John Cooper of Skillet Talks About His Book, Music, and Life

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March 3, 2021

Visit the store at https://doctrineandlife.co/ Had a great time talking with John Cooper of Skillet today about his book, life, music, regrets, and victories. Really encouraging. Having some blocking issues (we played some music and the algorithms got us again!) but they should be cleared up fairly quickly since we submitted the clearance for them many hours before we did the show.

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00:38: Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White, but you're probably not tuning in for James White. No, you're probably tuning in because of the fact that we announced that we are going to be joined together today.
00:52: Now, I think it was, was it July? When did, John, when did we have you on that first time?
01:00: Was it July of last year? Somewhere around in there, wasn't it? I can't remember that sort of thing.
01:05: What was that? All that loud music, you can't expect me to remember things like that.
01:14: Yeah, months, days. It had to have been July, August, something like that. Somewhere in there, because I remember
01:22: I did that Everest, that Everest climbing that I did up at the top of the mountain in September.
01:29: And we had already done it, and that's when I was reading your book. So it had to have been at least a number of weeks before that.
01:36: So sometime last summer, John Cooper of Skillet joined us, and we talked about all sorts of stuff, and the internet broke and everything else.
01:47: And ever since then, now all of a sudden, you are Mr. Popularity. I mean,
01:54: I've seen memes of you and John Calvin and just all sorts of stuff like that.
02:01: I haven't seen that, but that's pretty funny. Well, you both had pretty epic beards.
02:08: Yeah, I think it's the beard mainly. Before we continue, I just needed to get a waft of the smell of my
02:17: John Cooper beard oil so that I can get into the proper feeling.
02:24: That's exactly right. And if you're wondering, yes, John does have his own line of beard care products.
02:33: In fact, somebody on Twitter this morning was saying that they really want me to ask you and Jeff Durbin to get together to do a beard care commercial video together, how to care for your truly reformed beards.
02:49: Well, you know, if we are going to bring dominion to the earth, it must start with your own body.
02:57: I don't know if that's actually what that means, but it's got to start with the flesh anyway. Why not body?
03:02: There you go. There you go. And that beard is something you probably need to take care of each and every day,
03:09: I would imagine. I got to give this little thing a little assistance once in a while too. But anyway,
03:14: John Cooper of Skillet is our guest today. And like I was saying, sometime last year after we hooked up, because I think we hooked up a little bit sometime in June, as I recall, that long conversation we had when
03:28: I was driving down from Flagstaff. So after we hooked up, you mentioned to me that you were writing a book.
03:38: And how did you put it? You asked if I would be willing to check it for heresy,
03:45: I think was the term. Yes, it was like, our bar is pretty low over here at the
03:51: Cooper family. Like, just no heresy. That's all we're going with. No heresy. Anything above that is probably going to be fine.
03:58: Speaking of, I finally have your signed copy here. See, it's signed to James at the bottom right there.
04:06: So we're going to. Yes, I'm supposed to be holding this up right now as sort of like Vanna White.
04:15: Notice the beautiful cover in the book. But unfortunately, due to COVID, ice storms, and the fact that John just keeps forgetting, my copy is still at La Casa de
04:29: Cooper. In fact, I think that was probably there when we visited in December.
04:35: It was, and I forgot to give it to you. I'm getting all these random thoughts in my mind. Like, for instance,
04:42: Vanna White in one of your koozie sweaters would not work either. No, no, no, no.
04:47: Koozie? Did you just say koozie? What's it called? I can't remember. Koogie, koogie, koogie.
04:53: Koogie, yeah, yeah. That's the way to ruin Vanna White's presentation of the letters. Put one of those ugly sweaters on, man.
05:00: Oh, oh, man. You just made Rich very, very, very happy. He is.
05:06: I'm rolling in hot today. I'm rolling in hot. Oh, man, you are. No toys about it. But let's see that book again.
05:13: This was, this is, there you go. See, there you go. Awake and Alive to Truth. John L.
05:19: Cooper. I won't tell anybody what the L stands for right now. They can look online to find out for themselves.
05:26: But so you had started this before we first spoke, but you sort of finished it up afterwards.
05:34: What was the genesis? Why does the lead singer of Skillet want to write a book?
05:42: Right. I did. I had written it mainly in 2019, for the most part.
05:50: And I did finish a little bit of it in 2020. But basically, I'd left a little bit of it done in case publishers wanted me to switch something at the end or this and the other.
06:03: And I thought, well, little did I know that no publishers would actually want to make the book.
06:09: So I had to finish it up on my own. But it basically started, I think it probably started for me. I think we've talked about this before.
06:15: But 2012 is probably when I really began to notice that shift happening in culture.
06:21: I mean, I'd already been in Christian music since 96. So I'd already been doing
06:28: Christian music for, was that 15 years, 14 years, something like that. And I knew what it meant to live for Christ.
06:36: I kind of thought living for Christ was, I don't want to say it was easy because sanctification is never easy.
06:42: But it was easy to know, in general, what the right thing to do was. And 2012 was when it began to get confusing.
06:50: And you began to see all this stuff come out on the internet. People are saying all these new things about theology.
06:57: And what I know now is probably turned the social justice movement. But I didn't know what that terminology was then.
07:04: I didn't know. I'd seen some of the emergent church movement stuff.
07:10: But I didn't know what the name of it was. I just knew that it was preaching some sort of universalism.
07:15: But I didn't understand how that was coming in to the church in such a powerful way. And so after studying and reading a lot for three or four years,
07:23: I just thought, Lord, what could I do in my little world, my rock and roll world, to help try to ground
07:30: Christians into the traditional orthodoxy of the faith? And that is when this idea of writing a book came.
07:38: And I decided I would do that. And maybe for that little platform, encourage people to hold on to the truth of Christ, because everything else is falling away.
07:47: And I won't get too into it, but that happened in some personal ways. Friends of mine, people at my church, friends of friends who quite literally fell away from the faith, it was really heartbreaking.
07:58: And so that was the idea of the book. Right, so I've always been scared when singers start preaching between songs, personally.
08:10: That's always a very frightening, sometimes bone -chilling period of time.
08:16: Bone -chilling. Well, for theologians, anyways. It's frequently very scary, especially if you're going to have to speak afterwards, and now you're going to have to somehow very carefully correct the heresies that were just thrown out there without getting thrown out of the venue yourself.
08:37: And so, but obviously, when I started reading this book, the first few chapters, that was where you really wanted me focusing on, because you were talking about a lot of theological foundational issues, the doctrines of Trinity, issues like that.
08:52: And by the way, by the way, two things, two things, two things before I forget. First of all, belated happy anniversary to you and Corey.
09:03: Let me tell you something. In your business, being married as long as you guys have been married is like being married for like 147 years in your business.
09:16: OK, sort of like dog years. You know, there's seven. OK, it's like 27 per year for the music industry.
09:24: It is. So thank you very much. Yeah, I mean, that's a tremendous testimony, given the pressures and the difficulties.
09:33: And they're different difficulties now that you've had so much success than they were back when you were eating hot dogs in the back of the van off the money you just made from selling the t -shirts, you know?
09:47: Yeah, that's right. Am I right? Yeah. Now we get to eat hot dogs in the bus.
09:53: It's way, way better than it used to be. Oh, yeah. Yeah, big time, big time. But you know, when we started looking at this stuff, you said you were on Apologia Radio a couple of weeks ago with Luke and Joy.
10:13: And Summer wanted to be there. She really wanted to be there. But she's got four homeschool kids and stuff like that and wasn't able to be there.
10:20: She wanted to be on to say hello. One of the things, you told a story about me.
10:26: And as you remember, I was out walking. And well, you should have known
10:32: I'd be listening. But I want to provide context. We got to fix something here, unless someone thinks that I would actually be mean to my dear friend
10:41: John Cooper. But you and I were talking one time about the different kinds of songs that you have to sing.
