The group’s Myspace page introduces them by saying:

“1998: A bunch of Jesus-loving, jalopy-gospel way-backers get together and do creative things: Shrieking, speaking, flailing, failing, storytelling, fear-quelling. In the process, songs and stories are smithed and written, friendships and families are stretched and shaken, stirred and strengthened. Genre-gender-class-past-death-defiers and town-crying demystifiers of mystery history lead these pacifistic, full-frontally ballistic missives. Best of all, on frequent occasions, we see entombed voices raisin’ and we peek through the haze. ***NOW: More than one dog year together, these doors’re gonna swing wiiiiide.”

The group’s unique approach to worship is borne from a unique community, The Bridge, in Portland, OR. Several years and three albums worth of material later, the lamp of creativity is still burning brightly for worship. I recently spoke with Todd and Angie Fadel from the group to find out more about them, their creative process, ideas of worship and views on “Christian” music.

• What is your typical songwriting process?

We’ve done this thing in practice for a while now. Angie and I have been writing songs together for about 10 years. One of the things I felt was really helpful going into songwriting was implementing a “no criticism” zone. We give ourselves totally leeway about anything; any words, any melodies, whatever. We record it all and then, after that time has passed, we go back and see what works, but not mid-way through the process, which I think a lot of musicians do that. Many artists get stuck because anytime something comes out, they’re critical, either of their fellow band members or whatever and they’ve got a real specific idea of how they want it to sound and impose that on everyone but that ends up being a real creativity killer. We’re really mindful of that in our process. We are not going to attack each other’s ideas, we just let them free-flow and then pick the ones that are our favorites, which there could be more than a few and we often find more than a single song.

• How did the group come about? It’s tied to the Bridge pretty closely, is that right?

That’s pretty much it. Prior to the Bridge starting, there was a really close-knit group of musicians and artists, involved in things like the TOM Festival. The result was that there was just a group of people that started hanging out together. The Bridge started after that initial group had been hanging out together for about four years. A bunch of people came down from Washington state with the hopes of starting a church for this group of people.

But what was original about the way they did it was, rather than coming down and saying “This is what we think needs to happen in a church,” they fell in love with the culture that was already existed and kind of asked “can we be you” and came into our culture rather than the other way around and then just saw how those things would play out in terms of authentic expression of worship and faith. As a result, we were really allowed to flourish in this new community and we were all grateful. But it did take some time. I think a lot of us were very skeptical at first about these people who kept saying “No one can take your future from you. You are valuable and we love you.” We had all, to some degree, been burned by older adults saying “This all sounds fine, but you’ve got to get right with God” and not giving us any direction other than saying things like “You’ve really just to tap into the Lord!” Then these other people came and just said “You show us what you’ve learned.” That sort of leadership drew a huge creative spirit out of all us in a community way.

After a good year of this community had gone by, we’d written a ton of songs and wanted to record. We rarely would do any songs that were written by people outside of our community. So we wanted to capture that in an album but didn’t know if we should call it “The Bridge.” As we were talking about it, one of the co-pastors, Ken, was praying for the music team and he prayed that God would be with these “Agents of Future,” and we just thought, “Well, that’s it,” that’s the name for the group. It wasn’t describing the music, it was describing us creative people. Agents of Future is just sort of the name for what we call ourselves as a collective. At least that’s the idea! Any time there’s any songs we want to record that come out of our community, we call it that.

• So the music we hear on the albums, is that used for corporate worship?

Yes, that’s all it is. We’ve only done three or four actual concerts out in the community with the music, just because …… Angie and I ran an all ages venue in Portland for about five years doing about 1,200 shows. It was a real crazy time in music where we had a chance to develop relationships with some really amazing artists like Death Cab for Cutie, Bright Eyes, Le Tigre, The Thermals, all the Portland bands you might have heard of, they came through the club. They’d just be starting out or we’d put them on a bill to help them get going. It developed in us a real respect that, in a very similar way as to when the people from Everett came down without imposing themselves on us, it made us realize that the context doesn’t necessarily fit. If I was going to open for Death Cab for Cutie, the context doesn’t fit because our point is a real participatory expression and that doesn’t work well in those performance settings.

• That brings up an interesting concept, because content-wise, you’re a worship band, but presentation-wise, you’re not what most people associate with worship and even “Christian” music.

From my standpoint, since I’ve been a part of, or at least observing the Christian music thing, I just feel like it’s really been diluted. It’s diluted the strength of people’s personalities and people’s spirit. But any type of marketing runs the risk of diluting what the people’s hearts are really about. It’s almost worse when you bring in people’s faith because then you’re taking something mystical and trying to make it quantifiable. You end up with people counting how many times Jesus is mentioned, or Bible verses, but that’s a joke to everybody. That’s a joke to artists whose audience is primarily Christian and it’s a joke to anyone else. So of course creativity does not compute when you’re talking about Christian contemporary music because it’s been divorced from it. Anybody whose creative sees that dilution happen when marketing is involved.

So the best way we can share our stuff is real directly. If people want to learn methods or us to encourage writers who are already there, or maybe even writers who don’t even know that they’re writers, artists and dancers, in their own communities, that’s what we feel called to do. We’d love to make a living at what we feel God has given us a gift for.

• You mentioned the dilution that happens when marketing becomes involved, particularly in a “Christian” music sense. But if you look over the course of history, it has often been the Church at the forefront of creativity. What happened?

Any time someone knows that they can make a living off of it, you run the risk of that. There are few people who can really pull it off, like Radiohead or the Beatles and really bring their fans along on this artistic journey. There are very few people like that, that people say “wherever they go, we’re going to follow them.”

