Theology in the Raw - 702: #702 - A Conversation with Josh Porter

Episode Date: October 22, 2018

On episode #702 of Theology in the Raw Preston has a conversation with Josh Porter. Josh is a Pastor at Van City Church, a singer-song writer, author, novelist, theologian, and much more. You can follow Josh on Twitter to keep up with all his projects. Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I have on the show today my friend and somebody who I've admired from a distance. His name is Josh Porter. His stage name is Josh Dyes. He was a front man for the band Showbread for a number of years. He is a pastor. He's a novelist. He's a singer, songwriter, a theologian. This guy just does it all. And I've always been kind of intrigued by him and been a fan of his from afar. So I'm super excited to have Josh Porter on the show. You're going to really dig this.

We talk a lot about the role of art and Christianity and what does it mean to be a prophetic voice and to do prophetic music and art in such a way that doesn't just go along with the dominant culture, but protests and gives a voice to and sometimes against the dominant culture. So I think you will really like this episode. I had such a great time talking with Josh. If you are an avid listener of Theology in the Raw, or if you're just a generous person, you want to support the show, you can go to patreon.com forward slash Theology in the Raw. That's patreon.com forward slash Theology in the raw, or if you're just a generous person, you want to support the show, you can go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. That's patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. Support the show for as little as five bucks a month. And if you give five bucks a month to the show, you get premium content in return access to once a month, a premium only or a pod or

Patreon only podcast that I release once a month. If you support the show at $10 a month, you get a Patreon-only blog and a podcast. $25 a month gives you two Patreon-only podcasts and a blog and other goodies that I throw you away. So if you want to support the show, it's patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. That's patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. Okay, without further ado, here is Josh Porter. All right, we are here with Josh Porter. Josh Porter, as I said in the introduction, is a singer, a songwriter, a novelist, and a pastor. How long have you been pastoring, Josh?

Has it been like three or four years or so or longer than that? Yeah, wow, good guess. I'm on year four right now, yeah. Year four. And when did you graduate seminary from Western? Oh, I will next semester. Oh, you're still in? Right now. Yeah. Okay, cool. Well, hey, I just kind of jumped into it, but give us a little bit of that background. I mean, as I look at your profile and as I've kind of followed you over the years, I mean, you kind of do a little bit of everything. It seems like, like you're, I mean, you're a theologian. I know you probably, you probably will reject that phrase, but you're a very deep thinker reader. You're a writer. You've

written several novels. You're in a, you're in a, I'm going to butcher this, but like a heavy metal or screamo band. Is that, is that the genre? I like punk rock as a general term. Punk rock. Okay. Okay. I can live. Okay. So yeah, give us the background. Who are you and how did you get into so many diverse areas of art? Yeah, you know, sometimes when people read something like a resume to introduce me, it's like, oh man, it sounds like this guy does so much. And I usually just say, well, you know, you don't know if any one of those things is any good, but if you do a lot of stuff, it sure sounds really impressive. Something's going to

stick. Yeah, exactly. You just keep, I just keep trying a plethora of things. I think when, you know, I grew up in the deep South in like a near Savannah, Georgia, and I came from kind of a fundamentalist Southern Baptist, uh, hyper-conservative upbringing. This would be in the, you know, the eighties and nineties. And, um, at some point, somehow I discovered that there was this thing called punk rock, which was kind of, I was already someone who was deeply fascinated with the arts and, and with music. My dad used to play Queen records and ACDC records for my brother and I when we were kids. And my mom was into literature. She gave me Sylvia Plath books and Franz Kafka novels.

So I was really into the arts, in particular, like the stranger side of the arts. I know this is a terribly pretentious sounding thing to say, but what was a little left of center a little left of like the mainstream people like to say and uh and so when i eventually found that there was this whole uh genre and subculture and even like a school of thought called punk rock i are deeply connected with it because it was this kind of deliberate provocative controversial but i think it when it works at its best it's it's provocative for the sake of communicative resonance you know like it's saying something not just to provoke for the sake of provoking but so that something gets through you know yeah yeah well so conservative household but playing acdc records can you yeah it's a little bit i was actually having a conversation with

another friend of mine that we love to go back and my friend John Mark Comer, actually. We argue about what's appropriate for a disciple of Jesus to read or watch or listen to. And we both come from conservative backgrounds, and he takes more of a conservative stance than I take what he would call like a liberal stance. I wouldn't call it that. And we love to argue about it uh in a good natured friendly sort of way and i was actually because he was like well we both come from like fundamentalist backgrounds and i was like yeah but you know what like i was in this household in the during the you know the carryover from the satanic panic stuff

where everyone was terrified of dungeons and dragons and I wasn't allowed to watch The Simpsons and most things from popular culture. If it made it into the Christian culture to say like, this is bad, then we couldn't get to it. But my dad was like this Southern rocker guy from the 70s that he was just like, I don't care. I like Back in Black. I'm just always going to listen to Back in Black.

So he would play it for, there were little things that got through you know and other things that it was wildly inconsistent and i think they would admit that now but it was just like you know my mom told me like we didn't know people were like we shouldn't do this so we're like okay you know dude i'm getting kind of convicted my son my nine-year-old son blairs back in black and once he does my whole household all my kids start dancing and jumping off tables and stuff it's a classic record for a reason yeah we just i don't know like i we've always been big into appreciating and i guess weeding out there are certain songs

like my daughter kept searching acdc and highway to hell came on like yeah it's just i don't i don't know i don't even know what Back in Black is about. Maybe it's a horrible, horrible song. In fact, don't even tell me you're going to spoil it. But you shook me all night long. We're like, yeah. You know, when my daughter is dancing to it, you shook me. I'm like, yeah, let's just not do that.

