Across the Counter
This podcast is a passion project where we interview a diverse blend of musicians, authors, podcasters, pastors, and thinkers about semi religious topics.
Instead of listening to respond or debate, we listen to understand through finding common ground and hearing our guests’ stories.
So grab your beverage of choice and pull up a seat Across the Counter!
Learn more at www.atcpodcast.com
Across the Counter
Melody of Unity | Elias Dummer | Episode 45
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Join us as we sit Across the Counter from musician, entrepreneur, and researcher Elias Dummer.
In this ATC Episode:
• We navigate the complexities of promoting church unity amidst differing doctrines, and considered how the bedrock of Trinitarianism could offer a blueprint for interdependence in our all-too-fragmented world.
• How the artistic integrity of Christian music often gets entangled with the strings of the industry's commercial aspirations.
• How Elias lightened the mood with some amusing tales from his entrepreneurial adventures in the art world, blending faith with business in a way that's as unconventional as it is uplifting.
• As we wrap up, we came back to the core of our faith and the reassuring embrace of a simple truth – that in Christ, we find all we need.
Connect with Elias:
Instagram: @eliasdummer
Website: https://eliasdummer.com/links/?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0BMQABplGahNNxrBwS54lPs9lI4ouKDqV9a7Cf5X4OXN2mpDVminr6opSCSvVx1Q_aem_AVXDJZZlKMAD4WDXdzfthzVXSMdfvMFtcY6Pn1YyW1ZCoKSsE9ivmqRwPmfwka_r2l8
Beliefs espoused by the guests of ATC are not necessarily the beliefs and convictions of ATC.
That said the intent of our podcast is to listen, remain curious and never fear failure in the discovery life giving truth. Many people we ardently disagree with have been our greatest teachers.
Unity in Christianity
Speaker 1Pull up a chair across the counter. Your one-stop shop for a variety of perspectives around Jesus and Christianity. I'm Grant Lockridge and I'm here with Elias Dummer, and Elias is a musician. He was a musician with City Harmonic. He is now a part of a solo project called Elias Dummer. You should check him out. It's really, really cool. I love the song. The gospel is rest. It's pretty sweet. The first little bit of this recording got deleted through some nonsense on the interwebs, so we go right into my first question of the a hundred thousand dollar question. So just so you know, we might mention it a few times throughout the episode. And yeah, so, elias Dummer, so tell me about the time where you and your band blew a hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2Well, well there's about probably about five or six times where that's possible. We bought a bus once, but uh, heck yeah yeah no.
Speaker 2So our band had come out of a interdenominational missions movement in our city, so we made a movie about it in 2015. It was kind of where our name is from, the the city harmonic. Our song manifesto was supposed to be the things we had in common the Lord's Prayer and the Nicene Creed and this kind of interdenominational thing. It's a big part of our DNA. We'd been commissioned by a movement of churches working together that made a tangible difference in our city, and so we had some complications with cancer in the middle and by the time 2015 rolled around, we were making our third record and we knew we kind of needed a reset and to focus again on that thing. It was kind of our mission in a sense, and so we did. We wrote that record and we decided to make a tour where we would go around to cities across the United States and Canada and we would pull pastors together from different denominations in each city and have a conversation, talk to them about what had happened in our city and all that, and in a lot of ways it was a success from a ministry standpoint. We had several cities where kind of initiatives that came from those conversations still have life in them and pastors are working together, churches are working together to do good together. Uh, with standing on, you know some pretty basic creedal common ground, you know?
Speaker 2Um, it looks like I lost you again. Are you there? Yeah, I'm there, okay okay, sweet is it what happened?
Speaker 1am I just video?
Speaker 2yeah, well, it just kind of like looked totally frozen. But you're good. Yeah, yeah so we're trying yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah. So so, standing on like you know some creedal common ground and that sort of thing, and then, um, basically saying, well, with that out of the way, let's work together, let's find a problem and do something about it. And, yeah, it was great from a ministry standpoint. There was a point where Eric, member of the band, was like, hey, we're going to lose our shirts on this tour, but it might be the most important thing we ever did, and I think he's right. And so, at the end of the day, it was a commercial failure. We just didn't. We sold the idea so hard that, had we just done a tour of our own, it probably would have been much more successful. But we sort of made it about a thing.
Speaker 1And it turns out that in 2016, america wasn't deeply interested in the question of unity and it's a total mystery as to why and so, yeah, we lost over $100,000 making that conversation a priority, and I don don't regret it, but it was expensive yeah, I mean that's, that's super close to my heart, the idea of, you know, church unity, and you said before we were recording, like you could tell by the logo, you know the four churches kind of together, which we've gotten some flack on that and we've gotten oh, dude, if you look at the artwork for we are the city harmonic um, I did it, my, I actually did it.
Speaker 2There's inside that album is something really similar. So the cover is like our faces done that same way, like kind of like stained glass and inside the artwork I don't have it handy or I'd show you. Inside the artwork is for there's, like other iconic things, including a very similar concept to what you have as your graphic well heck, yeah, well we're, we're on team uh church unity.