And honestly, when the smallest run of LPs you can do is 1,000, you’ve got to figure out some way to sell it. So you’ve got to hear in a nutshell, “Why should I buy your record instead of this person’s record?” You have to get rid of your product, so it’s inherent. I was in a band on an alternative Christian label in the ‘90’s and it was hilarious trying to define for them what we were doing. I had been a big fan of Steve Malkmus’ lyrics in the band Pavement. So the lyrically approach, I got a lot of inspiration from people like him and Frank Black and most Christian labels don’t have a grid for that style, so you’re just left with words like “raw” and “passionate.” But that robs it of its organic process to become similarity driven and all inclusive.

Our goal is to show that you don’t lose your personality, you gain it. If anything, everyone finds their place in our community. There’s not a sense of one person taking over. Everybody is equally a part of it. That’s no easy task but we have really made that a priority in our community, to make sure that every single person gets a chance.

Recently, we had someone come to one of our services who lived in our neighborhood. She had a beautiful singing voice and we asked her to sing with us. We wanted to support that. She was in her mid 60’s or 70’s and just passed away. That was a reminder of how important it is to include and support people and use their talents and love them for who they are. Her daughter said that when we expressed excitement about her being involved in music, that she felt like God had answered her prayers. For me, it’s not about the music or the art, if I’m giving someone a sense that God has answered their prayers because they feel part of a community, that’s worth more than making a living at this.

• For someone who has yet to witness what you do, how would you try to describe it?

Anthems. Shouted anthems. Spirituals. Punk spirituals. Garage Gospel. Passion before precision. Female-fronted. I play the piano like Jerry Lee Lewis, so female-fronted, boogie woogie garage gospel? Garage spirituals.

• How did your collaboration with Glen Galloway of Soul-Junk come about?

That was really cool. Before the Bridge, one of the people that was part of the original group introduced us to Glen’s music and we got in touch with him. We just couldn’t believe there was this guy just singing Bible verses. Later, they came through town and we got to meet them all and they all came to church with us to our little home gathering and it was great. I was writing most of the music collaboratively even back then and we felt like we had a connection with Glen.

Then about a year ago, I decided to put together this thing called the WHIRRSHIP , a creative collaboration, sort of a workshop, but moreso just an experiment to see how many different things we could do all at the same time collaboratively. So we asked Glen to be a part of that and he came to the house and I played piano with him during his show. Then when he was doing his next album, he asked me to be a part of that which was a huge opportunity. I love Daniel Smith and we got to record in his studio. It was a great three days, I got to hang out with Lenny and Marian Smith.

• What’s next for you?

We spent a lot of time over the past few years getting to know some people from Enter the Worship Circle. Just on a whim we sent some stuff over to them. It was right after Village Thrift and I thought they might be ready for us. They weren’t. But they did tell us that out of all the stuff they got we were the only original sounding ones because everyone else just mimicked the Enter the Worship Circle style and we had been in our own little niche for so long, we couldn’t do anything but sound different. Our friend Tracy Howe who lives in Colorado and has worked with Ben and Robin Paisley, she’s doing this thing called The Restoration Project, touring with Brian McLaren on his Everything Must Change tour. She helped us be a part of the Fall Out Arts Festival. She’s got a bunch of different thing lined up for us this summer. We’ll probably be in Texas and then Colorado and that’s pretty much it. One of the things we really want to do is just sit down in our living room and record. We have like 36 songs that have yet to be recorded so we want to record a triple album in one night! The other thing I thought of was to record all of the songs and then release them one a week and just have people sign up to receive the songs over the course of a year, give ourselves a 36-week head start! As far as the music goes, we’re just trying to gather up these songs.

But one of the things we’re doing that would be cool to let people know about is if they e-mail or message us through Myspace, we’re going to be giving updates on a very regular basis of what we’re doing, whether it’s just putting up a new song or whatever. So we’re working on developing an e-mail list. We just want to maintain that personal connection.

We would love to work with any churches or small communities that are looking tap into everyone in their community and try to find ways to involve and include everyone and just make it feel like nothing they’ve ever felt before. Not run of the mill, this is what a worship service should look like type of thing. If they’re wanting help challenging the way of looking at things, they should let us know. We’d love to be part of that process.

We believe that every community has their own voice. It’s great if they want to use our songs, but our passion is to help them figure out what their songs are for their community.

It can tend to be for some people just “OK, everyone is doing Hillsong now, that’s what we should be doing too.” Hillsong is probably flattered (and they’re making money), that all these churches are using their songs, but how does that make them feel? Do they really think that it makes sense for a church 5,000 miles away to sing exactly what they’re singing and dress like they do?

One term I really want to introduce is “Rubinizing.” Rick Rubin is a famous producer who works with people like Neil Diamond and Johnny Cash, people that we’ve almost forgotten about and he’s helped us look at them in a different light by putting their music into a completely new context. I really believe that if we work hard at including people that have been forgotten by helping to put them in a new context, “Rubinizing” them, I think we could truly see some beautiful things happening in our own communities, realizing that maybe that 87-year old Grandmother who sews in the back of the church, maybe she’s got stories to tell, maybe she’s got artwork she’s not showing because she doesn’t think it’s important to anyone. I feel like that’s the kind of church that would attract the entire world. Not the kind of church we have right now because when an artist goes into most churches, they just don’t feel like they can justify doing what they’re doing.

• So if a church wants to take you up on this offer, how would you help them find “their voice?”

Trying everything you haven’t tried before. A songwriting game for example. If you put anything in the context of a game, it tricks our minds into feeling that things are approachable and manageable. What we do, we start covertly helping people develop this ability to not be critical of each other’s expression. We involve every age group and background.