Highway to Hell. But I don't know. Like we do try to appreciate a broader cultural array of of of music and and even film and other things that you know things where you can search and find beauty and um i think helpful narratives embedded in you know obviously well here's the thing you're you're always weeding out the bad from the good but you have to do that most vigilantly with disney princess movies that have a counter biblical view of love that's dangerous dang i mean i'm talking like it's so subtle and seemingly pure that's what makes it so dangerous but you build in this worldview that you will find your prince

charming one day and that becomes so embedded so that when you're single at 35 you don't know you lose your faith in god i mean i'm serious like some of these more safer forms of art that Christians have bought into are actually almost more dangerous than listening to Highway to Hell, I think, you know, because they're so subtle. You know, when I first started to go around talking about and writing about the relationship a disciple of Jesus has with the arts, that was one of the things that I found most surprising wasn't a given. I don't mean that in any kind of an arrogant way, but the thing that I argue for in this book I've been working on and then the talks that I do and stuff with art is that every disciple of Jesus

should exercise like a Holy Spirit led discernment with the arts. And that may or may not look quite different from one disciple of Jesus to the next, to the next, to the next. So blanket statements aren't helpful, and throwing the baby out with the bathwater is not helpful, assuming that all R-rated movies or all offensive albums are inherently evil is not helpful, because some of the greatest contributions to art, even from disciples of Jesus, people forget that a lot of the greatest contributions to art, even from disciples of Jesus, people forget that a lot of the most famous recognized artists in the world were, were Christians.

Right. Um, and, uh, and a lot of their art is what we would think of as, as offensive. Uh, and it's, it's interesting that, um, we all recognize when something's overtly offensive, you know, all these articles will pop up on the internet about like, should you go see Deadpool and stuff like that. But the subtle stuff, it only gets recognized by fundamentalists. And then the rest of us assume that it's fine. And it has a more damaging effect. And that's where I think that the key is to understanding how that nuance works out.

It works less now because both of them are in different places, but I, I used to use this whole metaphor about, or analogy rather about how it's like the Taylor Swift versus Marilyn Manson. Marilyn Manson in the nineties was like this pop culture boogeyman and everyone was like evil, evil, evil. And, uh, and Taylor Swift in the early two thousands was kind of like this country princess, the bastion of like moral pop music and everything less so now but at that point and uh but to just like you were saying to listen to her lyrics and everything there were some deeply like counter-biblical themes and i don't say that to beat up on her i just mean it was like out of out of sync with a jesus world view yeah um and in a

way that i think is like was hyper damaging to young women who were looking to her with a Jesus worldview. Um, and in a way that I think is like, was hyper damaging to young women who were looking to her with a world for a worldview of love and relationships and romance and intimacy. Whereas those same people would, I think many of them would never in a million years be affected by, you know, Marilyn Manson quoting Anton LaVey and, you know, Nietzsche and stuff like that. It's like, they're, they're just going to be like, oh, evil, evil, evil. And yet everyone assumes that one is evil and one isn't. And that's where the need for nuance comes into play. I don't use that one as much anymore because everyone's like,

oh, yeah, Marilyn Manson, he was a thing. And no one thinks of Taylor Swift as like a bastion for morality anymore. Yeah, yeah. But you get the point. She absolutely was i mean for a while and there's there's a great book by a cutter calloway calling breakage or breaking the marriage idol i have it here somewhere anyway he compares actually he has a whole chapter on taylor swift and disney movies and everything looking at pop culture and how these themes of

love and romance and marriage which which are really counter New Testament. I mean, it's kind of the pinnacle of life is to get married and live happily ever after. And he talks about these themes, but then he goes to the church and says the narrative that the church is kind of promoting is largely the same. The only footnote we have is don't have sexually married,

but it's in terms of like the role of marriage in the inevitable outcome of any faithful believers, you know, life, as long as you do the right thing, you'll find the right partner and everything. And, and it's just, it's so damaging to so many people that, that, you know, when that doesn't happen, they're like, God, where are you at? You know, you, you promised me this. And when he didn't actually promise you anything along those lines. Yeah, and that's the stuff that skates in art. That's the stuff that slips in and is subtle. And when it's subtle and bypasses filters and bypasses discernment, then that's the most damaging thing. personally i at least for me you know hearing like a torrent of profanity or seeing some kind

of violent set piece um never has compelled me to go out and start swearing in someone's face or you know like i'm a pacifist so i'm not like trying to swing a sword around because i've seen a scene from deadpool or something like that but there are subtle world view things that get through the art that i like you know an easy example is um the the tv series black mirror which is this twilight zone anthology type thing that i think is like deeply prophetic in its take on the damaging effects of technology um and it's it's hyper dark just really and at times uh obscene violent and all those. I think I saw the first episode of that. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's a, it's a show for design for impact. That's for sure. It's got moral, it challenges your moral, your morality, like moral tensions. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a,

it's a moralist show for sure. Yeah. And, uh, and I'm enjoying it because I, I'm not thinking of the things that are traditionally obscene as having effect on me. But then I realized that like, you know, in the, in my shadow side, as the spiritual formation writers like to say that something about its hyper bleak worldview scratches this like awful nihilistic itch that I have in my soul. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I need to, I need to take a break from black mirror and not because, you know, it's obscene,

but because something about the way that it's constantly saying humanity sucks the world sucks speaks to me and makes me go that's true you know like and it's not it's a lie um and so i think that that's the holy spirit discernment piece that i'm i'm trying to so it's very ecclesiastic kind of yeah exactly oh yeah it's super so what do you mean that you have nihilistic kind of tendencies is that when you lose sight of what's good and holy and righteous i mean is that where you go towards more of a oh yeah yeah to a to a horrible fault and you know this is where the uh the enneagram literature has been helpful for me i was uh hostile to i don't typically like personality

tests and you know like i guess that's part of my personality it's like I don't typically like personality tests and, you know, like, I guess that's part of my personality. It's like, I don't like having things in boxes and stuff like that. Does that make you a seven? What are you? I'm actually a four. So it's like, uh, the, uh, you know, the individualist. Um, and, uh, it was helpful for me to see like, oh, well, you know, it's not necessarily about categorizing people and more about understanding. I didn't realize that at least in the Enneagram, it was all about like coming against your brokenness, about like the ways in which you are bent out of shape so that you can do

