F4F | Interview with Joanne Hogg: Apologia Pilgrim

Fighting for the Faith

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00:15

Welcome to another installment of Fighting for the Faith. My name is Chris Roseborough. I am your servant in Jesus Christ.

00:20

This is the channel that compares what people are saying in the name of God to the Word of God. Now, a little bit of a note.

00:26

Over the years, the decades that I've been doing Fighting for the Faith, and we haven't been on YouTube for decades, but we've run into a lot of people who've been influenced positively by sound doctrine, and as a result of it they've left aberrant churches and heretical movements and things like this, and sometimes the people who leave those movements and rediscover sound doctrine also happen to be artists, and they then put into artwork, you know, music and things like this, aspects of their journey, and so it was with that in mind, it is a great privilege of mine to have on today's episode of Fighting for the

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Faith, Jo Hogg. Jo Hogg, how are you doing? I'm doing very well.

01:13

Thank you, Chris. Now, a lot of people may not be familiar with your work, at least, you know, by the name

01:19

Jo Hogg. Tell us about the Christian music band that you were a part of, you know, more than a decade ago.

01:28

The band was called Iona, and we formed in 1990, so our first album release was 1990, and we continued to produce music, live music on albums and studio albums, until I think the last studio album was 2011.

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2011, okay. But there's quite a long discography for Iona's music over the years.

02:03

Now, people here in the States or other parts of the world, they probably have heard of the name of Iona, because I have heard of Iona and was familiar with a couple of your songs going back in time, you know, but then

02:14

I'm showing my age. Well, yeah, you're showing mine as well. I gotta consider that as well, but right, so you guys were quite popular in Europe, and so the last album that you guys worked on, and in fact, let me do this.

02:33

I'm gonna swing over here, and yeah, that's a picture of Kongsvinger, a recent, you know,

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Aurora photograph there, but let me pull up my web browser, because one of the things we're going to talk about is your current project, the

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Apologia Pilgrim album that just released on Bandcamp, but if we go back in time, so here's the album cover for Another Realm, which was the last of the albums that you did with Iona, and theologically, where were you when this came out?

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Well, this was back in my kind of very prophetic era, as evidenced by the artwork on the front of the album.

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This, of course, had prophetic significance and was symbolic of, you know, a rider on a white horse with a sword, but just around the time that album came out, the band had some connections in Europe, and we had played at a big conference in Rotterdam.

03:51

The conference was called Heaven on Earth. The guest speakers at the conference were none other than Bill Johnson from Bethel and Heidi Baker from Iris Ministries.

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So that was my kind of deep dive into this world of New Apostolic Reformation, and that was much more the sort of the signs and wonders and the supernatural kind of end of things.

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I also had kind of a little bit of involvement in worship leading in the more prophetic end of that spectrum, although this came quite a bit later, but we had some visits to Northern Ireland from Glory of Zion's Chuck Pearce.

04:58

Really? Yeah. But, you know, the Chuck Pearce that visited

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Ireland was really quite different from the

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Chuck Pearce that comes on to your other show from time to time.

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Was he speaking in lucid sentences, or were you not able to understand a bit of it? I don't think

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I did understand much of it, to be honest. But, you know, once your brain is kind of, has been well indoctrinated with the language and the vocabulary and the jargon of that movement, you sort of, you think you're making sense of it, you know, because it all sort of sounds kind of like it's vaguely connected to something that is, you know, mentioned in the

06:03

Bible. But it's like, I think you switch your critical thinking off when, you know, after you've had an hour of, you know, emotional, passionate worship music.

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Right. You know, and especially if you've been the one leading, you know. By the time

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I'd sit down, you know, I'm all ready to absorb information in this kind of strange way where I, you know,

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I really couldn't discern truth from error.

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There probably wasn't very much truth there. But a lot of stuff that sounds very clever.

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And yeah, but nothing like the extreme prophetic stuff that, you know, they have at home.

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It's quite different. So you spent some time legitimately in the

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NAR doing this, you know, prophetic Bill Johnson, you know, signs and wonders, you know, and all of this, but that's not what you were raised in.