I see it as a community being like a 50-legged race. You know the 3-legged race where you’re tied together? Everyone has one leg tied together. At the beginning, it’s the most awkward, gross feeling and you don’t know what to do but then after a while, you just count, 1-2, 1-2 and soon, you have this community, 50 people strong walking, slowly but surely to a goal. That’s possible with any community.

There’s also obviously a context because we’re not going to go and just impost a “Contemporary Service” because I don’t think that’s necessary. People just try to throw this “Contemporary Service” band-aid on stuff and it’s just silly. How do we include everyone? We find out what their voices are, not only with the young but the old people.

So we’ll play games and help people develop tools of being non-critical, helping people to look at one another in a loving, inclusive way, laying their aesthetics and preferences aside in hopes of making a beautiful collage. In fact, one of my future ideas is a media player that would show all of the different media at once. Like the YouTube players that have eight different mini-screens or something but what if the entire player was talking about Grace or something. So you have your musicians, your artists, your storytellers, your dancers, your comics, whatever expression is represented in your community and that player contains every single one of those things. But then each community has their own player and it’s all on one page. How beautiful would that be?! How beautiful is the church of the world! Realizing that these are all different people and expressions, this collage of beauty, that’s what Jesus is wanting us to do for one another. I know that’s a long-term goal, but that’s the type of thing I see happening; people looking at their lives and seeing everything, the imperfections and everything and making it into this way to appreciate what God has given them in their community.

• Visit the Bridge’s website
• Visit the Agents of Future’s Myspace page
• Read an interview with Todd at The Blah Blah

Featured artist: Bill Mallonee of the Vigilantes of love. Music from Interstates, Romantica, The Foxglove Hunt and more. Welcome to Episode 03!

Episode 03 features interview segments from an October 2007 Colossians Three Sixteen interview with Bill Mallonee, formerly of the Vigilantes of Love (read the entire interview here). Bill reflects on why he believes Roman Catholic artists have had an easier time expressing themselves in art and what he believes the “secret code” of Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) to be. Episode 03 also features some great music. Check it out:

The Habañero Hour Episode 03 setlist:

1. I’m No Longer Subject by Destroy Nate Allen
2. Awake in Me Oh Morning Sun by The Cold Comfort Band
3. Uniforms Forever by Interstates
4. Black Sea by The Contact
5. Resplendent by The Vigilantes of Love
6. Drink The Night Away by Romantica
7. Forgive and Forget by Wavorly
8. The Deepest Blue by Geology
9. You Give It All Your Heart by Bill Mallonee
10. Blue by The Julies
11. Don’t I Know the Way by The Foxglove Hunt
12. The Things We Can and Cannot Keep by Alli Rogers
13. Want to Die Easy When I Die by Leon Pinson

• Subscribe in iTunes
• Download episode 03 as an mp3 file to your computer
• Visit our website to find out more about the artists and their music.

Beginning a career as a professional musician at age 19, Jamie Barnes plays what has come to be called “bedroom pop.” In other words, he records literate, lush songs in his bedroom, often alone, playing all of the instruments. His confessional style and way with words incorporates biblical and historical allusions track his journey and invite the listener along. Barnes is an active member and worship leader at Soujourn Community Church in Louisville, KY. I recently spoke with Barnes about his music, his faith and Girl Scouts taking care of public roads and everything in between. Enjoy:

• Were you raised in a musical home?

Yes, definitely. My father was actually a professional drummer when he was younger. He played in a white soul band in the late ‘60’s. They were called Tom Dooley and the Love Slides. They actually had a pretty good following, opening for bands like The Doors and Sam and Dave and the Beach Boys. He had all sorts of neat stories to tell my brother and I. Of course some stories he only shared later in our lives. He always had music playing in the house. He had a pretty extensive record collection that we took to very early on. Music was always going on. I started out as a drummer like my dad, as we often do we try to be different from what our parents do. I think I picked up a guitar at age eleven and it was pretty much it from there.

• Were you raised in a Christian home?

Yes. It’s sort of an interesting story to some. I actually was raised in the Church of Christ, the very consertive Church of Christ. Meaning that the church that I was raised in all we had was acapella music. They sort of take a stance against instruments being used in worship, which is not something I adhere to any longer. Especially doing what I do at Sojourn. That was what I was a part of growing up. They still do that. They sing four part harmony. They feel that instruments aren’t a part of… it’s hard to explain. When I was knee part in it I could rattle off as much proof as I wanted to, now I don’t necessarily agree with their viewpoints, so I’ll just leave it at that.

• That seems like an interesting choice of worship styles for your dad.

Yeah, it was tough for me too. I think that when God give you a gift, especially when you want to be close to Him, you want to draw near to Him, you want to be able to use that gift in service. That was something I was totally discouraged from doing growing up. I became a professional musician at age nineteen or twenty when I was first signed to a label. My music was considered secular. You know I don’t even like to use the term secular, but that was just the way I looked at it then. Most people who were around me at the time I guess were okay with that. They would have rather seen me take another job. As long as it remained secular and no mention of God in my music, which is strange for me to look at now. What aspect of life does God not touch? At the time you know it was very difficult. Now I see differently. I’m very, very blessed to be using what gifts God has given me in service. To lead worship or write songs for the congregation or what have you.

• Can you briefly describe your salvation experience?

Sure. I came to know Christ through the church of Christ. I wasn’t baptized into the specific local church. I very much knew who Jesus was outside of that indoctrination. It wasn’t until years later that I felt like something was missing in my walk and that is when I decided to leave the Church of Christ. I as just recently married at the time. Both me and my brother left at the same time and took our families with us. It wasn’t until later when we found Sojurne where we’re currently members of now. I think I really understood what Grace is. The church that I grew up in is very much…. And I really have no problem saying this because it’s where I come from, its’s very much like a works based sort of church. It wasn’t until later that I really understood exactly how big the gift of Grace is and how dependent I am on God for my salvation and not my own self. That absolutely changes your viewpoint of God and you begin to appreciate your salvation even more, and you’re not weighed down by guilt which I was for years. It’s sort of like two different experiences. I was raised in a house that taught Jesus. I guess I had the basics down. It wasn’t until later that my faith became more concrete and genuine because before I had a huge lack of understanding of what it meant to fully rely on Jesus.