Speaker 1So yeah, exactly I, I will give you a lot of not a lot of people are incredibly interested in that even now. Um, but it is, it is you, but we're coming around.
Theological Convictions and Ecumenical Spirit
Speaker 2Yeah, we'll get there. Well, I think part of it is the difficulty of being honest in terms of hermeneutics and being humble about your theological convictions, which is not something that evangelicals have been very good at. So I think for me, being raised in an environment where this kind of ecumenical spirit was part of it was really helpful for me, because I was forced, sort of at a young age to differentiate between things that are definitely Christian, things like, say, the creeds or whatever right um, and then like the rest of it, which is interpretive or, you know, developed over time. And and I'm just I'm still sort of shocked, having done a lot of this stuff in my 20s and having read a lot I'm a big nerd, um, on the subject I'm still surprised when people talk about like eschatological convictions as though they are like some point of orthodoxy when they're not even 200 years old. For goodness sake, like it. It's bonkers to me. But you know, people gonna people, I guess it's.
Speaker 1It's almost like we should count others as better than ourselves.
Speaker 2It's crazy, right yeah, a little humility goes a long way, it's wild.
Speaker 1But now I'm totally on, totally on that team of um. You know, basically the one thing that I will not bud on is jesus christ was the son of god. Right, he's the one savior there's. You're saved under one name forgiveness of sins through jesus to god, the father yahweh. You know, god of the bible I just got corrected. You know, maybe it's the bible of of the god. You know, whatever you get, what I'm saying the israelite god that's in. You know the bible, whatever. That's the one thing I absolutely will not budge on.
Speaker 2Yeah, I'd throw a Trinitarianism in there, because it's actually really hard to build a coherent Christian philosophy without Trinitarianism.
Speaker 1Yeah, you got to throw a God, the Father God, the Son God, the Holy Spirit, kind of thing.
Speaker 2Yeah, and honestly I think it plays a pretty big role ontologically, which evangelicals and Catholics have not struggled with enough Like what does that word mean?
Speaker 1By the way, you said, like the nature of humanness. There we go.
Speaker 2So like so like I, like we we think of ourselves, partly because of Plato, as these kind of like dualistic things, like we're the spirit thing trapped in a flesh body and and we just can't wait to get out of it, which, frankly, israelites probably didn't think up, like it's probably not a thing they thought part of what they're trying to resolve is the nature of reality. It's like okay, so we have this embodied self, we have this sense that there's more than the body. We have this will and this generative will and all that. So it's.
Speaker 2And yet we're also enmeshed in these social stratas, right, like you have relationships, you relationships, you have friends, you have family. You are not not the product of those things and you are not not intertwined with those things. You, we have a sort of certain social codependence. That's just a reality for humans, despite whatever we might like to argue in America otherwise. And so, like the Trinity actually makes sense of an awful lot of that, if we're made in the image of god and god is trinity and god is these persons in a social matrix, then where do we get off thinking that we're anything else?
Speaker 1yeah like.
Speaker 2We're people in a social matrix. We're both physical and spiritual, we have will and we have sort of this chaotic element. There's all of this stuff that like kind of adds up when you start to think oh wait, god's Trinity I made in the image of God. I am a complex creature myself, you know. You know this kind of embodied group thing, so I, I don't know. I think it's pretty fundamentally important that one as well.
Speaker 1Yeah, I will agree with that. The understanding of the Trinity is huge. It's almost like Jesus and God the Father are one and he wants us to be as one with each other, as him and God the Father.
Speaker 2Yeah, well, and I think that's the tension right. People hear that, exactly. People hear that and they think, oh, it's this or it's that and it's like well, probably it's both things. They're saying that they're distinct and one, and that tension is what we don't like, because it's not simple, but it also maps onto reality pretty well.
Speaker 1There's a lot of ways in which both things can be true at the same time, right yeah, I mean it's definitely if you read the bible like from cover to cover and you don't come away with some things that are absolutely paradoxical, like yeah, you didn't read yeah, yeah, exactly you know, you've got to hold two ideas in the in, you know, at once that might even contend with one another, which is pluralism, which is what you know a lot of the reason.
Speaker 1America is pretty cool, but also, you know, gets you in a lot of trouble, because then it's like, all right, my perception is reality, which is, you know, can get get sticky if, like your perception is the realest thing and there's not a thing outside of you.
Speaker 2That would be god oh, totally well, and it and it. It just erases and baptizes cultural forces. I mean, I've run a marketing agency a long time, man like 100. Do you think that they put coca-cola banners in the stadium so that you'll buy coke that day? No, like it's. That's not the point at all.
Speaker 2Yeah you know, it like these things matter.