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No, no, I was raised in a very kind of conservative, traditional

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Presbyterian church environment. My father was a Presbyterian minister.

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My mom and dad had been missionaries in India for 13 years before I was born, because I was number six in the family.

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So my older brothers and sisters were born in India. And my dad was just absolutely loved scripture.

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He was translating the Bible into the language that they had to learn.

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He was translating the Bible all his life from that point until just a few years before he died at the age of 83.

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So yeah, I grew up, I was well catechized. We had family prayers,

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Bible reading every morning before I went to school, every night before I went to bed, right up until I left home to go to university.

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So yeah, that was my early start.

08:39

That was your early start. And then so you got this thing, the season of your life where all of that just is kind of tossed to the wind and you went full

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NAR. Yeah. I think it was, I mean, there was a more gradual kind of veering away from the very kind of Presbyterian type environment.

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After I got married at 22, we spent a little time in sort of a little more charismatic type church environment.

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And then we kind of found our way back into a

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Presbyterian environment later in our 30s when we'd had our two boys.

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But around the time that the band Iona got sort of like plunged into this other stuff that,

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I mean, I did think, oh, this is like a bit weird. I'm really out of my comfort zone here.

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But when you say you're out of your comfort zone in that environment, it's kind of like, well, that's where God wants you to be.

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God wants you to be out of your comfort zone. This is the sign that that's really from God that's doing this because it makes you cringe.

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It's not stretching you. And I always, as a kid,

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I was always a bit of an adrenaline junkie. I loved a challenge. And I liked to kind of do things that maybe other people were a bit scared to do.

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And so it was kind of like this whole being a more radical follower of Jesus kind of really drew me in.

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I was all in because my love for God was really strong in me.

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I wanted to be doing what God wanted me to do, but I was just too biblically ignorant to discern it.

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Once I left home, became a student, I had my university years.

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I was kind of part of the Christian Union at university. But Steve and I just kind of spiritually sort of drifted a bit.

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We continued to go to church, but we weren't studying the Bible. I wasn't reading scripture.

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I was just kind of busy doing stuff, and that wasn't a priority.

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And that's the thing that I most regret now about those decades of my life. You know,

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I think, what if, what if I had just, like, I kind of think by the time I finished my degree, which was a medical degree, so it was five years,

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I was like, I don't want to study again. I'm done studying. I don't want to study books.

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And I just, I kind of sort of switched off that bit of my brain. I was like, I'm going to be a musician.

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I'm going to write songs. And so that not wanting to study kind of put me off studying anything.

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So I would kind of, I'd still read the Bible, but I was just reading it superficially.

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I wasn't really studying it, and I wasn't in an environment where I was being taught by someone who was teaching the deeper theology of scripture.

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So yeah, it was just a bit of a drift, but I never kind of lost that sort of, it was just like a passion

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I had. I wanted to be on the adventure. I wanted this, whenever something was presented as this really exciting, dynamic, new thing that God is doing, and it involves the supernatural stuff,

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I was like, sign me up. I did actually, I mean,

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I did sign up for a school of ministry that was modeled on Bethel's school of ministry.

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So I did actually go through the pilot year of that.

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And the reading assignments was all Bethel materials.

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It was when heaven invades earth and the supernatural power of a transformed mind and the supernatural ways of royalty and culture of honor and so on.

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We didn't actually study the supernatural. You were recatechized. Those are all the pillar foundational doctrines of the

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NAR. But we didn't call it a supernatural school because in Northern Ireland that would have just been too weird for people.

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So it was an encounter school of mission. An encounter school of mission.

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Wow. Somebody knows how to do marketing. Wow. Okay. All right.

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Now, I would note then, let me come back here, is that in your album,

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Map Project 2, which was put out in 2022, and by the way,

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Map Project 2 is available on Apple Music and I think also Spotify, but there is this one track,

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Find My Way Back, that really kind of stands out from the other parts of the album, aside from the fact that it's 12 minutes long.

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There's a story in here. So can you help us understand the story?