spiritual formation and less about like, I think of Myers-Briggs as more like a horoscope, you know, like, hooray, I'm this way, you know? And so what I've learned is that like people that are wired like me or at least myself, um, go to like despair faster than someone else does. Um, or, you know, if I'm stressed or overwhelmed or if I'm frustrated, I start to go into these like thought patterns of like, man, I suck or everyone else sucks. Um, and when I get bummed out on like the world or read the news

cycle or something i'm like oh man we just really all suck yeah and so watching something like black mirror where it's it is super bleak super nihilistic part of me is going yeah yeah and i'm realizing oh whoa that's that's not where i want to be yeah um yeah so it's replacing those thought patterns for me as has been part of a tricky part of my spiritual formation who are some of your most influential kind of bands like what kind i mean as a punk rock band artist uh who are some of the people they're like oh man these were some punk rockers that really really nailed it that you look up to and then also some maybe thinkers writers theologians and so on oh yeah what a fun

question me talking about things i like uh well when i was a kid the first thing that was really i think uh opened my mind musically was aerosmith my dad uh got me a copy of their album get a grip on cassette tape and i was just like whoa it was like uh something that felt like it was mine and i played it over and over and over it was one of those records for me um and then you know like everyone that likes music has listened to such a plethora so i try to think of like the things that kind of acted as like foundational touchdown moments for me the next one came uh when a friend of mine gave me an album i wasn't supposed to have in my house. My parents were super hostile to it was Nine Inch Nails, The Downward Spiral, which again is like this hyper bleak,

hyper nihilistic worldview, anti religion, anti authority, all that kind of stuff. So part of it was speaking to my like adolescent angst. But another part of it was for me, it was just like, whoa, I had no idea that music could be so conceptual, that it could be so elaborate, that it could be that it could shift seamlessly between genres this way. I'd never heard anything like itnor and the things that he likes. So I got into David Bowie and I got into Pink Floyd and these more conceptual high art type performance art band.

And then when I got into punk rock, it was like all the basic educational stuff that you're doing to make up for lost time because most of the great, what we think of as the great influential punk rock acts were long gone by the time i got into it so it's like oh someone gave me a ramones record someone gave me a misfits record someone gave me a sex pistols record and i was into all that most mostly aesthetically and in terms of like general voice i liked the idea that there was this kind of snotty like we don't care middle

finger to the establishment thing um and so the next big thing that changed for me was there's this uh swedish band called refused uh that were their whole philosophical approach was like well punk rock when punk rock becomes the herd mentality when it becomes generic who will subvert the thing that was supposed to be subversive in the first place um so they had this album in 98 i believe called the shape of punk to come and uh and that was matt that was the thing that kind of set me on a path with showbread and writing music and and uh that was like oh kind of taking my own and rather than just emulating things i had heard before okay um and then through all that the the you know people think when they meet me and taught

me like, Oh, music, music, music. And yeah, I'm obviously into music, but the things in the art world that have been most formational to me have been mostly film and novels. Um, and I, I mentioned earlier, like the first big ones that I got into was Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and, uh, Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, uh, which to me were just like, whoa, novels can be so weird. They can be so dark and so profound at the same time. And to this day, like what I read, I mean, I read a tremendous amount of like Bible and theology for school and for work. And I enjoy it and I do it for fun as well.

But what I most do, like if I'm reaching for a book for the sake of reading, is a novel. I still just go to the library and look at the new release shelf and just pick a novel based on the cover. Really? Yeah. And then go home and read it. I think it's like the most transportive form that there is in the art. There's nothing quite like it in the world. And then, you know, I just am really into – everyone's into movies. I think maybe I'm a bit more nerdy about it than the average joe um i host a podcast about movies and everything but

um but i like you know like people when people often say me i don't want to tell you but when i think about movies because you're gonna judge me i was like i probably like all the dumb stuff you like like i'm first in line for all the Marvel movies. Like, and I like, you know, the obscure indie movie, you know, art house movie as well. Um, but you know, for me, all that to say for me, that kind of stuff, I realized, um, I, it has been one of the primary ways that I like connect with God and like, and that the Holy spirit will often speak to me. I thought that maybe I was, it was wishful thinking on my part for a long time. Like, I just think that God is using these things to communicate to me.

And then I realized more and more that in the same way, a certain type of person connects with the Spirit, like through nature. They'll go on a walk or through long bouts of silence and solitude. And I'm into those as well. I'll be sitting in a movie and be like, oh my gosh, man, this is true about who God is and who Jesus is and how the world works, even counterintuitively. So even if I'm watching in my right mind something like Black Mirror, I'll be like, man, there's elements of truth in this. But the missing piece that I know to be true is this and this and this. be true is, you know, this and this and this. Um, so I think that's, uh, one of the reasons that I dabble in so many different genres and forms of art is just cause I like so many different ones.

I don't know that I'm, and this is not false modesty, but I don't know that I'm excellent at any given thing, but I, I like to like exist in those worlds. You know what I mean? So why, why go to seminary and then become a pastor? I mean, you have all these other interests. And as I hear you talk, I'm like, man, those all sound, I could very much resonate with that. Where does pastoral ministry fit in with all that? Oh, man, it's the weirdest thing. Maybe, you know, you have a story kind of similar to this. I don't know.

I was doing my thing in the band and the band for me, um, the band that I was in for so many years, uh, showbread was always an overtly Jesus centric thing. Like it wasn't like a bait and switch. It wasn't like, uh, you know, we, and we existed with one foot in the Christian industry and one foot in the non-Christian industry. And that frustrated people on both sides. Um, and I just saw such a, like a cohesiveness between, um, going around and what we would call sharing the gospel and like a

punk rock mentality because it's so counter-cultural, it's so counterintuitive, all the ideas about like going against yourself, um, for the sake of the kingdom. And, you know, honestly, in a place like, in Western culture in America, like Jesus values are so counter the norm, even counter the evangelical norm, that I was just like, it's just peas and carrots, Jesus and punk rock. So we made no bones about it.