Speaker 2In fact, I was just listening to a podcast today talking about political signs in the lawn and how they've done some research on, for example, political signs. Or like they got a group of people together some students, I believe and they would have an interview and they would flash either random letters or a very nondescript word like a name, like, say, ben Griffin or something like that, and then later on they would say, with telling you nothing else about them, they would say these two people are running for office. Which one do you think you would vote for? They have no information, just two names, two relatively nondescript names. One of the names was one of the words that had flashed for half a second subconsciously across the screen that these people were told to ignore. So they had no context for the name and then, at a totally separate time, they didn't even realize they had seen the name, right, yep, and so the point differential in this study was like 10% Really. Oh yeah, a 10% difference in an election with no other facts other than name familiarity.
Speaker 1Gosh.
Speaker 2Right. The fact is, all kinds of stuff in the world shapes the things that we think are our thoughts. There are a lot of ideas that are born from all kinds of forces. Being honest and humble about that helps, in my opinion. I just find a lot of people end up really uncomfortable because they're like wait a minute, aren't I a total agent in the world with complete individualistic power, who can shape the universe around me? Sorry, no, you're not that thing.
Speaker 2But then also also yes, you can, but then also yes, you can do these things, but it's not as simple as you say. You are part of an ecosystem, you know no advertising is wild dude like yeah yeah the.
Speaker 1The best example I can think of is just like big tobacco is like we are. You know, by we I mean, you know I don't smoke, but it's just like absolutely insane of like how big tobacco convinces us that that's like kind of fine Not really but like that that's like a good thing to do, even though nicotine like really doesn't do a whole bunch of anything ever no no, yeah, and I was reading a book about that and it was just like man, they just, they just got us, it's in our movies, it's everything like it's well and that's, everything is that way.
Speaker 2I mean that's, and, and you could say I mean the joke in advertising is that advertising is the second oldest human profession, um the like, because you know what. There's actually this funny thing, uh, in the movie gladiator, which is um called the Tiffany problem. So the Tiffany problem is when in movies there's something which is historically accurate but contemporary audiences perceive as an injection of modern values.
Speaker 1So in gladiator, give me that one more time.
Speaker 2Yeah, so it's, it's, it's when, when a movie or a story would include a name such as Tiffany or something else which is historically accurate to the story, like to the time period or whatever, but it's perceived as a modern injection.
Speaker 2Okay, I got you so audiences then are like the bubble bursts, because the thing which is accurate they don't believe to be accurate and so the story falls apart. Does that make sense? Yeah, so that's why it's called the Tiffany problem. Well, gladiator had this where the first version of the Coliseum scenes accurately included billboards. Because the Coliseum had such billboards, people painted signs for their local stores in the Coliseum. But early test audiences saw it, thought it was an injection of modern values, like some statement, like assuming that ancient history didn't have advertising, and so they took it out.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2And it's like the reality is. We've been trying to persuade each other of our ideas, of our offerings, of this from the beginning of hunting Hunt here, not there. So I have a lot of thoughts about advertising and I have a lot of beliefs about how to do it ethically, which is a big challenge. But the reality is human behavior is super complicated, and that applies to worship music, that applies to church unity, it applies to discipleship. We're just not simple, linear and certainly not purely rational creatures either. So these things influence us and it's helpful to know what they are.
Speaker 1These things influence us and it's helpful to know what they are. Yeah, I mean, that's definitely huge. And also, being a musician too, I mean you said you had how many streams right now? 100 million, maybe, I think. So, yeah, somewhere around there, which is absolutely wild, which means that 100 million people listened to the words that you put in lyrics.
Speaker 2Yeah, man, either that or 12 people really listened.
Speaker 1Yeah, exactly, maybe it was 10 million and they're just like ready to go.
Speaker 2They're ready, they're in.
Speaker 1But yeah, that's a good distinction, but let's just say, 5 million people.
Speaker 2Yeah, sure, whatever it is, yeah, yeah, yeah, more than 10.
Speaker 1Yes.
Speaker 2Probably, probably.
Speaker 1No one has that much time. Yeah, more than 10. I think we can agree, but even if it's just 10, I mean, good gosh, that's influence man, like, just like yeah, I guess, and it's funny how often it's invisible, and that's okay.
Speaker 2Um, I think, yeah, I mean, I think it does sort of put some gravitas to what we're putting in our songs. You know the role that we play.
Speaker 2That can be overstated too, you know I think, like you know, I listened to Offspring when I was a kid in the nineties and I didn't go breaking things like that didn't happen, you know. So you know, I think we can overstate some of those things, um, but at the same time, like I think there's some value in what you repeat, what you live with, what you chew on, and so being thoughtful about that, you know, funny enough as a songwriter, I think it makes um the job of Christian songwriting, if you will. A weird category, of course, but if you're going to choice, you used is heretical at all times, and that's just a which. I mean, I do care about.
Speaker 2I don't want to say things that are like false in scripture itself. So the idea that there's to be none now is kind of silly as well. So it's just this tough balance of navigating worldviews which you just don't have in rock and roll. People don't even care unless you're just saying hate speech. They pretty much don't care what you wrote down if it feels good. So it's an interesting challenge.