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Because Map Project 2, which I happen to have on optical disk,

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I have it on CD, but you sent it to me. But all of that being said, tell us, so here you got this song that just kind of falls out of the sky.

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What's going on with this song? Well, the Map Project, part one and two, of course,

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Map stands for miracles and parables. And it was one of the projects that was actually drawing me back into the gospel narratives.

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You know, I started to kind of read these narratives and just,

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I mean, that was already starting to make me think, what is this stuff that I think

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I'm supposed to do? You know, these miracles were signs of who

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Jesus is. And so as I've been writing the songs for the

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Map Project 2, I was beginning to sort of piece together, you know, the fulfillment of the

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Old Testament prophecies in Jesus. And that, you know, this was kind of, well,

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I was just being really drawn back to the gospel. And at the same time,

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I was starting to read and study the Bible again. No one ever came to me and said, you know, you actually think some really weird theology.

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Have you ever kind of compared? No one ever told you that. No. Have you ever compared like some of this stuff to what you read in Scripture?

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Nothing. Nobody ever said a thing. I was just starting to read the

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New Testament and slowly kind of starting to question a lot of what, you know,

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I had been indoctrinated with. So it's like disentangling things, and it really takes time.

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And as I was starting to read Scripture more, I also was in discussion with a friend of my son's who was preparing to go on his

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Mormon mission. And so I was having some conversations with him and, you know,

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I was finding out more about Mormon teaching and doctrines than I actually really knew about , you know, core biblical theology.

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And I was also observing, you know, the whole role of the prophet and the apostles in LDS, that, you know, there has to be this revelation.

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And I'm thinking, well, this is actually very similar to, you know, the

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NIR. And when

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I was actually grilling this 18 -year -old on the history of the

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LDS church, do you know, at one point, I just, I felt so convicted because I thought,

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I don't even know where to find the things in the

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Gospels and in the New Testament letters. I don't even know where to find things that I know, like, from my childhood,

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I know the core beliefs of my faith.

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But boy, I'm like, I need to get back to the Bible. And so I was kind of eagerly going through the answers from Scripture and from Christian teaching for, you know, to challenge the teaching, the doctrines that my young friend was learning.

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And I was also watching testimonies on YouTube of, you know, young people who had been brought up in the

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Mormon church and had become Christians. And while I was looking for those testimonies,

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I stumbled across Lindsay Davis's testimony. At that time, she had left

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Bethel School. And so I was listening to her.

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I think it was on, wasn't your interview with her? It was

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Cultish. It was Jeff Durbin. Yeah. Might have been on the Cultish show. And she mentioned

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American Gospel. And this was about March 2020. And I was actually on tour in England with young Natasha.

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And I was listening to these things while I was on this tour with her.

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And I thought, I'm going to have to check out this

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American Gospel. And it was the one hour trailer, was like the free one hour trailer.

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So I literally started to watch it in a travel lodge room where I was staying the night.

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And that was, that was the point at which, you know, all my, it was like all my questions and doubts about things that, you know,

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I had been doing, thinking, believing. It was just like,

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I can't even find the words, Chris, to express what that felt like.

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I've never experienced conviction to such a degree.

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I was just literally in bits. It was in bits. I was just like, I was weeping for hours.

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Couldn't sleep that night. And we still had to, you know, travel the next day and I had to play the next evening.

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And I just thought, like, I don't know what to do with this.

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I'm like, it was like, it was like, I felt like I was being born again, again, you know, because, well, you know,

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I had started off my life, my faith as a child.

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I was eight years old. And even at that early age, you know, I knew

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I'd heard the gospel. And I knew, you know, I knew that Jesus had died for my, you know, for my sin.

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Even as a child, I knew, like, I knew I did some really naughty things as a kid.

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And I understood, you know, punishment. But, you know,

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I didn't, going through my teens, I kind of had moments of, you know, rebelling and repenting and this kind of process.

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But I'd never as an adult experienced that kind of response to just hearing gospel again.

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And it was the beginning of this kind of ongoing process of unraveling, repenting, asking forgiveness, just being filled with peace.

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And it's just taken time. It's like, you know, that was three years ago.