• Before you mentioned you don’t really like the term secular music. On the flip side of that, are you comfortable with the term Christian music?

It’s not something I use to describe my music. My music ends up on the folk rack, or indie rock or something like that. I’m fine with the term when it helps people categorize things. The reason I don’t like secular as I stated earlier, it’s tough for me as a Christian to be able to divorce your faith from anything you do, so why even use the term “secular”?

I guess Christian music, well, any sort of genre helps people sort through, what’s the fell of it and what’s the message behind it. But it’s one of those things where Christian music has developed a stigma amongst unbelievers over the years, just because the majority of the quality is just sort of questionable, in my mind and a lot of people’s minds. I think it’s taking a turn but if you notice, the good quality stuff that’s coming out, it’s not really labeled “Christian music,” it just happens to be Christians making music. They’re just being honest and they’re not divorcing their faith from their art but at the same time it’s not alienating any listeners that are unbelievers. I think that’s just absolutely necessary; not that you’re ashamed of wearing the name “Christian” at all, I don’t think any of these artists are, I’m certainly not. It allows you to circumvent a lot of the issues that come with labeling something “Christian music.” You’re just being in the world but not of the world.

I think it’s been effective. I know of several people that, after watching the Danielson Famile movie, them not being Christians, they were affected by it and it caused them to want to discover more about Jesus, even in just loving these artists. I think they’re definitely not the same people that would listen to Twila Paris or Carmen.

I don’t know, you can probably make an argument for both sides but that’s just how I see it. I think it’s great when Christians are just honest and make music from their hearts and it just so happens to be a light to people. But it’s just being who you are.

• Is this something that you’re conscious about when you write or not necessarily?

I don’t think so. What comes out of me just comes out of me. I don’t’ think it’s a matter of being conscience about it. There is a different approach that I take when I know that I’m writing something for, like the church that I attend, Sojourn Community Church here in Louisville. We put out our own CDs. We have a lot of really great songwriters and musicians. But I take a different approach when writing for the church than I do when writing for a Jamie Barnes album. It’s not that when I write a Jamie Barnes album I turn off all faith or anything like that; that would be a horrible mistake.

It’s harder for me to write worship songs, just because I’ve been doing the other for so long. But that’s just a personal thing. It should be easier for me but that’s just another issue that I’m overcoming.

It doesn’t seem though that when my records come out people miss the spiritual stuff, even in articles and reviews that are not printed in any sort of Christian-oriented magazine or radio station. They get it and make comments to it. But they seem to appreciate that it doesn’t seem to be written specifically for Christians.

• Have you received any negative feedback because of that?

Not that I’m aware of. I’ve never received any sort of difficult e-mail or any bad press because of that that I’m aware of. Whether or not some people choose to come out to shows because of that, I’m totally not sure. Personally I’ve never had any of that. In fact, I’ve had more of a good response from people that are not Christians. They seem to appreciate it. At least that’s what they tell me.

Even if I did, I’d just have to see what the people have to say. I definitely don’t want to beat people over the head with my faith just because I want to beat them over the head with it. But I also don’t want to be shamed out of sharing my faith through my music because it offends people; that’s just what Christ does.

• Earlier, you alluded to the fact that as your faith progressed, so did your understanding of music. Can you elaborate a bit as to how those two have worked together in your life?

I think that music has a deeper meaning now than it used to for me. When I thought was I was doing was “secular” music, it just didn’t have as much weight or meaning behind it. I’ve seen the fruits of sharing spiritual things, or just having my faith on my sleeve on some of the records that has caused me to realize that that’s what the Lord wants me to do. I think, years ago, I was struck by the parable of the talents.

After I read that and had not been using my music to any sort of advancement of the kingdom or trying to preach to people or even just admonish the Body, I felt like the guy who was burying his talent under the sand. Everything was self-motivated. I looked at music as a way of making my living and I was very intent on gaining as many fans and as much attention as I could as an artist. But it wasn’t for the right reasons. It was just because I wanted to live the dream of being a professional musician. The Lord has helped me take a turn with that over the last few years, through what He’s allowed me to do through service at Sojourn, the church where I’m at. I’m heavily involved with the worship team there. Before two years ago, I had never played music in the church. Just seeing what the music inside the church means to the body of believers and experiencing what a difference it is to play a show at a bar or club versus inside the church. It’ definitely changes your perspective. Music is not just entertainment, it’s more than that. It’s communication, it’s a gift. My view has certainly shifted and continues to do so.

• Sojourn is one of a growing number of churches heavily involved in the arts. When you look back on church history, that was the testimony of the church, great art often came from Christians. Yet, as we’ve progressed, this no longer seems to be the case, how did this come about?

That’s a huge question. I don’t know where it can be traced back to or who is to blame. I think it’s just that Christians are to blame due to heart issues. I think it’s a matter of honesty. I have a hard time saying that, obviously you can’t judge people’s hearts when they’re producing stuff. I think that people just picked up on the fact that, for a long time, Christian music just seemed to be like the machine of pop music. It was the same, only we mentioned Jesus. It just wasn’t produced well, it wasn’t written well or performed well.

I guess it comes to personal taste too. I’m sure a lot of people have been blessed through the ages of some art, liturgical art, Christian art or whatever you want to say, but it’s important to always do what we do well and with a lot of thought behind it and make sure we’re not just cranking things out.

