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John Cooper Interview

The same people that are upset by this would have been upset by Jesus

By Kim Jones, About.com

Collide

Collide

Kim - I think that would really fall into what your definition of worship is. I have to agree with Rick Warren in "The Purpose Driven Life" that worship is more than music, it's a lifestyle of bringing pleasure to God.

John - Yeah, and that's kind of what I'm getting to. A lot of these things are very semantic oriented and a lot of these issues are very ... there's so many different philosophies on all of them. For instance, to me, a song like Under My Skin, I find to be a worshipful song. The same thing for evangelism, you get into evangelism and I guess the question is do you have to say "Jesus" for it to be evangelical or do you have to say the word "God"? I believe that in a lot of ways Collide is an evangelical record. Like the actual song Collide. I think it's very evangelical in terms of it spreads the truth. It plants a seed. I think that's almost one of the best things that you can do. True evangelism isn't from a guy onstage. True evangelism is from the body Christ. The body reaping the harvest in the people that they know. I think a true evangelist is somebody that inspires the body of Christ to do evangelism. So when you get into evangelism, I would say in no way that it would be fair to say that because the record doesn't say Jesus that it doesn't do that. While some people do. That's what I mean. Even in Christianity, there's very different ideas about what all these things mean. The same people that have problems with these issues would have had a major problem with Jesus. And I think that one of the biggest things comes down to that we just don't understand what the Bible is really all about. I think that we've been so confronted with the Christian sub-culture in America that we start to think that radical Christianity is something different than I think that the Bible thinks it is. The same people that are upset by this would have been upset by Jesus. "Why do you have to talk in parables? Why can't you just tell me what you're talking about?" It wasn't like Jesus was giving the gospel message. He was saying bits of truth. He was planting seeds in these parables that were a little bit difficult to understand. But the people that were searching, the people that would seek, would find them. But then He would speak differently to the disciples. Evangelism and discipleship are two different things, you know? So, coming down to that, I think that there are a lot of evangelical ideas on the record. But I do want to do it in a smart way. The major labels looked at Alien Youth and the first line of is "world wide Jesus domination" and there's a Jewish guy and he's like, what the heck is this record talking about? I found that same impression happens with tons of non-Christians. It's the same reason that non-Christians think Christian music sucks. Because it's Christian music, but they've not heard it. They think P.O.D., Blindside and Switchfoot are awesome because they don't know they're Christian bands at first. It's the same thing. It's like that whole shock factor of Jesus in your face - you get rid of that and you plant seeds and then hopefully the church is doing their job of evangelism and those who are seeking, I believe that God will water those seeds. So I guess in those terms, that's kind of what we see a little bit of our job being.

Kim - All of this is leading up to questions that I've had and that I've been asked about whether or not you guys are selling out and downplaying your faith in order to gain mainstream appeal. Before Savior came out with the video and the interviews, I was never asked that question about you guys. I've heard the song and seen the video and if I hadn't heard about the background of the song talking about child abuse, I wouldn't have gotten the connection from the song itself at all.b

Read the rest of the interview here....

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