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That's a very long answer to the story of this song. But because of that connection that I made with Natasha in March, when we were doing this short tour, at the end of the tour, it was just the whole pandemic lockdown thing was just building up, building up.

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And it was like, this is going to happen. You know, it's going to be a lockdown. So we finished the tour on like Monday, the 15th of March, I think, or 14th.

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But and then the last night I was just like, Natasha, I wish I could take you home with me, because it would be just so great if we could just write music and record and stuff.

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And two days later, I was back in Ireland, and she phoned and said, well,

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I've just been, what's the word? Furloughed. I've just been furloughed from my job.

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And so I could come to Ireland now. And I said, well,

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I said, you can come, but like none of us know how long it'll be for. And so we welcomed

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Natasha into our family in March 2020. And she lived with us for a year.

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So we were kind of journeyings, you know, on a theological kind of journey together.

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And she'd actually been involved in,

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I don't know what the name of the church was, but it was kind of cult -like sort of environment.

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And she was really pretty traumatized and confused by her experience.

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So that's when we kind of found Fighting for the Faith, and we found, you know,

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Messed Up Church. We found Doreen Virtue, Melissa Dougherty, Elissa Childers.

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And we kind of were watching, listening to podcasts and having discussions.

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And I wrote, I wrote Find My Way Back kind of in the early months of that.

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And because lockdown happened in March 2020, which was when the

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MAP project was to be mixed, the mix got postponed until I think it was next

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September. And during the, once the studio opened, we went in and recorded

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Find My Way Back. And it was Natasha's first time actually recording in that way in a studio, because she'd had 11 years of study at the

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Yehudi Menuhin School. She was on a scholarship there. So she was a classically trained violinist who had, you know, been working, practicing, practicing, practicing, practicing for 11 years.

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But hadn't, you know, it was her first experience of really like interpreting, putting how she felt into the music, that this, this song was kind of about her journey.

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And I mean, it was a very, it was a very emotional time in the studio, because even the, even the recording engineer, when

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I told him I wanted to record violin, he kind of rolled his eyes and he was like, oh, I hate, I hate violin sessions.

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And I said, well, you won't hate this one. And Natasha went in and just played, you know, just played her heart into it.

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And the engineer was in tears. And it was just one, it was just one through performance recording.

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He didn't have to edit it. He didn't have to tune it. And that was really just so special.

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And I just thought, God, in God's sovereign providential timing, you know, we got to add that song on to the end.

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I mean, I didn't know at that stage I was going to write more songs and and record another album, which is why when

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I did that, I thought, well, I have to start the next album with that track.

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So yeah. Funny that you would talk about the next album here. So Apologia Pilgrim.

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And notice I didn't say Apologia. I follow you out there. I teach Greek as well as, you know,

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I have a degree in Greek. And so you can't do that with a gamma. I understand how the English G works, but it's

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Apologia. So Apologia Pilgrim, this kind of continues this theological journey that you all have been on.

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And I like that Natasha, she's co -writer with you on the project.

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And this currently is available, as of the time we're recording this, is available on Bandcamp.

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We'll put a link to it down below. Sometime in the near future, you intend to put it on Apple and Spotify, the other streaming services.

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But if anyone would like to listen to it now, they can. And they can purchase tracks and they can even pay for what they want to pay over on Bandcamp.

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But as soon as I saw the playlist, there was one that kind of stood out.

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Dream Destiny. Really? Yeah.

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Yeah. So I've been the guy who's been telling everybody about the

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Dream Destiny thingy. I'm surprised you didn't name it Dream. It was actually after listening to your topic on the whole, you know,

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Destiny thing. And there were a couple of other podcasts that I kind of had picked up sort of similar ideas.

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But yeah, that was kind of the sort of the little trigger to try and kind of express my experience of that in the song.

30:47

Yeah, no, and it's well written. I love the story telling in your songs.

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So here's the project, okay? So obviously, Find My Way Back has found its way back into the music here.

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And I think that anchors it back then to The Map Project, too, clearly. But songs like Shepherds and Wolves, Meology, Dream Destiny, The Narrow Door, I'm detecting a theological theme here,

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A Vortex of Futility. I know that's a bit of a mouthful.