We talked about Jesus all the time, sang and wrote lyrics, songs about Jesus. Wait, real quick, real quick. So what punk rock music is doing to the broader music industry is you're saying it's very similar to what christian values and the christian worldview and christianity should be doing to the broader culture as a whole and so there's some prophetic kind of resonance that's yeah if you look at uh church history and this idea that there was this like podunk grassroots movement that became something profound that swept an empire and turned it upside down with a message that for all intents and purposes should not have resonated the way that it did.

At least on paper, if you take Jesus values and obviously there's something that you and I would say is like obviously beautiful and obviously profound. It speaks to the human soul. Yeah. But it comes at such a radical cost. It's such a costly, beautifully costly thing. rock did um in you know the late 70s in the in the uk and america at least in the music industry and then as a counter-cultural type of thing was like a hey everything's not the way that we think it is and someone has to stand up and say like this is not right and this is right like this is true this is not true um and they did it in like a hyper provocative type of way and even you know

like i read jesus and i tell people all the time that like, um, when they're like, I just love everything Jesus has to say. And I'm like, really? Like, cause it seems like Jesus often goes out of his way to be deliberately offensive for the sake of like, like communicative resonance. Um, and that's the weirdness of some of the things, and even like, you know, one of my favorite stories is like people hear weird stuff Jesus says, and they're like, this is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?

Yeah, so I think that there's like an obvious carryover between at least a punk rock school of thought and like a Jesus worldview. So one of my, I'm not a huge, well, I and like a jesus worldview so uh one of the uh one of my i'm not a huge well i'm not a musician at all i love music but i don't uh know music and so i don't even like i know hardly any bands and i probably like a lot of bands kind of like you know as you mentioned you know that you might like dumb movies too i probably like bands that are probably probably terrible musicians i just like i just like the guitar i don't know or um but one of my one of the bands that i would say i have almost

unintentionally resonated with in my own kind of writing and speaking is is rush did you were you a rush fan ever i mean they're i was after the fact yeah once i got into like prog and conceptual music i just early rush at least i didn't really like their after um oh what is it moving pictures or the like the fifth or sixth album after that i didn't i didn't really i just didn't like the sound of it but i just the thoughtfulness the difference the you know 2112 is a 20 minute song with five parts you know almost like a yeah yeah you know that's like i just like the idea of that and they the documentary on on netflix i think it was where they said like we just set out to do what we appreciated we never thought other people would do it we didn't care like we were never trying asking the question like oh wow how many people are just going to

resonate with they were just like diving deep and exploring different themes and doing different things that they didn't know if anybody's going to like it or not. It turns out, you know, a lot of people did, but, but even then, like in the time it took a while for it to catch on. Even back then, it seems like they weren't for being so off the chart talented. They still weren't, you know, as big as they could have been. I think good, good art is usually like that. And the philosophical imposition that we place on ourselves when we were doing showbred was like, we're not allowed to ask ourselves, but will people like it?

Will they understand it? Because I think that it's so crippling to, you know, creative sincerity to consider the audience as as arrogant as that sounds. But one of my favorite novelists has this great quote where he says, he was asked how often he thinks of the reader's reaction when he's writing. And he said, I don't ever think of the reader, and I don't care. The reader is me. And everyone was kind of like, oh, wow, he's a jerk. And he kind of has that perception. But I was like, man, there's actually a tremendous amount of wisdom in there because he's saying that like, in order to be, have some level of

sincerity and credibility, he can't pander to expectations to, to any degree. And I think that's what, when good art is doing its best type of stuff. Now that's, that's purely creative things. Uh, other kind of communicative forms like a sermon or a teaching are semi-creative. And then you have to consider an audience reaction. You have to actually consider it deeply. But when you're being purely creative, when Rush is writing their conceptual 20-minute future space opera, then I'm glad they just did whatever the heck they wanted. You know, I don't want, if I would have given them suggestions, they would have been bad

ones. Yeah, yeah, totally, totally. So going back, I don't want, if I, if I would have given them suggestions, they would have been bad ones. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Totally. So, so going back, I don't think you answered it. I took you off track, but, uh, why pastor? Why, why with all these other interests, you can, I'm sure you can occupy your, you know, 24 hours a day or whatever, uh, doing these other things. Why, why invest time and energy and money and study into, into training and becoming a pastor? Well, it was because we were having so many Jesus-centric conversations that were becoming increasingly deep, like especially the more that we got into a prophetic critique of American culture. And, you know, we were on tour during a lot of the big American bloodthirst events,

like post 9-11 America, we were traveling during all that, you know, when Saddam Hussein was announced to have been killed, we were traveling from town to town in the Midwest, that kind of thing. So we would have what I hope was like a prophetic critique of American Christianity in our music and in our lyricism and more and more, some people were alienated or they were offended. I mean, I'm sure you know all about that, but the, a few of them would come to us and be like, man, part of this feels like it speaks to my soul, but I need to understand it better.