10:51: And obviously, some songs, you're just belting it out. I mean, it's hard rock.
10:59: I mean, so you're at maximum volume. And so is everybody else.
11:05: So you've got a lot of cover for almost anything at that point. But then you've got songs like Anchored and Lucy and stuff like that, where it's pretty much just you.
11:18: I mean, and you've got to, it's a very different style of vocalization.
11:24: And you said to me, you said you're more comfortable with the rock song because, and you used the term, you said because my voice is, you either said coarse or rough, one of the two.
11:38: Rough, it's rough. Is rough, OK, all right. And so later in the conversation, we were talking about some of the language you used in describing the
11:49: Trinity. And that's when I said, drawing from what we had said before, well, some of your terminology, like your voice, is a little rough,
11:59: OK? So there was a context, OK? Hey, I told you, my bar is no heresy.
12:07: Anything above that rough is fine. It's pretty much accurate. That's fine with me, too.
12:15: Look, everyone, I think everyone's getting to see, when I tell, very often, people will introduce people and they'll say, this is my good friend.
12:26: Have you ever been interviewed by somebody and they started off talking about how you're such a great friend and you had actually met them only 10 minutes earlier, that type of a situation?
12:35: Oh, I guess I know what you mean, sure. Yeah, I've had that happen. And so people will say, oh,
12:42: I want to introduce you to my good friend, stuff like that. Well, when I call John Cooper my good friend, he is.
12:50: And John, you're going to have to testify, it was only last week that I was breaking you up pretty good via text message, wasn't
12:58: I? Do you remember? Yeah, you mean you were making fun of me about something?
13:03: No, remember, I dropped some pretty decent jokes on you. Oh, cracking me.
13:09: Oh, you did. You were making me laugh. I was like, I text you back. I said, James, you're on fire today.
13:16: You were dying. OK, you were dying. And we do that kind of stuff a lot.
13:22: Sure, we do a lot of the serious stuff, too. But we can take shots at each other and stuff like that.
13:30: We've really gotten to know each other well. And I'm so thankful for the encouragement you've been to me.
13:37: I hope I've been an encouragement to you. And what we're doing right now is just what we do pretty much every day when we text back and forth.
13:44: I'll either send you some wild, crazy thing that happened, and you'll go, no way, or you'll send me something and go, is this real?
13:52: Is this real? I do that one a lot. Is this real? That doesn't sound right to me.
13:58: No, no, no. And it almost always ends up with me saying, John, you've got really good common sense.
14:06: You're exactly right. This is off, and this is why it's off. And most of the time, honestly, the only thing that I'm helpful for you with is
14:16: I go, look, dude, I went to a very liberal seminary. I had professors who believed this stuff years and years and years ago.
14:23: That wasn't a part of your background. And that still makes you go, why do people believe things like this?
14:29: And once in a while, I can go, well, it's because of this, this, and this. Oh, OK. Well, it still seems weird.
14:36: And that's sort of our normal conversation. Yeah, that's right.
14:42: That's what goes on text message. But anyway, so I was listening to the book, because you'd send me the chapters.
14:50: I'd convert them to MP3, which you probably found weird at first. But you've probably gotten used to it by now. And I really enjoyed the book.
15:00: People can get it. They get it primarily from you, right, from your website? Yeah, unfortunately, it's still the only place you can get it.
15:07: So if you do want to get it, yeah, my website is johnlcooper .com. You can go straight to the book, which is johnlcooper .com
15:16: slash awake. And I always want to tell people who I think it's good for.
15:22: It's kind of an interesting thing to say. But I always call this book Theology for Dummies, because there's a lot of people that your kid maybe can't sit through that John Calvin book or that whoever book.
15:34: But this book, I think, is everyday language. It's for the layperson that needs to understand original sin, why you can't trust your feelings, why you even need to be saved to start with, the world that we're living in.
15:48: And it ends, of course, with the great news of Jesus Christ, which is almost too good to be true sometimes.
15:56: Even when I read the gospel, I go, I can't believe. It's almost too hard to believe that God has made a way for me to become like his son, wearing the righteousness of Christ, like a robe.
16:10: It's such amazing news. And it ends with this great news that you have a choice to make. There's two ways you can try to find truth.
16:18: One path leads to life in Jesus Christ. And the other path leads to death. And that's in anything else that is not
16:25: Jesus Christ. Right. I really enjoyed how you finished it up. I also enjoyed the fact that you,
16:33: I'm not sure if you get this from Corey or just what, or if Seth forces you into it or just what it is.
16:40: But once in a while, you'll write something and you'll basically say, yeah,
16:46: I had this really embarrassing thing happen to me once. And it's sort of self -effacing.
16:52: And so you'll tell these stories. And the one that I remembered the most was when this young lady, you're at some type of a get -together or something.
17:04: I guess there were lots of bands there or something. And this young lady comes up to you and she's talking about how your music has meant so much to her and it's helped her through these really difficult times.
17:17: And then, of course, the ubiquitous, can we get a picture type thing. And somewhere along the line, you came to the realization that she thought you were somebody else.
17:30: Yeah, it was at the, it had gone on for a while because she was like,
17:36: I was on tour with someone else. We were the opening act. And so the conversation started.
17:42: And I was surprised she knew who I was because we were only just then beginning to really sell record, like a good number of records.
17:49: But we were not like, people didn't stop us on the streets, OK, and so she had stopped me.
17:56: And she was crying. She was telling me about how much our music has meant to her.
18:01: It's given her hope. And I was really moved. I was like, this is amazing. God's using us.
18:07: He's getting our songs out there. And then at the very end, she's like, can we take a picture? I said, of course.
18:12: And then she's getting her camera out and she goes, I just cannot believe that I'm actually getting to meet
18:18: Jacoby. And I had this moment like, do
18:24: I say, like, it's like when you're talking to somebody you don't know that well. And they have that, like, spinach stuck in their teeth.
18:30: And you're like, do I say something or do I not? Is it more loving to say? So I was like, I am so sorry.
18:35: I just couldn't let her go on because she was going to find out in a few hours. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It wasn't me once she saw me coming up.
18:42: And then she saw Jacoby, the other singer. She would recognize how much better looking
18:47: I am than this other guy. No, JK, Jacoby's a handsome man.
18:52: He just needs some proper beer care. Oh, there you go. Have you sent him some beard oil? No, I haven't.
18:58: I should. But yeah, I did write that in my book because it's an interesting analogy to the way that if you say you love
19:10: Christ, but you do not keep his commandments, then are you really living for Christ?
19:16: Right? Is that actually Jesus you're loving? Or is it an imposter? Is it an idea of Jesus?
19:23: It's a phantom. And I say that a lot because a lot of our fans are young or they're young in the faith.
19:30: Or they're, I would say, spiritual but not religious. We have a lot of those kind of fans.
19:36: And they like the idea of Jesus. And they have no problems with the idea of Jesus. But they might not actually be born again.
19:43: And so I felt that it was an important story to tell them the story of this is what it's like. She thought she knew me.
19:49: And she even really liked me. But she didn't actually know me. And I thought that was an important story for them.
19:56: But yes, I am in general always self -effacing. I make fun of myself all the time. It's part of my charm, maybe.
20:05: If I have any charm, that's part of it. Let me tell you, I've been involved in church stuff long enough to have met many, many, many people.
20:16: And indeed, many people in music. I was at a very, very, very large church when
20:22: I was a young man. And I ran sound at that church. And we sound men wanted to have a shirt made that said more me on it.
20:33: Because that's always what the music people were, they wanted to have more of themselves than the full -back monitors.
20:40: And we're up in the sound booth going, we want less you, what are you talking about? But I've met enough people to know that there's all sorts of people in that field that would never, ever admit that something like that ever happened to them.