Speaker 1I think we have in sort of faith-based music and they almost want you to be controversial, like that's, that's kind of cool and you know modern music, but like, yeah, christianity, christian music. It's like, did you, did you make sure to you know, dot your t or dot your eyes? Cross your t's on theology before you? Oh yeah wrote this thing even though, like you, could have been writing like a song that's purely based on feeling yeah, oh yeah, totally you know just straight poetry, like maybe this is wrong, but this is how I feel, kind of thing.
Speaker 1And you know, maybe you know a christian you know beats down your door and it's like that's not theologically accurate, but it's like that's how I feel and I door and is like that's not theologically accurate, but it's like that's how I feel and this is like a prayer that I'm saying.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, and I think we can differentiate between, say, songs which are intended to replace the Book of Common Prayer and songs which are intended to be songs that exist. Yeah, and I don't think we've done a very good job of delineating those things, and it's true that sometimes those lines aren't helpful, where a song that wasn't intended to be congregational easily could be, and so I think that's one of the things we've learned with worship leader. Research is just like or, I guess, affirmed, I guess is that like one of the attitudes of people when they hear just how monolithic the industry is? Is that like, oh well, there must be this worship leader, this group of like churches and worship leaders, like a cabal secretly ruling the world, like the Wizard of Oz and, you know, bringing on the downfall of every small church so that they can all become mega church McDonald's locations. And nobody? I don't think that at all.
Speaker 2I think what has happened is that the worship leader at the local church doesn't realize the influence and power they have in merely choosing what the diet of their church is.
Speaker 2They underestimate their power.
Speaker 2They are often naive to commercial forces like marketing and advertising that benefit the existing people who do the thing that they do, and so they attribute that trust to sort of spirituality and, you know, like trust in a brand, they give it a sort of holy.
Speaker 2You know, they might call a song anointed because of who it came from rather than what it is, which seems bizarre all the way down if you really break it down. So I think the thing for me is like helping tell the truth in my music, helping tell the truth in our research, and you know, that's part of what our unity thing was and and I've continued to try to do that, I think, in my solo stuff. Now I mean, that's kind of the attitude. I made a, a record in 2019 that came out and it was a song called enough, which was, I think, some vulnerable song about, you know, admitting that I'm insecure and had just broke up a popular band and it was like, like I had, I didn't do it, the band broke up amicably, but it was just sort of this, like am I only as good as the last thing I did, sort of song.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2And that and that connected with a whole bunch of people. That was great. But going into my second record, it was like the world got real complicated between 2019 and 2022, that turns out, you know, and so it was going to be bittersweet and it was um and so it really is sort of a concept album, not of deconstruction, because, honestly, my sort of album not of deconstruction because, honestly, my sort of journey of reevaluating my beliefs happened 20 years ago, before anyone knew the City Harmonic. We were already a band who had read too many seminary books and we're halfway different than a lot of our audience in certain things very orthodox, but you can't be an ecumenical band and be simple in that sense, right, um and so, but yeah, but by the time 2022 came around and all these songs were coming out, there was a lot of real life and a lot of mixed feelings and a lot of pain in there, mixed with hope and grim determination, I guess guess.
Speaker 1You know, I think that's super wise too, to deconstruction is such a buzzword, but just like to evaluate, you know, basically walk out your faiths, you know, with fear and trembling, oh, definitely, you know, be constantly thinking about the ideas that you hold about God and whatever.
Speaker 2Yeah, and how well anchored they are right. I mean, I think it's not hard to pick up a couple of Christian history books and go, oh, where did this idea come from? And learn If something that you believe is sacrosanct and fundamental to the faith was first ideated in 1890 or whatever it is, you probably need to reevaluate just how central that thing is.
Speaker 1Oh yeah.
Speaker 2Because it's impossible that Paul fought it.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2So you know just a little tip.
Speaker 1Just a tip, so we might have gotten cut off. So describe to me what worship leader research is again.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Because we dropped that in there.
Worship Leader Research Project and Findings
Speaker 2Oh yeah, totally yeah. So worship leader research is this thing I started with some friends who've become friends to. Research is this thing I started with some friends who've become friends. One of the researchers is a guy named Dr Mike Tapper who, with Mark Jolliker, who's also on the team, had run this research project on the shelf life of worship songs. So in other words, hey, are songs in the church sticking around less long than they used to? And they found that they were significantly less than they used to.
Speaker 2And that has just been ramping up. And so, building on that research, him and I had been friends. My band played a show at his church. Building on his work, he was like we should put a little team together and look at the relationship between market forces and the industry and these charts and the local church and do some survey data. So we did that. We ran two phases one which looked at CCLI and praise charts and sort of examined the trends that exist in the songs themselves, and then the second being how do worship leaders in the local church feel about the people who make the music and the state of the industry and the industry itself?