Like genuine, humble thirst for more information, not necessarily like, you know, convinced, but they wanted to like, consistently follow the way of Jesus. And I was like, man, I should actually know more than I know. So I just started to actually, um, look for, uh, and buy books by writers that were on that topic. And one of the first ones I came through that really resonated me with was Greg Boyd in particular, his, uh, myth of a Christian nation. Um, and the, the corresponding sermon series that lost him half his congregation in Minneapolis or whatever. Uh, and I was like,

Oh, wow, this is really interesting. And much like the same way that nine inch nails is like a gateway to pink Floyd and David Bowie, Greg Boyd became this gateway to more of the thinkers in the Anabaptist tradition, um, writersist tradition, writers like Yoder and Walter Wink and these other people who were writing also a prophetic critique of Christendom, now they like to say, and especially American Christian culture. And I just realized that I actually really enjoyed theology

as a discipline. I thought it was fascinating. I loved the way that a mind like boyd's worked in just parsing out ideas even like a philosophical like you know this this and this and logic and that kind of thing and i liked it to the degree that um i started to do uh what i guess some people might think of as an excessive amount of studying on my own just for the heck of it um and i was always having these conversations. I'm sure they were frustrating or they sounded pretentious to someone else. So I was like,

oh, you know, I was reading this thinker and that person. And it eventually landed me, you know, my wife and I moved to, uh, Portland. We were living in Georgia, moved to Portland and got involved with, uh, this church out here in Portland. And I befriended, I mentioned him earlier, this guy, John Mark Comer, um, because we had shared interests in theology and we liked a lot of the same thinkers and had shared a lot of similar views that we felt we couldn't go around broadcasting. So we would secretly be like, yeah, I'm really into this. And, you know, what do you think about this? And, and in that he was kind of like, you know, I really think that you should pursue

like a pastoral role or as a teacher at least and go to seminary and I can get you know, I really think that you should, um, pursue like, uh, a pastoral role or as a teacher at least, and go to seminary and I can get you into, I can help, you know, like get you into this, um, seminary cohort type. It was an unconventional form to the way they do graduate school. And I was like, Oh, okay. And I realized that like, uh, I, I think that that was kind of like the next evolution of what I was doing with art and music, um, was to take all that like energy, communicative energy that I had to, uh, talk about what I think is like profound, true theological insight, distilling concepts that are way up here, you know, um, from thoughtful theologians down into an accessible, understandable,

comprehensible level for the person who's never going to crack a, you know, a text, an academic book. And that's fine. And I found that teaching was like, or sermons were such a fantastic form to do exactly that thing. The same way that lyrics and, you know, novels can communicate profound truth creatively. Sermons can do the exact same thing. It's just an entirely different skill set and, you know, disciplinary form. And so I started to do that. I was working at the church, not in a pastoral capacity whatsoever. I was the videographer. This is at John Mark's church or Vancity? At John Mark's church at Bridgetown in Portland. And he was kind of pushing me in that

direction and be like, no, you can do this. You should do this. And he would let me like teach on a Sunday here and there. And it was so weird. It was like, why is the video guy up there doing a sermon? And eventually they kind of asked me to plant a church in Vancouver, which is just like 10 minutes from Portland, but a different state, different city, different culture. Portland, but a different state, different city, different culture. And so now I lead this small church out here in downtown Vancouver. And so it's been quite a wild ride. Now, oh, so it's a plant from Bridgetown. It is. Yeah. We like to think of it as like a pseudo sister church because it's not a campus. It's not like an extension of Bridgetown in the formal sense, but we still share resources, collaborate,

do the same types of teachings and all that. So I'm curious, and I don't know how to say this. You're not your traditional pastor. I mean, even your look, your choice of film, your favorite bands. Does your passion, the things you're interested in, does that reflect the flavor of the church? Or do you feel like you're kind of buddying up against a church culture within your church that you don't necessarily

resonate with or both and? Yeah, I think it's a little bit of both i mean i'm sure people that go to van city would probably say that in it's some way my personality is somewhat reflected in the personality of the church um but i do i feel like a uh you know uh i have a phobia of i don't want to become uh predictable in the sense that like, Oh, the pastor's got tattoos. So it's this rock and rock and roll church, like skulls on the side, you know, that kind of thing. Um, so in some ways, maybe people would be terribly surprised to find that it is, um, at least more conventional that you'd expect. I mean, replay the normal worship songs. We have normal bands and, um, the form is, the form is what you might expect from the type of church that we are.

So it's not like, in your face, loud music or something like that. And part of that's like I'm apprehensive. I don't want to be this like the rock and roll church. And in many ways people like to say wow that guy he's a pastor and there's an accuracy to it. But I'm also terribly conventional in 2018.

It's like he has tattoos hooray. Everyone has tattoos. I think the notoriety of it has waned a lot over time. But yeah it's still it's like I don't fit the mold. And that's not necessarily just in an outward presentation, but like you said in some of my... Yeah, the idea is, I mean, are you from the pulpit

talking about annihilation and pacifism and things that the average churchgoers typically doesn't really... Although, I mean, well, in the Portland, broader Portland area, I know Vancouver is more conservative though, right? Aren't they very different? Yeah, it is.

So I know in Portland, it seems like every pastor there seems like they believe in nonviolence from my vantage. I mean, I know it's not true, but I mean, it's you guys over there can get away with some more nonconventional beliefs. I mean, yeah. Yeah. It's both.

It's weird because in a place like the Pacific Northwest, Portland, and to a lesser extent Vancouver, but Vancouver as well, know, critique, uh, the empire, if I talk about America and compare it to the Roman empire or something like that, which, you know, if we're just teach, we're a conventional church in the sense that we like exegetically teach through a book of the Bible. And so when you do that, we've been in Matthew for like more than a year now. When you do that, you inevitably run into all these topics like judgment and, you know, the empire, nonviolence, teaching a sermon on the mount. You just can't possibly get away of sexuality, all that kind of stuff. And it's inevitable that you ruffle feathers on both sides. And to a point that I sometimes find it surprising, like, Oh really? People were offended by that. I would think that that's kind of, you know, less surprising than it was once upon a time, but they still do. Um, and we do, we talk, I mean, like I'm not on a mission to go there and I, you know, I, we have our, our model is like team leadership. So I'm not like the boss of the type of top of a pyramid. I'm,

and you know, I know people don't like this language, but like submitted to a team of elders and all that stuff. Um, so if they're like, you're on your hobby horse, don't do that. I'm like, okay.

You know, I, I trust in them and they trust in me. I, I hope. Um, but there are times when it's like, we have no choice but to go.