20:56: They would find that absolutely destructive of their entire view of themselves.
21:02: So I appreciated that aspect of your book. And that did make it very, very, very approachable.
21:11: You can give this to all sorts of folks. And so I'd encourage folks to get a copy and share it.
21:17: And we did, I did try to get that out there on social media and stuff like that, especially back around Christmas time.
21:24: So people would maybe be able to give that to their friends and stuff like that. So I hope it continues to do well.
21:34: But I also know what you mean by saying, boy,
21:39: I thought publishers might like something like this, but yeah.
21:46: That's just like when you start your first band. Yeah, we're gonna sell a million records.
21:52: And then it's like, oh, no, nobody likes that music at all. It's not good.
21:58: Every song I write's a hit, it's amazing. No, it's not. But yeah, it was interesting. I kind of thought, well, cause you know,
22:06: I don't know if everybody listening knows this or not, but the way that things run today with publishing or actually with making any sort of art, if you wanna be in a band or a singer, an actor, a book, a publisher, excuse me, author, excuse me.
22:23: What companies really want, they really want somebody that already has a brand. So you need a social media brand.
22:31: You need that following. Rather than they're gonna sign me, I'm gonna release a book and they're gonna help me build a brand.
22:38: They want you to already have it, right? So that being the case, I thought there'd be a lot of Christian publishers that would want to make this book.
22:47: And I met with a few and it turned out to be six or seven that we really wanna make a book with you.
22:53: And then when I turned it in, none of them wanted to print it. I couldn't believe it. I was very surprised cause we've got a pretty big base.
23:03: But, and I don't know if they just didn't think it was good or if they were afraid of the material.
23:08: But I said, you know what, Lord, I'm just gonna publish my own book then and write what
23:14: I feel is on my heart, from the Lord and prayer and studying and write what
23:19: I feel that I need to write and not be beholden to anybody. And it's turned out to be a good thing.
23:25: Yeah, that's sort of how we've done things for a long time. We recognized a long time ago that we're gonna be saying stuff that a lot of people aren't gonna like.
23:34: So we sort of have to go our own direction. And of course, sadly, in our day, most of the major Christian publishers have been purchased by secular concerns.
23:45: And so they don't have the final ultimate say. And these days there's just so much political correctness going on that it's an amazing thing.
23:56: So, hey, let's talk, now that we've talked about your book, let's talk about what you're probably a little more well -known for.
24:05: And that is your music. And it's weird because you have an album out and I'm not sure how this works because it's like you release an album and then you do sort of like a deluxe thing.
24:22: And you were telling me when we were there, Kelly and I had the opportunity of going up in December and staying at La Casa de
24:29: Cooper and for not nearly as long as we would like to have, but we got as much out of the few hours that we had together as we could.
24:40: And you were talking about how many songs you have to write just to put together a single album.
24:50: And that means there's a lot of songs that were right on the bubble as far as making it, not making it.
24:56: And so I'm noticing, you get the first album and then six months later, you get the deluxe version and there's some more songs on it and stuff like that.
25:06: Things have really changed. I would imagine you've been in the industry so long now that you've seen huge changes in how all of this stuff goes down.
25:17: Sure, absolutely. I mean, it's changed. I've been in it since 96 and certainly there's been a lot of changes.
25:24: Probably, I don't know, a decade or so ago, they began doing those things where you could buy, they did it with movies too, like the
25:32: Lord of the Rings or you can buy the extended version of the Lord of the Rings if you want more.
25:37: And they began doing these things where simultaneously they would release a brand new skillet album.
25:44: You could buy for 9 .99 or 14 .99. You can buy the extended skillet record and it already came with three extra tunes or something of that nature.
25:54: And they've been fiddling with it over the years but now because of most people end up buying digitally.
26:02: So now you purchase the whole album for 9 .99 and then six months, a year later, if you wanna add songs to it, then people only have to pay three or $4 to get the added material.
26:15: So in one sense, it's kind of cool because if you feel something on your heart or if something's happening, you're like,
26:21: I really wanna write a song about that issue, you can do it and have a chance to do it as a midway between album
26:28: A and album B. Or in our case, album X and album Z because we've been doing it for a long time, right?
26:33: Right, exactly, yeah. Yeah, can you imagine, I mean, I remember when an album was actually an album, you know?
26:41: I mean, it was made out of vinyl and if you left it in your car in the heat, it was toast.
26:49: And in Agatha DeVita took up one full side of the vinyl. That's right, that's right. Iron Butterfly.
26:58: See, now, John, you gotta understand something here, okay? When I was listening to you and Luke and Joy and you all are just whipping out all these names,
27:10: I'm walking along going, I don't have a clue. I had never heard of any of the bands that you all were talking about.
27:19: I was just going, okay, whatever, this is interesting because you were talking about how at a very young age, you had been like the manager of a club type thing at a church.
27:34: Right. And that you had gotten a pretty bad taste in your mouth by what you saw coming through that club.
27:44: How much do you think that has been behind your actually being successful because you already saw what you didn't want to do?
27:53: Oh, certainly, when I ran that, I was in college and my pastor was very passionate about things that I'm passionate about, which is, and things that Apologia Church is passionate about, bringing
28:09: Christian arts to the culture, taking back the culture for Christ and film and music and evangelism.
28:18: And I was very passionate about that. But my pastor was on the forefront of that and he ran a
28:23: Christian coffee house slash club. We had bands and stuff that would play there.
28:29: So I was his protege. And so I ended up kind of becoming the manager,
28:35: I guess you will say of that. And we'd have Christian bands in. And I remember I always thought, this is gonna be great.
28:40: I'm gonna get to meet these guys and pray for them and encourage them in their faith. And little by little,
28:46: I was just like, are you guys saved? Is anyone in the band, a believer, like a follower of Jesus?
28:53: And I mean, that's a little extreme, but that was probably the beginning of my, like John the
29:00: Baptist calling. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My like, what's going on in the church? And so, yeah,
29:05: I think that when I began Skillet, when we got signed as a
29:11: Christian artist, going into the Christian market, I was like, I just was passionate about living out a
29:19: Christian life, not just singing about Christ, not just making art that I pray is glorifying to Christ, but going into the world as salt and light, as a preservative to the world, as purity to the world from sanctification.
29:34: Let's live what we say, because I believe if we will live what we say, I think that's the best form of evangelism there is.
29:43: People see that you are different and also believe, as I know you do, James, that if you are different, that the blessings of God will come, but you'll be, your life will flourish because you are within God's design.
29:56: You're acting with inobedience and you will reap what you sow. So it's gonna be a great way to evangelize.
30:02: That was always something I was quite passionate about. Let's not just sing about Jesus. Let's make all of life holy.
30:09: You know, that's, come on, that's what it's all about. Right, right. You know, it's interesting because, okay, so as a young person, you're seeing real problems in the quote -unquote industry.
30:23: You know, you're seeing that you can sing things behind a microphone that don't translate into how you live the rest of your life.
30:32: When I was young, when I went to seminary, I was way to the right of almost everybody else in my classes.
30:41: I went, I had to, the way, you know, we didn't make any money. I was getting paid 400 bucks a month.
30:51: And so I had to go to Fuller Seminary. That was all that you could do in Phoenix.
30:56: And there were many times I'm asking the Lord, Lord, why am I having to go through this?
31:02: I mean, people told me that seminary should be a time of encouragement and grounding.
31:08: And instead I'm having to have the sword out almost every single class. Not all, you know, my
31:14: Greek professor I had had in college, we had, I had him for seven years and that was fine.
31:19: But a lot of those classes, you know, I'm having to do warfare all the way through and all the rest of this type of stuff.
31:26: Well, years later, I now know exactly why the
31:31: Lord had me do that. That was some of the most important training that I could never have understood at that time.
