Faithful Rock Journalism with Doug Van Pelt

Truth is easy to preach until a real story requires putting faith into action. That’s where our conversation with Doug Van Pelt gets honest fast and why it’s one of the most important Creative Christians interviews we’ve done.

We sit down with Doug, the founder and longtime editor behind Heaven’s Metal Magazine, later known as HM, to unpack how a six-page, cut-and-paste fanzine became a defining voice for Christian metal, hard rock, and “hard music” culture. Doug walks us through his first exposure to Christian rock, a long prodigal season, and the moment he came back to Jesus and started consuming Christian music with fresh purpose. From writing for a major college newspaper to landing early band interviews, he shows how faith and craft can grow together when you keep shipping the work.

Then we go deeper into Christian journalism ethics. Doug shares the cover story that forced him to ask what “pursuing truth” means for a believer, and why dignity, restoration, and biblical wisdom shape how he reports, edits, and reviews. We also talk about the HM rebrand during the grunge era, building a global community before the internet, interviewing mainstream rock stars about God, and why the print magazine finally ended amid Napster-era industry collapse and the 2008 advertising crash.

We close with what’s next: anniversary print issues, new creative projects, and the Scripture that keeps Doug grounded. If you care about Christian creativity, music journalism, faith-based media, and building something that lasts, this one’s for you. Subscribe, share this with a friend who loves rock and faith, and leave a review so more listeners can find the show.

Heaven's Metal Magazine

Email Tim: tim@timristow.com

Transcript

Season Three Return And Setup

SPEAKER_03 0:03

Today on Creative Christians, founder, editor, and journalist for Heaven's Metal magazine, Doug Van Pelt, joins me to discuss the history of his groundbreaking Christian music magazine and what it means to be a Christian journalist.

SPEAKER_02 0:18

As a journalist, I said, here's what they said. You know, he goes, Oh, yeah, that was kind of a dark time in my life, and appreciated if for the sake of my family, you would wouldn't include that part of the story. So I like Russell, what do I do? You know, the definitions of Christian journalism, I I think my definition that I helped the Lord through seeking him diligently was, yes, we pursue truth, but not at the cost of ruining somebody's life. If it's going to destroy somebody's life, you show that person dignity. Now, with this particular story, I didn't feel like cigarette smoking and beer was going to ruin his life. So I ran that story because that was the story. That's why the band got so angry with him. It's because of that. So I kept those details, but that whole thing really made me wrestle with it. So this is an important issue for me because I came up with that definition of what is Christian journalism and helped shape my vocation and see my vocation through a biblical lens.

First Christian Rock Concert Memories

SPEAKER_03 1:10

That's Doug Van Pelt today on Creative Christians. Creativity. Faith. Inspiration. How do Christian creatives serve God using the gifts and talents He's given us? How is our creativity different? Because of our faith. These are stories of creative Christians. Welcome back, y'all, to another episode of Creative Christians, the podcast series that explores Christian creatives, their talents, their faith, and what they're doing at the intersection of both. I'm your host, Tim Risto. It's been a while. This episode finally marks the beginning of the third season of this podcast series, which actually started its first season back in March 2022 and continued on up through the end of its second season that wrapped in February 2024. Then I took a break. Many of you listeners may be asking why, what happened? Well, the short version is this. Essentially, I went off to rebuild my YouTube channel, also called Creative Christians, by the way, which simply took a lot of extra time to develop, grow, and of course, now maintain it. Please feel free to check it out on YouTube. It's at Tim Risto, that's T-I-M-R-I-S-T-O-W. You can also search Creative Christians, and it should show up under my name that way. Channel is actually doing very well. Continuing to grow and develop is now going strong enough, and I'm in a good workflow with it that I'm finally ready to step back into this Creative Christians audio podcast. And so now, two years since the end of the second season, I'm back with more of this series. To kick things off for the third season, I've got a great little interview for you with my friend and fellow brother in Christ, Doug Van Pelt. Doug, as I said in the teaser, is the founder, editor, and journalist for Heaven's Metal Magazine, which started as a print piece back in the day with articles, interviews, and album reviews, as well as spiritual content that focused on the hard rock and heavy metal scene in Christian music. Later it moved online and recently it came back to print for a couple of special anniversary issues. You'll get to hear Doug's whole story about Heaven's Metal, how he started it, and some of the challenges along the way, as well as get to hear about Doug's faith journey a bit as well. I first met Doug online, doing some guest co-hosting with him along with Kent and Rex for their Area 312 Rock and Metal Vodcast on YouTube. Check it out if you haven't seen or heard it yet. Before discovering that Doug and I actually live in the same city and attend the same church. It's a large church, so you'll have to forgive the oversight on our part. Anyway, we've been attending church together and also are part of the same small men's group. It was a blast sitting down to chat with Doug. I'll keep the intro short here because you'll get to learn a lot about him through this interview, as well as, of course, a lot about Heaven's Metal magazine. So, welcome back, y'all. Enjoy. It's good to be back. This has been uh I guess you can kind of say a long time in coming. I've been waiting to interview Doug for a long time. Yeah, exactly. There's so much I want to ask you. You've got such a rich history with Christian rock and metal, Heaven's Metal magazine, which you started, correct? I mean, you were the founding member of that magazine. And it's taken off in so many different directions. So I really want to explore that with you today, but also your band Lust Control, your uh involvement with Christian rock and metal in other ways, um, all sorts of stuff I want to dig into. So let's start with I want to know kind of what your first experience was with Christian rock. How did you first experience it?

SPEAKER_02 5:28

That's a great question. So when I was wow. Yeah, my first show was with 200,000 people with Johnny Cash and Larry Norman. Top that uh where was that at? My uh my dad uh was an Air Force fighter pilot, test pilot. Yeah. After Vietnam, two tours. Uh the Air Force sent him to college to get a master's degree. So we went to SMU, okay, and we were in a Dallas suburb, and my oldest daughter, Valerie, had become the first person in our family that became born again. And uh my dad was watching her like a hawk. That was really part of his testimony. But yeah, uh, they had a big event called Explow 72 that Campus Crusade put together. Sounds good. Billy Graham had Crusades at night. Yeah and uh at the end of the week or on a Saturday, I think they had a big concert. Chris Christofferson was one of the headliners, Johnny Cash, probably Love Song, although I don't remember if they were there or not, but Larry Norman was there. So I was uh nine years old, and I was part of this crowd of 100 to 200,000 people. It was a place where the two or three freeways converged. It was a big giant place. So that was my first exposure to Christian rock. Heard uh you know, a lot of songs that day and was around a bunch of uh really enthusiastic people in love with Jesus. My grandparents are like the reason why the Vampelt family came to Christ, and they had traveled from Southern California in their little pickup truck shell camper, and they had about like half a dozen, maybe more, uh teenage girls with them that they took, and they all uh stayed at our house. And uh during the daytime, they went down there and they had like little wristbands on, and they went and got trained in evangelism, and then they hit the streets and would witness into people, and then at night Billy Graham had to crusade in the cotton bowl. My parents got born again that night. Then we we lived there about a year and a half, moved to the Washington, D.C. area. My dad had gotten born again, and we were involved in a church that was very active, full of life. There was the the youth pastor and his wife, Benny and Cherie, and Dan and Wally Campbell. They were in a band together and they kind of wore like leisure suits on the stage, lots of polyester. And I remember the rapture was like a big topic of conversation. The end times, you know, how Lindsay's book, The Late Great Planet Earth, is bestseller. Right. And they had a song, What you gonna do if you wait too late to get your heart right with God? Nice. And I uh came forward at an altar call at age 11, probably, you know, one of the nights they had one of their concerts, probably about a sermon about being right with God when the rapture happened.

SPEAKER_04 8:11

Right.

SPEAKER_02 8:12

And Billy Graham had a movie, Billy Graham Films had a movie called Time to Run. Had Randy Stonehill on it, had a song called Catch Me If You Can, and a song called I Love You. Um, which is a beautiful song.

SPEAKER_01 8:26

It's just a I love you, I love you, I love you. It's one of my favorites.

SPEAKER_02 8:30

I love you, I love you. And uh I I bought that cassette at a local Christian bookstore, I think, in Alexandria, Virginia.

SPEAKER_04 8:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:38

The uh the cassette that wasn't the plastic shell, it was like a plastic snap in case, like a miniature VHS container. Right. Uh bought that soundtrack. So that's the first Christian rock album I purchased. And so that goes back to way back then. I that was like 74 when I bought that soundtrack.

Prodigal Years And Coming Back

SPEAKER_03 8:57

So did that kind of hook you then from then? Were or were you were you one of these that was like, okay, it's nothing but Christian music for me from here on?

SPEAKER_02 9:03

No way. Um my relationship with the Lord was serious for for an 11-year-old. Yeah, I was reading the Bible, I was highlighting massive amounts of pages. I fell in love with John 8, 9, and 10, where Jesus is having a discourse with the Pharisees, and I just the little yellow highlighter, the whole page is yellow, but just blocks of like four pages in a row, all yellow. I was learning about worship, I was worshiping God. I had the privilege of leading my two best friends to Christ. Wow. And that lasted about six months. After about six months, for some reason, I slowly but surely walked away from the Lord and just be, you know, took control of my life back in my own mind or whatever. Yeah. And uh so I always had a nine-year prodigal state. And, you know, I bought the first album I bought was was the Wild Cherry album that had played that funky music on it. Eagles Greatest Hits and Kiss Destroyer, and then really got into KISS in junior high school, uh, Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin moved to California. I spent all four years of high school in California, uh, just really embraced the Southern California lifestyle, the whole rock and roll thing. So as far uh my parents forced me to go to church every weekend, and I heard a lot of sermons and a lot of the word was getting into me, but I was just like uh a rebel. I didn't get in much trouble, but I was just far away in my heart to the Lord. So I wasn't listening to Christian rock of any type. And then I came back to the Lord at age 20. So after nine years when I was in college, came back to the Lord, uh, Mile in the Favor and Broken Heart concert on the beach in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, had a lot to do with that. And then this a song called You Gave Me All by Degarmo and Key from their This Ain't Hollywood album was the song that kind of tipped the scale in my heart, and I cried for the first time in years and wow, gave my life back to Christ. And so then after that, uh, which was a big serious moment again, I didn't want to be like uh a wishy-washy, you know, have to get saved every month kind of thing. So I really counted the cost. Like, do we really want to give up smoking weed?