Speaker 2So, we did that and have done a whole bunch of articles since. We've been covered by the Washington Post, christianity Today, a bunch of people, roy's Report talking about this stuff. One of the reasons is that our first finding was pretty shocking, which is that 100% of the top 25 CCLI songs between 2010 and 2020 came from basically four megachurch movements, or were popularized by four megachurch movements, even when they didn't write them. So what people thought from that was sort of this like, oh, those people are ruling the industry. I don't think that's it. I think what happens is local worship leaders attribute a lot of trust to those brands and have mixed feelings about it or have certain expectations of songs which come from those churches or are popularized with those churches, and so they become functional gatekeepers. But they're not gatekeeping in a sense, they're just being normal. In every vertical, every industry, it's going to have one, two, three, four players who make up 80, 90% of the activity in that domain. So it's actually not even special or unique to worship music. So it's just one of these things where there's and we examine a lot of different findings.
Speaker 2The most recent article was about the role of aspiration. So we know, in advertising, for example, that if I show you a thing you wish you were like enough times and associate it with a product, you're more likely to buy the product because it might make you into the thing you wish you were like. And so we asked that question to what extent do you wish that your worship culture in your local church was more similar to the videos you watch on YouTube of Bethel or Hillsong or whatever? And 54% said sometimes yes. So a small majority of churches across all sizes are wishing their church was a little more like that church, and that matters. So those are the kinds of conversations we're having over there. It's worshipleaderresearchcom. We have this great board of advisors from all walks of the industry and academia, so it's people with the best of intentions just trying to tell the truth. It's pretty cool, in a sense myth-busting about the industry and the church, and I think myth-busting is God's work.
Speaker 1Nerd. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, yeah yeah, no, that's so interesting to me. I guess I'm a nerd too. Then, yeah, and man, this is something that is so good to actually do real research. People skew data like you wouldn't believe. I'm sure you would believe it because it feels like you got your head on straight and your eyes open towards like marketing and you know advertising and that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1But you know how people are just like drop a fact casually that they just like got on Google, like you know something, just something crazy, and you do a little bit of research on it and, yeah, there was one article that said that, but the data was so skewed in the wrong direction oh, yeah, oh yeah, fox news or cnn or well and honestly, coverage of science, coverage of academic work, is generally pretty bad for that reason, like it's, it's just misunderstood, and so they they take something, they think it means something and they run with it very often not the case.
Speaker 1So how do you like kind of combat that if you're actually because one, you already have a big leg up because you're already doing the research, and then you're kind of, are you telling people kind of what that means or are you just kind of putting it out there?
Speaker 2So we sort of intentionally did two things at the same time. We did pure academic work, so we've had presentations at Duke, at Oxford and all of these highfalutin places around the world. It's been incredible. It's published research, you know, and peer reviewed all that. However, we also do popular work, so we do short blog posts, which is what you'll find at worshipleaderresearchcom. For the most part is short, readable posts that really unpack it and ask some of the why. So we do a little bit of well, what might this mean? But we try not to go too far down that road.
Speaker 1But we are dealing mostly with facts. Yeah, that's wise. The facts really do kind of speak for themselves if you go in the right way.
Speaker 2Yeah, well, and I think it's interesting how quickly we attribute intent in that regard and you see this with all kinds of biases, like people who have a bias towards hymnody as opposed to modern worship music or whatever, as if there was not a publishing company publishing hymns.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2It's like no, that was a thing, that was a business that existed and they sold paper books to churches in great quantities. They didn't get rich in the way that we think about it now, but there was a for-profit enterprise making at least some of the time, selling hymns to these decentralized denominations.
Speaker 2You know, yeah, the methodist hymnal might not have been that, but others certainly were, you know so it's, it's like you know what, at the end of the day, industry is part of what it means to be human.
Speaker 2Even if you want to look communist russia, I mean, at the end of the day there is industry. There's something which guides or shapes or influences how people interact in trade and facilitates how we get where we're going. So I think it's interesting how often creatives and in spiritual circles or Christian circles in particular, we just have a really strange and kind of incoherent relationship to what it means to be a person in an economy of any kind, and so we, we use spiritual language and veil it and hide it, and I think that honestly, I think that uh shields a lot of abuse from coming to the light of day. So, um, for me it's important to talk about it as it is, talk about business on business terms, transparently, and take the gas out of the bag so it can be a little less weird. Let the things that are already weird about Christianity be the weird things.
Speaker 1Let's not create a whole thing.
Speaker 2Yeah, create a whole weird thing on top of the weird thing that you happen to believe.
Speaker 1And I do get that and that's the way it's always been, throughout history at least. Yeah, you know that, we know that's recorded, that's also skewed, but whatever. Yeah, you know what I mean. Like there's all sorts of you know. Data is so, so important.
Speaker 2Yeah, also boring, but so important well, and that's why it's on us to be good storytellers. You know we can't, you't, you can't just say facts and trust. People are going to care. You have to sometimes help them connect the dots, and so it's part of why I love conversations like this, you know is because you can do that, and I think I think music does. That too was really about a serious bout of anxiety. I didn't even know it was. I didn't even know I had a serious anxiety problem and you know, I run a few companies and I was doing music and my band at the time when this happened was getting ready to break up. So, of course, I was under all kinds of pressure and I had this bout of vertigo and it lasted for almost a year. So I was like dizzy and not able to stand sometimes. Yeah.