31:37: I could not have understood it. And you probably went away so disappointed so many times seeing these bands and what they were doing.
31:48: And you said on Apology Radio, you'd go up to some of these guys and, hey, can we have a Bible study before the show today?
31:53: And they're just like, what, do a what? Why would we do something like that, you know? And for a young person that you could have become very jaded and just simply walked away from the whole thing, rather than taking the necessary, you know, lesson from that and then making it, applying it and look how many bands last from 1996 to 2021.
32:20: Not very many, not very many. In fact, are you guys planning some, you know, 25th anniversary woo -hah type thing?
32:29: Oh, I hadn't even put that together, James. Is that this year? I can't do math. That is this year. Yes. That's how you do math, you add the one.
32:37: Okay, folks, look, folks, this is why John and I are such good friends because Alvin Omega, we've been around since 83 and we can never remember when our anniversaries are either.
32:49: You just simply, you just do what you're supposed to do. And then you go, hey, we're literally coming up.
32:56: You ready for this? You're sitting down, we're coming up on 40. Oh my gosh. Okay, so 2023 will be 40 years for Alvin Omega Ministries.
33:06: But the point being, yeah, y 'all ought to do something for your 25th. You really should.
33:12: But the point being that we learned and God knew what we needed to learn before we knew what we needed to learn.
33:23: And one of the things that I'm enjoying about aging is not the fact that now as an athlete, all
33:30: I do is manage injuries and pain. But the fun thing about getting older is you get to look back and go, oh man,
33:40: God knows what he's doing and I don't. And yet he still uses people like me.
33:47: And so when I heard you telling that story to Luke and to Joy, I'm like, yeah, yeah.
33:54: I know exactly what he's talking about. I've been there, done that, got the t -shirt and it also gives us, we can look back and we can go, well, could have handled that situation differently, could have handled that situation differently.
34:10: And so on that note, on that note,
34:16: I was at my, let me find my thing here and see if I can go.
34:22: Yeah, I was about to say, you were talking about all that stuff that God knows. I was about to say, do you need me to open up Ephesians one and give you some proper exegesis from the original language?
34:36: Double predestination? I will be doing that later in the program. Thank you very, very much. So you don't need me to do it.
34:43: I'll leave that part to you and you leave the rock into me. How's that sound?
34:48: Okay, I will do that. Okay, so here's the story. Let me let folks, and I think again, this is one of those neat things where the
34:58: Lord works things out and he does it in his own timing. I don't remember exactly when it was.
35:04: At some point in the past year or so, I became aware of something.
35:10: It may have been, I was at my chiropractor's house and I have the world's greatest chiropractor, by the way.
35:19: I'm sorry for all the rest of you who don't get to get that kind of treatment. I would be a walking mess without Dr.
35:27: Wibrew. But anyway, and she was, we were talking about you. And I think it was shortly after you'd been on the program or something.
35:39: And she was saying, well, what song would you like me to bring up on YouTube so we can listen to it?
35:46: And I said, well, you know, I didn't wanna wake the entire house up.
35:52: They've got little kids or have them dancing around necessarily. So I said, look up Stars.
35:57: Stars is a nice, quiet type of song. And so she goes to YouTube and let me just play a little bit here of what she brought up and what
36:11: I heard. So you got this, Rich? All right. ♪
36:43: You spoke of Toto ♪ ♪
36:56: You said still you come ♪ ♪
37:14: If you can know this, you can know my heart ♪
37:23: Okay, so let me pause it there because that's the same song that I introduced you with when you were on last summer.
37:31: As soon as I heard it, I was like, that's different from the version that I listen to, that I hear all the time.
37:41: And when my chiropractor read the screen, she said, that's Stars, the
37:46: Shaq version. And I was like, hmm, okay.
37:53: So the first thought I had was, at some point when we feel comfortable,
38:00: I'm gonna ask John about this. And I didn't, even when we came up there in December, I didn't bring it up.
38:09: I figured, you know, eventually the time will come and we can have a chat.
38:14: And so a couple of weeks ago, we were having a chat and I forget what the topic was that made me feel like, yeah, this is probably the right time.
38:25: And so I just threw it out there and lo and behold, you had been praying about it and it was on your mind.
38:33: And so here we are. So obviously for people who don't know what the background is,
38:42: I think you can confirm for me, cause you can see that, right? Were you able to see that while I was playing it? Oh, me?
38:49: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so I think there were actors and portions from the movie,
38:57: The Shaq, that were being intertwined with your video, right? Yes, that's correct.
39:03: Okay, all right. So I only know the book because when it first came out, and I've forgotten, it's been a very, very long time ago, it made quite a splash.
39:16: It was all over the place. And of course, the reason that I was asked to read it was because of the theological elements of the relationship of father, son, and spirit that were presented in the context of the book.
39:35: In regards to the doctrine of the Trinity, I had already written The Forgotten Trinity and things like that. And so my interaction primarily was, what is the theology behind what is being said?
39:49: And it sort of died out for a while. And then I guess the movie came along,
39:54: I forget how many years later. And - Quite a bunch, quite a few years later.
40:00: I can't remember. I think it may have been five or six years, maybe. Okay, yeah, it was a while later.
40:06: And so I threw it out to you and I was like, well, we semi -jokingly call me
40:14: Skillet's official theologian. And it's only semi, I'm pretty stuck on that particular title there.
40:25: But it always was in the back of my mind, well, someone's going to ask me someday about how you put together some of the things that you've said in regards to the importance of truth and the fact that you only have, you don't have your truth, you have the truth.
40:45: And you know what I'm referring to there. That kind of thing. How do you put that together with being involved with the soundtrack for The Shack?
40:56: And I'm going to tell you right now, John, one of the most wonderful things
41:03: I think was, and you'll confirm this, when we started talking about it, you're like,
41:09: I need to say something about this. Could I do it on the dividing line? You invited yourself on this program and you knew you could do it because you know how much
41:20: I love you. So, and I'm like, you bet, let's do it. Because I talked about The Shack when it came out and I did so accurately.
41:31: I wasn't one of the people that was doing the fire and brimstone flamethrower type thing.
41:37: It's like, here's an opportunity. We need to understand the proper relationship of father, son, spirit.
41:43: The gospel is Trinitarian. Let's use this as an opportunity to spread the light rather than just simply do all the nasty negative type stuff, which sometimes happens.
41:56: So anyway, with all that as the background, your response to me indicated that you've done a lot of thinking and it's a tough topic.
42:08: But anybody who's been in the music ministry for 25 years, and I'm glad to do the math for you so you now know.
42:17: Thank you, James. That you've been doing this for 25 years. You're gonna have some regrets looking back and some things you'd like to be able to change.
42:28: Talk to us about involvement with the shack. Sure, sure.
42:34: Yeah, I do think, I can't believe it's been 25 years. So now I'm ADD, so I gotta put the 25 years out of my mind.
42:42: So click, it's done. But I think if I remember correctly, I did text you.
42:48: I was like, yeah, that's my biggest regret. And I've been praying about a way to be able to talk about it.
42:55: And so I was like, hey, maybe I'll come on your show. Right. But I'm really glad to do it.
43:02: But I kind of wanna be, I'm not gonna give any caveats but I do think I should explain it in case people go back and hear an older interview and something
43:12: I say now doesn't jibe. So I will say this, I do want to repent for doing it.
43:19: I believe it was sinful to be involved with it. I wish I hadn't have done it. So I'm not gonna give caveats about that because I'm honestly not even embarrassed to repent about it.
43:29: I love repentance. It's the kindness of God that draws us to repentance. Right? Times of refreshing may come.
43:37: So that doesn't embarrass me at all. What I didn't want to do was to be ungracious or seem ungrateful to people who fought for me to be on it, who gave me the opportunity and we did the song and it went well for us.
