Theology in the Raw - 714: #714 - Has the Christian Worship Scene Become Commercialized? A Conversation with John Mark McMillan

Episode Date: December 24, 2018

On episode #714 of Theology in the Raw Preston has a conversation with John Mark McMillan. John Mark McMillan is something of an anomaly: an artist and Platinum-selling songwriter bending genres and defying categorization by carving out his own unique and independent path. With an ear for melody and a poet’s eye for metaphor, no topic has been off-limits. While each of his albums over the past decade have continued to explore new territory, it’s McMillan’s ability to give lyric and language to the human experience that many consider his greatest gift. Mercury & Lightning (out 9.1 via Lionhawk Records) reminds us why we love great songwriters; The exceptional ones find a way to put new words to private musings and desperate feelings until the songs themselves begin to live in our bones. Learn more about John Mark McMillan on his website. Follow John Mark McMillan on twitter. 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.

Thanks for joining me for another episode of Theology in the Raw. I have on the show today John Mark McMillan. If you know anything about Christian music or especially the Christian worship music scene, then you probably know the name John Mark McMillan. And the reason why I had him on the show, it started simply because his, I believe it was his publicist reached out and said, hey, would you like to have John Mark on the show? And I said, man, I would love to have John Mark on the show. We have never talked before. We didn't know anything about each other.

I mean, I know just a little bit about him just because he's pretty well known in the Christian music scene. So, and you know about him if you have sung the song, Oh, How He Loves Me, which was written by John Mark Macmillan, made popular. I think David Crowder did a version of it and made it super popular. But John Mark is an accomplished Christian musician, but as you'll hear, he doesn't necessarily love Christian music and he's had secular labels and done non-Christian songs too. So he's kind of has ridden the edge between the Christian world and just the music, the broader music world. And so I didn't know anything about John Mark going

into this conversation. I actually had been to a concert of his and really enjoyed his music. I've always enjoyed his music, but I didn't know about anything about him as a person. And I have to say, I really was so impressed with his thoughtfulness, his authenticity, his rawness. his thoughtfulness, his authenticity, his rawness. And so I think you're going to enjoy our conversation. We talk about one of the things that really intrigued me in this conversation was his thoughts on the intersection between money and worship in the Christian worship scene. And that was really interesting to get it from somebody who was on the inside. And I think you'll be, I don't know what you'll be. Maybe you'll be upset. Maybe you'll be excited. Maybe you'll be, I don't know, somewhere in between. But yeah, he was honest. He said,

hey, look, here's the kind of pros and cons of the intersection between, you know, commercialism and the worship industry. It was super helpful to get it from somebody who has been in that environment. And I just love, love, love his thoughtfulness and authenticity. If you want to support the show, you can go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw, support the show for as little as five bucks a month or 10 bucks a month or $25 a month or more. And in return, you get access to premium content. I spend about a third of my podcast and Theology in the Raw energy producing content and spending time on my Patreon page for my Patreon supporters. So if you're not a Patreon supporter, you're only getting two thirds of the

Theology in the Raw experience. I think, isn't that what we do today? We kind of, we tack the word experience on anything and it kind of enhances the attractiveness of it. So anyway, there I go. The Algin Raw experience. Join the community if you want. You can go to patreon.com forward slash thealginraw. Support the show for as little as five bucks a month.

Okay, let's engage this really interesting conversation between myself and John Mark McMillan. Welcome back to another episode of Theology of the Raw. I am here with a new friend. We've never met in person. I've known him from a distance. I have no clue if he knows me from a distance or not, but I'm here with a singer, songwriter, worship leader, music writer, and I'm going to assume Christian. We can get into your face. John Mark McMillan. John, thanks so much for being on the show. Yeah, it's a pleasure. It's a pleasure for sure. So I saw you in concert that I didn't even know you were going to be at. It was some, so we have this out,

I live in Boise, Idaho and we have this old state penitentiary where they have a lot of outdoor concerts and you were there with two other artists who, who, gosh, I'm blanking on their name shoot um probably matt carney and need to matt carney yeah yeah yeah that was it yeah yeah killer concert so uh i was like dude i didn't know john mark was gonna be here but um i think if i could say a lot of people probably know you for uh not only your worship music but also your song writing in particular, Oh, How He Loves Me,

which has been, I mean, obviously one of the most, I don't know, do you have stats on it? One of the most widely sung worship songs in the last several years? No, I don't have any official numbers on it. Yeah. But is that, am I right to say that that is your most well-known song you've written

or are there others that I don't know? I think so, yeah. This probably is, yeah. Let's go back to little John Mark McMillan. Tell us about your upbringing and what got you into writing worship music and doing what you do now. Yeah, so I grew up, my dad was a pastor. He pastored a small church in a um strip shopping mall here in charlotte and so i grew up you know in church going to school just i mean super i feel like

super normal you know like i wasn't i wasn't incredibly popular nothing super special about me um i like to draw you know i was into comic books and that kind of stuff. One day, a good friend of mine came over. I hadn't seen him in a while and he got out of the car. He's probably 15. His mom dropped him off. He had a red Squire Stratocaster and a little PB Rage amp. And he came up to my room and he played me all these songs from the radio. And I already knew I was no good at sports, and I decided that my illustrations were not going to help me with the girls. So I tried to convince him to teach me how to play all these songs on the radio, and of course he couldn't really teach me.