It almost seemed like Christian music was cranked out just to combat pop music but that’s not a good reason to do it: “We’ve got to have something for our kids to listen to, so let’s just send this person to a studio and sing this song.” It almost seems to me like that’s what happened.

The Church took such a huge stance, particularly in the middle of the 20th century against pop culture and I think the art that came out of that was just a response to stick it to the Beatles or something: “Our kids burned all of those records so we’ve got to have something for them to listen to.” I don’t know if it traces back even further or not.

The one thing I always encourage people to do when they’re just getting involved in the arts at church is to remember that we’re made in the image of a Creator. That means a lot. We do these things to the glorification of God’s name. Look at what He’s created! If we can understand that, that we’re made in His image, then we too have a creative side and can say a lot about the character of God through what we craft. But we’d better make sure that our heart is in it and the reasons behind it are true and just. I think that when we’re honest enough to really put our hearts behind our craft, people will at be less offended by it. They might object to the message just because Jesus came to bring a sword but I don’t think that people will be able to put it down just because it’s cheesy and lite.

• It would seem that Sufjan Stevens is a perfect example of that, wouldn’t you say? Many reviews essentially say that they don’t like what he’s saying but they love the music.

Right, that is great. At least if they’re going to reject it, let it be the message. Get yourselves out of the way and let people look at the message. We’re definitely not going to get anywhere with a world of unbelievers when it’s just sort of half-way lobbed up there or it’s not a well-crafted thing for everyone to look at. Why would anyone want to be a part of anything that just seems like it was put together half-heartedly?

I always stress honesty when I talk to other writers but that’s tough. It’s tough because that requires a level of transparency. Even as Christians, not just as artists but as Christians, we have a hard time doing that. I think Sufjan Stevens has been great at that. I use his song “John Wayne Gacy” in seminars on songwriting. It’s an awesome song and he talks about Gacy and all the horrible things he did as a human being but the last line is something like “look underneath my floorboards and you’ll see that I’m just like him.” Man, what a confession! That’s a true understanding of sin and depravity. People can appreciate that. Instead of Sufjan pointing a judgmental finger, he points it back at himself. He has the wherewithal to be transparent with his listeners and that’s huge.

• You sometimes lead songwriting seminars. Do you have a typical creative process?

I’m pretty atypical on that. I don’t necessarily have a typical process. I teach building around one thought. Sometimes I teach based working around a title. I’ll give you an example: there’s a song on the last record called “Hell’s Adopted Mile.” I totally built that song around that title. I was driving down a road somewhere and you see those signs saying that this stretch of mile was adopted by the Jefferson County Girl Scouts or whoever and it looks nice and taken care of. So I saw one of those signs and then a few miles later it was apparent the Girl Scouts were no longer taking care of the road and I said that it looked like the Devil adopted that part of the road! There were wrecked cars and trash along the road. I thought that was a pretty good line and started working with it. So I built the song around that. You can train yourself to listen to your thoughts and to other people and listen to yourself ramble off stupid things like that, which I’m very accustomed to! You never know when a thought might be worthwhile that you can build all sorts of themes around. I don’t really have a set formula: it’s hard to schedule creativity. For me, it’s hard to come up with a solid process that you can teach people to do so I just teach a lot of things but I’m still learning too. I hit creative walls all the time and I just figure the Lord wants me to be doing something else until the moment strikes.

• Your music has been described as “simple, hooky, lo-fi, bedroom pop gems.” How would you describe your music?

I don’t know that I’d use any of those words. I don’t know, I guess that would be fine. I think the one thing I would agree with is the “simple” part. That’s not self-deprecating. I like the idea of things being simple. I try to be simplistic in my approach to it.

• And yet there’s a lush-ness to your music. How do you balance that?

I don’t know that I have an answer to that. I know that it takes a long time for me to write a song. I wouldn’t call myself prolific. I definitely err on the side that it takes me a very long time to craft a song. There’s a lot of thought and pain that goes into every one of them. Whether or not that’s for the better, I don’t know. So in that way, they’re not simplistic. But I think the musical presentation is simple, maybe that’s what I’m trying to say. If someone down the road publishes a Jamie Barnes fake book of guitar chords, which I doubt that anyone ever will, but anybody can play these songs on guitar. I dress them up simply but the words is what I focus on. I love language and I love words. That’s something that I really try to put a lot of effort into.

• Do you read much literature or poetry?

I don’t read a lot of poetry. I’m a real history buff and I read a lot of things about obscure portions of world history. I really like early American history, Civil War and around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. I’m a big documentary watcher. I love the History Channel. I love being able to look at history and how that applies to present day and learning from history. But also, it’s very easy for me to make poetic allusions from history. That’s a resource that’s always been very precious to me as a writer.

I’m not a big poetry guy. That’s not to say I don’t like poetry I just don’t read it a lot. I love novels. I’m a big fan of Cormac McCarthy whose been getting a lot of attention lately. Flannery O’Connor. I love writers that seem to have their own jargon. Like Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, the language is just so rich, it’s just a very violent book. The language that he uses to describe all the depravity and absolute ugliness is truly beautiful and that’s something I’ve always admired.

• Who are some of your musical influences?

Tom Waits is a big one. He’s just been a huge influence on me in the way that he thinks. He’s someone who can make ugly stories into something beautiful. I wish I had a voice like his. A lot of people say not to wish that upon yourself because it probably took years and years of cigarettes and who knows what else. When he sings about hard times or being some sort of rambling guy who sleeps in a graveyard and watches TV through the window of a furniture store, you believe it when it comes out of his mouth.