43:52: And then here I am later acting like I'm ungrateful. I'm very grateful that they believed in me.
44:00: So let me say a couple of things about it. I didn't realize at the time, and this is where I've really, what
44:05: I feel most not good about. I just didn't understand the wisdom of the war that was going on in Christianity.
44:17: And if you go back and find, not that you should or want to, but find interviews that I did for The Shack at the time when people asked me about it,
44:26: I would always say, oh no, this isn't a Christian film. This is just a drama. It's fiction.
44:31: It's not theology. It's nothing that you should believe. It's a drama and it's a story of forgiveness.
44:38: I actually found the film to be impactful in its sense of towards the end of the film, this character,
44:47: Mac is his name. He has to forgive the person who killed his daughter.
44:52: And I found that impactful to me, but because of what the scripture says in 1
44:58: John, anybody that says they love God, but they hate their brother, that's not a disciple.
45:04: And so I found that to be moving for that in that way. So at least when
45:09: I talked about The Shack years ago, I never viewed it as a Christian film, but I think what I feel is the biggest sin about being involved in it is that I do think there was this battle going on, this battle to confuse
45:22: Christians of what Christianity actually is. And I know that I was a part of,
45:29: I feel like I was a part in fighting against the gospel.
45:34: I think I just want to say it like that. I didn't know that I was, I would never knowingly want to do that, but I do feel that that is what
45:42: I was doing. And I don't feel embarrassed, I'm ashamed of it, but I don't feel embarrassed to repent for it because of God's grace in my life.
45:50: And I love his word and I love his truth. And now I go, man, that was so unwise.
45:55: And that's part of, I think, what has propelled me wanting to do my little part in training up people to love righteousness, love what the
46:07: Bible says, and to see with your eyes what's happening in the world and how the devil can use things that might seem good, but it is not good.
46:18: But that's what the devil does, right? He twists little things, he twists truth, and it's almost like truth, but it's not, it's actually lies and it will lead you into destruction.
46:28: And that's what I think in the end, frankly, that I think that I was a part of.
46:34: So I am very ashamed of that. That is my number one biggest regret in my career.
46:39: I don't wanna seem ungrateful to the people that gave me the opportunity, but I am very ashamed of that.
46:47: But at least if you go back and you see stuff, you'll find stuff of me saying, I was really glad to be a part of it.
46:53: I just wanna be honest about that. So you don't go, well, that doesn't jive with what you're saying. I was really glad to be a part of it because I didn't understand the larger picture of the battle happening in Christianity.
47:05: And so, but even if you don't understand the battle, it's still sin, right? It's still sin, whether you get the battle or not.
47:13: So it's an encouragement, I hope, to people listening to wake up, to wake up and find out what's happening.
47:21: Right, at one point you made the comment that the primary message, the primary thing you had gotten out of what you knew of the book was the importance of forgiveness, that you had to forgive people in your life, things like that.
47:35: But then as you're, I hate to have to mention this because I know a lot of your fans are gonna watch this, especially once it hits the various Facebook groups and stuff like that, because your fans follow you and they wanna hear what you have to say.
47:55: But you are aging, we all are, okay? I'm not,
48:01: I think that all of you are, but I'm not. But I think I understand what you're getting at.
48:06: Right, right, well, here's the problem. Skillet has been in existence for 25 years.
48:13: Let me translate this for you. That's a quarter of a century, okay?
48:20: So just plug that. How old was Jen when you started?
48:26: That'll give you another idea of just where we are here. And here's the - I didn't know you were gonna be mean today, go ahead.
48:34: This is called truthfulness, it's a glorious thing. And here's the point, as you're aging, you're growing and what
48:44: I see, especially as you and I are talking, you are seeing the bigger picture in the presuppositional relationships of the assumptions at the bottom of the
48:59: Christian worldview with more and more clarity because you're being forced to.
49:04: All this stuff that you're dealing with since 2012, it's like, how could somebody come to that conclusion?
49:10: And you've asked me that over and over again. How could a believing Christian come to this conclusion? And then
49:16: I explain the leftist thinking and you see where the presuppositions don't line up.
49:22: There's a problem in the foundation and that leads to the erroneous conclusion. Well, the only way to really see the danger of the shack is to recognize you've gotta go back.
49:35: What is the ground of forgiveness? What does, where is the source of the power of the gospel to bring forgiveness, but in the triune action of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?
49:49: That's what really grounds all of this. And that's what the real issue was in regards to the content of the film and the book and things like that.
50:01: And so it is God's grace, honestly, that protects any of us from just constantly getting into things that 15 years later, we've gotta be going, oh man,
50:17: I shouldn't have done that, or I shouldn't, I should have, because we can't see, I can't see the future.
50:22: You can't see the future. We can't see an inch in front of us into tomorrow.
50:29: And so it is an amazing thing when you can go through 25 years and say, well, here's my list of regrets, but it's not like the vast majority of folks where those regrets involve destruction of lives and broken relationships and all sorts of sin and heartache and everything else.
50:51: And so I didn't know when
50:56: I raised that question just a matter of days ago, I sort of assumed,
51:03: I had sort of come up with some ideas on my own as to why something like that might happen as far as just the business is concerned and stuff like that, but I didn't know.
51:16: And you were just really straightforward. It's like, yeah, man, in hindsight, that's my biggest regret.
51:26: And I'm like, okay, well, there you go. Put it out there and explain it.
51:33: You cannot control if someone doesn't listen to your explanation. You can't control if someone won't hear you saying, hey, my big thing is the gospel does bring forgiveness, but this is why it brings forgiveness.
51:48: It's because it's found in the source of the father's love. And then you have the son who comes and accomplishes and you have the spirit who comes and applies and it's
51:59: Trinitarian and it's beautiful and it's balanced and it's eternal. It's what God always wanted to do and it's self -glorifying and it's awesome.
52:06: And you can't play with that just simply to create emotion in people's hearts.
52:12: You've got to stick with the truth. There's only one truth. I don't get to have my version of the truth. You don't get to have your version of the truth.
52:19: There's only one truth. And so since you're saying those things very strongly now in your book and certainly in your music, then people have to hear why it is that you think that is so vitally important.
52:35: I can't force them to do that. You can't force them to do that. But I'm very, very thankful that you wanted to address that and to let people understand that you want to be consistent.
52:50: And for a lot of folks, 25 years, like who cares? If it was more than 10 years ago, I don't even own it anymore.
52:58: You did say on the last time you were on the program, you said, there are certain skillet songs that I look back on now and I don't think anyone should be seeing them or something along those, because the guy was asking you, you were saying, don't look at us, because sometimes we'll do a song that's just like, oh, 10 years later, you're like, oh, well, it rhymed, but I'm not really sure that was, it sounded good at the time.
53:29: Yeah, yeah. That's not the standard. The rhyme's not the standard. It matters. It matters, but let's get a little better.
53:35: Yeah, there is a higher standard for Christian music. And so that's another thing
53:40: I appreciate. In that very first interview, we played it last time you were on, you were saying like, hey, there's lots of stuff that we sing that you shouldn't be singing in church.
53:49: That's a higher standard in that situation. So you're trying to apply that consistency over a 25 year period.
54:01: And let me tell you something, this program has been on, our archives go back to 98, but literally we were doing the dividing line in the 80s.
54:10: And that's a lot of talking on my part. That is a lot of talking. That's a lot of talking. And most of it did not rhyme at all.
54:17: I can assure you of that. And so. That's a lot of bicycle talking too.
54:24: That's 141 ,000 miles worth. So yeah, happen to know that. So, all right.
54:30: So was there anything else you wanted to add to that? Because I'd like to go to something positive. No, I don't think
54:36: I need to add anything to it. You go wherever you want to go. Okay, I contacted you back in November, December somewhere.
54:47: And I literally sent you a text. I said, dude, you just ripped my heart out.
