Black Lips
Judah Swilley has always known he wanted to make a difference. The process has been figuring out how. The son of a preacher, his was initially a strictly religious vision.
“It actually started as a college ministry,” he says of Ignite, the organization he founded in 2011. “You see these people downtown with signs telling people they’re going to hell… we wanted to present God in a more loving, non-judgmental way.”
Ignite’s mission shifted when its founder observed that there were a host of organizations in Athens aiming to do good work outside the confines of the church, though most of them lacked resources.
“We want to ‘ignite’ small organizations with big ideas,” says Swilley, who speaks in broad, inspirational terms; he is candid about his faith but respectful of many of his peers’ wariness of organized religion. “There are people that are never gonna make it into church,” he says. “But we still wanna reach those people.”
Ignite has hosted several concerts, raising funds and awareness for groups like Books for Keeps, Project Safe and UGA HEROs, but this Wednesday’s boasts a higher profile. Headlined by garage-rock titans Black Lips, the show will benefit Red Lotus Recovery, an Atlanta-based substance abuse center that utilizes alternative treatment methods like yoga and meditation. Black Lips (whose bassist, Jared Swilley, is Judah’s brother) chose the charity.
Swilley is adamant that the faith, nonprofit and arts sectors can work in conjunction to inspire positive change in the community. With concerts like this one, Swilley encourages folks to do just that.
“To just be standing on a corner yelling at people—in my opinion, that’s not really making a difference. To really make a difference, let’s feed somebody, let’s clothe somebody… That’s the whole purpose of Ignite. It’s not just to ignite organizations, but to ignite people, and to help them realize, ‘I can actually change my world.’ And when we all change our world, we can change the world.”
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