But I dug up my dad's old Samick guitar and his little amp, and I started playing, and I would buy magazines from the drugstore and learn how to play songs on buy magazines from the drugstore and learn how to play songs from radio in the back of those magazines so that's where music started for me I didn't grow up in a very musical household my mom was rumored to have sang and played the guitar but I don't know that I ever remember her doing that okay my dad occasionally I'd hear him in the morning strumming acoustic guitar but that was like rare and you know yeah not very often you know so not a lot of music in the family really as far as i knew um so really i uh started playing the

guitar and i just want to be a part of something so i joined bands and played with people around town and um not very excited about church but it was a chance to play music. And so, you know, they let me put the worship team and I think they were excited for me to do that. Cause I looked like I was in the drugs, but I wasn't. This is the nineties. So, you know, I wore the black nine inch nails t-shirt and I had the long hair, you know, shaved underneath, like it's kind of popular again, you know that was you know i was always jealous of that haircut i always wish i could pull that off and it just wouldn't work for me i don't know that it worked for me either but i did yep so um i mean just trying to find my way you know playing music

um and then i there's something that happened later on in high school where um a couple of my friends moved away and i decided like i just don't care about school you know you're trying to decide what to do with your life after school and i'm like i really just don't care about all the stuff the other kids cared about you know at least i didn't think i did and um so i didn't know what i wanted to do go to college or whatever the college guy came to house and was really manipulative tried to give us a loan you know and um i was like i don't know what i want to do you know he pressed me you got to know something i'm like i don't i don't know what i want to do you know the uh the military called remember that guy calling two or three times just to talk to me super manipulative dude

i'm not anti-military by the way but this guy looking back i was like man if anyone ever talked to my kids that way i would be irate the way he was trying to manipulate me made me feel really bad about not wanting to be in the military and tried to tell me we have a band in the military i can't remember what branch it was you know i got friends in the military military is great but i but you know it just felt like I was being manipulated. And so I didn't know what to do. I started to develop what I thought was a love for God. Started to connect with a spiritual life as a young man. Then I decided to go to a ministry school.

It was time to figure out what I wanted to do. I think ultimately I wanted to play music, but I didn't feel like I was up to it. I mean, I didn't pick up the guitar till I was, you know, maybe 15. I didn't write my first song. So I was 18, 19 years old, maybe not even until I was 20. You know, I didn't sing until I was like 19, you know, and then I didn't sing very good, you know? So I was in the ministry school and I, I really enjoyed it. I wanted to play on the worship team and I guess too, there's something real interesting going on in worship music back was in the ministry school and I really enjoyed it. I wanted to play on the worship team. And I guess, too, there's something real interesting going on in worship music back then in the 90s.

There's the delirious and there's a sort of underground weird thing that I loved. You know, I don't think the same thing exists anymore like it did. Really? Just something. Yeah, not at all. Like in the mid to late 90s? Mid to late 90s, yeah. There just wasn't, like now there's kind of a culture

and there's a celebrity thing connected to it. Like there's nothing like, I mean, you know, for instance, like I remember my worship leader playing the sitar and then switching over to the Marshall stack. You know, we had weird instruments. They played instrumental stuff and people danced for hours. You know, like it's just, I don't see that really anymore. You know, so that was super exciting. Felt like something real exciting was happening. And I think I connected in that sort

of environment. And so I started writing worship songs because I wanted to be part of the worship team. And in my school, you couldn't be on the worship team if you didn't write your own songs. So I started writing my own songs. Nobody really cared for my songs. I think I ended up on the stage once or twice. At that point, my dad had moved to a larger church. And that was the ministry that had the ministry school. He was part of that ministry.

So I think because of my dad, I got some opportunities, but people didn't care about the songs. I went through a really difficult breakup at one point. I was super depressed for like nine months or something. I moved in with a friend, and I didn't have a job. We didn't have a relationship. His grandmother was older, and she needed to move to a sort of assisted living. And we moved in to just keep the house up, you know, so we had no rent.

I think we paid the insurance and the utilities. So other than that, I didn't have anything to do. So I'd stay up late at night depressed and played songs. And I think that was the first time in my life that I wrote songs, just to write songs, right? Just cause, you know, and all of a sudden, people seem to be when I played those songs for people, people seemed interested, right? So I started playing, I think I started writing more, I had some opportunities, I ended up playing at some worship conferences and um so i remember i'd written a song that some i'd maybe led worship for you know like 100 people

ever you know yeah and someone heard one of my songs and uh they wanted me to play this big worship conference it's like 5 000 people they remember walking out on the stage and I could not make myself sing. The background singer started singing. I joined in on the chorus and all these people sang my chorus, the songs, the words I wrote. I could feel it throughout my whole body. I was like, whoa, this is exciting. Wow. Yeah.

