name
4. Pride (In The Name Of Love)

SECTION 5 : The Finale ? Communion, Unity, The Dismal, The Blessing, The Commission, The Sending Out

1. One
2. Drowning Man
3. Walk On
4. 40
* Scarlet ? post-concert
* Grace

AN ALTERNATE SET LIST

SECTION 1 : The Gathering - Up, up on your feet, celebratory, praise, rejoice

* Scarlet ? pre-concert
1. A Celebration
2. Three Sunrises
3. New Years Day
4. Dancing Barefoot
5. Mysterious Ways
6. Drowning Man
7. Everlasting Love

SECTION 2 : The Word Of God : Personal reflection and awareness - faith struggles, doubts, difficulties

1. Zooropa
2. Last Night On Earth
3. Numb
4. Mofo
5. The Wanderer

SECTION 3 : The Word of God : Community reflection and awareness - Societal problems, faith responsibilities in social action and justice

1. North And South Of The River
2. Peace On Earth
3. Sunday Bloody Sunday
4. Miss Sarajevo
5. MLK

SECTION 4 : The Bread of God - Passion, Death and Resurrection

1. With Or Without You
2. Bad
3. Where The Streets Have No Name
4. Pride (In The Name Of Love)

SECTION 5 : The Finale ? Communion, Unity, The Dismal, The Blessing, The Commission, The Sending Out

1. One
2. Always
3. Walk On
4. 40
* Scarlet ? post-concert
* Grace

There are other U2 songs that I believe would be lyrically appropriate such as Falling At Your Feet

 

[Discoteque]

interesting post, Soar, your first, welcome!

actually, I believe U2 did in fact perform at a couple of Christian festivals back in their very early days....just after the whole Shalom thing happened, I think. But U2, being U2, never wanted to have themselves pigeon-holed as strictly a "Christian" group, and they've pretty much stuck with that for 20-some years!

 

[One Tree Still]

Don't forget "Until the End of the World"...

The story of Judas and Jesus.

 

[oliveu2cm]

Hey Soar! I'm soo glad you posted this here! I think a lot of people will enjoy it, and I wanted to share my response:

I loved the intro paragraph there- just about Bono relating to his Christian brothers & sisters. Sometimes he shies away from that, or you just don't hear about it (like I hadn't) so it was pleasant to read that.

I really liked Elevation being the first song to start it all out- since there are real religious hidden messages in there, things which i just recently learned about "I and I in the sky" and that sort of thing. Plus is really gets the crowd going!


For Sect 2 I like a combination of the songs. I love that you included Zooropa and The Wanderer on the second list, and I think the show would need to have ISHFWILF as well as Love Rescue Me like you did in the first.

I wonder how a song like "Walk to the Water" would do with the Passion Sect 3.

Sect5 of the second list is my favorite sect 5- One, Walk On and 40. I'm not a big fan of ALways but that's my own preference. I'd probably replace that with IWF ?? that's a hard one..

The themes that you splie the show up into are interesting, and it's amazing to me how many different and intense songs this band has to be able to fulfill all of those.

I'm curious as to why you put the personal reflection/struggle before the community reflection? I think I'd agree... but convince me

Lots of interesting stuff here, really thanks for sharing.