The moonlight is exquisite, especially when you consider the competition it has from the mass of light that is Philadelphia. But this Saturday night, even Philadelphia's most aggressive attempt is not enough to dampen the moon's brilliant effects.

Circled beneath this luminous moon is another "brightly shining mass," a group of young people, huddled together arm in arm behind a suburban Philly high school, heads bowed in concentration and attention. If you didn't know better, especially in view of the fact that a football field is situated just behind them, you might think the tiny band was planning the next play in a late-night football game.

Not exactly.

It is no coincidence that the word "angel" sits quietly, comfortably nestled inside the word "evangelist"--especially when it comes to someone like Rebecca St. James, the young woman who instigated this circle of prayer. Is that to suggest that she is an angel complete with wings and halo? No. But a messenger? Oh, yes. St. James, the 21-year-old, Australian pop rocker whose last album, God, received a Grammy nomination, has just released her fourth album from ForeFront, her third with producer Tedd T. Titled Pray, it is the latest in a series that, while simple in its message, is confident in its presentation. This album (even its title is a call to action) epitomizes what St. James believes to be her calling. Demonstrating a maturing self-awareness, she explains that she does not believe she is necessarily called to minister to the lost but to exhort the found.

"I really feel I am called--and hey, I may be wrong," she says, "--to encourage believers to be radical about their faith, to be bold."

Amidst the criticism that Christian music is often "preaching to the choir," St. James recognizes that even the choir needs a choir now and again.

"The choir is just as sick as the world unfortunately," she says. "It's like my Dad says, 'The church is just sick people wanting to get better.'"

She doesn't foster any pretenses that her music acts solely as a catalyst to the lost either. Indeed, lyrics like these from "Come Quickly, Lord," written with her brother Daniel, could be frightening if not baffling for a non-Christian with no context in which to place them: "When the sun grows dark/And the moon will shine no more/Quickly Lord/When the stars fall out of the sky above/Won't you come, dear Lord?"

"I can't convince some 16-year-old, non-Christian guy to come and listen to my music," says St. James, "but if I can encourage believers to reach out to the world about the love of Christ... who knows? Revival could break out."

Her concerts are encouraging, but tent meetings they're not. Between tunes that are so blazingly loud your entire body vibrates no matter where you are on the premises, St. James cracks open the Bible to share her meditations on Scripture and what it means to her to be a young Christian in this century. She reads letters from fans whose lives have been changed as a result of her forthcoming messages, especially regarding virginity and "recycled virginity." She abandons the band and the light show on a number of a capella tunes and invites the audience on numerous occasions to join in singing.

She's also added more recently the "NAV" altar call (that's the New Australian Version). Instead of the more traditional invitation reserved for non-Christians to come forward to discover more about the faith, St. James emphatically addresses her audience of believers: "Anyone who really wants to get serious about their commitment to shine for Christ...."

Crash Course

But St. James does not leave new "members of the family" or long-time believers to flounder in their emotions, but rather she gives them a specific call to action, presenting a five-part crash course in the life of the faithful: dig into the Bible, dig into prayer, become accountable to other Christian friends, get rid of the junk in your life and get involved in a Christian church where you can be fed, expounding on each assignment in some detail.

At 19, St. James was recognized as one of the "Top 50 Up and Coming Evangelical Leaders Under 40" by Christianity Today, and with good reason. Associate Editor for Christianity Today and author of the as-yet unreleased The Class of 00 (InterVarsity), Wendy Murray Zoba recommended St. James for the nomination. She says that this is all very fitting for being a Christian is indeed work.

"She goes beyond this 'Jesus can save' presentation," says Zoba. "She adds 'Jesus can save, but Jesus wants everything you've got. There are a lot of demands in following the Lord.'"

This may not be a message that youth in today's culture are accustomed to hearing.

"I think one of our biggest problems as a generation is selfishness," says St. James. "We've just been told over and over that life is about living for ourselves, doing whatever feels good... And that is so destructive; it's so damaging."

In what Zoba refers to as our "consumer culture," she suggests children today are "a button-pushing generation that calls the shots," constantly bombarded with consumeristic messages that are empty, endless and growing louder.

"I think that what Rebecca does is not present the gospel as another consumer option," says Zoba. "[Youth] are resonating with that because they don't want God as another consumer option. They want something bigger than the sum total of their consuming appetites... and she is pulling out of them what is just waiting there to be harvested in terms of spiritual life and spiritual wholeness."

