“Good Folks Club” is a raw cry of satirical lament over how the Church often excludes the same people Jesus attracted - people who clearly don’t have it all together. It came out of wrestling with my own urge to exclude others with different convictions, and my fear that I might actually be the one who is in the wrong. Featuring lots of brass and culminating in an organ-and-church-bells-filled “cacophony of hypocrisy,” it gives space for Christians to grieve how we’ve failed to love like Jesus. As a recovering legalist, I often see things in very stark terms of black and white, right and wrong, and grace is a slippery concept for me to apply both to myself and others. While I personally tend to be morally conservative and fairly traditional, I wrestle with the fact that Jesus attracted people easily recognized in His time as immoral, while the Church tends to repel them in ours. This song, therefore, is not an abandonment of Christian morality, but rather a cry of “Why?! How!? Jesus, what has become of your Church to make it a place of keeping out rather than welcoming in?”more