On our second night at GMA week Chad and I sat down with Karl Messner, lead guitarist for ApologetiX and his lovely publicist Kathleen Burke of Burke Communications for dinner and an interview. I assumed that Karl would have a decent sense of humor and be at least fairly easy to talk to because no one who can do parodies could be a stick in the mud. But even going on that assumption, I definitely wasn't prepared for what I got. Karl is such a riot that I could barely eat my dinner! He does cartoon type voice impersonations and I found myself laughing more than chewing while he talked about the serious and the not so serious. Karl is the kind of guy that doesn't take himself too seriously at all, even when talking about a serious subject that he's obviously passionate about. That became even more apparent when we started the "official" part of the interview and he picked up my tape recorder and said (in a perfect Captain Kirk voice), "Captain's Log. Star date - April … uhh….today! Interview with Karl Messner from ApologetiX. He has no idea I'm tape recording."
Religion and humor certainly makes for an interesting combination and when I commented on that Karl said that he has a theory about reaching people through humor. He explained, "We talk about humor and how it's disarming. You can make a joke and you can tell anybody anything after that. We're not trying to talk anybody into anything. I would consider it a mistake if I was sitting down with somebody who had absolutely no interest and I talked their ear off and then they were suddenly interested and I led them in a hasty prayer. I know that they may or may not be really saved, and when they walk away they're going to be totally useless. And that may be a bad decision, you should probably take any chance you can to pray with somebody. But I personally believe that they don't care what you know until you know that they care. So we develop relationships with people using humor and music."
Using humor and music to teach may seem a bit odd, but it works for them in areas that are on vastly different ends of the spectrum. Karl commented, "We're probably the only band that's been played on The 700 Club and Howard Stern! He made terrible fun of us. Please - make fun of us in front of 31 million unchurched people! I want them to hear about us! But it even reached Howard a little bit. When he played our last CD, he said 'I'm going to take this home and think about it.'"
Howard Stern played ApologetiX and then said he was going to have to take their CD home and think about it? Hold the phone! It was time to get into some serious explanations of just whom and what ApologetiX is and Karl was happy to oblige with the following explanation:
"ApologetiX is a teaching ministry. We're not a rock band; we're just cleverly disguised as a rock band! Sort of like a bad episode of Planet of the Apes. We have a two-pronged ministry: to reach the lost and teach the rest. We're best known for Biblical parodies or spoofs if you will, of rock hits from the modern era and the best of the classics.The interesting thing is that there's a lot of Christian music out there and a lot of it is great. If the purpose of Christian music is to just give Christians music to listen to then that's great. You can have that so called "Jesus is my girlfriend" music. And that's great and there's a place for that in the world. But from the standpoint of evangelical Christianity - from the standpoint of fulfilling the Commission - the Bible doesn't say "go out into all of the world and make converts or fans". It says, "go out in all the world and make disciples. To fulfill that mission we have done something very strange. We're using, as the great theologian Mary Poppins said, "a spoon full of sugar" to "help the medicine go down". Our medicine is the healing power of the Lord and the spoonful of sugar is humor and other people's music.
The interesting outcome is that you will find an ApologetiX CD in a locker next to a Slipknot CD, next to an Eminem CD because that's the mission field. You won't find it, most likely, next to a Skillet CD or a Pillar CD, or any other of our great Christian band friends who are great folks that do a great job. That music isn't geared toward reaching the unexposed. What ApologetiX tries to do is carefully and clearly explain what the Gospel is … The Roman Road to Salvation - the Gospel of Salvation.