So what's funny is like I have never been attracted to Christian music ever. Not in the slightest. And I'm not putting it down. Like it just didn't interest me at all. You know, there was this interesting thing happening in worship, you know, culturally that I was excited about. Even then I didn't really like worship music, you know, but I wrote songs because it was exciting and there was something going on and people were interested in them, you know know so even some of my um well i'll say this like i i originally released my first records just because

people kept asking for the songs you know they're like whose song is that it's like well i wrote it like where can i get it it's like well nowhere i guess i mean so i recorded the song most songs because there was a demand for the songs initially i had no idea you could make a living i mean i knew people did it I don't know if you had to sign a record deal or what do you do you know yeah I knew people did it um and so slowly more and more I sort of um not that it was unintentional but it was sort of like early on there was a demand there people were interested in the songs you know and so I I just kept doing that I mean that's a long story that was almost 20 years ago now so there's been a you know 20 years between then and now so there have been ups and downs and things but there was never like one moment when I was like oh I've

made it it was more like just kind of hard and you struggle and you do better and you struggle some more things get harder you struggle some more you make it you know you early on um there was a point in my wife and i left our jobs so i would just do this music thing full time you know and we had a little bit of savings and i said if we ever touch that savings i will go get a job and we never had to we sold cds out of the trunk of our car and on MySpace, you know. And then slowly people got more and more interested in the music. And it was really funny because I wrote like the How We Love song probably in the early 2000s. Okay. And so I played that song for a few years.

And we were like in, I feel like this doesn't exist anymore. Maybe I'm just like out of it. I feel like there used to be a moment when you could play all different types of songs they had christian festivals like cornerstone we had all the types of artists there i feel like there is no room for to be an artist anymore in the commercial christian space which is fine you know but there was back then you know and so i was singing the worship songs and doing my other thing. And by that point, I stopped playing How He Loves You years before it became popular. And then, you know, people liked it and started playing it again.

I didn't mean to interrupt you there, by the way. Well, no, no. You've touched on this a couple times, and it's super interesting to me. Like, what has happened then from, I guess, according to your narrative, I mean, the late 90s, more artistic, more genuine, less commercialized, if I can say that, to now the celebrity culture, the commercialization of kind of the worshiper Christian industry. Like, can you drill down a bit deeper there and unpack kind of what is carrying that, what's causing it, what's shaping it? Yeah, totally. And by the way, I don't think everything was just super pure in the 90s you know everything is a mixed bag right everything's a mixed bag but i think what's happened is um in the 90s you could be you know towards the end of the 90s when the internet

started to rise to the point where you could post some music online and you could market through the internet you know i could i could book shows through myspace you know and then eventually through facebook so all of a sudden you could be an independent artist, you could print a thousand CDs, and then I could go out and sell a hundred CDs a weekend and make $1,800 off those CDs. You know, that doesn't exist at all. Nothing like that exists anymore for young artists, you know? So, you know, you could sell, it was not difficult to sell like i had friends um i had a friend who used to go out on the weekend and sell 5 000 cds a weekend i don't know if that was average but like he would he would easily sell a thousand cds a weekend easily and no record label

at all okay so the cds disappear and so that money isn't there anymore. So sort of what happens, and I'm not against this, because this is you can't, you can't fight the tide, right? But so what happens is, you know, when there's a lot of money here, and the money goes away, like imagine a pyramid, right? When the money starts to go away, it's not the people on top that go, they, you know, it's the people on the sides. So the artists on the fringe who don't fit all of a sudden, like, you know, they can go out, sell a few hundred CDs on the weekend and like, you can have a career, you know, like make a few grand on the weekend, you know, you split it up with your band, you know, you pay your travel, your hotel, whatever, you know, or if you get big enough, you can get, you know, ticket sales, cover you and then you can make money off the CDs. That's the way it used to work. At least the way I remember it. Okay.

So when the money is gone, when sales cease to be a thing, you know, it's not the guys on top that suffer it's sort of like the people on the fringe and so like all this sort of thing that doesn't quite fit here doesn't quite fit there all of a sudden there's no budget for them at all you know so they're gone however the you know the people in the more established areas there's um there's still more for them to do that can make more off streaming. There's licensing opportunities. But I think in the worship community specifically, like CCLI, which I really appreciate the CCLI guys. I don't know much about them, but Christian Calvary licensing.

So in the United States, it's pretty similar throughout the world, but it's different, a little country to country. But in the United States, when you write a song by sort of your given God given, right. You own that song. It's yours because you wrote it unless someone hires you to write it. And even then there's a portion of it you own, right? That's just your God given it's it's yours intellectual property, right? Okay. So when anywhere you hear music in a public place, uh, someone has bought a license to play that music. anywhere you hear music in a public place uh someone has bought a license to play that music so if you're in a coffee shop if you're in a restaurant you know if you ever go to a restaurant you'll never hear anyone sing happy birthday because it's it's owned by somebody and they don't have the license they don't want to pay for a license to sing happy

birthday right but they they pay for license, they pay bulk licenses with these big companies. There are these companies that, independent companies that collect, right? That are not owned by the record labels or anyone like that. Performance rights organizations who collect for artists. So anytime your music is played in public,

you're supposed to be somehow reimbursed for it. And people will buy these big licenses you know so that they can have music in their restaurants and their shops and their stores and that kind of stuff okay so church is no different like you're taking up a collection and you're playing music that's owned by other people you know you should you know do the right thing, the legal thing and, and pay for that license. But it's, it's, it was up to a point. It's more complicated in church, you know, and nobody, especially if you're a believer and you're writing music, like they're really hard to sue a church. You have to, I mean,