I mean, a great example is we were in the sermon on the mount and we did like six extra teachings on non-violence because we realized that like oh people are going to have so many questions that we can't possibly answer in that little collection of verses just exegetically so you know that was when john mark and i bothered you we did an interview with you we did an interview with like boyd and uh bruxy cafe and all the, all those guys. And it became like this great conversational moment for our church where we have a couple of guys who are like in the military and we have people who were like, Oh, Whoa, that's crazy. But they limit my tendency to provoke, because when you provoke and alienate, this is I would much rather, you know, and your book is a great example of this. It opens with this like, all right, everybody calm down for a second. I'm not the traditional expectation of a pacifist.

Just give me a second. That's how I read that. Like prologue is like, all right, everyone, just calm down for a second. Sit down. Hear me out. And that's kind of the approach we take. how i read that like prologue it's like all right everyone just calm down for a second sit down hear me out um and that's kind of the approach we take but yeah we inevitably when you talk about the bible have to talk about that it's all you could ask for is somebody willing to engage the conversation not just begin with a bunch of anger and walls going up it's like hey man i'm not even saying that you need to be convinced by this but at least let's reflect on some really challenging

things in scripture you know if you can get there to me, that's, that's a win. It's surprising how many people just don't, won't even go there. They don't want to engage in. Yeah, I know. It's such a huge bummer. And you probably have even way more experience with this than I do, but you realize sometimes that, uh, and maybe this is my pessimism talking, but sometimes people are just fundamentally uninterested in having a conversation whatsoever and when they are you're just like oh you this is not going anywhere i wish you well my friend and then other times there's like a little bit of that but also a little bit of like i don't know tell me this and you just try to work your way through that totally

you know yeah uh evan wickham our mutual friend um he was he is going through matthew and he had me come down and do the love your enemies talk i think he lost like 200 people between the next sunday and that one i it was summertime so i don't i don't think it was mostly because of that but um and i was pretty reserved i thought i thought. I wasn't even advocating nonviolence per se. I was advocating loving your enemy. And not tying the bow too tight. But we had a good conversation because he's very much like you. And I think my natural tendency is to challenge people

and almost go beyond where they're able to go in that moment. And somebody challenged him, I think it was his wife. Yeah. I think it was Sandy that challenged him saying, look, you've been reading all this stuff. You've been married, you've been marinating on this for five years. You can't expect somebody to make a, you know, a 180 degree turn in one sermon when they haven't been, you know, thinking through this for so long. And that's, that's so, it's such good pastoral advice of meeting people where they're at and not trying to get them, trying to take them so far in one moment where it didn't take you, it took you a long time, you know, I mean, to get somewhere.

So that's, that's what makes it good. That's what separates, I think, the prophets from the prophetic pastors who are able to meet people where they're at. And I, you know, you and I probably both fail at that more than we succeed, but it's a good, yeah, no, it's a good reminder. like, enjoy, put up with pastoring or what aspects of pastoral ministry do you, in your kind of unique gift set and creativity, what do you love about the pastor? What could you do? If you could spend like 40 hours a week doing this aspect of pastoral ministry, what would it be? Yeah, you know, I honestly try to be terribly forthcoming with my limitations and my own psychological dilemmas, whether

it's about pastoring or just life in general in my teaching and in like hanging out and talking with people at Vancity. So I don't think it would come to any surprise to them whatsoever to know that like where my heart and interest and intellectual passion is, is in the teaching side of things. I, I love like the idea of spending a ton of time reading, you know, a stack of books for, in a, in a week that 10% of which I'll use content from, but wrapping my head around an idea and then trying to distill the essence of that idea out of, you know, teaching from the scriptures into 45 minutes or something like that. And, and being able to have

these kinds of conversations on the side as well. So we have like a, a very, a spectrum of leadership at fan city and team people, and they're based almost on missing pieces in personalities. So if someone comes to me and they're like, I want to get coffee, I want to talk, you know, I'll, I mean, I'll do that for sure. But more and more, they say, Hey, I've got a couple of questions theologically, and I'd like to know more about what advanced city thinks or what you think about this. And I'm like, heck yeah, let's, let's have talk coffee and talk about that. Um, and then there's, you know, uh, other people on our staff that are more just like

that. I would just sit down and have coffee with people all day if I could, just for the sake of hearing about them and their lives. And they'll tend to gravitate toward those people for, for that reason. And that's not to say I don't like just hanging out with people and talking to them. I do. I re I genuinely do. But when it comes to like being a pastor and a teacher, I think that my skill set, if I have one is that I actually like studying the Bible and talking to people about the Bible. I mean, most artists, would you say, are also more introverted? Like they're not this real.

It seems to be that's an accurate stereotype, at least to a certain extent. Yeah. And that's true. You know, I, I, I don't always like the, the, the terms at least colloquially, because when people say introvert extrovert, they use it as an excuse to be a butthead. Like I'm an introvert. So don't even talk to me. I don't like people. And it's like, this is not true. I love being around people. I love talking to people. I love people, at least when I'm like operating out of my redeemed self. But yeah, I also like being by myself and having time to think.

I think that's a more accurate version of what introvert, like I get energy and replenishment from like being by myself as well. That's how I've come to understand because I think both my wife and I, who we love being around people, we're around people all the time. We can, you know,

but I think we're both actually introverts. When somebody explained it that way, saying what gives you energy and do you need alone time? Because extroverts don't need to be alone. They're alone and they start shriveling up. And for me, I could spend all week. This is my basement right here. I got a bunch of books.

I could literally spend all week here by myself and I'd be totally fine. But when I go travel, I speak. I'm talking to people morning and night. And I enjoy that too. Now I go to my hotel room exhausted. I feel like I've played a a double header football game or something you know but um but I enjoy that too I love I love I love uh interesting conversations it is the superficial it just stays superficial and every time you try to pull it out of that just the

other person pulls it back up into the realm of superficiality, that's when I'm just like almost not angry, but just like, I just want, this is so uninteresting. Oh, yeah, it becomes uninteresting. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. You're working on a book now, your first nonfiction theology type book. Yeah, tell us about that. What are you thinking through in that book?