Another big one over the years is Leonard Cohen. I love the early Leonard Cohen songs; not the greatest musician but a heck of a lyric writer. Jim White is another one. His first record, Wrong Eyed Jesus, I got when I was pretty young, like 16 or 17 and it just blew me away. I still listen to that a lot.

There’s other stuff that might not seem so obvious in listening to my music like, I love ambient music and I love contemporary classical like Steve Reich. Last year there was a whole summer I listened to nothing but old reggae. Sometimes it’s stuff like that that might not be so familiar that’s really fun to listen to.

• Are there any current artists you listen to?

I recently just discovered Neko Case. I know everybody’s been hip on her for years but I totally missed that boat. I bought Fox Confessor Brings the Flood and, man, that’s just a great record! I love it. I’ve been listening to Dawn Landes lately. She’s a Louisville native whose taken up residence in New York. Her latest album is called Fireproof and it’s really good.

• What’s next?

That’s a good question! I’m finishing up producing an album for a guy named Luke Asher. This is his debut album and I’m excited about that. I’ve done production work before but I feel like his record might actually do something. He’s really talented and he’s already got a label behind him. We’re just finishing up the mixing and mastering for that.

• Is producing something you’d like to do more of?

Yes, I think so. It’s just a matter of having the time. It’s time-consuming. I don’t notice how much time goes into my own stuff because I produce myself but when it’s somebody else’s music you’re more aware of time.

• Visit Jamie Barnes’ official website
• Download “Paper Crane” from the EP of the same name
• Download “You Can’t Go Wrong” from the Paper Crane EP
• Download “Devil At Our Heels” from the Paper Crane EP
• Download “Patient Love” from the Paper Crane EP
• Download “Wings On the Line” from the Paper Crane EP

As the fusion band Olio came to a close in 1999, long-time friends Chris Hale and Pete Hicks began to play “South Asian devotional songs called bhajans,” for the British Asian community in London. In 2000, Chris and Pete recorded their first project as Aradhna, which means “adoration” in Hindi. Travis McAfee was added on bass and since then, Chris, Pete and Travis have all married and continued to mature their sound, resulting in their fourth album, Amrit Vani (”Immortal Word“). I recently spoke with Peter Hicks about the new album, Hinduism and living a life of worship.

• You were born in Delhi, is that right?

Yes, I was.

• Were you raised in a Christian home?

Yes, I was.

• How do you think that’s affected your outlook?

I actually didn’t grow up in Delhi. I was born in Delhi and after about a year my parents returned to the States, so I don’t have any memories of growing up in India. I’m the youngest of four kids. My two oldest siblings were born in Calcutta and so they all had their own memories of growing up in India but I was born and my parents left right afterwards.

Even growing up in the States, my family was so in love with India because of their time living there, they lived there for about six years and had visited many times for long periods. Because it was so deeply entrenched in my family, the love of India and the Indian culture, we had Indians coming through our home on a regular basis, I kind of feel like I did grow up in India, though it was all second-hand.

• At what point did you return to India?

I went back for the first time when I was 18 years old. I went up India to join up with Chris Hale, he had a rock band out in India named Olio. I had met him a couple of years before. I was in High School and just learning to play music and he had invited me to come out when I finished high school to join up with his band. You know, it felt like a bit of a tongue in cheek invitation, but a few years later I came out and took him up on it! The desire to go to India had been really strong in me and music had been the thing that really carried me through high school so I just jumped at the chance. I sent a letter and surprisingly enough, he said “Yeah, come on out.” So that was when I really go to know Chris, in that rock band in India and we traveled all over, North to South and all sorts of various music festivals around India.

• So you actually met Chris in the States?

Yes, I met him when I was 14 years old. Through some connections he knew my father and my father really wanted me to meet him because of his Indian connection as well as the music connection. So my dad orchestrated our meeting. I owe a lot to my father in many ways.

• How did you become involved in music?

It was almost on a whim. We were in a church and my brother and I had a youth leader who was always talking about forming a band and we got really excited about it. I think I picked up a guitar originally when I was about 11 years old and took two lessons but just wasn’t ready to put the work in at that point. But then with the high school ideas of having a rock band, we really got excited and we both picked up the guitar and I think within two weeks I was writing songs and simply fell in love with music. They were really bad songs, but that’s not the point. The point was just doing it.

• How would you describe Olio?

That band consisted of people from all over India and other areas of the world. There were people like me who came in for six months to a year to play with the group and they would come from South America, the States, Papua New Guniea, different places all around the world. And then there was the core of Olio which was Chris Hale and several others and they were the ones who were long-term and they opened the doors to others to help keep things fresh.

• How did that band come to an end?

Chris is ten years older than I am and grew up in Nepal and in north India at a boarding school for his high school years. He came to the States to go to Berkeley College of Music in Boston and then returned to India and started this band. I think, for him, since he had spent the majority of his life in south Asia, he wanted to investigate his Western, American roots. So even when I was out there in ’97, he was considering moving to the States, just to live here and fill in a lot of blank spaces in his own history.

Also, when I was out there, I lived with Chris in an apartment. We would go home after a day in the studio or practicing for these rock concerts and he would bring out his sitar and I would play the acoustic guitar and we would just play for hours and hours and I think there was a great connection between Chris and I musically and as friends at that point. We met up again a couple of years later and that was when Chris introduced me to bhajans, the type of music that we play now. Out of that came a type of a flip-flop, he was in India doing Western music and moved back to the States and began doing Indian music. That was a bit confused, but aren’t we all?

• Can you share a bit about your salvation experience?