you have to be a certain kind of individual to sue a church. You know what I mean? Someone who's like giving money to the poor and, you you know taking food to ladies who just have babies and like trying you know what i mean you gotta be some yeah sort of type person to sue a church but you know so nobody does it and i don't know that anyone wanted to or even thought much about it but and especially because sales were such a big thing i don't know if people thought much about it um but they create this like this company ccli they have this licensing where churches buy a license depending on the size of the church so it's a small church it's very little and if it's a huge church it's a lot but honestly if you're bringing in 60 grand a weekend 100 grand a week and playing songs that i wrote

like i'm like i think my kids need a little bit of that money for college but so that money and I this sounds negative I don't want to sound negative because you know he lies a really good company there's such a good company they've done so well they've helped artists in the worship space make a ton of money so much so that when sales disappeared all of a sudden people started looking for other opportunities and now they look at church because there's so much money to be made in church worship and i mean millions of dollars right that's why yeah that's why all the big christian artists do worship songs now they do worship albums they do their version of a worship record and my worship

songs are so big on the radios because all the money um i know this is real like nuts and bolts and not super sexy but yeah you know it'd be more fun if it was a more spiritual principle but really it's just sort of like i don't know it's just sort of where the money is and so unfortunately money tends to drive uh expression which there's a major danger with that in church you know because yeah our worship song supposed to tell you what you want to hear they're supposed to challenge you or you know yeah so if they challenge you that's tough because all of a sudden you know i need you to like my songs i need all these churches to play my song so that i can make the money because if a few churches played it

doesn't make a difference but if every church plays it it's a big deal so i need can make money. Because if a few churches played, it doesn't make a difference. But if every church plays it, it's a big deal. So I need to make sure nothing I say offends any one of those churches. You know, you start thinking that way, even subconsciously. And that's sort of what has created, you know, the sort of culture we exist in right now. And I don't want that to sound cold. Well, it is what it is. It is what it is. It doesn't mean there's not really great things

happening in that i don't feel fully connected to that world to be honest i'm somewhat connected but day to day i think of myself as an artist i don't really think of myself as a worship leader or a christian musician okay you know so that this is super fascinating let me um and from the outside looking on i mean i knew just i've got a lot of friends in Nashville where I thought you lived in the, do you know Phil LaRue? He's a good friend of mine. And Audio Feed, the Audio Feed was the music festival that picked up when Cornerstone folded. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. five years as a speaker, not as a musician. I don't know how to play anything at all or sing. But I have a lot of friends who are in that world. So I do get kind of glimpses into it. But yeah, from the outside looking on it. So if I let me just try to summarize this, and this might sound creepier than I than the question in depth. I'm not trying to ask like,

you know, make a point with a question mark. mark. So what you're saying is that when the money was starting to dry up with people on the fringe, and yet at the same time, there was created a way to make money, not just by doing Christian music, but specifically by pursuing worship music and hoping you kind of get a song that gets hit. That there has been, again, right or wrong, we can critique it or, you know, celebrate it. There has been over the last decade or two, a financial motivation as a Christian artist to focus on worship music, whether or not you're even really interested in intrinsically in,

in creating worship music. Is that, is that too? Yeah, definitely. I, I don't think that, I think that most people who are out there doing it like really are enjoy it, you know, have some sort of passion for it. I don't feel like it's people who just like see this as a way just to make money. Cause honestly, it's not easy. That's for sure. Sure. You know, you got to write songs and they got to be believable. It's you got to be one heck of a they got to be believable it's you got to be one heck of a

songwriter to write believable songs that you don't believe you know yeah yeah so like and with all the competition with all the competition out there now yes i'm sure it's raised the bar quite a bit i would think or um although is it uh and again this is from an outside perspective but what makes a good worship what makes a worship song become really popular? Is it really, ah, that sounds cynical. Is it the quality, the artistry, the depth of the song, or is it just the masses happen to like it and it actually maybe took five minutes to write and has no thought and it just ended up taking off? Or is it kind of a both and? And I can speak, so I'm a writer and I know some books that are just take off. I'm like, that person doesn't even know how to write.

They just have a platform, some idea that isn't even that original. And other books are like, no, that's actually a really high-quality book. That's why it took off. So in the writing world, I'm sure it's in every sort of artistic world, you have kind of a both-and of high-quality stuff taking off and just other stuff that just the masses love it for whatever reason. Well, I've kind of learned that those two things aren't really connected. We really want to, especially when you do something you love,

you do really well. You want to think if you write an awesome book, if you write one of the greatest books, it's going to be successful because it's great. But that's not really true. Like Malcolm Gladwell talks about, you don't have to be the best in your field to be the most successful. You just have to be good enough. You still have to be really, really good, but you have to be good enough and you have to have a high emotional or social intelligence, right? So you can get by with a high social intelligence and not be the absolute best in your field um i guess what i'm saying is like i used to think like if i write the best song then that's what's gonna i'm gonna make it because i wrote a great song i'm realizing that it's two different skill sets almost you know so there are a lot of songs out there that i think

are just out there because they got good placement and the person performing them is believable and honestly in church a lot of times it's it's connected to some greater message or story or something yeah you know um and there's that thing where you just can't always know like and i'm terrible with this like i almost didn't put how he loves on the record that it was on my wife is like you have to put that song on the record i'm like i don't know if it fits you know and that song became a huge song and then the song saver and i wrote recently that's become a big song king of my heart like it wasn't my favorite song when we were in the writing process i was like do you like she liked it you know and and she liked it she wasn't incredibly passionate about it either. After we recorded it,

we realized, okay, there's something kind of neat about this song, you know, but I never expected that song to take off and be a huge song. I definitely don't dislike it, but not for a minute did I think, Oh, this is going to be a big song. I don't think she did either. So like, I don't really always know. I do know there are things that keep a song from being a big song, you know? What are those? Yeah.