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That was actually, that title was from Emilio Ramos.

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Okay. Did a series that he called The New Apologetics. And I listened to this, and I just,

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I really was getting so many ideas inspired by his presentation of things.

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And this was a phrase that he used. And it just, as soon as I heard him say it, I just,

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I was like, that's going to be a song. And it ties in with the five solas.

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And, you know, this was kind of what happened. I didn't,

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I did not think in, you know, 2020, when we released

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The Map Project, I didn't think I was going to write an album of songs.

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It just, they just happened as I kind of unraveled just a lot of doctrines.

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I'll call them doctrines because, you know, in that environment, you know, it's like, people talk like doctrine's a dirty word, doctrines, you don't talk about doctrine, you don't talk about theology, you know, that's all too kind of legalistic.

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But doctrine is what it is. Too much head knowledge, not enough heart knowledge, right? Doctrine is what it is, you know, but I, there were, you know, those little cliches, like those little statements, what are they?

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Is it euphemisms? Yeah. Or something where, you know, I used to read, when

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I read Johnson books, I'd be underlining, you know, like, oh, wow, oh, that's really great there, that statement.

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And, you know, I just thought it was all so, like, intellectual in a way.

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And there was one in particular that kind of, I kept saying, so I'm so embarrassed that I, like,

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I said this to people, you know, a person with an experience is never at the mercy of a person with an argument.

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I've heard this a thousand times. And I was like, and I actually, at that time,

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I thought of that expression was more to do with my experience of God being,

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I was not threatened by an unbeliever or, you know, an atheist's arguments.

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They were no, they didn't bother me. You know,

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I was not at the mercy of their futile arguments. But that's not how the people within the movement understood that statement.

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It was more along the lines of, you know, whoever coined that expression,

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I think they were like, the person with their mystical experience is never at the mercy of the person who's got a biblical argument, you know.

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That's exactly how it gets used. That is exactly how it gets used. You know, and, you know, because that's the kind of argument that gets thrown in my face or emailed to me with some frequency, you know, people who are offended by the mean things that I say on my

35:08

YouTube channel. So, yeah. But, wow. So, you really, you can in a way say come full circle, because your father gave you a foundation that you didn't build on as a young adult.

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And now you're now building on that biblical foundation and not with cheap, you know, with cheap pseudo profound slogans and euphemisms from Bill Johnson, but actual biblical texts.

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And so, now your discography has your theological journey embedded in your artwork, you know?

35:47

Yeah. Yeah. It's true. And when I started writing the songs,

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I was like, I really thought, I really want to be faithful to the truth now, because it's kind of like, if you're going to write songs that express theological themes, like, you want to be getting it right.

36:14

Yeah. And it's kind of as why I was sort of sending my very early piano iPhone recordings, you know, to your good self, to, you know,

36:30

Steve Cozart, just because I thought, well, if there's just some dodgy theology in here,

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I'm sure they'll let me know. Because I just felt such, I just felt such a responsibility, if I'm going to express these things now, that I want it to be,

36:51

I want to be faithful to the true gospel. And I've, you know, a lot of Iona's music for me was, it was, there was a lot of poetry in it.

37:05

I was always very inspired by the natural world as God's creation. And that would have, you know, that would have been expressed in some of those songs.

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But I kind of veered off. And I think now, gosh, you know, if any of the songs that I've written or music that I have been part of has, you know, drawn somebody into that kind of bad theology, you know,

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I seriously want to say I'm sorry that, you know, I have been guilty of that.

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I know a lot of people don't, you know, they don't really analyze lyrical content that deeply.

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But I know a lot of folk were kind of getting, having, or using that music to have like a mystical experience.

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And I thought, I, you know, I know music's a very emotional thing.

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Like, I'm a very emotional person. But if it's detached from the mind and, you know, like the words, well, you could be listening to anything and have a mystical experience.