SPEAKER_03 11:16

Ah man, is it worth it?

SPEAKER_02 11:18

I really had to, I really had wrestled with that for that night. And when I made my decision, then I quickly started gobbling up as much Christian rock as I could, like Larry Norman and Petra. And uh what's funny is the the the Christmas before that summer, the summer of 83, my dad went to Marinatha Village out in Southern California and talked to one of the music buyers. So my son is like, you know, loves rock and roll. What would you recommend I get him? And they got me Resurrection Band, uh, Colors, uh, Phil Keggy, Town to Town, Sweet Comfort Band, Cutting Edge, Kansas, uh Vinyl Confessions, and Carrie Livgren Seeds of Change. And only a couple of those I really liked at the time. This was still in my prodigal state, but was really big into Kansas and was really starting to really kind of search, you know, and Carrie Livgren was one of those seekers, searchers who found the truth at that time.

SPEAKER_04 12:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:17

But yeah, so the prior to that I'd been exposed to Christian rock, and I my dad had one of these little um miniature uh or a handheld cassette recorder, full-size cassette, and it had like a condenser mic on it. Can I take this to college, Dad? I want to, you know, I didn't I don't think I use this phrase, but I want to bootleg some concerts. And he goes, I'll let you borrow it if you promise to go to at least one Christian rock concert. I didn't keep that promise during that that school year. Yeah. But uh anyway, I came back to Christ and was fully, you know, interested in Christian rock and was trying to, you know, gobble up as much as I can. And of course I went through my my secular record collection and kind of asked the Holy Spirit to help me choose what I should keep and get rid of and got rid of a ton of stuff, sold it all at the Sound Exchange in Austin, like used record shop, and was buying things like U2 and jazz albums like Al Demiolo and some classical stuff.

SPEAKER_03 13:10

Yeah. Ah, excellent. Yeah. So what age was this? This was age 20. 20. Okay. That's quite a journey.

SPEAKER_02 13:17

Yeah, it was intense. And I really felt like uh like when I was reading the Bible like a year later and just reading the parables Jesus told about that man had two had had us servants, but he kind of talks about one, then talks about another, almost like it's the same one, but it's like two different choices. And one of them was like, My master is gonna be gone a long time. And he beat the other servants and he got drunk. And I was like, that was me. I I I actually thought, whenever I thought about God, that he's probably not gonna come back till about 88. Yeah, you know, and uh there's some calculations on on that that pointed towards that, like Israel in 48, a generation being 40 years. So I'll get I'll repent in 87. So I was playing games with God, which is probably a dangerous thing to do. And uh, but uh You'll always correct you along the way. Yeah. So fortunately, I got right with God in 83, didn't wait till 87. And but it was very it was very intense, and like I said, I really counted the cost. Like, do I really want to give up my lifestyle? Yeah. You know, women and weed were like a real heavy decision. But I knew that one thing that haunted me about when I was a kid is I was at a church retreat, and I don't want to use this term lightly, but it's like the Holy Spirit, the God's presence was in the room at this retreat during the worship time, and it was like so thick you could cut it with a knife kind of metaphor. Yeah, and everybody was just walking around hugging each other and crying and weeping. And I knew like Christians are the happiest people on earth because I experienced it, just you know, yeah. Uh and so that kind of was like in a good way, it haunted me. It reminded me, it's like, you know, that is the truth. Yeah, powerful, man. Powerful.

Starting Heaven’s Metal From Scratch

SPEAKER_03 15:09

You're listening to Creative Christians, and today I'm talking to Doug Van Pelt of Heaven's Metal Magazine. Let's make a leap. Yep. How did you go from this point of listening to Christian music, coming through this journey, and then ultimately to creating this magazine, Heaven's Metal? I mean, that's quite a quite a leap there. How did that come about?

SPEAKER_02 15:41

Yeah, when I was a kid growing up, I didn't know what I wanted to do when I got older. You know, like I was in high school, I thought, well, I'm gonna get a I'm gonna go the math science route so I can become an aerospace engineer because they make$35,000 out of college. That's what I want.

SPEAKER_04 15:55

Right.

SPEAKER_02 15:56

Is that money? But looking back when I was in junior high, I was on the Yubrick committee, one or two years of junior high. I made some fake my own comic books. Looking back, I can see, okay, these this kind of might have steered me towards doing a magazine someday, but yeah, I never grew up thinking I'm gonna be a journalist. Right. You know, I was really good at English and really interested in English, so I did a lot of writing. And then when I came back to the Lord, was going to the University of Texas here in Austin, they have a giant newspaper called the Daily Texan. Right. They had 50,000 undergraduates. So I don't know what the circulation of the paper is, it's probably 75,000 or more.

SPEAKER_04 16:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:29

And they let students write. So I was writing album reviews of Christian rock albums, which I thought was a neat way to you know try to save the world to turn people onto Christian rock. And that gave me some experience doing that. Uh Stryper came to Austin in '85, and the Daily Texans said, Hey, we're being pitched by their publicist. Well, let's have you do the story on the band for the that'll come out the day of the show. Yeah. So that was the first time I did an interview where I had to record it using my little suction cup device on the on the phone, the old landline. Oh my god. And then transcribing the recording later, and then making it a feature article and choosing a photo and uh yada yada yada, that the whole experience. And then fast forward a year later, I was reading a a fanzine called Acme, which stood for alternative Christian music enthusiasts. And they were talking about some news about a Christian metal band, probably Saint. I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 17:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:26

But they said with the advent of Christian metal, somebody should start a Christian metal fanzine. You could have a lot of fun along the way. And I thought, oh wow, I could do that. So I prayed about it, pondered it in my mind, got some advice about it. And then as summer approached, my buddy Carrie Womack, who later went on to form One Bad Pig, he said, Hey, I'm going to the Cornerstone Festival. Why don't you print your first issue and I'll hand them out as a promo? So that was the shove out the front door that got me started.

SPEAKER_00 17:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:51

And so that's how Heaven's Metal magazine started. Wow. And you had never done anything like that before, other than working with the Daily Texting a little bit. Correct. Yeah. Had no investment capital, no money to start this up. So it was very cut and paste, uh, a couple photographs taped on a piece of paper, took it down to Kinko's to make Xerox copies of it. But within three months, I had 300 subscribers and it was it was starting. So I I kind of hit a nerve and I got in on the ground floor of a movement, and lo and behold, I got to the movement exploded and I got to grow with that exploding movement.

SPEAKER_03 18:25

That's incredible. Were there a lot of interviews at the beginning, or was it more so just like album reviews? How did it how did it begin as far as the content?

SPEAKER_02 18:32

Well, the first issue was only six pages, so there wasn't a lot of content, but there was like uh a couple articles. That very first issue had a list. These are the Christian rock and metal albums you should check out. Yeah. And uh it had like three photographs, they were all striper. Um, and then the second issue had Jerusalem on the cover. And I had actually met them in the summer of 84. I was in LA. There was a number of interviews on that issue. Uh Ian Ripper, a band from Austin that had Christian members in it, and uh Jerusalem, and then I had a section called Stripe Hype and every issue or some striper news and it was doing album reviews. So the beginning, the vision was always it was going to be a full-blown magazine, but it it it had a very small beginning. Yeah. And it I only grew as I could afford to grow. There's the money that came in for subscriptions, paid for uh expanding things and doing better. Yeah.

Tape Trading Networks And Early Growth

SPEAKER_03 19:27

Today I know, of course, you've got an extensive connection with artists and bands, you know, many of them are good friends of yours in the Christian rock and metal scene. How did you go about starting to foster that? Were they just very receptive to you know, you reaching out to them? What did that process look like for you from the beginning?

SPEAKER_02 19:47

Well, if you're focusing specifically on the artist, because all of all everything kind of had a synergy together that kind of grew and expanded from working with the record labels and the artist. But back in the day, we communicated through tape trading. You know, you're making mixtapes through the mail. So you're talking to people on the telephone, long-distance phone bills, and writing letters and sharing mixtapes with people across the country. And when I started Heaven's Metal, I took out classified ads and other underground fanzines like the cutting edge at in Orlando, Florida. There's a thing called the Advocate, which was somewhere up in the Ohio area, and then ACME and some other uh fanzines. I took out ads in CCM and also Kerrang magazine, the British heavy metal magazine.

SPEAKER_03 20:35

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 20:36

That classified turned out to be an issue number 100, which had Motley Crue on the cover. It was the first issue that was printed in the UK and the U.S. So there had a circulation that was 100,000 copies more than usual. So it just so happened to be in the biggest issue ever of Kerrang. But those classified ads helped expand. So anyway, just being able to pick up the phone or write a letter to these artists, and of course, networking with the other people, you know, I don't remember for sure, but you know, a lot of information was shared. We were all just freely sharing information with each other. And then when the record labels came on board and had me design ads for them to put in Heaven's Metal.

SPEAKER_04 21:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:15

And of course, they had you know publicists or they were trying to get coverage in it. So it was real easy to say, yeah, I want to interview Bride, I want to interview Daniel Band and this band, and so it was yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:25

So then you had the support of the labels, yeah. Built credibility to that point to where the labels came alongside you.

SPEAKER_02 21:31

Yeah, and then a lot of the bands were unsigned at the time, too. So it was like that all was growing together.