What are those? Well, for one, like I think songs in the worship space are supposed to be really easy to play. Cause if you think about it, like most churches are small and have voluntary volunteer musicians. Right.

So we think of churches like the big mega churches, but they represent such a tiny percentage of like actual church. Right. Most churches are like most churches are under 500 people. Right. You know, so, you know, they have a voluntary musician, you know, who aren't so great. So if the songs are easy, they're more likely to play the songs. And so there's a huge push to make every worship song as easy as humanly possible because it'll get played more. And this sounds really dirty, but honestly, all music is like that. All music is like it.

On the radio, secular music, just straight up secular music on the radio. They're like, all all right we need the chorus to come in within this many seconds of the song starting we need this much instrumental at the top in case dgs dj has to say something you can't have too many hooks because we don't want to confuse people and when the song needs to be done by two minutes and 50 seconds or something like that you know it can't go longer than that um you know we can't have a long instrumental portion you never hear that anymore because people change the channel on the instrumental It can't go longer than that. You know, we can't have a long instrumental portion. You never hear that anymore because people change the channel and the

instrumental part, you know, like, so it's really interesting how mathematical music music can be. And I still love music, you know, but it's sort of, I guess that's the problem when you start digging into the sociology of music and we're even worse. And then especially worship music, it starts to sound gross but it's not really i mean you know everything sort of has a reason yeah but i don't want yeah go ahead i mean i am a guy who believes in the holy spirit like i'm a believer in that

sense and so maybe and hopefully there are times when you know i feel like maybe you know uh the spirit wants to hear something or there's just something that the people need to say you know and and that happens you know i have to believe that that's real you know i think it is you know so i don't want to sound jaded i just it's the conversation a lot of people don't want to have because it sounds so it's like talking about the mechanics of kissing or something like why would you ever talk about that just do it but it's really interesting to me you know so yours you said but the the the the music you thrive in is the more artistic creative thoughtful in-depth not christiany you made reference that you don't actually

your your natural love is not toward the typical kind of christian uh music so how would you describe your your love and passion um outside of like writing worship songs well in christian music okay so there is a there is definitely a um people want you to say something not i mean we all want to say something otherwise why are you writing but they want you to say something. I mean, we all want to say something. Otherwise, why are you writing? But they want you to say something specific. So like, I like to think of music in these terms. Like there's a spectrum. It's not like everything goes in one category or the other.

You know, but you sort of have in one category, you have like commercials, you know, like TV commercials, the intros to a show or a podcast you have like um educational music you have you know um political propaganda you know what i mean like in one side you have like music that like only exists to try to help people think a certain way it only exists to push um an agenda or um and you know it only exists to move a message forward essentially you know on the other end of the spectrum you have music that like you know that i try to write you know i'm not saying i don't have that and i guess we all sort of dip our foot in the water you know and then there can be commercials that are so creative that they sort

of yeah deserve to be considered art you know so like you can't just say but you know just the music i'm interested in like i want to feel like the artist is writing it uh because the music deserves to be written you know they it's like they have something to say they have to say so they say it not that they feel required to say a thing or not. I guess on one side, people want to tell you something. On the other side, an artist wants to invite you into a conversation. You know, and it's hard to know when that's happening. So in the Christian world, like it's easier to get by. You can get people excited in the different places, the radio, the big churches, the big

organizations. It's not altogether different in the general market either but you know if you sing a song about a thing they want you to you know say it's like easy to get on because all of a sudden you're the soundtrack you're basically you know i don't want to call it propaganda because that feels dirty but honestly people do it out you know in all types of music you know like you're gonna go sing about something, write a song about... Right now, with politics, it's just sort of like everyone's writing political songs. I'm like, do you really care? I know people do.

I was like, but a lot of you don't. A lot of you don't. A lot of you are just saying what you need to say to be heard. You know what I'm saying? And like, so it gets really complicated and it's not, people want to act like Christian music is terrible, but I'm like, it's just like everything else, you know, and you, you can make it what you want.

It's not like music in the general market is all more pure. It's just sort of like, everyone's trying to make it. And there are people who are artists and you make compromises, you know, know no matter what and you just sort of decide what your compromises are going to be um yeah but so i guess to me that's the difference in art and propaganda though is propaganda is more like a commercial and i like and people really like and i don't want to put them down i feel terrible because i love a lot of these people but it's sort of like i don't want to write commercials for jesus like i just don't want to do that to me it doesn't work you know because it's based on something that i think is is antithetical to the kingdom and sort of like

if i have to sell you jesus then like you don't got it you know what i mean like if i've got to pitch jesus to you i'm like i'm sorry this is not it's not jesus if i have to pitch it to you. And I'm like, I'm sorry, it's not, it's not Jesus if I have to pitch it. If I have to like, we were talking earlier about how like there's so many really attractive worship leaders. Now it's real popular to have like a super attractive worship leader, you know? But I was like, you know, if you've got to like, you know, like if, if you've got to like, if that's how you got to bring me into the fold, then it's not working because that doesn't last.