I grew up in a pretty traditional Evangelical home. More than anything about my upbringing, I really appreciate that I saw in my parents’ lives that they lived lives devoted to Christ. It wasn’t just about church on Sunday, it wasn’t about rules, it wasn’t about having to look a certain way, or that you had to be like this in order to be a follower of Christ. It was truly about change and the heart and becoming more Christ-like. For all of my experience with church, I don’t know if I would be a follower of Christ right now if it wasn’t for my parents displaying that for me day in and day out in their commitment to follow Christ and also the humility in their lives.

I remember my family telling me that I had accepted Christ when I was 4 years old but I have no recollection of that at all. That made me a little bit nervous when I became around 10 or 11 years old. So, when I was 11, I had been thinking a lot about it and at that point I prayed with my mom and was baptized.

But after that, I lived like most teen-aged kids. I took it for granted and ran with it and did what I wanted to all through high school and got myself into some trouble here and there. It just wasn’t very real. But then when I was 17 years old, my mom called me one day while I was at school and told me that there was a guy at a church praying for people and she asked me if I wanted to come. I would have done anything to get out of school, so I went. So I went to the meeting and I was sitting there in this Pentecostal church while this man prayed for people. I just thought “OK, that’s cool.” But I was just trying to squeeze out as much time as I could because I knew that when it was over I had to go back to school. I just sat there and didn’t participate. The only thing that really kept me there and not wanting to walk out was that my mom was really into what was going on and I trusted her.

After a while she asked me if I wanted to go up and get prayed for. It was near the end of the meeting and sort of my last chance. So I went up and I was prayed for and it was kind of nice. And as teenager, someone who had made a choice at 11, I had made a choice to be a “Christian,” which is maybe a bit different than “follower of Christ,” this was one of those times when I thought I should really take it seriously. When that meeting ended, someone came up to me and asked me, “What is your faith about?” That put me in the corner! It just kind of came out of me, “Nothing.” They asked if I minded if they prayed for me again, so they all gathered around me, there were probably 5 or 6 people around me, the pastor of the church, this guy who was a kind of itinerate minister, and they all started praying around me and I just felt really uncomfortable. Someone suggested that I tell God what I wanted to tell Him and I just thought “Oh, OK,” but when I opened my mouth, I just started weeping. I felt this kind of excavation of my soul taking place and then I just felt arms around me. I’m giving you the long version, but from that point on, I knew; I understood that not only was God real but that God wanted me to know Him and allow Him to know me. That is really when I would say I began my journey of following Christ more than anything else. When I had that experience, I believed for the first time.

• How long was that before you went to India to join Olio?

About a year-and-a-half.

• And how long were you with Olio?

I was only out there for six months with the band. I came back to the States at the beginning of 1998. Chris remained in India and did another year of touring with Olio. It was the summer of 1999 that I reconnected with Chris in the States and then in England and that was the unrecognizable birth of Aradhna. We didn’t know what we were doing, we were just kind of moving forward. We actually say that the birth of Aradhna happened when we recorded our first album Deep Jale which wasn’t supposed to be an album at all. It was just for the South Asian church to use, for worship leaders to use but it turned into an album. That was the birth of Aradhna and that was in April of 2000.

• How did you go from being a rock band to playing Bhajans?

Bhajans are the type of song that will be sung in temples all over India, that’s the genre of music. They are written by Indians all over the world who want to express their devotion and their faith in Christ in a culturally Indian way. Instead of writing something like “Father I adore you,” they write these songs because they resonate at a deeper level with where they come from.

• How would you describe the progression of the band?

It’s so funny to analyze it. In 1999, Chris invited me to come to England. It was a gesture of friendship because we had become very good friends and there was musical compatibility between us. It wasn’t necessarily to play this type of music, it was more “Hey, if you’re not doing anything, why don’t you come to England and maybe we’ll go on to mainland Europe or whatever.” He was taking a break from Olio at that time.

I arrived in England and met him in South London and he said “Hey, tomorrow I’m playing at a South Asian fellowship, do you want to play the guitar and I’ll play the sitar?” So he introduced me to this music that way. It turned out that we played 6 or 7 different places in England, South Asian fellowships, little house concerts. It was very unofficial, it was very organic in the sense that we would just sit down and play. During that time, God just reached down and exploded into my heart through this music, this worship and drew me close to Him. It was such a different approach because at that time, my Hindi was horrible. Now it’s just bad. I spoke maybe 20 words at that time!

So when Chris would sing, I would play the guitar and I would have a time of meditation. I understood the word Yeshu, I understood the word Prebu which is “Lord,” Yeshu being Jesus. It was just like meditating on the name of Jesus. God reignited my soul for worship and my will to follow Him. Chris had a very similar experience in a different way. God really used this music in our lives to open closed channels. So it was a very selfish thing.

At that point we decided to return to India and then to England and do more of the same type of thing. But it was completely about our own journey of following Christ and worshiping so we wanted to invite as many people as wanted to join us. It wasn’t so much about a band, it was about us! That’s why we did Aradhna, because we ourselves were so impacted by it.

• How have you been received by English-speaking audiences?

I’m always incredibly confident; maybe too confident when we go into churches or universities where the audience is primarily Western, or white. Because of my own experience of being that person; God knew that I needed a completely different approach for Him to reach me in a new way and expand my image of God and my journey of following Him. The response has been very similar, we get so many people sending us e-mails saying “I don’t even know what hit me! I was at your concert or I was listening to your CD and it just happened. All of the sudden I was in the presence of God.” God often uses the unexpected avenue to reach us as in Christ coming down to earth. That was just not what anyone expected the Messiah to be like: humble, the One who was killed for us. I think it’s like that for us as Westerners, it just takes you off your guard and when we’re not analyzing and having a battle of minds with what’s happening, the Spirit of God can actually move.

• One of the things that comments many people have about your music is that it’s so “genuine” and that they don’t find that in some other “Christian” music. What are your thoughts about that?