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You know, it's like, I know that the

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Holy Spirit may minister to somebody through a piece of music in a mysterious way, but that's up to the

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Holy Spirit. Like, I can't, I don't manipulate that. I guess it's just with this album, the words have become very important.

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So, yeah. And so, one of the things I like about this album, it's not overly produced.

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This is, tell us a little bit about the thinking as far as the musical choices that you're making, because piano plays a big role.

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Your voice plays a big role. Violin plays a very, very important supporting role.

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But I'm not hearing a whole lot other than those primary elements.

39:53

What were your thoughts on producing this type of music? You know, the initial impetus to actually do an album at all came at the end of 2021, and a friend of mine contacted me and said, you should apply for the grant that the

40:12

Northern Ireland Arts Council are giving to creatives.

40:18

It's called a Creative Recovery Grant, and it was something that the Northern Ireland Arts Council wanted to, you know, support musicians and artists who had kind of lost a lot of work, hadn't been able to tour and stuff over the lockdowns.

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So, I applied for this small grant, but you had to present a project to get the grant.

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So, I thought, okay, well, you know, I've written 10 songs, you know,

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I could record, but I'm going to have to keep it very simple. And initially,

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I just thought, well, I could just record voice and piano at home.

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And, you know, and the money had to go towards paying other people or, you know, how to kind of be helping other people in the industry.

41:20

So, I couldn't spend the money, like, buying the recording equipment. Okay. So, it was a really a quick sort of put together, okay,

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I'm going to record this album with voice and piano, and it had to be done within a certain time frame.

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All the budgeting had to be put forward. So, but as I started to record the songs,

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I'm like, it just needs something more. And I'd really loved

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Natasha to play on it. So, that was right, this is going to be vocal, piano and strings.

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And then I was like, well, it'd be nice to have just like a couple of other flavors on a few of the songs.

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And I loved, I mean, the low whistle was a big part of Iona's sound.

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And I also, because I was including Find My Way Back, again,

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I thought, well, you know, I need to do something a little different with it for this album. So, low whistle, and then

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I really loved the flugelhorn, because that was part of the sound palette for the map project.

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And then it needed double bass. And then I'm like, when we got to actually mixing it, the mix engineer's good friend, he said,

42:49

Joe, there's a couple of these songs, and I think they really need just a little bit of percussion or kit, you know, and he's a drummer.

42:59

So, he just set up a very simple kit in his studio and put that on.

43:06

So, it was, I kind of wanted the overall sound to be like, quite intimate and personal.

43:16

So, a bit like someone's just coming and listening to the songs, you know, in the room with, you know, those musicians playing.

43:28

So, yeah, and it was partly just time. I didn't have time to kind of overproduce it and didn't have the budget.

43:37

So, that kept it simple. And now I'm actually, that's the way

43:43

I'm going to do the next one as well. Nice. Now, you've already announced that you're working on another

43:51

Apologia project. Yeah. So, are you already, do you already have songs written for the next album?

43:59

I have four so far. Four. Okay. Okay. Yeah. And the theme,

44:05

I'm going to call it Follower, so that I can still have a cross where the

44:12

L intersects the vertical and the horizontal. I see what you're doing there.

44:18

And yeah, and this is already, the songs that I've written so far for the next one already kind of have a different sort of vibe or energy.

44:31

I mean, Pilgrim is really quite thoughtful and well, just kind of, it's pretty slow tempo, most of the songs.

44:51

But this next project, the four songs so far have definitely got some interesting rhythms going on.

45:02

Okay. And we'll definitely need some percussion happening on those.

45:09

So, what have I got? I've got, I've got, I've got, I've got, I've got, I've got, one's called Prophets, one's called

45:16

Truth, la la la la la, one's called

45:22

Critical Thinking, and one's called, one's called

45:28

It All Comes Naturally, which is kind of on the theme of, um, well, it just actually is part of my nature to sin.

45:40

I didn't, I didn't, it kind of, it opens with my, my daddy didn't have to teach me how to be bad.

45:47

Yeah. Yeah. That's what dads have to spend all their time teaching their kids how not to be, you know?