Speaker 2And it turned out it was just anxiety and burnout you know, and I was misdiagnosed as having Meniere's disease, I thought I would go deaf, all this stuff. So I've had to have, since then, this really interesting relationship with like work and value and all of this stuff. It's like, yeah, I'm not going to hustle my way into the kingdom, you know. So that's really what that song came from. Was that event, that moment of like, oh, I I'm out here doing things and you know they're good things, they're valuable things.
Honesty and Authenticity in Christianity
Speaker 2But if I value the doing of the things more than I value the fact that this gospel of grace is one which should instill peace and rest in our lives in terms of our worth and in terms of our time and in terms of our relationships, then I've got it wrong. And so essentially admitting I don't actually believe in the gospel in that sense, yeah, yeah, on some, some part of me still and maybe it's one of those both and things right when it's helpful and beneficial, but some part of me doesn't really believe that my worth is answered for yeah I don't, I don't, I don't know how healthy or unhealthy that is, and so the song is really just starting from an honest place of that, and so it's.
Speaker 2I've heard it said the gospel is rest um. Oh, how I need it, which is a double entendre in a sense um, I need to rest, I'm tired, and also I need the gospel of to be a gospel of rest um, and then say it again till I believe it, you know, because I don't yeah that's beautiful man, that really is.
Speaker 1That really is beautiful. Also, to hear just like a guy out there being honest is huge, especially in Christianity. My goodness, Like I don't know. I love more than anything just genuineness and honesty, especially from our artists. Like, yeah, that's what makes art art.
Speaker 2Almost it's just like sometimes yeah yeah, at least to me, that's what makes it, and people you know interpret art just differently all the time, but you can tell, or at least kind of tell, when someone's being totally genuine and just yeah, ripping their heart out and putting it in a song and oh yeah that's really cool, that well, and it's funny like I'm not going to name names or say anything, but it's funny how audiences are completely unaware of how that really works behind the scenes, like there's people who you know are postured as being these really tortured, sincere artists, songwriters, types who bear their sleeve or whatever, um, who are very worried about their brand behind the scenes oh yeah, never, would never admit it out loud, you know.
Speaker 2And so I think, in my part, the thing that people have a strange relationship with me is I just say the quiet part out loud, so I'm like, yeah, no, of course I, I am being earnest and I'm also not not thinking about how marketing works.
Speaker 2That'd be stupid, yeah, and so. So that that's kind of my take. It's the same with, like, performance and worship and the whole video on that, and, and a lot of worshipers don't know what to do about it because they're like, well, he's right in this sense and and, but you know, is that what we're talking about? And so for me, I'm just hoping to instill some thoughtfulness and some thoughtful conversations. That's not to say I am the one with the thoughtfulness, but I just mean like, if nothing else, I'm going to say things and approach things in a way that hopefully encourages people to think more deeply about their faith and about their life and their own way of thinking and being in the world where those ideas come from, and that sort of thing way of thinking and being in the world where those ideas come from, and that sort of thing Sometimes through music, sometimes through work like research, and sometimes through blowing a bunch of money trying to get pastors to talk to each other.
Speaker 1I do love that. You did that, man. I am a big fan of that. I'm glad that I didn't go that far with it. I'm glad that I just do like a little yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean it, it, it almost it only kind of worked like there's like two or three things where it seems to have made a difference and maybe I'll, you know, one day hear stories of of the sort of thing that makes it different. And that's one of the weird things about, I think, being a creative person and being an artist or a songwriter, even a researcher, whatever it is so much of the effect of what you do in the world. When you do projects, you do podcasting, whatever is unknown to you. You have no idea what it does for people and you just kind of trust that it's doing something.
Speaker 1I agree, unless they go and tell you which people don't. Yeah, I did tell you, but I think that part maybe got cut out. But the reason I found you is because my wife listened to. The gospel is rest. Yeah.
Speaker 1And she's going through a pretty stressful time with anxiety. She has anxiety and all that stuff. And she listened to that song and she was like this is how I feel and I love this song. And I was like you your work is getting noticed by, at least you know, some head honcho like me and my wife yeah, we're big fish, you know there you go, yeah so but no, it really is.
Speaker 1That is a really just good, honest song. I think you know, and maybe it's not, maybe you're only in it for the industry, who knows?
Speaker 2Oh gosh no.
Speaker 1I mean that's that.
Speaker 2See, that's the thing, man Like I, um. So a bunch of years ago I used to be in full-time there. I was in full-time ministry 15, 16 years ago. I just noticed for me what happens to me in terms of the way I view the world, the way I view decisions and influence and leadership in church or whatever, and we can have a whole conversation about that. But I just viewed that so differently when my decisions shaped whether or not my kids would eat.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2And so I kind of decided back then 15, 16 years ago 16 years ago, I guess, actually um that I wouldn't work full time in ministry, that I would do ministry from a place of having something else, so that I felt more confident in my choices.