While she may invite the label "evangelist," heavy as that is, St. James demonstrates an appropriate candor when she says that she is less comfortable with the label "artist."

"I do feel like [my music is] art, but I focus more on the ministry side, having the content in order," she says. "Then I trust people around me, [different artists] that I work with, to bring the art to it, to enhance the art that God has given to me."

Programming 101

One of those St. James depends upon to enhance her art is two-time Grammy-nominated producer Tedd T.

"He believed in me even from the first day," says St. James of her partner on her past three projects. "He pulled something out of me that I didn't know was there; he's done that all along."

It was a deliberate pulling, or pushing, as the case may be.

"I really push hard for artist participation," says T. "Rebecca has grown to be very interactive in the process."

Their interaction has paid off. God sold over 350,000 copies; no little sniffle for the Christian music market.

"He's encouraged me so much to seek to do things differently and to be creative," says St. James. "He's really good at making the artist's album."

And so it goes. St. James' straightforward lyrics swim safely along in an often chaotic sea of programming wizardry, compliments of T., engineer Julian Kindred and others. In fact, the programming on this project is one of the more essential components, much more so than her first two projects.

"In a lot of ways [programming] is similar to Braille in that it allows people that might be able to feel music but not be able to articulate it or imagine it to be able to lay it out in some shape or form, to marry different forms," says T. "I thrive on the process of everyone bringing in different elements and me sitting back and saying, 'How do we combine all of these?'"

While they may be at odds with each other--St. James' lyrical simplicity and T.'s sophisticated Euro-'80s programming--they may also look to be another commercial coup. And they do have this in common: they have both received criticism--programming is often attacked for crushing spontaneity and creativity while simplistic lyrics are accused of lacking artistic depth.

Both Tedd T. and St. James beg to differ.

"Programming for the sake of replacing live musicians is a null and void attempt," says the producer. "Using programming as a tool that would create music that live musicians are incapable of playing or supplementing music that live musicians are playing is to me a whole new world."

Pray would be his latest attempt at creating that whole new St. Jamesian world.

"I actually quite like the contradiction of having music that's [techno-sounding] with lyrics that are so straight ahead, so simple," says St. James. "In the Christian life there are lots of contradictions to the world. The world says, 'Serve yourself.' Jesus says, 'Follow Me, die to self.' I love the contradictions of the world to God's way, so in a way I'm kind of pulling from that."

She also adds, "I have people come up to me and say, 'Thank you for putting my prayers into song.' That's cool to me. That's successful songwriting to me, or success in being faithful to hear from God."

A Servant Behind the Scenes

Whatever the appeal, be it message or music, young and old alike line up to ask for autographs, to snap a photo, to tell her how her ministry has impacted them. It's a long line. She obliges everyone.

But this "up and coming" messenger is in all ways a typical young woman, laughing with peers, requesting tips on hairdos from the teenage girls in line.

Growing as she may be into the title "artist," she cringes at the word "star," adding that the question and answer portion of her concert, where audience members may pose any question they wish, was introduced solely for the purposes of creating an "anti-star environment."

"It's my goal to shine, to reflect God, to be beautiful to God," she says. "Our society puts so much emphasis on the outside. It's another one of those contradictions. God says, 'I don't care about what you look like on the outside. I care about your heart.'"

When it's all said and done, the desires of St. James' heart are far more simple than the path her present career has taken her. She reveals a longing to one day serve God working in an orphanage, perhaps in a foreign country.

"I've always had this vision of tucking all these kids into bed at night, saying their prayers," she says. "That's my passion, to eventually serve God in a more behind-the-scenes kind of way."

For all the work of photo shoots and autographs, light shows and sound checks, St. James consistently recognizes that the real work of her life does not take place on stage at all, but backstage, behind the scenes, maybe behind a high school in Philadelphia.

In a way, this circle of musicians and tech crew led by St. James is a group of strategists. The message is conversion, and the method is music and much prayer, lots of prayer. Prayer before concerts, during concerts, during intermission and in this case, prayer after concerts, thanking God for those who came forward, asking God to go before them to the next venue, be it concert hall or high school gymnasium.

"We do not draw people to Christ by loudly discrediting what they believe," wrote author Madeleine L'Engle (Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith & Art), "by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it."

This little band praying beneath the brilliant moon seems as dedicated as any to just that.

So until that "moon will shine no more," Rebecca St. James will continue to encourage, and shine, and pray.