From Kim Jones,
Your Guide to Christian Music / Gospel.
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Mar 1 2007

In early 2004, a small Underground Church in Mexico City began to plan a Christian music event called "The Revolution Metal Festival". Stryper, who was scheduled to play, cancelled after receiving $56,500 but refuses to return the money. There is much finger pointing, but the question remains ... who is at fault?

The facts that everyone agrees on are as follows:

• Stryper, Saviour Machine, Narnia from Sweden and Mortification from Australia were all booked to play this show.


• Stryper was paid an advance fee of over 56K US dollars.


• Stryper cancelled their performance.


• Stryper has not refunded any of the money to the promoters saying that they spent it preparing for the show and that they are not legally obligated to return it. However, they have offered to give the proceeds from any T-shirt sales (of shirts printed up for this show) to a fund established to help the church recoup the losses.

From there the "facts" differ, depending on who you ask.

Saviour Machine, Narnia, Mortification and MCM Music have provided information for a web site calling for Stryper to pay the money back. There are copies of letters sent to Stryper and their management (Deep South Entertainment) from the pastor of the Underground Church and his wife, MCM Music and the members of Mortification, Narnia and Saviour Machine. There are allegations of greed being the bottom line, hidden in excuses of contractual failures on the part of the church.

Stryper has posted statements from Michael Sweet on their web site as well as his own web site and they have also published a statement from Deep South Entertainment. Those combined statements say that there were contractual agreements not met by the church. They say that work visas were not in place when they cancelled. Michael Sweet said "We have, on many occasions, been detained by customs due to improper paper work or not having work visas. We have had to pay obscene amounts of money to customs in order to get in to a particular country to perform. Also, to bring our equipment in to the country. Again, there are times when you have to use wisdom and you can’t blindly say “just trust in The Lord”. God calls us to be smarter than that. We have learned the hard way and we don’t make those same mistakes anymore."

I've met the members of Stryper, interviewed Michael and Tim (who was not a part of this, having left the band in September) and seen their reunion show. I always had a lot of respect for the band and what they did for Christian Rock music. After reading the information on the "Pay it Back" site I was determined to give them the benefit of the doubt so I went to their site, to Michael's site, to Oz's site and to Robert's bands site looking for their side of the story. I read what Michael and management said (Oz and Robert have no mention of it). After all that, I can honestly say that I'm appalled. The statements by Michael come out and say that three questions should be everyone's focus ...

1. Why were the details of the contract leaked?


2. Who put the Pay it Back site up?


3. Who were the "real" promoters behind the show?

As to why the details were leaked, the Pay it Back site sums it up by quoting a visitor in saying, "There are those who think that this should be a private matter, and that it should not be aired on the web. I disagree. Those who see this will primarily be fellow believers. This is a Church issue. Believers have been wronged by other believers. Stryper has been approached in private, yet was unresponsive. Therefore, it should be made known to the rest of the Church. That's us." (see Matthew 18:15-17)

Who put the Pay it Back site up? Why does that really matter? If what they're alleging is true, then there are much bigger issues here than "who ratted us out to the world?" Stryper doesn't deny that they got over 50K in upfront money and while they may be legally right in not returning it, aren't they (as Christians in active ministry) held to a higher moral standard than the loop-holes of the law? We're talking about church members who sold their personal possessions and gave their entire paychecks (extremely low by American standards) to the church to fund this show! I understand that Stryper has bills to pay like the rest of us, but to spend $50,000 getting ready for one show! Michael speaks of "flights to Boston, hotels, per diem, rental cars, other expenses (strings, batteries, drum heads, tape, tools, cables, parts, fuel)", and paying management "who had an office full of people working on this show for over 6 months". I personally know that playing music isn't cheap, and equipment costs and travel expenses can be high, but that still sounds mighty high to me. I talk to management companies for various artists just about every day and I've never heard anybody even hint at spending six months planning for one show. Saviour Machine has 5 members, two who live in Calif. and 3 that live in Sweden and they say that their "prep" costs were less than $1500.