45:53

Yeah. That's true. Yeah. All right. So, so again, the current project is called

46:00

Apologia Pilgrim, and you can find it at joehugmusic .bandcamp

46:07

.com. And that's currently where it's, it's living. And then you like,

46:13

I already let people know, but sometime in the near future, you're going to be putting this out on Apple Music and Spotify.

46:20

Yeah. Untitled is the other one that'll go on. Okay. Yeah. So it'll be, yeah, it'll be out there.

46:29

Yeah. And the, and the, uh, the previous album, Map Project 2 is, uh,

46:34

Miracles and Parables. You can find that also already on Apple Music. And if, uh, and if people would like to purchase the album currently, they can do so at, uh, at, uh, your band camp website and the link will be down below.

46:49

And, uh, and the best thing, the best way I can put it is that, um, that, that as human beings,

46:56

God has given us both a heart and a mind. And, uh, and the one of the wonderful things

47:03

I like about your music is it engages both. Um, and, you know, and as a, as a theologian and pastor, uh,

47:10

I always have to find, uh, ways in storytelling to help engage people's hearts, but I still have to faithfully teach the biblical curriculum, which involves having their mind be engaged.

47:22

And so one of the things I love about your music is that it, it, it both are involved, uh, in, in your latest projects.

47:29

And, and, and like I said, it, it absolutely captures your theological journey, uh, and it's, it's, it's there for everybody, but it's done artistically.

47:39

So I, I, I'm absolutely convinced that, uh, you know, my audience, if you are looking for some good

47:45

Christian music, that's actually Christian, uh, I, I, I, uh, I would note that this would be a great resource for you.

47:52

And, and I, I assure you, you'll be humming some of these tunes and putting them on your playlist to listen to in your car while you're working out, you know, things that, although I would say that the, the, the, the, the

48:03

Apology of Pilgrim album doesn't lend itself too readily to working out.

48:09

Okay. I don't have it in my workout mix. No, you won't.

48:14

You won't. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, but, uh, but still, you know, the, the style and the music is just really, really tastefully done.

48:22

And it shows, uh, it, it also shows that you're, you're a veteran, uh, you know, uh, songwriter and, uh, your decades of, of writing music and performing, it all, it all, it all shows.

48:35

So, but, uh. Yeah. I mean, I think my heart for this project for these songs is to encourage

48:46

Christians who are maybe just embarking on this, um, disentangling process or who have become really disillusioned.

49:00

They're on the verge of just chucking it all in. They, uh, because of the disillusionment and the disappointment that inevitably comes in this kind of environment where you're continually being told, you know, the breakthrough is coming, or you need to contend more for your breakthrough.

49:23

Um, and you're, you're, you're getting, you're being told, you know, that God has promised things that are, that he hasn't actually promised to do.

49:34

So it's just that it might encourage people who are still really kind of struggling to get, you know, really back, to find their way back.

49:47

And, and also I'm kind of hoping and praying that, um, those who are sort of still, um, you know, very defensive about, um, this type of theology, that maybe something in a song might actually, there might be this little, little bit of conviction or something that makes think more deeply about it.

50:17

Um, because I've, I find it difficult to know what I can, um, share or give to, to people who

50:28

I, who I know, who I love, who are still, um, very, very involved in, in that NAR environment.

50:38

And, um, and I think sometimes it's like, you know,

50:44

I've read some great books and I think, oh, I would, you know, this would be such a good book for so -and -so to read, but I know they're not going to read a book.

50:52

So I'm kind of like, well, it's a little bit easier of a, a way to, you know, communicate some of those, um, ideas and, and introduce some of those questions because it's, you know, the theme through, through the

51:15

Pilgrim is very much about returning to Scripture and, and, and knowing and understanding the true

51:25

Gospel, um, uh, that Jesus taught and, and, and, and to, you know, to just find, to get back to that real peace and freedom that comes with it.

51:40

I mean, it's not easy. It's not, it's not easy to unravel, you know, 15 years of really twisty, um, weird thinking and, and practice.