SPEAKER_03 21:37

Oh, very cool. When did it really you just knew you had something? At what point did it just kind of take off?

SPEAKER_02 21:46

Well, for me, you know, as weird as it may sound, I knew I had something from the get go from the first very first issue, which was my my buddies that went to Cornerstone, I found out years later they were so embarrassed about the quality of it that they kept it in. Their suitcase and only gave a copy to Glenn Kaiser and one other dude. Yeah. I think it was Mike Delaney from Spring Arbor. Uh, so so it wasn't much to look at, but I always kind of knew that this is where I was going and it was gonna get there eventually.

SPEAKER_03 22:14

Do you still have that first issue?

SPEAKER_02 22:15

Oh, yeah. I've got two copies of every single issue. Oh, that's awesome. We printed 150. If you don't count this year's couple anniversary issues, right?

SPEAKER_03 22:23

That's fabulous.

SPEAKER_02 22:24

But there was definitely some highlight moments that that bolstered the magazine, like uh going from small size to full magazine size to new stand distribution to color paper, to you know, and then different advertisers coming on board and different times. Yeah, there's definitely highlight moments where things were going, but I kind of knew from the beginning, believe it or not, that it was gonna work.

SPEAKER_03 22:50

You had something good going.

SPEAKER_02 22:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:52

What was its peak circulation? Like when was it just at its ultimate?

SPEAKER_02 22:58

It was it peaked at 23,000 back in the mid-90s. Pretty much I reached 15,000 and stayed there for the the life of the magazine, but for one mainstream distribution deal that lasted about a year, yeah, the circulation spiked 8,000, so it went from 15 to 23. Eventually it becomes HM magazine.

SPEAKER_03 23:21

How did that process happen?

Rebranding To HM During Grunge

SPEAKER_02 23:23

It's a funny story behind that, but uh at the time, uh people would write I had a letters to editor section from the early issues onward, and people would write in, hey, and in in the latest issue of HM, they would abbreviate things, especially people from Great Britain and Australia. They call relatives rallies, university uni, and they're they're prone to abbreviate everything. So it was Heaven's Metal is abbreviated as HM in conversation and letters to editor. But I was in LA at the frontline slash intense records offices. At that time, I had started a record label doing compilation albums and also video magazines, like a 60-minute television show on VHS tape that had interviews, videos, next band, interviews, videos, you know, half a dozen bands on there. And I didn't have access to editing equipment, and Frontline Records did. They had the video toaster back in the day. You could do A-B roll with a switch that went like this. Yes. And uh I said, Hey, why don't I come out there for a weekend? You give me access to your studio at midnight, you know, when you're when you're closed, and I'll give you some advertising credits for the magazine. So I was out there in the middle of the night editing, you know, I think a mortification segment, and uh Michael Sean Black, one of the AR guys, comes in, see how I'm doing, checking on his mail, I guess, or something. He goes, you know, you should change the name of your magazine to HM. And uh inside my head, and I was I was I really had a a pure tongue in those days. I felt like cussing was like a really bad no-no, but inside I was almost wanting to cuss at him like, dude, how could you suggest such a thing? This this God-given divine name, Heaven's Metal to call it HM. And so it it really bothered me. I kind of it wasn't much of a conversation, but uh, but I heard him, you know, because uh at that time was around '94, '95, heavy metal had become a bad word. Entire record labels had dismantled their metal divisions. It was a big deal for these labels, but they they just dissolved their metal divisions. Radio was getting rid of their metal format. Record stores were getting rid of their metal sections. They were shrinking to like one little shelf. We were in the midst of the grunge movement. Yeah. Nirvana had killed heavy metal with one song. Um, Beavis and Butthead with one squirrely guy named Stuart wearing a winger shirt ruined Winger's career. So metal and especially hair metal, commercial metal, died an immediate commercial death. Just and so it was harder and harder for us to sell advertising, our advertising base was going to it look, it looked like on the horizon, it was gonna be a struggle.

SPEAKER_04 26:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:12

Because metal was just the bad, it wasn't heavens that was the bad word, it was metal. And so ironically, so yeah, so changing the name to HM made sense. It was like, you know, people call it HM already, it can still stand for Heaven's Metal.

SPEAKER_04 26:26

Right.

SPEAKER_02 26:26

And for the previous two years, I'd actually use the bar under the word metal in that logo I'm looking at there. Yeah, uh, I wrote your hard music authority, because hard music had become like alternative metal and industrial. Yeah, it's all meant hard music, and so we started using that subtitle for the longest time. So HM can stand for hard music, and we were already covering a hybrid of hard music. You know, the electric guitar is the mainstay of all those styles. In 1995, we approached our 10-year anniversary issue. So I decided okay, I'm gonna cap it off with issue number 54, the 10-year anniversary issue, which had a fold-out cover. It showed all the different thumbnails of every issue from issue one to issue 53. Sweet. Was in there, and then after that, uh the next issue had MXPX on the cover, and that was had a new logo, HM with an oval, kind of the trendy oval artwork then, and it still said heaven's metal in small type over the oval for the next two issues as I transitioned out of 1995 into 96. 96, the January-February issue had Michael Sweet on the cover, and it didn't say Heaven's Metal anymore, it just said HM. HM. Wow. So that was a big there's a big time. I got a lot of backlash, a lot of metal heads thought, how could you betray our genre? You've turned your back on metal, Doug. We hate you, and just caught a lot of flack for that. And I was able to weather the storm because I kept covering what was good and what was new and what was heavy. And a lot of that was grunge or hardcore punk and uh but all and a few metal bands, and then of course death metal was was happening then, but commercial metal was kind of taking a back seat. So it was it was a tough transition, but we survived it and actually grew.

SPEAKER_03 28:17

I'm talking with Doug Van Pelt of Heaven's Metal Magazine. So you kept this thing going along and wrote out some tough times, made some tough decisions, branding, rebranding. What what what year did it actually end? 2012. 2012, okay.

SPEAKER_02 28:41

The last issue came out like in December, January of 11 and 12. Okay.

A Defining Moment In Christian Journalism

SPEAKER_03 28:47

You look back over all those issues, 2012, all the way up to 2012. What are some favorite issues that stand out for you? I brought a few with me. You did? Yes. Grab those out. Let's take a look at them.

SPEAKER_02 28:59

Okay, so this right here is issue number 21.

unknown 29:02

Oh, look at that.

SPEAKER_02 29:03

Had Rage of Angels on the cover. This is the second time they graced the cover. Really? The first time was issue number 12, but it said ransom because they right before we went to press, Rage of Angels had changed their name to Ransom for some name, I don't know why. And they ended up going back to Rage of Angels. Fortunately, because it's a much better name. Wow. This issue uh yeah, it had Baroncross and Stryper, had an article on accountability, which was a big buzzword. Yeah, had an article on Mastodon and Watchmen. Those are just some of the what do you call them inset cover stories? Uh-huh. Yeah. But Rage of Angels. And this this issue was one of my favorites because it it really had me wrestle with the definition of what is Christian journalism.

unknown 29:45

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:45

You know, by the time, well, when I was a junior in college and I wanted to start a Christian heavy metal magazine, I still had, you know, another year to go in my college. So I I got a minor in journalism.

SPEAKER_04 29:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:59

And I took a couple feature writing classes and a PR class and some other journalism class. In hindsight, I wish it would have taken an editing class. That would have helped me a lot. Because I always found it hard to chop stuff and throw it on the cutting floor and get rid of stuff because it's like I valued the word so much. Oh, yeah. But I was ingrained growing up, and you know, as a kid living in near Washington, DC when Watergate happened, and you know, truth is something journalists always strive for, pursue truth at any cost. Yeah. And that was like the epitome of what journalism was supposed to be. But I thought, is there a different definition for Christian journalism? And uh this story, this cover story made me wrestle with it. And I thought about um in in Matthew 18, Jesus said, if a brother offends you, go to him one-on-one. And if by chance you can win him over, that's great. If that doesn't work, go two-on-one. Bring to two people, confront the person. If that doesn't work, turn them over to the church, you know, for discipline. And uh and then the in the Old Testament, when Noah had landed the ark, he grew a vineyard, planted grapes, made some wine, got drunk, and passed out naked. And his son Ham went in there and saw it, and then told his two brothers about it. And the two brothers walked in backwards carrying a blanket covering him. And so I knew that you know, exposing somebody in front of the whole church is the last resort. God will do that if it gets that far. But his first priority is one-on-one showing dignity to the person. Yeah. And then Noah, his son, the two older sons are commended for covering his sin. So I knew that it was the heart of God to cover your sin, to show you dignity as a human being, to not shame you or expose you. And so I was doing this story about Rage of Angels, and uh they were being courted by all the Christian record labels. And the Rolls-Royce of Christian labels at the time was Myrrh Records. Yes. Amy Grant's label, multi-platinum artists. Right. And they sent their AR guy, Mark, over there. And Mark hung out with them, drank beer with them, and smoked cigarettes around them. So they let their hair down. Yeah and they spoke freely with them. And at the end of a few days, they go, So, Mark, what's up? Do you want to sign us? And he goes, Well, yeah, we want to sign you, but we want to send you to last days ministries to teach you about discipleship and how to be a minister and kind of men of God. And they were like, Oh, blankety blank you, you you suck, dude. You you let your you cause us to let our hair down in front of you, and then you turn around and act all holier than now and just forget this, screw you, you know. Wow, and uh so as a journalist, I went to Mark and said, Here's what they said, you know. And he goes, Oh, yeah, that was kind of a dark time in my life, and I would uh really I was smoking and drinking too much, and I would really appreciate it if you for the sake of my family, you would wouldn't include that part of the story, you know. Yeah, so I like wrestling, what do I do? You know, and I told you about the definitions of Christian journalism. I I think my definition that I helped the Lord through seeking him diligently was yes, we pursue truth, but not at the cost of ruining somebody's life. If it's gonna destroy somebody's life, you show that person dignity, dignity. Now, with this particular story, I didn't feel like cigarette smoking and beer was gonna ruin his life. So I ran that story because that was the story. That's why the band, you know, got so angry with him because of that. So I kept those details, but that whole thing really made me wrestle with it. So this is an important issue for me because I came up with that definition of what is Christian journalism and helped shape my vocation and see my vocation through a biblical lens.