And I'm not going to last either. I'm being really harsh right now. This is called theology in the raw. It is raw. You're not being harsh enough. Well, I've got a friend who says, and he's probably quoting somebody famous, but I've got a friend who says that, um, the kingdom that come or the kingdom. Oh, the kingdom that comes is the way it comes or the way a kingdom comes is the kingdom that comes the way a kingdom comes is the kingdom that comes. So if we, you

know, if we win by money and power, then, then the kingdom is money and power. It's not the kingdom of God. If we win by influence, we end by sexy singers. You know what I'm saying? Sure, it's the kingdom of sex. It's not the kingdom of God. It's a different kingdom. That's a huge problem.

Like you said, I appreciate you said it's you know it's evident in the worship arena the christian music arena but it's not just true of any kind of arena i mean it's in it's true everywhere it's in preaching it's in teaching it's in writing it's in you know we are all trying to we we all fall short of promoting and embodying this sort of upside down kingdom yeah ethic and flavor of what we're doing, you know, where power structures are supposed to be turned upside down and, and we follow a crucified Messiah who is crucified for treason against the state, like, you know, who said pick up your cross and follow me and die to yourself. And like,

I don't care how sexy your worship leader is. There's not going to be a genuine conversion until people realize the radicality, the impossibility of what it means to follow a first century Jew who claimed to be God, who was crucified by Rome for treason. But can you, let's go back. Can you tell me a bit about your faith or even theological journey? What's that side? Sometimes we forget that worship leaders are, I mean, Christians who have their own, you know, wrestling with God throughout their life. So what does that look like for you the last 20 years? Totally.

So I grew up in a very charismatic tradition, which is funny that you could say charismatic tradition. But I think, you know, it's old enough. And the charismatics are very... Their tradition is anti-tradition. We have our own tradition. Everybody has their tradition. The common thing is we don't have religion. I'm like, yeah, but...

It is, though. Religion is a spiritual practice. What are yours? I'm not putting them down because I still am part of that world. Like I consider myself to be one of them, you know, but I grew up sort of the charismatic non-denominational world and it was great. I mean, there's a lot of superstition in that world, you know,

like don't read Harry Potter books and you know, that kind of stuff, but you know, and, and just like much of a mainline evangelical cultures, you know, there was, you know, there's some, you know, like certain ways of thinking and doing things that is sort of pitched to you as being kingdom, but isn't necessarily the kingdom. You know, I think it's true with all traditions you know and um but um but overall like it was i really liked it it was experiential you know so faith was first experience i think that is richard rohr who talks about faith comes by experience

tradition and what was the other one say scripture yeah probably scripture yeah faith reason scripture tradition maybe something like that yeah and so you know so but experience is a big deal you know and i feel like i experience god in legitimate ways and you know people really put down the world of the faith healing world you know and not and I'm not that I ever like, it's my dad is he loves to pray for people to be healed. And he says he's seen healings and I believe it, you know, I've known him long enough. I have no reason to doubt him. And he hasn't made like a ton of money doing it, you know, you know and there's so many stories. It'd be real interesting to go talk to those people and,

you know, but there's been a lot of abuses in that, you know, and, and, you know, but I grew up in sort of that experiential world, you know, where sort of we expected God to do things. And I really loved it. I think that as I got older, I realized that, that, you know, there are strengths and weaknesses to every stream of christianity i think and one of the weaknesses of the charismatic movement that i was connected to was that they don't encourage or appreciate process very much and uh it seems like spiritual transformation is mostly a process yeah you know and like we want to be healed like immediately and people pray for money and God, I can't put that down.

Like I remember times when we didn't know how to pay the bills and someone would give us some money, you know, we didn't ask for, I mean, you know, like I would pray and that kind of things would happen. I mean, did it happen because I prayed? I mean, was God already going to do that or I don't know, chicken or the egg. I don't really know. You know, was it, um, but, um, you know, so I don't want to put that down, but there's, there's definitely like this. I think as I grew older, I realized like, oh man, my life isn't going to be fixed or maybe fixed is the wrong word. My life isn't going to be fixed or maybe fixed is the wrong word my life isn't going

to be completed by something that happens in a moment right like my life is a trajectory and it will become and will continue to become whatever it's going to be daily based around my practices as an individual you know which i want to believe and i do is um influenced by outside spiritual um things you know and um i hate to take all the magic out of the spiritual life you know like um but a lot of it is a process so And so I think that was something for me, you know, over time that, um, weighed on my theology, you know, but then also I grew up with the, like, Hey, we're, we're right. And we're going to win. We're going to rule the world theology, you know, you know,

like the, we need Christians in every level of government business, the arts, you know, and early on, I was like, I'm going to be in the arts mountain. I'm going to rule for Jesus from the arts mountain. You know, I thought people needed my music or they were going to die. You know, looking back, you know, it's like that's so antithetical to the kingdom. And it's just like a terrible way to make music and live a life. It was for me to feel like god like god needs me you know what i mean like if i don't do it god's in trouble without me like

how much pressure can a person live under yeah you know when did that shit when did you start to shift your thinking was that just over time where you started to stop kind of pursuing this kind of i guess for lack of better terms, this power kind of driven Christianity? You know, it was over time. Honestly, it wore down over time. A lot of people, especially now, you know, I know the past few years, you don't hear it as much anymore. But for a long time, you heard a lot about deconstruction. You still do.