54:54: Why didn't you warn me? And you're like, what are you talking about? And then
54:59: I gave you the background that when I had gone on to iTunes to basically buy all of Skillet's stuff last year,
55:08: I had missed a few albums. I'm not sure if they didn't display correctly. Who knows? If we're not on a phone, sometimes you just don't even see stuff.
55:15: I don't know. But I had just downloaded the album that had
55:22: Monster on it, which of course is your biggest hit. But there's another song on it.
55:29: And I was doing a 10K run. This did not help me run faster, by the way.
55:35: Every once in a while, I contact John and go, dude, you did not help me out today.
55:41: Normally it's, you got me to the top of the hill today. But this one was like, I was a hospital chaplain for a number of years, hardest work
55:51: I ever did. I think I gave you, have I not given you my book on grieving?
55:57: Yeah. Okay, that grew out of that extremely difficult work in a major hospital, medical center here in the
56:07: Phoenix area. And so I did grief counseling regularly and it's the hardest stuff
56:14: I ever did. I mean, I would much rather be alone in a mosque in a foreign country debating the
56:22: Quran than to do that. It's that much harder for me to do.
56:28: God just didn't wire me all that well to do that kind of stuff, but he forced me to do it anyways. So when I heard this song,
56:35: I immediately went, okay, there's something behind this. There is, I've got to ask
56:42: John, but I didn't just jump on the phone and say, dude, talk to me about this. I Googled it and found a transcript of your explaining this song,
56:54: I think in Philadelphia, somewhere around 2010, 2011, somewhere you explained this and that gave me the background so that when you got back to me, when you found out which album it was, you said, oh, you're talking about Lucy.
57:14: And I said, yeah, I'm talking about Lucy. So as you told me once, you said certainly not one of our most popular songs, but what did you say when you said that, do you remember?
57:28: I think I probably said, I think it's probably the best song that I ever wrote, even though it's not one of our most popular ones.
57:35: Yep, yep, that's what you said. So let's take a listen to Lucy and then we'll talk about it when we get a chance to listen to it here.
57:44: ♪ I just came to talk for you ♪ ♪
58:22: I just wanna hope it's over ♪ ♪
58:35: I just wanna stop today ♪ ♪
58:50: Hey Lucy, I remembered your birthday ♪ ♪ They said it brings some closure to say your name ♪ ♪
59:53: New start, living the life that we could have ♪ ♪
01:00:05: Just another moment in a piece of heaven looking back at me ♪ ♪
01:00:32: I just wanna hope ♪ ♪
01:01:15: Hey Lucy, I remember your name ♪
01:01:23: All right, first question I have is a real practical one. Do you ever struggle to sing it?
01:01:31: Yeah, when we first started singing it, it is such an emotional song.
01:01:36: And obviously, I assume we're gonna tell what the song's about. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. But I think everyone could see in your face and that, believe it or not, is you before Beard.
01:01:48: Yeah, yeah, that's what I used to look like. And doing P90X, I don't look like that anymore.
01:01:54: But yeah, that was my P90 phase. But yeah, it was. I mean, it's a very difficult song to sing.
01:02:01: It's just so brutal and so sad that it did take me a while, honestly.
01:02:08: That's probably the only song that I can recall ever thinking, all right, we need to rehearse that song again until I can separate the live performance out from the emotion of it.
01:02:20: Yeah. It's kind of a weird thing to do. Yeah, that would be so, so hard for me to do because I stink at that.
01:02:28: I really, really do. Now, I heard that song and the first thought I had was there is a loss here.
01:02:37: Someone has experienced a loss here, but I didn't have enough of the context to really be able to fill in the blanks to know exactly what it was.
01:02:48: So if you'd be willing to, what's behind this? Sure.
01:02:54: Well, one thing to say first is sometimes when you're writing a song, everybody might not know this, but sometimes you're writing from your personal experience, of course.
01:03:06: But you might be writing something that you haven't exactly gone through, but there's something analogous in your life.
01:03:13: And you can draw on that pain or that heartbreak or whatever, even if you haven't gone through exactly this.
01:03:21: And that is what this song is. Certainly, I'm drawing on my mom's death.
01:03:28: My mom passed away when I was 14 years old. And I visited her grave probably only one,
01:03:37: I've only visited it twice ever. I don't know why, just never did. And it was years and years after she had passed, probably five, six years after she died was the first time
01:03:46: I ever visited the grave. And I had this feeling like I can't, once I was there,
01:03:51: I didn't think I would get that emotional like a dummy. And then once I was there, I remember saying,
01:03:57: I can't believe I didn't bring any roses. Like I brought nothing to this. It was a really weird moment.
01:04:04: But what the song is about was based off of a story that I read. There was around 2008, 9, 10,
01:04:13: I began seeing a lot of these ministries popping up, which were people that had had abortions basically.
01:04:22: And they were beginning to minister to people who have gone through, terminating pregnancies.
01:04:28: And I began seeing a lot of these stories and I read one that just really crushed me.
01:04:34: Honestly, it just crushed me. And it was basically a high school girl, a couple, found out they were pregnant.
01:04:43: They were scared, didn't know what to do. Didn't tell anybody. They just wanted this to get away, just end.
01:04:51: My hand's clean of this. And they thought, she thought, frankly, that if she just went and had this abortion, all of her problems would be done.
01:05:02: Nobody would find out. I don't have to worry about this. My parents don't need to know. And something happened to her that happens, as we all know, to thousands and tens of thousands of people, which is that you have the procedure and there's this sense of loss and this guilt and this depression that doesn't go away.
01:05:23: And so in this story, the girl and her boyfriend went to see like a guidance counselor, basically.
01:05:30: And they sent her to someone else, one of these ministries that deals with this grief. I don't really know the right name of it, but in the story, in real life, this counselor said to her, the problem is that you were dealing with that child like it was just another, it was just a problem.
01:05:49: And you need to realize that you have lost a living human being. You have lost, you've had a death in the family.
01:05:57: And this counselor suggested that she named the baby. Why don't you name the baby and have like a little service type thing?
01:06:06: And it will give you closure. And so I was, this story, it just broke my heart.
01:06:13: And I decided to write a song about it, which is supposed to be years later. And it's the girl saying, yeah,
01:06:20: I remember your name. I haven't forgotten you. And she's, you know, it's on the birthday, if you will.
01:06:27: And I had hoped that the song would encourage people. It's not a condemning song.
01:06:36: It's a song about this fact of, we have things that are tough to live with, but there is a
01:06:41: God who can fix that. There's a God who can bring wholeness and forgiveness that we so desperately need.
01:06:50: And in this song, again, it's not a condemning song, but in the song, I think she's, I envisioned her looking back on the story and going, if I had known then what
01:06:59: I knew now, I would have made a different decision. And I think that's a really important message because our society has so made abortion, like it's just a thing that you get rid of.
01:07:11: And because of that, as we all know, because we've all read thousands of these testimonials, people just look back and they go,
01:07:19: I just did not understand that it was a life. So I hope that God could use the song.
01:07:24: That's what the song is about. Well, now, just standing here listening to that, it's very, very interesting.
01:07:32: You'll find this interesting because even once I learned that and I understood this was the regret of the life lost in an abortion and the needed closure and the little grave and the name and things like that,
01:07:51: I never thought about it. I heard the song as the father, not the mother.
01:07:58: Right. I heard it as the father, not the mother until you just said, no, my intention was this is the girl.
01:08:07: And of course, for some reason, until you said that, I was thinking the father who lost, because I think of having a daughter.
01:08:17: Yes. And that connection you have with that daughter as a father. And that just overwhelmed every, even thinking about, even waiting to go, well, is this the guy or the gal?