SPEAKER_03 33:44

That is fascinating and great biblical examples you brought up there too, that are phenomenal. Goes back to this question. Why did you want to do Heaven's Magazine to begin with? I mean, the purpose, your purpose behind it.

SPEAKER_02 34:01

Well, uh, that's a great question. When I was growing up, I was reading Circus and Cream Magazine, yeah. The cre the rock and roll journalism of the day. And those magazines taught me how to treat women and how to disrespect women. Um, taught me about lifestyle choices that I was making. So I knew the power of rock journalism.

SPEAKER_04 34:25

Right.

SPEAKER_02 34:25

Instinctively, I knew that. So I wanted to um use that power for good and wanted to uh the vision for Heaven's Metal was always uh to serve the artist and the fans. The artists simply needed what they call publicity, so more people would know about their ministry. The fans they wanted to know who they could trust. Yeah, and out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. And so through the interviews, they would be able to trust these artists because they would see what their hearts were made out of through the interviews. So I was able to serve both the fans and the bands through the magazine. That was kind of the vision always from the get-go for Heaven's Metal. And then you got to this point.

SPEAKER_03 35:07

What issue was that again?

SPEAKER_02 35:09

That was this was issue number 21. 21. So this was in 1989, maybe right before 1990.

SPEAKER_03 35:16

So you started to wrestle with that issue with some of those journalistic integrity elements. How did that change you going forward from there? And then we can get to your next next issue.

SPEAKER_02 35:27

Well, it it taught me a great lesson, and uh I kind of kept that in my quiver, so to speak. I can't think of other times, but I'm probably had to lean on that at other times, but always always trying to be biblical in what I did and taking it seriously. Like if if Heaven's Metal was a uh platform or a media outlet, and people were looking to it for not only information, but maybe direction and some sort of biblical guidance of some sort.

SPEAKER_04 35:58

Yeah.

Building A Team And A Gospel Back Page

SPEAKER_02 35:58

And so I took that seriously and tried to apply it as I could. Yeah, good stuff. All right, what else you got there? Okay, so issue number 49. This issue had a lot of groundbreaking stories in it. There was an issue about hardcore. This was in September, October of 1994. Yeah, and so hardcore, like crucified but unashamed and focused, we're all starting to break ground. And so there was an article on hardcore in here. Yeah, there was also a really cool article about the scene in the Northwest, the Northwest music scene. Right. And uh there was people living on porches and a lot of bands that live together in community, right? And they really uh believed in Jesus. These are bands like Sometime Sunday and MXPX and Poor Old Lou, and a band called Linus and Blenderhead. So there was this scene that hadn't really blown up yet because the labels hadn't gotten around to signing them yet. But so is this this was like a chance to kind of what do you call it when breaking news or a scoop when you can kind of show people, hey, this is the future of of Christian hard music. There's gonna be a this explosion of sound here. And there's a big article on the blues. Uh had your Glenn Kaiser and Chris Lazat. And there's a guy named Sleepy Ray. Yeah, who had a hat. Yes. Like Stevie Ray.

SPEAKER_03 37:17

I've got both his albums, uh, those early albums. Yeah. I think one was Under the Blood, if I remember correctly, or something like that.

SPEAKER_02 37:24

Yeah. Northern Exposure is what we called that article uh about that scene. Portland, Salem, Seattle, and Vancouver. And uh so just a crud of it. Really cool to be able to have an article like that. And I also love the back page. One of the things we did with Heaven's Metal was this is like the the prime real estate for advertising. Yeah. And I always kind of looked at it like this has been paid for by God. He paid for this with his the death of his son, Jesus. So this was never for sale for record companies, but it was always a place for the message of the gospel or a Bible study. And this particular one, I had like a guy like at a biker bar. He's drinking a dad's root beer, by the way. He's got a die happy shirt on. But he's saying, watch what you're saying about my wife. And it's like people were bagging on the church. I mean, this happens today, it's happened for a long time, but people were just bagging on the church and railing on the church. And it's like, I was wanting to point out, we're talking about the bride of Jesus Christ here. That's his wife. So you're talking about some dude's wife and you're putting her down, right? You better watch what you're saying, bro. So this is kind of a I had a a buddy that one of the the guys who designed the HM Oval logo, yeah, did this artwork for me. I kind of told him what I wanted, and he drew that.

SPEAKER_03 38:43

That's the other thing. At this point, you you've obviously expanded. It's not just you doing the magazine anymore, right? Yeah, I mean a bunch of writers. How many did you get to? You know, it maybe maybe it's peak or whatever. I mean, how many writers did you have? How many people were involved in this? A couple dozen freelance writers. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 39:00

And uh, and we had probably about 30 to 36 album reviews on every issue.

unknown 39:06

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 39:07

I I had a news section that was always back in the day, I would get faxes in the mail or letters in the mail, or I'd take notes from a phone call and stick it in a folder. And when it came time to deadline, I would whip out everything in that folder, and that would be the hard news that would be like the breaking news. This came out every two months, right? And people kind of depended upon this, all parts of the world, you know, what's going on in Christian hard music right now, and this is the where they would read about it. Right. So that was kind of fun. And um what about photography?

SPEAKER_03 39:37

How did you get photos of bands and stuff like that?

SPEAKER_02 39:39

Did you a lot of people came alongside me? Yeah. Like even from the early days, uh, some of the early logo I designed the first logo, which is like a I copied it after Randy Rhodes polka dot flying V guitar that had like a the Heaven's Metal word was filled with black ink with white polka dots on it.

SPEAKER_04 39:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:58

And uh, but the early logos that came to improve on that were like volunteered from people. So people just loved what I was doing. It came alongside, said, Hey, do you need help with this or that? You know, can I write? Can I do this? And that's fabulous. It was a process of trusting people and just building friendships along the way, and it kept growing and growing. God blessed it, clearly.

SPEAKER_03 40:22

Yeah. What other issues you got there?

SPEAKER_02 40:24

Okay, so this is one of my favorite issues, is issue number 66. And this was a very crucial issue for a lot of reasons, but uh it had Living Sacrifice on the cover, which was a big moment for them when they kind of went hardcore. Yeah. They uh, you know, DJ had left the band, and so Bruce took over and lead vocals, so they were the cover story. And by this time, I had already been doing for years the what I called what so-and-so says, where I interviewed a mainstream artist and asked them about Jesus. And this particular issue was an interview with Sammy Hagar, and it was a great conversation. At the end of it, it was like, what the hell are you trying to do, Doug? Make me think, you know. He kind of enjoyed the time where we talked a lot, and there was a big scandal with Roger Martinez, he was the lead singer for Vengeance Rising, Vengeance Rising. He was a pastor at the Sanctuary Hollywood Church, and by this time he had become a uh satanic atheist and had renounced his faith in Christ, and he was writing letters to his uh mailing list and trying to persuade them to abandon Christ. Yeah, and um so I couldn't just ignore the issue because he was such a prominent part. People looked to HM, you know, what are you gonna say about it? So I interviewed Roger. I did an interview with him on the phone, and it was a very intimidating interview. I remember being on edge the whole time, yeah. And then I uh really prayed about what to do and how to present this. I was gonna let his words speak for themselves. I wasn't gonna rewrite his words. One thing I always tried to do is, and I did with the magazine, especially with the mainstream artists, was I print what they say. Right, I don't edit them or censor them. Uh I would take out the the cuss words, I would put bleep, which is a funny thing because bleep is a unique word because when you read it, you hear it in your head. You hear bleep. And so it's a it's a powerful word. I was gonna let Roger speak and explain why he was an atheist now. Yeah, but I also felt really through counsel and prayer and advice uh that we were gonna enact a sense of church discipline. Like the HM was kind of like a a pastoral voice, always and everybody, anybody's pastor or the pastor of all my subscribers or readers, but it's kind of a pastoral voice. I had that kind of heart. I wanted to uh give them information from that kind of attitude.

unknown 42:49

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 42:49

And so I I counseled with Glenn Kaiser and Pastor Bob and Kemper Crab, and Pastor Bob and Kemper both had columns, and I also did the back page about church discipline. I had somebody do the church lady with like a ruler in her hand. Yeah. But basically, the church discipline I was telling my readers don't have anything to do with Roger Martinez. He's divisive, and that's what you're getting from us. And uh, so I kind of explained that and I kind of defined what church discipline is, what the purpose of it was. Yeah. And then Pastor Bob talked about he knew a different Roger back in the days when he was a pastor that was really doing well. And that's the Roger I knew that I met and sat down with at time to time. Right. So this was another highlight issue for me, one of my favorites through the years. Very, very cool. What year was that one? 97, 98. Okay. 97.

SPEAKER_03 43:42

97. Nice. I'm sure there were some valleys along the way. I mean, this obviously had its uh, you know, with Roger, it had its challenges, you know, and again facing that. But you also just stood firm with the foundation that you grew up in the faith. I love the way you talked about defending the church, you know, the Christ's bride, you know. And so you obviously built up probably some thick skin over these years, too, dealing with some of the things, some of the the fallback, like from the change to HM, um, all these different things that came along. But what for you are some of the best peaks? And also maybe a couple of the deeper valleys that you had to go through.

SPEAKER_02 44:42

Some of the peaks were like interviewing, just well, the friendships I was able to make with some of these Christian artists that you referred to earlier. Yeah. Uh, some of those friendships exist to this day. Just some really cool people are involved in this scene. They're they're they're doing some really cool stuff, but they're also made out of really good material. Their character is is good.