Speaker 1I love that.
Speaker 2And so that's what I did. I started basically tent making, if you want to call it that. At this point I own six companies, so music makes a little bit of money, but music isn't the only way I make money and ministry is not a big part of how I make money. I'm involved in my church, mostly as a volunteer, of course. I travel and get paid and that sort of thing, and that's ministry in a way.
Speaker 2I mean, it is ministry but it's also commercial and so it is this like weird bag, but it also, for me, has given me the ability to just like be myself in a sense, to whatever that means, and that's a whole conversation. But as much as one can be themself, I'm trying to do that, I guess, and say what I really think out loud, you know. But but I'll tell you, man, it's, it's not if someone really just wants to make money. This is the part I don't understand about so many things that happen in the church, with abuse and stuff like that. It's not actually that hard to go out and make a thing and be shameless and make a living. You can make money and you can even make a lot of money if you move to the right city and you become a realtor. And whatever there's ways people can do things become a realtor and whatever right Like there's ways people can do things and doing it through Christian ministries not the easiest way to do it.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's not the way to go.
Speaker 2That's not the way to go. And Christian music is a, you know like, if you look even just at, like radio songs, right, Like people don't realize this, but like K love is a nonprofit, right? So K love is owned by a nonprofit called EMF Educational Media Foundation and the royalty rates paid on radio songs for songs played on K-Love, which has the widest reach in Christian music by far, is like one-tenth or one-eighteenth somewhere in there I don't know the actual number, but it's like minuscule compared to commercial radio. So you can have a Christian song that's a hit that's like five, ten times in its reach to a rock song that is on the local alternative station and you're making less money, that's wild, so Christian music is not the way to go.
Speaker 2Yeah, if that's the goal.
Speaker 1Yeah, that seems very, very unfair.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's real complicated for sure, but but yeah, I mean it's. Christian music is not the answer of get rich quick as anything in the mix yeah, to get rich quick, you gotta either create a religion or be a pastor. No, just kidding oh my, I mean it can be lucrative if you write the right sort of books.
Speaker 1Yeah, just write a book.
Speaker 2You won't find me writing those books, yeah.
Speaker 1And also I'm poking fun. But there also is, like I read so many Christian books. I'm a huge fan of that specific brand of Christian kind, christian kind of theology books. So keep on writing fellas.
Speaker 2If that's right, do it do it up, do it up, but even. But yeah, I mean it's. It's not the, it's not the christian books, which are the ones making people very, very rich. It's, you know, the, the equivalent of a course on how to make money, being the way you make money.
Speaker 1Yep.
Speaker 2You know, if you do this thing, I mean the kind of prosperity gospel stuff which I have very little patience for. That stuff existing in the world and the perpetuation of that myth is yeah sure, there's money in them hills. If that's all you want, tell a certain kind of person that they're going to be rich.
Speaker 1If they just give you a nickel, yeah sure, great, fair do that all day long dad gummit dave ramsey no, I'm just kidding, oh man, yeah, I'm not throwing any shade to dave ramsey either.
Speaker 1Like these are all jokes like this oh man, I yeah, I got my thoughts yeah, this is no shade, because my you know, my sister used the whole financial freedom thing and they're doing a heck of a lot better and yeah, yeah, not that they were doing bad at all, but it's just like you know how to budget as a couple and you know that kind of thing it's.
Speaker 2Yeah, there's certain, certain fundamentals that can be helpful. Yeah. Certain certain practices but honestly like it I. It's useless advice for me because I don't have any kind of fixed income. Yeah, yeah Me either, by the way, there's practically no application for what he does beyond a stretch and a misunderstanding of equity interest and how to leverage interest as well, yeah, so I flip houses is what I do for a living. Yeah.
Speaker 1And I feel very just hearing you say that of like I want to be a tent maker or whatever, but just like, you know, just working to make money and in an industry that makes money like flipping houses is what I do and then having a little not that music is your side gig, but just like being able to be free, like with this podcast, like I'm nobody's telling me what I can and can't do. I don't take any sponsors because I don't care, like people you know have reached out whatever. And it's like I'm not going to make money off of this because it doesn't. You know, this is literally just for fun.
Speaker 2I mean, you could sell advertising, just saying. Just saying you could throw it out there.
Speaker 1I'll sell some advertising. I know somebody, I'll sell some advertising. I do want to make a coffee, like I'm working with this guy right now, that I want to make a coffee, like I'm working with this guy right now, that, um, I want to make a little coffee blend, oh nice, I. I told him my, my whole goal was just to have one coffee, like one coffee bag, with our logo on it, and that would be enough for me, just because that's fun.
Speaker 2I don't know why but that just felt cool to me yeah, dude, I mean if it's, if it's a good roast, you know yeah, you know he, he crushes it, but but yeah, well, I want to get back to you.
Speaker 1Um, so what are you up to now? Like, yeah, are you writing music right now, are you?