I know it's not done yet, but. Yeah, yeah. Well, here's the long, cool title. You want the long cool title you want the long i do i like long cool titles the long cool title is uh with all its teeth um sex violence profanity and the death of christian art come on now and uh it really is just uh i hope like like an amalgamation of all that stuff that we've been talking about this whole time. So what I realized when I would have conversations with people along those lines is that they would have so many questions. There was such an appetite for more information in that realm, whether it was like parents trying to exercise discernment with their kids in the arts, just disciples of Jesus who

were like, ah, is there something that's bad for your soul? Is it anything goes? Um, should we go back to fundamentalism and nothing that's offensive? And I had what I, what they thought was like a more nuanced view. And they'd be like, tell me more, tell me more. And I was like, oh, I actually haven't worked it out. I'm just, this is off the top of my head. Um, so I went like people would say, do you have a book you can recommend? And I went looking for one, at least that would provide the kind of things that I'm talking about. And I could not find it. I found like a great wealth of books about art theory or art history in the Christian tradition or about like why art's valuable for the church. church, but nothing that was really speaking to how to navigate art that isn't traditionally redemptive, obviously, you know, like uplifting art, art that is even I would, you know, even

art that could be offensive or blasphemous or things like, is there any value in those things or is it all bad? And the most I could find is like a throwaway paragraph in a book or, you know what I mean? So I was like, it should exist. There's a, so my buddy, Mark Buving,

do you know Mark Buving? He's a, Oh, I know. I don't know. He's written, he's co-written with Francis Chan quite a bit. And he, so like multiply,

you'll see Mark Buving's name on there. And he's, Francis is kind of editor and he's, he wrote one solo because he's huge into he's not a musician but he's huge into studying like uh just music as a whole like he knows every single band he loves all the bands that nobody's ever heard of um and he wrote a book called resonate and it's about it's only with music though it's not with art in general right he deals with um i think a very similar perspective i But he deals with, I think, a very similar perspective.

I think he's speaking to maybe more of a conservative audience. So the teeth, the edge of the book is, I think, blunted a little bit because he really wanted to reach an audience that may be categorically kind of like, no, they're secular or sacred. But yeah, that one's really good. And there's another one called Meaning at the Movies, and it deals with film. It's by a guy who teaches at like John MacArthur's college. But this guy's a really forward thinker.

He's really interesting. I'm forgetting his name now. Shoot. Yeah, I think Meaning at the Movies. And he's a big fan of horror movies. He has his class, watch The Exorcist and stuff because he's he's like this is one of the best films of all time apparently i'm not um but yeah he uh it's true yeah i think but but i don't i don't know know of a book that takes the whole the whole thing together though and i think your

style if i can predict would be very needed and and very unique in how you even present it. I have the book. You sent it to me. I still need to crack it open and check it out. Yeah, I hope so. I mean, I have. I actually. Wait, you sent me the outline.

Did you actually send me the manuscript? I sent you the proposal. The proposal. That's right. Yeah. No. We'll say outlines in there and all that. Which I thought just in glance that looked

incredible yeah i would love to see the manuscript yeah yeah i'll show it to you the the the thing that's like oh you know i realize that when you have to write a proposal you have to say all this like self-promoting garbage that's like i'm great you'll love this book buy it how many twitter followers yeah yeah exactly It's so painful. But I did, when I say in the proposal, like, it's just like, I just don't know if there's a book like this. Now, there's attributes of the book that you can find represented in a spectrum of books. And a lot of them are fantastic. And they were massively, you know, I spent a few weeks doing research for the book.

And I read a huge stack of just about everything that I could get recommended to me and everything that I could find from a little research. And it was so helpful. Like I stole content, like, or ideas, like I ethically stole content. Yeah. Not straight up plagiarism that gets people into trouble. They say, um, but, uh, uh, I've, yeah, I just found that like, oh, there's, you can find specialty books about certain things and you can find broad strokes books about certain things in the arts. But I couldn't find one that was mostly there to give people like a nuanced view of not only how to navigate art that's like offensive or controversial, but how to learn to see if there is any value in that. Because I think that it's the thing that happens is it becomes a conversation about more or less censorship. Should you, or should you not?

And less about like, well, what does God think about art? What does God think about creativity? Does God think that there's any value in art that offends and alienates people? If so, how do we learn to appreciate that? Should there be a place for it in the church specifically? Should there be no place for it? How do we like expand appreciate that? Should there be a place for it in the church specifically? Should there be no place for it? How do we like expand our palatate? See, when you like track art history and church history concurrently, there was this like high, high value for art that started to wane and dissipate.

And I would argue is all almost all but lost because now we think of art in at least in modern, quote unquote, evangelical culture as little more than entertainment. We just use those terms interchangeably. And that to me is like a, a dis at, at art because art can be entertainment. Entertainment can be art, but like, uh, it seems to me that, um, even things that, you know, people write off as, as nothing, little more than popcorn entertainment, like a Marvel movie or, you know, like a grocery store paperback can have significant, profound, meaningful soul impact for a disciple of Jesus. And I would love to see like a, you know, a rediscovery, not just in the, like, that's the misconception is like, oh, if you're like a four on the Enneagram and you are like artsy fartsy and into that stuff, then great.

But for the rest of us, and I'm like, no, actually, I think that like a spiritual discipline in general, all disciples of Jesus are called to have a certain amount of appreciation and value for art and creativity. I mean, like, why did God like God is the original artist, the original creative, and he has so much non-utilitarian purpose in creation itself. Like in, I think that he intends for us to value that, not just be like, eh, whatever. You know what I mean? Oh, that's so good. So that's my agenda. That's my manifesto. Oh, that's awesome, man.