SPEAKER_04 45:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:04

And uh so being able to make friends like that has been a real blessing over time. Some of the interviews with mainstream artists like Gary Sharon of Extreme to find out he's a believer, had just a long talk about end times and stuff, and building a relationship with him with one of those one-on-one face-to-face interviews. Most of these were done over the phone. Yeah, some really cool friendships were established over the phone as well. Yeah. And those are some neat times to discover believers in the mainstream, like Damon Johnson or Brother Kane. Yeah. And when I was uh I was doing an interview with this band called the Shiny Toy Guns, and they were opening for Mute Math, or vice versa. Mutemath was opening for them at the Frank Irwin Center, this big arena in downtown Austin. Yes, the drop.

SPEAKER_00 45:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:51

So I was in the dressing room, and I remember the the guy from uh Shiny Toy Guns, he kind of grew up in Oklahoma, was a fan of Oklahoma, and he felt creeped out by the Longhorns, you know, because it was a basketball arena. Right. And they were he grew up hating the Longhorns. But uh as I was interviewing them, he was looking through my had a couple of my magazines last flopped down on the coffee table while we were doing an interview, and he's like, Oh, Cornerstone Mag Festival. We played there in my old band. It was uh called Cloud to Ground. It was a worship band we did. And and Mikey, I know him. I go to the same church he does in Ventura, California. So that was all surprised, a real pleasant surprise to find out this guy had a vital faith and he was in the mainstream music world with shiny toy guns, who had a bunch of radio exposure and hits at the time. Yeah. So those are really cool highlights and and uh bright moments.

SPEAKER_03 46:42

Yeah. Um did those type relationships, I don't get too far ahead here, but did that did that kind of lead to your books, Rock Stars on God, right?

SPEAKER_02 46:51

Yeah, back in back in the early days in the 90s, when I first started doing this, and I was kind of inspired by Cornerstone magazine. Yeah, they'd interviewed a couple mainstream stars like Ozzie Osborne. And during the interview, they said, Here's a copy of Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. We encourage you to read it. So that's really cool. I want to start doing that. Yeah, and because Heaven's Metal had become a media outlet, I was on the radar of publicists everywhere, not just Christian publicists with Word Records and Frontline, but like so like Epic Records and Atlantic Records, and I would get media kits. And all I'd have to do when I get it, when you get a media kit, there's a there's a phone number. I mean, there's a press photo, there's like a one-sheet bio, there's a copy of their new album, and there's obviously the the publicist's phone number. You just give them a call, say, Hey, I'd like to interview you know Tom from Cinderella. Okay, how does next Wednesday sound? It was that easy to make that happen just because we were a media outlet and publicists are trying to get press everywhere. Yeah. And uh, and that grew, and that uh it soon became the favorite part of the magazine. Subscribers, when the issue would hit their mailbox, it's the first thing they would turn to who did he interview this time? Wow. And um and people would write into letters to editor, you should make this into a book someday. And so that was a a goal or an idea for a long time that I pursued. And started pursuing it in earnest around 2000 or so. And I got turned down by about five or six pub uh publishing companies, and finally relevant books came and said, We'd like to do this, you know, and Rockstars on God, we could do a volume, a series of it. So it was always the idea was volume one would come out, and then two, and yada yada. And it came out of relevant books, sold about five thousand copies, and I got about five thousand dollars in royalties, which was awesome. Nice, and then after about four years, it went out of out of business. Their whole book company, publishing company went out of business. Relevant magazine still goes on today, yeah, but the book company I guess didn't didn't do well enough for them. Right. And so that went out of print. And so shortly thereafter, around 2012, I decided to put out volume two. And volume one had the biggest names like Metallica, Kiss, Alice Cooper, Sammy Hagar, Jeff Rotoll. But the biggest names didn't always mean the best interviews. So when volume two came around, I was like, oh, okay, I'll get Ronnie James Dio here, I get Peter Steele from Typo Negative, I get Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden, I get, you know, this guy, that guy, and that guy, Collective Soul. Um so that was volume two, and that was real exciting for me because I got to put the best interviews out there and just came out with volume three last year. Wow. So that was fun.

SPEAKER_03 49:35

I've got to read all those yet, so I gotta get caught.

SPEAKER_02 49:38

You can start anywhere. You don't have to start at chapter one and go to chapter 25. You can just jump around. Just jump in.

Interviewing Rock Stars About God

SPEAKER_03 49:45

What what do you think is one of the things you learned the most from that experience of being to interviewing these guys who, you know, were commenting on faith and on God? Yeah. That weren't Christian artists per se.

SPEAKER_02 49:57

Well, one thing that kind of bounces back to you asked me earlier how did this learning what Christian journalism is, how did that stick with you, or how did you capitalize on that down the road? Yeah. And this is one of those areas where it did, because chief to that whole philosophy was dignity. That God that God sees man and guards their dignity.

SPEAKER_04 50:20

Right.

SPEAKER_02 50:21

And we should do that with people around us. We shouldn't, like if somebody's homeless on the street, we should, oh, you bum, why can't you get a job? You know, we say, here's some food. You know, what's your name? You know, how's it going? You oh, you have a dog? That's cool. You know, talking to them, that you show that looking them in the eye is a sign of dignity, right? And then treating them as a human being with incredible value, made in the image of God. So taking that whole attitude I brought into this thing where I'm interviewing these mainstream rock stars, yeah, and I always treated it like I was live on television, like I wasn't gonna let this interview end abruptly. And there was some times, like with Henry Rollins or Tommy Victor of Prong or Phil Eheart with Kansas, uh, where they were like, we better change this these questions, or this interview is gonna be over in 10 seconds. You know, like I got kind of threatened by that. And yeah, I could almost feel Henry Rollins' arms going through the telephone line, like he wanted to strangle me because I upset him so much. Yeah. So I was always like on guard, my mind was reeling. Okay, how am I going to recover from this awkward moment and get this rolling again? And I was always able to make that happen, but it was a lot of work. Yeah, but I always took the attitude of like, we're on TV. I can't let dead air happen. Right.

SPEAKER_03 51:40

You know, so I knew approaching this as an expose kind of thing. You were an investigative journalist in a way, in that in that sense, to try to just uncover their views on this, right? Was that kind of your your primary purpose in some of that?

SPEAKER_02 51:57

I uh I often tried to persuade them and engage in some debate and dialogue, but I always let them say what they wanted to say, and it was didactic, I've been told, it's because it both voices counted. It wasn't just one voice dominating the other, right? But I always tried to counter their arguments. If they if they gave some of the typical answers about, you know, who God is or that got does God exist at all? And yeah, you know, I remember talking to the guy from Machine Head about evolution. He one of the his road manager was like really into dinosaurs and it was a paleontologist, actually. And so they were really, really into that. And so just diving into uh whatever topic it was, centered around the existence of God or the authority of scripture, yeah, and trying to debate with people about that and and you know pique their interest, but not in a way that was heavy-handed or never telling them, I always chose my words carefully, like using the words I believe in the authority of scripture. The words I believe means it could be wrong. This is just my opinion. And so by using words like that, it kind of uh diffuses some of that tension.

SPEAKER_04 53:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:09

And so the person can receive it without feeling like they have to be on edge, like, well, okay, this is your belief. Right. So thanks for sharing that. This is what I think, you know.

Brand Expansions And The Business Collapse

SPEAKER_03 53:21

You're listening to Creative Christians. I'm Tim Risto, and my guest today is Doug Van Pelt from Heaven's Metal magazine. As I look, and you know, I had the iPad out here, you know, now Heavens Metal has a website, you know, has had a website, and and you guys got involved in in videos. And I mean, there's been a lot of the Heavens Metal brand that continued far beyond the magazine. You know, how how have you overseen that and and passed it on over time to to what it's become today? I mean, did you envision something like where it is today? Even though, you know, yeah, it ended at a point, but it it's come it's coming back, which we'll we'll get to here. But to just use a you know, uh a kind of crass marketing term, but the brand, you know, how has the brand developed over over time? And did you expect this?

SPEAKER_02 54:16

Well, um kind of always expected this to be successful, this to be a magazine on the shelf next to Circus Hit Parade or Rolling Stone. Right. And I was able to see that actually on newsstands at Barnes and Noble or whatever, yeah, next to those other magazines. And so the the evolution of the brand was always kind of fun and exciting. Like it seemed like a natural extension to do a record label. So we released a compilation called the Heaven's Metal Hard Music Compilation. We were the first label, besides their own label that the drummer's dad had, first label to sign POD and had a track from them on there. And uh, and then also it seemed like a natural extension to do these video magazines, like a VHS video product in stores. I forgot I've got some of those here. Um you know, 60-minute TV show with in artist interviews, and and even had like a devotion at the end, just like the back of the magazine cover had a had a devotion.

SPEAKER_04 55:16

Right.

SPEAKER_02 55:16

And so it was just like a reflection of the magazine that made sense. And then when the internet became a thing in the mid to late 90s, we had early websites. And uh, and we also started doing uh this particular issue, the number 66, was the first one that had a sampler CD. And it came in a little plastic bag because it had a CD inside of it. Yeah, and uh so we would charge bands or labels, you know,$400 to have a song on here, and we'd fill those things up. There'd be 15 tracks of of on each CD, and those went to subscribers only. So newsstand copies didn't have it. But that was another natural extension of of the magazine that just kind of made sense and it was fun to um fun to experiment with, and yeah, and a lot of those things seemed to really work.

SPEAKER_03 56:05

Why did it ultimately come to a close when it did in 2012?