Speaker 2so I am, I am, yeah, I'm. We're putting together a tour in canada, in the us, for the rest of 2024, which is really fun. We haven't done that in a lot of years, so we're putting weekends together and that sort of thing, which is fun.
Speaker 1Are you coming to Greenville, south Carolina? By the way? No concrete plans yet. Okay.
Speaker 2Trying to do a new model and see how it goes. We're able to try stuff and that's what we're doing, oh yeah. But yeah, I am writing a new record. I have a few songs ready to go in that. But first I'm doing these kind of re-recorded versions of older songs. The first one, uh, a new version of manifesto, which comes out May 10th oh cool, so that's. I'm pretty, pretty stoked on it. It's a rad kind of reinterpretation of the song. But I'm also doing a holy wedding day and some others, um, and some other stuff of my own as well. So I'm doing this little EP kind of in between, and then I've got a new record coming out after that. So, yeah, it's going to be, it can be a fun year. Lots on the go.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's. That's really cool. I'm looking forward to it, Also at the end of our show, because I usually like to keep it around this time frame is there anything else that you'd?
Speaker 2like to promote for anything. I like giving my people space to promote stuff. Oh yeah, it's to promote stuff.
Speaker 2Well one of the things if you're into art at all. I'm. I own three companies in the art space. So I have one called square foot show, which is like the, as far as I know, the most dominant um uh flash sale for small format art that exists online. So we we run these shows with like 50 to 60 artists each putting in three to five pieces at 12 by 12s and they fly in the first 40 minutes. We sell hundreds of paintings sometimes. So that's, check out squarefootshowcom. You can check out artlabelca, which is where we do these kind of development deals with artists, where we kind of launch print lines for them and help them scale their reach and grow their audience.
Speaker 2And then we've got a in Canada, at least in Hamilton, where I live. We have I'm one of the owners of a gallery and cafe because we have a coffee shop and bar actually so call, and it's it's crown and press gallery in Hamilton where we've got artists from 40 artists across Canada, prints and originals all over the place, sort of two spaces. The back is this really gorgeous art gallery and the front is this like really robust cafe and bar with seating for like up to 50 or 60 people. So we're one of the biggest seating spaces in the city for a coffee shop and because we're not a pure coffee shop, like the gallery obviously is a business enterprise. Um, we don't have to kick people out after 40 minutes. They can park and work in our space and we're happy.
Speaker 1So yeah.
Speaker 2So that's crown, and press on Ottawa street.
Speaker 1Yeah, you can't, um, you can't own a bar as a Christian, though is what I've, what I've heard.
Speaker 2No, I, I have a. My favorite, bourbon is there on the shelf.
Speaker 1I don't know what you're talking about man that's Christian on the bar, Like you can't be doing it.
Speaker 2Actually dude, my, my best selling t-shirt. This is. This is a funny story, you'll enjoy this. Um so I made a t-shirt once as a joke. Um, I just, you know, it just seemed like one of those things which was kind of on brand for me. Yeah, um, so I, I, I made this shirt which is, you know, I call it the I believe in miracles shirt. Um, but it's the water into wine, so it's the kind of chemistry symbols for water into ethanol in a row yeah on my on my.
Speaker 2There's no explanation, there's no context, it's just h2o.
Speaker 2You know arrow c2h6o and that's a lot of that I put it out on the internet and it sold a bunch right away and then so I printed them. I was like people love this shirt. So I took it to shows while I played this Baptist conference and, um, there was some pretty old guard, baptist, senior pastor kind of guy, you know, blue hair dude, actually old school blue hair, not like now, blue hair, white hair dude, um, um, and so I asked out of respect. I was like, hey, I don't, you know, I jokingly call myself Anglicostal. I'm, you know, not a teetotaler or anything.
Speaker 2So would you rather I didn't sell this shirt at this event. And they said, yeah, we, you know the younger guys, we all drink a little, but we'd probably be better if we didn't have that. The older pastors would be pretty cheesed about it. So so I said, okay, cool, no problem, I put it in the boxes, put it behind the thing. The problem was that it left. It left mostly feminine shirts out and you know, this was like a simple black shirt dude with dudes would wear. What I didn't realize until after the event this is again, this is a Baptist conference Was that the church ladies who were volunteering at my table, even though I told them not to sold this shirt under the table to all the Baptist dudes the entire night.
Speaker 1To the point where my under the table water into wine t-shirt was the best selling merch item.
Speaker 2I had at the Baptist event Talk about good marketing. Make it a little secret. It was not intentional and I did not want it to happen.
Speaker 1This one's cooler than the other shirt.
Speaker 2These ladies just did that on their own.
Speaker 1You can't keep the church lady at bay, man, I'll tell you, no man, karen's going to run the show.
Speaker 2Just let her.
Speaker 1Thanks for listening to the Across the Counter podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please rate us five stars, wherever you got this podcast. Thanks, y'all.
Speaker 3Jesus, you are enough. Jesus, you are enough for me. With nothing, I still love everything. Jesus, you are enough for me.