lot about deconstruction you still do you know deconstruction was like from like i heard that word every day and from 2015 to you know 2017 it's fine i'm not putting down the word but you know but before you know i didn't have this most of the people i know talking about deconstruction had this like moment i never did in fact church always treated me well people in church i mean you have conflict because it's human beings right but church has always treated me well they played my songs they took care of me like the people who were the closest to me who i would trust you know if i was in jail i had my one phone call or if i was like in the hospital like i would call those people you know like yeah so like I I never got like hurt in church or like turned away but I just felt less and less connected to that sort of message you know

and I guess too I had a bit of a faith crisis I really don't know when it started I think it's it began probably back in 2007 you know I just started to ask myself questions I hadn't asked because I was so insulated in this Christian world that these other questions didn't come up. Whenever they did, they're immediately shot down. You know, people get very uncomfortable. It's like you go into church and you start talking about doubt. All of a sudden, it's very uncomfortable because like hey we we got a show to run you know we gotta like you can go do your doubting after the show yeah yeah please let's doubt later like and i mean they're they're good people they're really good people we're not talking

about yeah you know there's there are probably some you know sociopaths out there, but very few of them. Very few of them. Most of them are really kind, well-meaning people who are just trying to keep it going, trying to pay the staff, trying to pay their bills. And I do get a little frustrated growing up with the pastor for a father. When people talk about how pastors are just about money, I'm like, have you ever considered doing this for a living? I was like, do you know how much money most pastors make? It's very little.

Most pastors have to work multiple jobs. You know, they just see the top, you know, 1% church pastors, mega church pastors and the big writers. And they think that like, you know, that's what, you know, pastors are trying to do. I'm like, it's just not true yeah you know but um yeah but slowly i i had a faith crisis that kind of snuck up on me because i was outside of church and i was trying to live um you know i have i've had a problem a little bit of a problem with sort of the worship music and commerce. And so for a while, I was like, I'm just going to do my music outside of church,

just so there won't be that temptation. And the truth is, people in church love my music. And so after a while, I was like, this is really kind of mean for me to refuse to play at church. It's just because of my issues. You know what I mean? I just need to be a grown-up and work this out in my heart, right? So you pursued secular labels or just kind of left the church? I mean, I just need to be a grownup and work this out of my heart. Right. But, um, So you pursued secular labels or just kind of left it.

Yeah. I was like, I'm just going to play clubs and theaters and we're just going to live outside of church. And we're just, you know, um, just because I don't, I felt a little bit gross, you know? Um, and then I think I grew up a little bit and it's like, okay, like I'll play my music for anybody who wants to hear it. I'm just going to be grateful that people love my music and it, but it wasn't, that was an anti-church guy. I didn't like church or church wasn't cool, you know, but it was like, man, this, how

does commerce and worship, how do I do this without the two touching? It's like, well, you know, maybe I just got to figure it out inside myself. You know, I was pretty idealistic back then too but when i got outside of the church i started bumping into all sorts of conversations that i didn't have real answers for you know and gosh you know we had kids i had um relationship issues with guys in my band some of my closest friends you know we went through some hard things and I think over time they just started creating these new conversations I was like hey I need to maybe I need to rethink this another big thing was I grew up with some pastors who it wasn't my dad

but some pastors who I kind of idolized you know and gosh when I was young i thought i i thought they were like superheroes i mean i thought they were actually superheroes like i thought they could do superhero things and couldn't for a moment imagine them being wrong about something you know and that was terrible and that's one problem i have with sort of the more authoritarian approach to um church is that i'm like man, you end up shielding yourself, you know, really to prop up your brand sometimes, you know, and I'm sure I do the same thing. There's certain things when I, on my worst days, I don't want publicized,

but I guess there was a breakdown with these two pastors. I'm like, at least one of you is wrong. Turns out, I think looking back, they're probably both pretty wrong about a number of issues, but I was like, Oh, if you're wrong about this, what about all these other things? You know? And I started jumping in things I just believed, you know, without asking or without thinking hard about it. I was like, I need to like revisit this stuff or visit it for even the first time, you know? And so on my way back up, I feel like feel like i i i constructed a much different type of faith than i had on the way down so you went through the deconstruction reconstruction definitely definitely i mean richard or talks about the you go from order to chaos back to

order yeah god i'm so glad i'm back in order the chaos yeah some people live in the chaos yeah i know well there are those days where i'm like i don't know if i believe in god but every person out here has come to me because they want me to like channel the holy spirit you know like shaman the holy spirit for them and i'm like i don't know if i believe in god tonight during those you know during those that season you know but I am. And what's funny is God's was still channeled. Apparently he doesn't depend on me, which that was pretty great. Yeah. And I realized God doesn't depend on me for that. And I was like, ah, God doesn't depend on me for anything. And this is a beautiful way to live. God does not depend on me, you know, and, um and there's a lot of freedom in that.

He doesn't even depend on me to figure out how to believe, you know, sort of like, I feel like I can just enter into the process and that's enough. Right. You know, and so looking back and rethinking all these things, you know, I think I actually see faith as a different thing now, you know, I like where I'm at. And I do. I consider myself a believer. Maybe a couple days out of the month, I'm an agnostic.