SPEAKER_02 56:09

Well, uh after 28 years of publishing, uh if you do the math, it's really 27, but it in in 2013 we were still doing we were doing digital issues only, but we provided a print on demand. Yeah. Uh so there was actually print issues available, but it wasn't on newsstands anymore. So I say it was 28 years in print. Prior to that, the whole music world changed. You had uh uh file sharing, uh Napster come along, and uh record labels uh were were downsizing and going out of business. And that was our chief forms of our advertising was record labels. We had like record labels and t-shirt companies, and we had some music gear, and we had uh some technology stuff, and we had some independent bands advertising their products and whatnot. But you know, the biggest advertisers we had were record labels, so those are shrinking you know, every month in this time period. After about in 2008, the US economy took a dive. Yeah, uh, around that time, marketing took a dive, advertising took a dive, the music industry took a huge dive, and all of those factors happened at the same time. So, how you can have a music magazine and keeping that going was a real challenge, and I was downsizing my staff. And at one point, even my advertising salesperson um was let go, and I was just gonna take that on myself and selling ads myself and doing everything again. The whole business model of it just kind of disappeared and shrunk almost overnight, and it was crazy.

SPEAKER_03 57:51

And uh was that I mean, I'm sure that was difficult, of course. But was that tough because I from the point of view that this seems like it was more than obviously there's business aspects that have to be maintained, but it seems like it was more than a business, it was more than a brand, it seems like to you. It was it was a ministry to some degree, it sounds like correct me if I'm wrong, but this had come to mean something much more to you over time.

SPEAKER_02 58:18

Yeah, it was really a it was a dream come true, and it was my baby. It was like I had several offers to buy the magazine. CCM magazine tried to buy it three times, Star Song Records tried to buy it, and this guy named Weston, who was forming an uh entertainment empire in Nashville, he bought the Sound Kitchen studio from the Elefante Brothers. Oh wow, and he wanted to buy HM magazine. He sent Dino to Austin to come and talk to me about it. Wow. So, like five different times I had a chance to sell it. And for me, the hardest part was I don't want to give up my baby to somebody else. Because once they own it, they could most all of the deals it was talked about would include an employment contract where I would be still be the editor, yeah, but I would be an employee. But if I did something wrong or they decide they you know decided something else, they could fire me and they could take my baby and make something out of it I didn't like. So that was always the stickler for me. But that's what one thing that helped me grow the brand. It was always my baby, it was a dream come true. And also I got to feel uh like I was doing what God put me on this earth to do. Yeah, I feel like like He had given me a special touch, like to use the religious word anointing to do what I'm doing, that I had that. I would wake up, I could wake up every day knowing this is what I was put on this earth to do. And that's a feeling you can't buy. Right. It's very rare, I think. Like now I'm working for the state of Texas. It's it's very rewarding, and there's a lot of you know, feel good kind of pride that can go with that. But there's nothing like that when you have like this is what God put me on earth to do, like the Chariots of Fire movie. When I run, I feel God's pleasure at my back, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:03

When God calls you to something, you can't say no.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:06

Yeah, and the reward is is so exceptional, it's like, wow, you can't bottle that or buy that. It's like an amazing blessing that I've been able to experience.

The 40th Anniversary Print Comeback

SPEAKER_03 1:00:17

And so it's an incredible publication, and you've touched so many people's lives through it. There's obviously still a uh a strong fan base out there to that point. 40th anniversary last year in 2025. You put out kind of a two-part uh anniversary issue. Tell me a little bit about that. How did that come about? And uh why did you decide this was a good time to do it? Besides being 40th anniversary.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:49

Well, I've been doing the the website, you know, heavensmetal magazine.com is a functioning digital magazine, a website where you can go there for news and album reviews and feature articles. Right. And even as a radio station, you can listen to while you're there.

unknown 1:01:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:04

And uh that had been going well. This promoter in Ohio, in Versailles, Ohio, this guy named Steve, was doing these shows called the Immortal Festival. Yeah, he's bringing back these Christian metal bands from the 80s and 90s and uh putting on these two or three-day weekend shows. And I was talking to Anthony Grober, the guy who does merchandising for much of those bands, goes to the festival, kind of manages the the merch hall there. He was thinking, I'm thinking about doing a program for this festival. I'd done programs for events before. And in a conversation, I was like, Well, I could do the program for you. Why don't we make it a legitimate issue of Heaven's Metal magazine? And the content will be all the bands that are booked for this thing, those will be the articles we do. So we had Saint on the cover and Bride on the other cover. Um, and that was the issue, and it was so I forgot how much fun it was to plan this, yeah, to put it together. And we have like a little over a dozen writers that work for Heaven's Metal magazine now. We're all volunteers. And uh we put this together, and it was it was so much fun, and it was such a success that uh after the the summer ended, I thought maybe we could do a Christmas issue because Striper's coming out with the Christmas album. And um, and who else has come out with albums? Demon Hunter and Circle of Dust and Precious Death and Jerusalem. So we did uh put together the another issue, and this one is really beautiful because we used the 80-pound stock, yeah, which is like a thicker paper with a gloss coating on it, so it's the prettiest issue we've ever had. It looks really nice, and we went color through the whole thing. I know.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:47

Kudos to that, man. It looks great. So was that kind of like a coming home again? Getting to put these two issues together and dive back into that again in in kind of a fresh way.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:59

I went back to square one. I just start off with a blank sheet of paper and get the ruler out, and I draw like 48 rectangles, one for each page, and start filling in with a pencil. Wow, who's gonna be on each page? And that's how I managed magazines for three decades now. So it's like so fun to do that again.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:17

What's the response been to these issues so far?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:20

It's been great. I mean, I sold out of the summer issue. Uh Anthony still has a bunch of copies, so I'm telling people get them from Anthony because I don't have any more. And this one, I've got like less than 20 copies left at the house. Wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:34

So uh it's these are great issues. Um, I've read all of the summer issue, and I've read most of the Christmas issue, and all I can say is they're phenomenal. I love, I love the writing, I love the photos, I love kind of that nostalgia of going back to Heaven's Metal magazine again, which I remember picking up many issues back in the day. Um, so this is so, so awesome. Is is there I don't know if you can tell me anything, but is there a potential future yet for the magazine this year, next year, any well, any more issues potentially?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:09

I uh kind of lean in on I'm I'm hesitant, I hesitate to commit to it because it's a lot of work and it's just kind of a it's a hobby for me now. It's not my gig anymore. Right. So I hesitate. Um I don't foresee ever going back to newsstand sales because Christian bookstores is where you got Christian metal, Christian rock, and Christian magazines at. They don't exist anymore. Yeah, there's there's a Mardells, uh, a few of those around the country, and there's some life weight bookstores, I think, but most of the big chains are gone. Yeah. So that that whole that's another industry that just kind of evaporated. Well, Christian radio, Christian magazines, Christian festivals, Christian bookstores all disappeared at the same time. Yeah, it was almost like a conspiracy. It was weird. So and my career ended. So I this is a wonderful, amazing career. All this happened almost overnight, so it was kind of a shock to the system. It's like, what is happening here?

SPEAKER_04 1:05:05

Right. And uh but uh crazy time.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:08

So I don't see going back into print, I'm not, I don't want to do subscribers. I had a a mailing permit. Uh back in the day, it used to be called second-class mail. It went right behind first class, that's how magazines were mailed. The post office decided to change it because we don't want people to think of themselves as second-class citizens. Right. So they changed the standard rate. But it's the same thing, it was right behind first class, and I had a permit for it. And to apply for the permit, you have to prove that more than half of your circulation is paid for. So you have to save all the subscription cards that come in, show your deposit slips with the bank, and show how they line up, and then they uh they audit your list, and you have to prove that. So I was able to do that. It's an arduous process, and also not many people know this, but magazines have to have 50%. Or less advertising. If it goes over that 50% ratio, it becomes a catalog and has to go third class, uh, which has another name now, too.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:09

But um all the stuff you didn't think you'd become an expert at.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:12

And now yeah, now I know it. No zip codes, I know area codes all over the country. But so I don't see going back to full-blown magazine status anymore. But uh these specialty issues, one or two a year is kind of fun. And there's this documentary on striper. So one of my ideas I'm kind of wrestling with and I've shared tidbits of is when that documentary comes out, I think I want to do a special striper edition. Yeah, like you see in the grocery store for like the Eagles or Led Zeppelin or whoever there's like and maybe uh Fic and um it's they're those are high price too. Yeah, that would be fun to have like every one of their albums reviewed, maybe articles from the past of Heaven's Metal, brand new articles covering their whole career, and also the people that are in the documentary, like Chris Jericho the Wrestler, or Jamie Rowe of Guardian, Calamity Kills, uh the artists that are interviewed. We could maybe interview those in the magazine too. Yeah. What does Stry mean to you? That'd be awesome. That would be a great special edition uh all about Stryper, but include all those other artists too, because they all have been influenced by Stryper and they could talk about themselves as well as Stryper.