51:59

I mean, everything is like, it was like, I, I had to unlearn so many things, like how

52:05

I prayed, how I approached prayer, um, how I approached church, um, how

52:14

I read Scripture, um, how I prayed for other people. Uh, it's, um, and, and also, you, you know, you do, you will feel like you are just really swimming against the tide.

52:30

Yeah. Because, um, it's like the majority of, um,

52:39

Christians that I know here, um, just don't, they don't, they don't really get or understand why

52:49

I've left this wonderful, rich, dynamic, friendly, happy environment to go to a little old

52:59

Anglican church, six miles up the road with 25 people.

53:07

And, and, and, you know, I'm way more emotional in church now than I was before.

53:16

And I, boy, I was emotional then, you know, I was like always in tears by the end of the worship. And now, now

53:23

I, I can sometimes, it just, just gets me when, when I'm just reading.

53:29

Yeah. You have asked me, they've asked me to read the Scripture, you know, a couple of times, um, in services.

53:36

And I like, I just about get to the end of it and I'm nearly in tears because I get it, you know, and, and this just every

53:47

Sunday to have, you know, corporate confession of sin, it's just, it's just so humbling.

53:56

And, and to then, you know, have that prayer of absolution of forgiveness, you know, and I just, it's just so precious.

54:08

I mean, I, I just love it. I wouldn't, I wouldn't, uh, go back.

54:17

And, and, and, and always, and again, I, you know, I, I think back to my times in the charismatic movement and, uh, the latter reign and, and it's like, they were always really, really trying to grind this, this idea at home that churches that don't have the experiences that they have, that don't have the music that they have, that those are dead churches, that the

54:39

Holy Spirit isn't there and they're, um, and, and the Holy Spirit's offended by the fact that they've put

54:46

Him in a box and He can't operate in stuff like this. But the reality is, is that that's all just nonsense.

54:53

You know, uh, you know, God, the Holy Spirit is intimately involved in preaching it, where the word is rightly handled and convicting us of our sin and giving us joy and wonder in, in, in, in the one true

55:10

God. I, I always, you know, one of the things that I used to do when I was doing the audio podcast of fighting for the faith is talk about how the

55:18

Bible is so much better than the way these guys are actually preaching it. They're not really actually bringing you the biblical texts.

55:26

And then when you encounter the real stories and what's going on in them, it, it, it'll flatten you at times, you know?

55:33

Yeah. Yeah. It's so, it's so true. I mean, there's like, there's so, there's so many bits of, of, of it that, you know, we could spend like hours just, you know, unraveling different things.

55:53

Yeah. We'll have to spend some time, you know, when I, when I finally make it to Northern Ireland, you know, maybe you and me and your husband and Natasha can all sit down in your, your piano parlor and just, just chat and sing and talk for hours, you know?

56:07

Yeah. Yeah. That would be great. I'd love that. So, well,

56:14

I want to thank you for coming on fighting for the faith and giving us an opportunity to number one, hear your story.

56:22

Number two, share with, with my audience, the, the great gift that they have available to them in your music and your artwork.

56:31

And, and for those of you who have been kind of unlearning the bad theology that you've learned, this might be therapeutic music to give you a good, a good, a good anchor, a good anchor, both for heart and, and, and mind to, you know, as you kind of still kind of process and unwind this.

56:52

So, so Jo, thank you for not only the interview, but thank you for the fantastic music that you've been producing.

56:58

I'm looking forward to the next project already. So. Thank you. Thank you so much,

57:03

Chris, for just this opportunity to chat and to share that. Excellent. Now, let me, let me sign off with the folks here and then we'll chat a little bit more before you head out.

57:14

So if you would like more information about how to get Jo Hogg's latest project,

57:21

Paula Ghia Pilgrim, again, there's a link down below and to her band camp and then the album, the previous to it,

57:29

Miracles and Parables Part Two, the map project. You can find that on Apple Music and Spotify, you know, the different streaming platforms.

57:37

And so, you know, avail yourself of these great resources. I think you will agree with me that this is really well done music that does glorify

57:47

God in both spirit and in truth. And so until next time, may God richly bless you in the grace and mercy won by Jesus Christ and His vicarious death on the for all of your sins.