But most days, I'm a believer. And some days, I feel like God's best friend. That's probably how most people actually feel. They just don't admit it. Because again, they sometimes don't have space in church to wrestle out loud i mean gosh if you leave if if you look at all the so-called saints in the bible and look at yeah i mean look at you got like peter took him two years of walking with jesus before he you know came to jesus said i think you're the messiah you know and then a few months later he denies that he even knows who jesus is you know like that's not just rest of a doubt that's like flat out

radical atheism for that moment then he came back and he's a leader of the church and so on and that's pretty typical of the honest the honest christian life so no i i i appreciate that um we're about out of time but you you uh you, uh, you got a Christmas album that come out. Yeah. What's the date of that release? It's out. It came out about a week ago. Oh, right on. Okay. So we're recording this, uh, December, I think it's the fourth. So it's, it's, yeah, it's out. Yep. It's out. Now, what is that? Uh, fresh songs? Are you covering, uh, traditional Christmas songs, both and? Or what's that album? It's both and. So it's actually sort of like about one-third new songs,

one-third traditional songs, and then one-third songs that aren't Christmas songs that I decided to make into Christmas songs. Songs like Make You Feel My Love, the Bob Dylan tune. My buddy Andy used to always

play it around christmas and uh i just think that sounds like that sounds like a great christmas song so i did that in fact i hope andy's not mad at me for covering that song um and then um uh what a wonderful world has become a christmas song even though it's not technically but it's probably my favorite song ever written okay yeah really yeah well it's got my favorite song ever written. Yeah. Really? Yeah. Well, it's got the dark sacred night and the bright blessed day. It's just a beautiful outlook on life.

And I feel like it's the outlook I want to have, which is like, there are parts of life and things of life that are terrible, right? Like suffering is real and no one avoids it. right like suffering is real and no one avoids it you know and uh but that doesn't we've first i don't know where down the line we've decided that that um cancels out the beauty of life you know the two are just two separate things and you i think that we can sort of decide which of those things we're gonna like have fellowship with what who are we going to make friends with like suffering is real but suffering doesn't have to dictate my life i i actually think that the beauty in life is greater than the suffering you know even the worst you think of the worst things i mean this is my personal view and it's really hard thing to say

it's a harder thing to believe but it feels right to me is that even when you look at like things like the holocaust you look at the worst things that happen human existence they're awful but actually think the beauty in life and the goodness is actually greater you know and those are awful you know so it doesn't make one less awful but i just think that life is is greater and i actually think the reason we think things like the holocaust are so bad is because life is so good you know that otherwise we wouldn't care if we died or anyone else died if life wasn't so beautiful death would have no sting and have no there'd be no strength or power in death you know if we that sounds antithetical sounds backwards but you know the only reason death is so rough is because life is so good.

And if life wasn't good, death really wouldn't be that bad, you know? And so what a wonderful world. It's like, I can say that with an honest heart, even in the midst. Who are some of your sources of influence and inspiration, either, you know, books that you're, you know, you mentioned Richard Rohr a couple of times. So maybe writers, Christian or non, or, or musicians, like who, who, who do you draw your, you know, who, who shapes you the most? Yep. I love Springsteen and Dylan early on. They were

the ones I sort of modeled my writing after, you know, when I was in my, you know, in my 20s um uh steinbeck i love steinbeck um stephen king i love those writers as far as books go um uh as far as you know kind of theology goes dallas willard is one of my personal favorites i love richard rohr i'm reading um well there's a couple books i'm reading now i guess they don't count because I haven't finished reading them, but I've really enjoyed Brian Zahn. Oh, yeah. Robert Capon is great. I'm really loving him right now.

Yeah. Yeah, probably, I mean, Dallas Willard's one of my favorite. It's like if you could take Dallas Willard and Richard Rohr, they're sort of like, what's the two? It's not a trinity, they're the holy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're my sort of two and dylan thomas okay so here we go take giles willard richard roar and dylan thomas and uh you would kind of have i'm not familiar with dylan thomas he's the only guy you mentioned that i don't know who's uh yeah so he uh bob dylan stole his name from dylan thomas dylan thomas writer and um poet his english or irish maybe he's welsh but um i think he died kind of young he's pretty dark

pretty heavy but um everybody steals from him you know bob dylan obviously and a lot of the those guys steal heavily from dylan thomas but okay um yeah but dylan wrote that uh dylan obviously and a lot of the those guys steal heavily from dylan thomas but okay um yeah but dylan wrote that uh dylan thomas wrote that um poem uh gosh uh rage rage against the dying of the light oh yeah okay oh yeah and the interstellar you know the beginning of that poem and you've heard it on football commercials and other places like that you know but that's okay oh cool man well dude i really appreciate your honesty and i'm super excited for this podcast to come out i think uh yeah i try to have a mix of christian thinkers artists uh theologians writers and so on so um even the several i recorded today, it's a good broad range of, um, I had

a Cambridge scholar on that. I had a friend of mine who works for life way and his PhD. And then now you're, you're bringing in the artistry side of this. So yeah, I appreciate you, man. Really enjoyed this conversation. So how can people look up your stuff? I mean, uh, do you have a website they go to or? Yep. johnmartinmillan.com and then you can find me on any of the socials under john martin mcmillan um okay on spotify apple music uh amazon all you know youtube all under john martin thanks a lot john appreciate you being on yeah all right take care all right peace Yeah, he loves us. Oh, how he loves us. Oh, how he loves us.

Yeah, he loves. Yeah, he loves us.