Album Reviews With Truth And Tact

SPEAKER_03 1:07:26

You're listening to Creative Christians, and today I'm talking to Doug Van Pelt of Heaven's Metal Magazine. Let's talk about artists for a second and albums. Who for you? I know this is probably tough, but who for you are some albums, bands, artists, uh, albums in particular that really resonate with you, ones that are favorites for you that you return to time and time again, or that just produce albums, have produced albums that are classic for you, or you just love them.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:02

Well, one thing I took very seriously uh about albums was trying to be accurate about reviewing them. I always had kind of a heart never to just slam or diss an artist and say, This sucks, you know, because that artist is gonna read it, their mom is gonna read it, their family's gonna read it. Yes. And if that's all you can say is they suck, you haven't done anybody a service. You've kind of been immature and rude. So I've never taken it to, I've always kind of tried to consider my audience and whatever I write. And part of that audience is uh a 17-year-old who mows lawns for a living, and that$15 is hard-earned. Is this album worth his hard-earned 15 bucks or not? I need to be honest about that, right? So I need to evaluate it and give an honest answer, but I also know that the artist's mom is gonna read this, and she and if I just say that you know, her son can't sing worth a darn, that's that might hurt her feelings. And so there's got to be tactful ways of approaching the truth and um lifting up brothers, and so and you've got this balance of like you can't just say every Christian rock album is great because it's about Christ, because then you're doing your readers a disservice by not being honest and you're lowering the standard of what good art is. So there's all these factors involved. I'm totally with you.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:24

I can understand that that conflict. You know, I even experienced that on YouTube when doing reviews. It's like, how do you balance being, you know, you don't want to just be all out promotional at the same time, you want to support the bands and artists for the work they're doing and the ministry they're doing, but you know, without being overly critical either, how can you kind of give your opinion about how you feel about it? So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:43

Well, they call us critics, rock critics. Yeah. So part of that is you know, I always learned in English, you you you you need to go review the opera or the schools doing a play on the fiddler on the roof. You need to find something good about it, something that's bad about it, and defend your answers, you know. So that's kind of what a good review does. But I've always uh looked at the what is a classic? A classic album is something you're still gonna listen to five years down the road. Right. So, like Ken Tamplin uh and Lanyard Cordola did a project called Magdalene, and they were recording it at Mama Joe's studios, and they were looking for a mainstream deal that came out on Frontline Records. They were on the cover of issue 26 of Heaven's Metal, and some of those songs are just phenomenal. They had the kind of the harmonies and stacked vocals. I don't know how many tracks were stacked, but probably almost a hundred, some of those songs. But like the Beach Boys harmonies, uh, and it's like the really good guitars and everything. There's melodies on that album.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:45

There's an example Big Bang album.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:47

Yeah, Big Bang. There's there's tons of albums I could talk about. Yeah, like King's X, you can almost pick any one of their albums except uh Black Lack Sunday. That's that's not that great of an album. But uh, and by their own admission, that was like their first band sneak preview in the edge. They took those old songs before they ever got signed and gave them new life. And but uh like Faith, Hope, Love. Yes, that album that's could one of the best Christian rock albums of all time.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:16

Those are early albums, Out of the Silent Planet, and and um Gretchen Goes to Nebraska and all that. Yeah, well, that's not to draw this off, but that's another example of something in the magazine that was pretty controversial, too. Was the the issue issue you talked about Doug Pinnick. Uh-huh. Um uh coming out as gay. I believe that was was that an HM or was that in Heaven's Metal? That was an HM. HM. Yeah. Um another example of you know, riding the highs and lows of I'm sure that that got a lot of feedback from your audience as well, too.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:46

Yeah, it was tough.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:48

Yeah, but uh anyway, not to withdraw that, but that just popped in my mind. Um, other great albums for you.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:54

Well, Blood Good's Detonation album was so phenomenal coming off the strength of their debut album, which was really strong and really gave us Metalheads spiritual warfare lyrics to uh edify our souls and spirit with. Such but Detonation had that song Crucify and Messiah. Yeah, it was kind of a mainstay of their concert uh performance. Yes, so good. Uh Stripers, Yellow and Black Attack, just right out of the gate, was just so phenomenal. Those guitar tones that those guitar harmonies were so much better than most metal bands, period, not just Christian, but right all around the world, they were just so phenomenal. And then the To Hell with a Devil album was just so chalk full of hits.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:37

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:38

Um bands like Zayo uh turned their market and their scene upside down and became innovators, like people copy them, and you know, mainstream bands say uh Zayo really influenced me. Yeah, and so when Christians um influence people in the world, that's a big deal. Oh, yeah. It's like one thing they used to say about when Christian rock was still in their forming ages, they talked about you know, people don't use Christian plumbers, they use the best plumber in the yellow pages. Yeah, what's the yellow pages? It's a phone book. What's a phone book? But uh they would go. So if you want to make an impact, be the best guitar player that you can possibly be, and people will look to you and hear what you have to say because you're the best. Yeah, and so Christian bands have been able to do that. Some bands like Anne Berlyn, Zao, Stryper have been so good that other people in the world emulate them. Yeah, they weren't just pretty good for Christian, right? They were great, period.

Lust Control And Accidental Breakthrough

SPEAKER_03 1:13:39

Yes, but I can go on and on and on about I know we can do a we can do a whole episode just about great albums that we both love. All right, Lust Control. We gotta hint up on this. Not only you journalist, magazine, publisher, and many other things, you also were in a band. At least one that I know of, maybe we're in more. Uh, but tell me about Lust Control, how'd that get started, and what's that story in in a nutshell?

SPEAKER_02 1:14:06

Here in Austin, Texas, around 1988, I was buddies with a bunch of musicians that went to my church. Um, and the guys in one bed pig, Paul and Philip, the guitar player and drummer, uh, decided to start a band with me and this guy named Maury, who was the associate pastor at our church and worship leader. Yeah, we were less control. We decided to put a tape in the underground just to see what would happen. And we decided to just be radical, to be as punk as we could be. Right. And instead of putting our names on it, uh, we just we used our middle names. And the idea was to let the music do the talking and see what happened. We had a song called The Big M, which discussed the approach the subject of masturbation, which nobody had pretty much done before or after or since there's a few bands that might touch on it. Right. That turned to turned the Christian underground scene. They got it a buzz. And what is funny is uh this guy named Mike Delaney, who's kind of one of the unsung heroes of Christian rock. He was the music buyer for Spring Arbor distributors. Spring Arbor was a one-stop distribution company, humongous warehouse. I don't even know how many square feet that thing was. It's it based up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, or somewhere up way up there. But they distributed products, all kinds of products, from Frisbee's choir robes to Amy Grant to Bibles to books to music all over the world, especially in North America. There's over 6,000 Christian bookstores at the time. Yeah. And he was the music buyer. He not only was on top of all the big bands, and you know, Rustaff and Amy Grant or whoever, but he was really into radical music. So he would get stuff like by the 77s or independent bands like Paradox from San Antonio. Yes. And he would buy them. And so he bought 200 copies of the Lust Control album, the debut album, This is a Condemnation in 1988.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:58

And when those 200 copies hit the warehouse, it became the talk of the warehouse. Like people would buzz each other and come, hey Bob, did you see this SKU number 321? What? Is that really the title of the album? Giggle, giggle, giggle. You know, pretty soon that I don't know how much work they got done there that day, but the the vice president of sales called Mike in. Uh, shut the door behind you, Mike. You need to return this. We we service a lot of Catholic stores. We can't have a tape with the word condom in it. Uh, you need to return these. So Mike reluctantly calls me up, says, Doug, you know, I can't lose my job over this. I need to return this product. Is there anything I can do for you? I was like, actually, Mike, there is. You guys have a flyer program because Christian bookstores all over the world get packages from you guys multiple times a week. And in every package, it's a flyer. Oh, the new Tim LaHaye book is coming out. Order this many copies, get a discount, you know, blah, blah, blah. I want one of those flyers. And he goes, You got it, Doug. So I sent him the artwork for the flyer. They put it on colored paper, and the order started coming in. And the magazine buyer was looking over Mike's shoulder. Can I take on this title? He said, Yes, you can. So that's how Heaven's Metal got newsstand distribution for the first time in a major way. I I was servicing Christian bookstores here and there, maybe a couple dozen of them. Yeah. But this was like, you know, getting access to that many Christian bookstores. Right. And Heaven's Metal became the number two best-selling Christian music magazine behind CCM. And at one point it was like the number seven best-selling Christian magazine, period. Like today's Christian Woman, uh, focus on the family, CCM and Heaven's Metal was up there. So that was funny that Lust Control, this return product, right? Got Heaven's Metal into Newstand distribution. That's very interesting.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:48

You never really competed with CCM, other than I guess in that regard, there, or a cornerstone. I mean, everything was kind of uniquely different, I think, in most those Christian magazine circles, wouldn't you say?

SPEAKER_02 1:18:01

CCM had broad coverage from Black Gospel, Southern Gospel, Hip Hop, Pop, mostly pop, and hard rock and middle. They had me do a column for him. Oh. I did Christian metal album reviews, and I had a column in every month issue. Yeah. This is what's happened in the latest, latest issue. Did a few cover stories for him and uh whatnot. So they I was one of their writers. It was kind of fun. They John Still was a a pioneer in Christian music journalism, and he was always there for me. I could pick up the phone and ask him questions to get advice or whatnot.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:44

Projects you're involved with today. You mentioned like the Stryper documentary. What what are some things that you're doing today and that are coming up for you?

SPEAKER_02 1:18:53

Well, I want to do volume four of Rockstar's Longstation. I've got that mapped out pretty much already. And uh so I need to find the time to lay that out in a book form. Yeah. Uh I've written a children's book, I've written a novel about high school football and time travel. I started a music project with one of my writers, uh Seth Matoyer, who did the layout for this cover and did the Saint cover for that summer issue. He does a lot of music. He runs a record label called Broken Curfew. Oh, yes. And um we just sort of were tossing around ideas, and I took an old song that I always wanted to release, but it didn't really feel like a good fit for lust control. And it was called Break This Promise about somebody that begs God to have spiritual eyes to really see the unseen spiritual realm. And God's like, No, you can't handle it. And he goes, please, and he begs God, like the old lady who comes to the judge, and God finally relents. Okay, when you wake up tomorrow, you're gonna have spiritual eyes for 24 hours. And after 10 minutes, he's begging God, No, no, no, no, I want to be blind again. Take this away. I cannot hand this is too intense. And so that's what so I shared that with him, and he kind of uh crafted together a song, and it kind of sounds like doom heavy, kind of like typo negative music, which is one of my favorite mainstream bands. Yeah. Um and so that's out there, and we just got another song that uh my great-great-granddad, Hiram Van Pelt, he was blind and he wrote a poem about being blind. And so we put that poem to music. It's kind of the same style, it's kind of doomy. Yeah, and uh there's another, I'm taking an old no, there's another lust control song in the works that we're gonna try to redo and maybe kind of make that doomy as well. That's cool. That's kind of a fun project. I don't really have anything to do with it. I'm not singing on it. Yeah, I'm just kind of like the the director.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:46

Uh and he's kind of Seth is kind of picking up the realm of the guitar and the vocals.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:51

That's Dreams Over Texas, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:20:53

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:53

Uh so if people want to catch that, where can they where can they hear that?