01:08:30: Obviously it could be either one, but it's interesting until you said that, that's how
01:08:35: I heard it. Well, sometimes when, I'm trying to remember now, sometimes when you write a song, you are leaving aspects, of course, open for interpretation.
01:08:46: Right. I don't know if I ever made a decision in my brain, is this her, is this him?
01:08:52: I think I just left it open to the fact that for, obviously she deals with something in a different way than he does.
01:08:59: I'm not saying, but in an ideal world, both of them would realize what they had lost.
01:09:09: So I remember when I wrote the song, my wife was gone with my daughter. She was out to the grocery or something.
01:09:17: And I was just thinking about that story. I thought, I gotta write something about it. And that chorus hit me.
01:09:23: And so I sat down and I was playing the song and I was singing the chorus, trying to get through it, even though I'm just writing it without tears, to be honest.
01:09:33: My wife comes in and she's like, whoa, are you okay? And I said, yeah, I'm writing this chorus. You gotta hear this chorus.
01:09:38: And so I sing this chorus for my wife. Now that it's over, I just want to hold her. As I sing the whole chorus and I start crying.
01:09:47: And I think Corey is looking at me like, what's wrong, what's wrong with you? And I realized that I hadn't told her what the song was about.
01:09:54: So I think in my wife's mind, I don't know why I'm telling you the story. In my wife's mind, John's writing some old love song and he's crying about it.
01:10:03: And she's like, no, John, it's written really well. I just, it's not really meaning to me what it must be meaning to you, but it's written really well.
01:10:11: And I said, oh, oh, oh, I'm sorry. I forgot to tell you why I'm writing this song. Remember that story that we read?
01:10:18: That's what this song is about. And my wife looks at me and just immediately, she just tears rolling.
01:10:25: She's like, play it again. And I played again. And it was one of those moments when
01:10:31: I thought we had written something very special, very powerful. Yeah, and I love you.
01:10:39: I saw, I don't know where I saw it, but you have, you bring some musicians along to do the strings, particularly just for that song.
01:10:52: And it was just beautifully done, really, really. So I hope for your fans who maybe weren't aware of that, that will cause them to track that song down and mark that one as one to be listened to, mulled over.
01:11:14: And when your favorite artist, if John Cooper and Skillet's your favorite artists, then the one that they think is there is at least
01:11:22: John's favorite. That should be something important to you as well. So I really, really, really appreciate that.
01:11:28: We have kept you for a long time, but there's one more song we talked about looking at. And what
01:11:35: I have is, and again, this is another, this is a super early,
01:11:42: I guess a super early album. 2001. 2001, okay, so only five years in.
01:11:49: I'll do the math for you. It's 20 years, people. But only five years into Skillet.
01:11:57: So 96 plus five, okay, anyway. So this is early on.
01:12:04: And again, it was one that I didn't have for some reason, even when I got the other one, couldn't find this one.
01:12:11: And of course, the picture of you on it, I can barely even recognize.
01:12:18: I'll be perfectly honest with you. I just invite people to go look this one up. What's the name of the album again?
01:12:25: You might wanna invite people not to look this one up. Just listen to the song. Anyway, the name of the record was called
01:12:32: Alien Youth. Right, right. Yes, and the song is called You Are My Hope. Right, right, so Alien Youth.
01:12:39: There you go, you can look that one up too. For all your listeners, they'll probably like that Alien Youth song too, because it's got that great post -millennial bit to it.
01:12:51: We're taking over the world with Alien Youth. We're here to stay, we're taking it over, man.
01:12:56: Right, right, right. That's what we were talking about, was you had been influenced along those lines long before I was.
01:13:05: But you specifically pointed to this one. And before I play it, let me throw this out here so folks can be thinking about this.
01:13:12: Because you and I have discussed, there's just a lot of popular music that doesn't transfer to the church well.
01:13:22: It doesn't transfer to worship. It doesn't transfer to congregational singing.
01:13:28: And in fact, I'll be honest with you. I think sometimes, especially in the modern period, we try a bit too hard to get popular songs to become congregational songs.
01:13:40: And most people just don't have the vocalization capacity to really do it.
01:13:47: And I don't know, I'm old school. I learned, excuse me, I learned to sing bass part for everything.
01:13:56: And most people don't even know how to harmonize that. They wouldn't know the soprano and alto and tenor and bass parts if their life depended on it.
01:14:05: And I love when we sing the doxology or something like that and people break into the parts.
01:14:11: It's beautiful. We become this huge choir. It's really, really neat. It's wonderful. So you've said, hey, there's a bunch of my songs that just, they don't belong.
01:14:21: They belong in your ears, in your car. They don't belong in the congregation, in the church because Aunt Mildred over there is gonna get up and walk out if you even bother to try.
01:14:32: So, and you know Aunt Mildred. You know exactly who I'm talking about. Oh yeah. So, so there are a couple and I threw this one out to you and you agreed that I've gone,
01:14:44: I think this could actually survive the transition and be a good congregational song.
01:14:52: And so I'm still, I'm still wanting to get the chord progression charts from you or you may not have them from 20 years ago but probably wouldn't be.
01:15:04: You and I both know a genius on the guitar, a couple of geniuses on the guitar. Yes, yes, that'll be no problem.
01:15:12: It's like, you know, it's like five chords. This should be no problem. Elvis could do it. Right, right.
01:15:18: But I was, I was thinking more along the line. I was trying to get out there that people like Corey and Seth are geniuses.
01:15:25: They are geniuses. My wife is absolutely, she's amazing. Yeah. She can do anything with music, producing, parenting.
01:15:36: Parenting music, okay. All right, that's an interesting combination there. But I was trying to throw stuff out there and I don't know what to throw out there just to make
01:15:46: Jen happy but I've mentioned more than once that one of her songs has helped me to get to the top of more than one mountain.
01:15:55: Oh yeah. So throw that into the mix so everybody feels like they've gotten a little something out of this today.
01:16:01: But anyways, I'm going to play You're My Hope and this version is not you.
01:16:09: It is you singing, obviously but you don't have to worry about the fact that some blonde young kid is, did you dye your hair back then?
01:16:20: Yeah. Oh yeah, man. It was, it was late nineties, early two thousands. Everybody looked weird.
01:16:26: You know, we all watched the matrix and we all wanted to be in the matrix. And so, yeah.
01:16:33: Oh gosh. That was one thing I never did. I can assure you of that. And that was right around 2001 is when this was.
01:16:41: Okay, that's when I had my debate with Father Peter Stravinskas and that was the last debate in which I had hair.
01:16:47: So that's what I remember about that particular period of time. So that gives you an idea of how far down the road
01:16:54: I am from John. But this version has the lyrics. So even though the nice thing is you really wouldn't need them because you can actually understand very clearly without all sorts of other things getting in the way.
01:17:08: But folks listen to this and let's see if we can get agreement that maybe this is something we can start working on getting into congregational singing.
01:17:19: So you wrote this around that same time or maybe a little bit earlier? Yeah, I wrote this in the year, either 2000 or 2001 early because the album came out right before September 11 and this song came out on radio literally probably 10 days before September 11.
01:17:42: And so when that tragic thing happened, all of a sudden this song,
01:17:50: I don't mean that it meant more but it took on kind of a new meaning because people were literally going, their whole lives were shaken, right?
01:17:58: And people are, well, if that can happen in New York, that could happen anywhere. Maybe that, what if it happens here?
01:18:04: People were all of a sudden looking for, if you can remember all the way back at that time, people started getting a little bit more into the idea of spiritualism, like maybe there's something out there, maybe
01:18:15: I should be asking these questions. And I found it to be a great time for the gospel.
01:18:21: It was a great time to talk about Jesus because people were realizing that nothing is sure in this life.
01:18:29: You are not guaranteed tomorrow. You're not guaranteed anything. Anything can happen. And so this song took on a bit of a new meaning at that time.