Gosh, there was another question I was about to ask you. I totally blanked on it. Ah, shoot. It's because all that good. No, yeah. You said so many said so many things there was like oh i want to follow up that i didn't want to break you off but uh anyway um well shoot uh what i want to do is well before i forget where can people find your stuff uh you know website blog twitter whatever like where if people want to find out more about your work your your novels your your music, and everything else you do, your blogs, your forthcoming book, where do they go?

I do have a website. It's joshdyes.com. Yeah, explain Josh Dyes. Is that your stage name for your band? It is, yeah. When I first got into music proper, the things that most motivated me were a lot of the performance art guys.

So David Bowie is obviously a stage name. Marilyn Manson's a stage name. proper the things that most motivated me were like a lot of the performance art guys so you know david bowie is obviously a stage name marilyn manson's a stage name um all these kind of guys that came up with fake pseudonyms and i was cool i'm gonna do that too so i did and then the first record came out and then it was too late you know but so i i continued in that pseudonym okay uh at least as a musician until showbread was over is there any significance is that like the verb dies or yeah i just thought it like you know a lot of people looked for significance and it being like oh you mean like die to yourself i was like not really i just thought it sounded cool that was my assumption i was like oh yeah i kind of like there's a band uh um kill nate allen i think it's kill nate yeah yeah i know yeah yeah yeah and i was like what's

up with kill that sounds so he's like i'm trying to kill my kind of fleshly self or whatever i don't know yeah so it sounds cool it's catchy people remember that okay and you have a band you have an album that just came out right i do yeah the the a bunch of the guys left over from showbread we made a record together and when when you're not doing like a career band, it becomes so much fun again to just be like, I don't care, whatever. So we have this moniker that we operate under called The Bell Jar, named after the Sylvia Plath novel. And we made an album called I Infest, Therefore I Am. I Infest? And it's this, yeah, it's a super bonkers, like off the wall kind of synthy noise rock kind of

thing um and i think we'll just keep messing with that for fun like write songs put them out right without any ambition to like become we're gonna become a huge band you know can you can you send us over a couple songs and we'll play them on the podcast yeah by all means all right so so can you think of one right now i mean we're recording before the fact but i mean can you think of a song you will send and we'll close out this podcast with and can you explain maybe some meaning behind the song yeah um this is a funny story for you there's a a song on the album called toxic shock syndrome and uh it came out of a conversation that i had working at a megachurch with another like a co-worker and they would refer to the uh the the the entirety of the you know the conglomerate the big megachurch machine that it was i don't mean that i know that sounds mean but

i don't mean it in pejorative sense it It just really was a really big operation. And, uh, they were like this, they were super burnout and super, uh, upset about everything. And he, he, he constantly called it, uh, this, this toxic organization. And so I wrote this kind of like satire narrative of a character who's like critiquing the workplace and finding all this fault in it just as really like a comical exercise. And, um, I think satire is one of my favorite forms of just like using a comedic voice to critique something. Uh, it's a lot like, uh, the prophets, you know, that they were hyperbole and all kinds of like extreme language. Um, so then you get a song like toxic shock syndrome and it's,

it's like not a secret. I had a conversation with him when I wrote it. It wasn't like an offensive thing and he thought it was fun so it's a satire that deals with your reflections on the the internal machine of a megachurch all in love all in love no i don't i doubt anyone would pick that up just reading and listening to the lyrics but there's the inside base so so with with uh and i used the phrase screamo i think before but with music that the average person can't understand the lyrics. Is that fair? Sure.

Are they expected to kind of Google or go read somewhere the lyrics so that when they're hearing, they can hear the message? I've always wondered that because I can appreciate, I appreciate almost all types of genres, including music where I'm like, man, I can't understand a word the guy's saying, but I can appreciate that there's something going on here. Is that kind of the expectation that you can, you got to go figure out? I think so. You know, it really depends on when, when the vocals are like screamed or yelled to any extent, there's a certain amount of compromised intelligibility. Uh, but you know, I've honestly found this sounds like a silly thing to say, or like, I'm an apologist for the screaming style and I'm really not, I could care less, but the, or I could not care less rather. Um, the, the, there's certain vocalists that I can understand just fine. Cause they enunciate and there's others that I can't, or it's too fast

or it's too wild. You know, I've never been a fan of like death metal, for example. And every now and then someone will say, but you should try this record. And I'll be like, okay, I'll give it a shot. And it's just like, they could be saying nothing as far as I can tell. And I sound like my grandma or something like that. And I know they are. But usually the stuff that I gravitate to, even if it's like over the top or extreme, and I don't listen to a ton of it, but I do like some edgy stuff.

I can understand some or at least I can get a sense that like, oh, this is being said. And then it's more like, you know, what's fun about art. You're like, oh, I'd like to know more. And then, yeah, I'll go to the liner notes or Google it. So you're saying you should be somewhat intelligible to the average listener and draw them in like art like a good piece of a painting or something and yeah yeah i'd like to think that even on like uh maybe not all of it but even on the showbread records that are more over the top that have a lot of screaming um at least if you're somewhat accustomed to that genre at all there's there's some comprehensive you can comprehend what the what some of the words are, at least like a chorus or something like that.

Yeah, well, thank you so much, Josh, for being on. We're going to close out. Say the song one more time. What's it called? Toxic. Toxic Shock Syndrome. Toxic Shock Syndrome. My producer is a huge fan of yours, I'm sure.

Well, you'll send it over and he'll load it up so you've been listening to josh uh josh porter aka josh dies uh renaissance man writer novelist musician theologian and pastor this is this is uh you're going to be listening to one of his latest songs right now thanks so much josh for being on the show oh it's my pleasure thank you I've got a son documenting all the screen lives extemporarily alienated and so egregious they don't pay me enough

to suffer the fruit trees and everything pathetic violent anthropogenic incompetent standing to keep you through it Thank you. We'll see you next time.