SPEAKER_02 1:20:56

Uh it's on all digital platforms. So Dreams Over Texas, you can find Break This Promise out today. That's it's been out for a while. Yeah. The new one, the song about being blind, that's gonna come out coming out next month. Next month. All right, excellent.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:10

Rex Riffs.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:11

Oh, yeah. That was uh I went to see Michael Shanker in concert in San Antonio, yeah, which is kind of uh I know I didn't know I won't really needed to see him on concert. It's one of my favorite guitar players of all time, just plays with feeling in his fingers. You can't you can hit all the same notes and not sound the same because it there's just so much power and what the fingers do with the the strings. I was able to see him and I uh had uh I had a photo pass when I was up there right in the front of the stage at one point. He was playing a familiar song, and I pulled my phone out with my left hand, and without even looking at it, I got the video to record. And I recorded like the solo for that. And then Rex sent me a text message where he played the audio of that solo, and he said, This is what I taught Michael years ago. Ha ha ha. I said, Wouldn't that be fun? How can I get these rifts, you know, all the time? Right. And the conversation turned that's a good idea. Maybe we could have a subscription service called Rex's Rex Rifts, where And this is Rex Carroll, by the way. Yes, of White Cross Foot. White Cross, yes. The master shredder himself. Oh, definitely. So for 10 bucks a month every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in the morning, I will send you a text message or that's a video of him playing a Riff a minute long in front of the camera. And so that's what Rex Rifts is. Yeah, and uh we also have like a whole an annual subscription at a discount price, too. Yeah, and uh so that's kind of fun, and Rex is really enjoying doing it. And he's like, Well, why don't you we do this, Doug? And we'll split the money down the middle. So you market it, and and I'll I'll just send you these videos. Very cool.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:46

I love that. I've seen several of those, those are very, very cool. I ask you, of course, you know, why you started Heaven's Metal magazine. But broaden that out a little bit. Why, why do you do what you do? Why, why are you still involved with all these bands, these artists, um, this publication still, all these decades later. Why do you do what you do? And why is your faith so important to what you're doing? You know, I mean, Christian rock it's one of the things that drew drew me in, you know, early on was Christian music, Christian rock, and later metal. Um I I've got a serious connection with it, but you have a very serious connection with it with all your history with it. Why do you do what you do? And why is your faith such an important component of this tie to Christian rock? Wow, what a great question.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:39

Well, um when I was uh forgiven, I uh really felt like uh like Jesus imprinted himself on me. And uh I feel like if I could go back in in time or be any person, I want to be the prostitute that washes the feet of Jesus with her tears and dries the feet with the hair. Because to me that it kind of epitomizes my brokenness, um my unmerited condition. Uh you know, I deserve judgment and hell, and he gives me love and mercy and forgiveness. And so that um, like I said, is really imprinted on me. And so I can't see doing anything else but being a lover of Christ. You know, my high priest uh can sympathize with my weaknesses, and so that uh has kind of made an impression on me that that can't be uh taken away, nobody can take that away. Therefore, for the grace of God go I, you know, no man is above falling man, just that that love is so compelling. It's like when when Peter told Jesus, where else can we go? You have the very words of life. So there's like there's no sense of uh, well, I'm kind of getting tired of this now. I kind of regret that decision. I remember one of my buddies, Paul Kupek, did a took a poll on concert. How many of you out there have given your lives to Christ? Now, how many of you people out there are kind of burned out, kind of kind of wish you never made that decision? How many really regret that making a decision? Yeah, you know, raise your hand and see nobody had their hand up for that part. It's like, see, see, non-Christian, this is a decision you will never regret. Exactly. And so that's kind of feels true to me. The Christian metal and rock, Christian art. I guess it felt like uh it was a a place that God allowed me to go, called me to, gave me a special touch, and used me in a way that was just so so cool and so rewarding, and so felt like I belonged. Yeah. Felt like he was truly uh with me, and it was like, you know, well done. And and uh I'm I'm into this and I'm with you. And um so that that's hard to let that fade away into a memory. And uh, and of course, there's um I love music, it's just it it moves me in such a way, uh you know, music kind of cuts through your rib cage right into your heart, and it reaches you in a way that uh words and text on a page can't. And so it is the universal language in so many ways. Yeah, it really crosses boundaries. And like I remember I went to Africa with Compassion International. They took a bunch of bloggers on tour to expose the bloggers to everything they do in Uganda. And I got to meet my sponsored child, a little girl named Rhoda, who's like nine years old with her mom, never been to a restaurant or the big city of Kampala in Uganda. And earlier that day, I had heard some African music, Weibo Ray Yezu, which means thank you, Jesus. And I thought, I bet she knows this song. So I started singing it to her. I was able to connect with Rhoda from all these thousands of miles through music. She knew the song. We both had smiles on our faces. We sang to each other, and we sang, you know, thanking God. So that's beautiful. That connection is just so powerful. Yeah. I guess that's one of the reasons why.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:27

Oh, no doubt about it. Well, I have no doubt that you will hear well done, good and faithful servant, at the end of your journey, um, because you've done you've you've been given something that you have been a very good steward of uh in the faith. And uh respect that. And so much of again, you've probably reached people you don't even realize through the magazine and through through your example as well, too. I can say that as a fellow brother in Christ, and also, you know, we're in a men's group. Together at church, and I have enjoyed that as well. Being able to bond with you in the faith and in hearing your knowledge of scripture come out in our group has been uh you know rewarding for me too. So I appreciate that too as a fellow brother in Christ. But bring all that around. I got to ask you, what's a favorite Bible verse for you? What's a verse that maybe has carried you through difficult times or joyous times, whatever it may be?

Favorite Verse And Closing Comments

SPEAKER_02 1:28:29

There's a bunch, but uh probably my favorite passage is Hebrews 4, 14 through 16. And it talks about Jesus is the perfect high priest who's been tempted in all things, yet was without sin. And it kind of throws that out there and it says, Therefore, let us approach the throne of grace to find help in our time of need. So because of who Jesus is and what he did, and because he was the perfect high priest, paid for it all, it's been complete. Therefore, let us approach not just the throne, but the it's called the throne of grace to find help in our time of need. So it's got like this open invitation. So because Jesus is so awesome, run and jump on his lap. Yeah, that's kind of kind of what it means. I like to quote that verse when I pray for people because usually when when you pray for somebody, yeah, you're praying for their need. Right. And so I'm just acknowledging that. And it's just it's so cool to sing worship songs that are scripture. It's like God's words just aimed right back at them. Yeah. And in prayer are the same thing, and kind of uh you start there and you're kind of uh I don't know, you're touching eternity right there. And I love that. Well put. Well put.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:48

Well, my friend, I think we'll close it out there. Although I could go on for hours or two more questions I can ask you. But you know, we should probably we should probably close this out. I'm sure I enjoyed talking with you hearing about your memories of Heaven's Metal. And uh look forward to to seeing what you do next. With documentaries, Dreams Over Texas is great, all the things you're involved in is so cool. One quick other quick question do you ever make it to any festivals anymore? So like Immortal or anything?

SPEAKER_02 1:30:15

No, I uh back in the day, I I uh my experience has been so blessed. Yeah, I've I've like done it all. Yeah, I've seen every band I want to see, like even going to see Michael Schenker was like I didn't think he was on my bucket list, but I I added him on there. But yeah, I've I've seen so many great artists and so many been to so many festivals. Like every year I would go to and have a stage at Creation and Cornerstone and Sunshine and Tom Festival and RevGen. Oh, yeah. That's five festivals in a year, and then South by Southwest, a whole week in Austin. Right. And so I got to do so much. My experience has been so rich. Yeah, I I don't need to see anything else. I'm happy just with my memories. Yeah, really. And and I don't have the budget or the time to go do that back in the day. You know, Heaven's Metal HM, that was a business, and so all that was a business expense. The travel, the restaurants, a portion of that was a write-off, you know, and yeah, going to all the shows. Um, and just you know, don't have that anymore. I work for the state. Right. It's good just to survive these days.

Subscribe, Review and Contact

SPEAKER_03 1:31:26

Yeah, and enjoy family too, of course. Indeed. Awesome, man. Hey, thank you, Doug. Appreciate you coming and share memories with me, taking some time out of your schedule. And uh I appreciate it. We could go all night for sure. I know a slumber party episode. That would be awesome. That would be awesome. Tell some scary stories too. Awesome. Thank you, Doug. Appreciate this. You bet, Tim. All right, y'all, that does it for this episode of Creative Christians. My guest today has been Doug Van Pelt, founder of Heaven's Metal Magazine, and a good friend as well. You can find out more about Doug and Heaven's Metal by visiting the magazine's online portal at Heavens Metal Magazine.com. Thanks for joining us. Go to Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast distributor, and be sure to subscribe to catch each and every new episode because, yes, we're back and there will be new episodes coming very soon. After listening, take a moment to rate the show. If you're really feeling generous, I'd love it if you left a brief review as well. Let me and others know what you liked about creative Christians. Thank you for all of you who have already been leaving feedback and reviews. It is very much appreciated. You can also email me directly with your feedback, comment, or questions. That email address is in the show notes for this episode. I'd love to hear from you. I'm Tim Risto. Until next time, stay creative and stay in God's Word. Blessing, y'all. Creative Christians is produced by yours truly, Tim Risto. A special thanks to my guest, Tug Van Pelt, and Heaven's Metal magazine. As always, a shout out to my lovely and supportive wife, Tracy Risto. Creative Christians is an audio production of Tim Risto Productions. Visit TimRisto.com to learn more.