01:18:37: All right, let's listen to You Are My Hope. So did we lose the sound back there,
01:19:11: Rich? Okay, I'm sorry. It's playing.
01:19:19: Day to day. I'll sing it for you, that's all it is. Yeah, really, we shouldn't have to worry about this.
01:19:25: I mean, listen to how clean my voice sound. It doesn't sound rough at all. It sounds very, very good. My language about the
01:19:31: Trinity. Let me, let me. Do you have a video? No, this is the song.
01:19:36: I played it earlier. It was fine. I'm gonna reload it here because we're playing it straight off of the thing and see if I can find it.
01:19:47: But you sure you didn't mute this, huh? No. Well, okay. We've lost connection between the computer and the feed for some strange reason.
01:19:58: I don't know why, but things like that happen when we do stuff like that. We got the first two done anyways.
01:20:05: But - I'm amazed. Yeah, well, and we had tested all of these. So I don't know why this one would be throwing us the curve.
01:20:14: But it is a very strongly hopeful and positive message concerning the spread of the gospel across the earth.
01:20:28: Now, do you mind saying what you said to me when we were talking about this?
01:20:35: Do you know what I'm referring to? I don't remember what I said to you, but go for it. Yeah, well, you said, yeah,
01:20:41: I liked writing songs like that, but I stopped because no one understood what I was writing about. It's totally true.
01:20:49: It's like, we would write these songs and I'd be like, this is really good. This has got some theology in it, and this is right, we believe it.
01:20:58: And yeah, it just felt like the people that liked Skillet really loved that we wrote those kinds of songs.
01:21:05: But other than the people that liked Skillet, it wasn't growing. I think people were like, I don't really understand what these songs are about.
01:21:12: And I was very taken aback at that time, in college is when I got so into the
01:21:18: Bible and into the idea of the, not the idea, sorry, the theology that the earth is the
01:21:27: Lord's, this is his earth and history belongs to God. And the earth belongs to God and it's all for his glory.
01:21:35: And I had not really ever heard that. I don't really know why, but I got into a bit of Augustine, you know, city of God.
01:21:43: And I was just very excited about the idea that Jesus's glory would be made known in all of the earth.
01:21:51: And I felt like that's our mission. That's our, I mean, us the church, that's our mission to make
01:21:57: Jesus's glory known in all of the earth. And so I was writing a lot of songs about that, but in the end, a lot of people didn't know what
01:22:04: I was talking about. But it's the lyric in the second verse of, you are my hope.
01:22:11: My wife wrote it. I remember we were in the van and we had started writing the song and I said, I got the chorus.
01:22:16: And she liked, we were in the van and she goes, hey, I got some second verse lyrics. Tell me if you like them. And she gave me the second verse lyrics, which says, what does it say?
01:22:27: Etching your eternity in me. And then she wrote the nation stream and angels sing
01:22:33: Jesus reigns. And I remember, I thought I was gonna have to pull the van over. I was getting my hallelujah on.
01:22:40: I was like, whoo! Yes. Because it reminded me of that great scripture about all, what is it?
01:22:50: They will say, come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, every stream, to the house of Jacob.
01:22:56: And he will teach us about his law. I'm not quoting the scripture, but it's a paraphrase.
01:23:02: I love it. They will say, every stream, that's what I had in my mind.
01:23:07: I wanna see the glory of God known like that when the world says, all right, we need to go to the mountain of the
01:23:14: Lord to find out how to live because those are the people that are flourishing. That must be where truth is.
01:23:21: And that's my real heart with Skillet and hopefully my life. Indeed, I would just suggest to folks since we had the technical issue, go to YouTube and put in Skillet, you are my hope.
01:23:35: It'll pop right up. And I'm sure the audio will play for you, if it doesn't play for me, and you'll be able to hear it.
01:23:44: And maybe, you know, let us know if you think that, yeah, that would be something that a congregation could do.
01:23:50: Because I really think, you know, I mentioned that to you and you agreed that could survive the transition, wouldn't you think?
01:23:57: I hope so. I hope so. If not, somebody like me out there will be like, that shouldn't be played in church.
01:24:05: Somebody mean like me. I'll send you a tweet.
01:24:10: I'll judge everybody on there. This isn't about God's attributes. What's wrong with you? But it is.
01:24:16: It actually was. No, it is about his attributes. It is about his attributes. It really, really was. So I thought it was great.
01:24:22: And I appreciate that. And the other, and you did have other songs on that album that had similar, very positive.
01:24:29: Well, and that doesn't, I mean, this is the kingdom is, is much more, much more modern, much later.
01:24:38: What would be the years for this is the kingdom? Yeah, this is the kingdom is on our current album.
01:24:45: So that album is called victorious. And yeah, this is a kingdom. That one's straight up too, man.
01:24:51: So that's got some of that, you know, one voice, one nation, one Lord, King Jesus Christ.
01:24:58: You know, I like anything that's about any of that. The reign of God. Oh, I'm a big fan.
01:25:06: I'm a big fan. Big fan of the reign of God. And we need it now. My lens do we need it?
01:25:11: Well, the, the, the hashtag that many of us have been using in social media is Christ or chaos.
01:25:18: And right now there's a, the chaos is very understandable because you're, we're rejecting the one who, who made us all and who can give us eternal life.
01:25:29: So anyway, John Cooper, I thank you so much for giving so much time for us today.
01:25:36: Once again, if people do want to get hold of, of that book, they need to go to johnlcooper .com,
01:25:44: right? That's it. Johnlcooper .com. And it just goes slash awake.
01:25:49: If they want to go straight to the book or otherwise, otherwise they might be end up finding beard care products and things like that.
01:25:58: There's beard. We'll take care of your beard. We'll take care of your beard and your soul, your beard and your soul.
01:26:06: There you go. We're here for the beard of your soul. And I, and I'm very, I just want to,
01:26:11: I do need to thank you brother for your, your headwear today. I'm sure everyone has noticed that it was quite appropriate for, for the program.
01:26:22: Not that, not that the first time when you're advertising for the other guys that that was wrong.
01:26:28: I was advertising for, for Daryl Harrison and Virgil and just thinking, we're no more advertising for them.
01:26:36: We're doing this one today. You know, I'm so thankful. Honestly, I wish
01:26:41: I had discovered you and them three or four or five years ago. And I'm so glad that they're out there.
01:26:48: So I try to promote everything as much as I can. It's just such great material.
01:26:53: And we won't make any comment whatsoever about why you would want to be wearing a hat anyways, because, you know,
01:27:02: I'm sure there's no reason for it at all. Is there? What do you mean? Oh, cause you always give me a hard time when
01:27:09: I don't wear the hat. Well, you know, I just don't have to worry about all that hair stuff anymore.
01:27:15: You know, it's, it's, it's very easy to get, get around all that stuff now. So, hey brother, I appreciate it.
01:27:21: Thank you very, very much for being with us. And I'm looking forward to what the Lord's going to be doing with skillets.
01:27:27: And I know you guys have got plans within plans and I'm looking forward to, to the future and can't wait to get a chance to maybe the next time we'll be able to hang out at the
01:27:39: Casa de Cooper for more than just a one night. And just as long as I don't have to help you break down the ice wall in your backyard,
01:27:48: I'm sorry, Arizonans. We just don't do that. It's, it's illegal for us to do that. I had a great time being with you.
01:27:56: Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for everybody for watching. I appreciate it. Hey, thanks, John. God bless you. You too, brother.
01:28:02: All right. God bless. All right. Excellent. Wish we could have played that last song.
01:28:08: I don't know what happened, but we got two out of, we're at 66%. So we're, you know, that's, that's better than, better than nothing.
01:28:16: I suppose you might say, but do, do go look up You Are My Hope on YouTube and check it out.
01:28:27: And I think you'll agree with me that it would be a great, a congregational song. Thank you for watching.