That’s tricky! It is a bit of a loaded question and I think you have to make the distinction between the people who are doing that music, CCM maybe, that sometimes what’s said is not about their hearts. I think that what happens sometimes is that, and we are in danger of it ourselves everyday, but what starts off as a beautiful expression of devotion and love for God can easily be captured and dumbed down a business. We get the benefit of the doubt because it’s hitting people in a new place. Because our music is so foreign and yet somehow not so foreign, everyone confuses that and says “Oh, that sounds real, it sounds true, it sounds deep and meaningful.” But the truth is that it’s a struggle to keep the reality of worship alive in our hearts.

It’s our biggest prayer as we go into concerts or when we’re on the road or working on an album, “God we’ve played these songs so many times, thousands of times and Lord, please make it real, don’t let it be a show.” I catch myself on a regular basis thinking it’s just rote, I could do this in my sleep: “This is how I’m supposed to look, this is how I’m supposed to play,” and you go through the list and you check it but when I do that sort of thing and when I don’t ask for help, I leave those concerts just feeling empty and thinking I can’t do this anymore.

I think this is a big struggle for all Christian artists. I believe there are those people out there who just see the Christian market as wide open for their type of music and if they just say this, they don’t have to necessarily mean it but can make a lot of money. That exists everywhere, but I like to believe because I don’t want to slander people from CCM, I like to believe they’re on the same journey we are and yet they’re caught in a bigger machine. Most of the Christian music labels are not run by followers of Christ, they’re run by Sony and people who want money. So you get trapped and yet you still believe that you want to get this music out because you believe your own heart and you just pray “God, even in this system, may this touch somebody’s life for real and may it also touch my own life.” Sometimes that gets missed. Sometimes it gets squeezed out by production, or, I just don’t know, it’s hard because it’s such a big issue.

• Who would you say is your primary audience?

I would say that it’s a tossup between Indians, both Christians, people who would call themselves followers of Christ and Hindus and Western college-age to 40 or 45 maybe. We’ve got quite a large following in the West too which has been kind of amazing.

• What has driven you to release your albums independently?

That ties into the question before as well. We want to have the option to say “God, what do you want now” instead of saying “Oh, we’ve got three more albums to do on this label.” We also want to be in charge of where we go for tours. We do all of our own booking. We do basically everything ourselves. We just recently started bringing some people on because I’m overwhelmed. We want to keep our hands open around Aradhna. We want to have visions and dreams of how many places it can go. At the same time, we want to say “God, this has always been Yours” and in the same way this just sort of fell into our laps and He blessed us miraculously allowing us to do it for 10 years; if tomorrow it goes away, then OK. We don’t want to have to go through a label to follow what God wants us to do. And it’s worked. It might not have worked as well as if someone had been distributing the albums, it might have spread faster, but from the very beginning we’ve spent most of our time responding to people rather than promoting our own music so we haven’t really needed that.

• What are your visions for the group?

I can speak for myself at this point. Chris and I are talking about it a lot. We talk about it on tour, so it’s usually cut up by sound-checking and manning the CD table, but with the release of this last album Amrit Vani, I’m excited, to me, it’s a culmination of 10 years of hard work and it feels “right” to me in a way that maybe some of our other albums didn’t quite. I’ve done all the mixing on the albums that we’ve released and usually when I’ve finished I’ve just haven’t been able to listen to it again for at least six months or even a year. With this album, when I was done, I sent it to the mastering studio and they sent it back and I had to listen. As I listened, my heart was at peace. Even though I wasn’t enjoying myself, my heart was at peace and there’s an excitement in that. I understand how hard that is to get after being so close to a project.

• Why do you think it’s different with this album?

I think this one incorporates so many different elements. I think the choir adds so much of the “we’re together in this.” It’s not a bunch of musicians just playing but people singing along. There’s a communal aspect and that was the concept from the very beginning of this record while still trying to keep professional musicians involved, having the refined and the non-professional choir involved. People really gathered around us. We had so many people donate finances for the album. We had people pre-order so many copies. There was a sense of doing this as a team, a global team helping us move forward. There were enough people out there who believed in what we’re doing. We’re together in this. There’s a vitality in that and encouragement that we are on the right road.

This album was supposed to be done about a year earlier but things just fell apart and we couldn’t do it. So we just decided to wait on the album and a week after Chris and I had that conversation, we were in Portland and I talked to a guy in San Francisco who had contacted us for some concerts and as I was talking to him he started asking me all these questions about a new album. I told him we were trying to figure that out and a week later he sent a card with $1,000 in it! And that to us said “Go forward” and from that point what happened over the next six months was just unbelievable. I want to take that and run with it and make the community larger. I really feel that God is with us. He’s telling us to rest in this but in another sense He’s telling us to work at it.

So in terms of where we’re going with this, who knows! It could stay the same we’ll keep doing what we’ve been doing which is a lot of house concerts and university shows, Hindu temples and Christian churches, which I would be completely happy for. But then, I also hope that more people get into it. I just got an e-mail from Mac Powell of Third Day who said that they’re using one of our songs as their introduction. When you have stuff like that, who knows what God’s going to do with it.

• How has marriage changed your perspective on music as a career?

When Fiona and I were getting married three and a half years ago, Chris had just gotten married in India and we were getting married in England. I looked over my tax returns and I just thought there was no way we could make it work. Financially it just wasn’t feasible. The travel was no longer feasible. I really thought Aradhna was ending and there was a certain sadness with that. But we had had a few tours that we had already booked before Chris or I was engaged that we had to do and it was crazy: everything doubled! The CD sales doubled, everything doubled! I saw that as another encouragement.

Fiona’s a violinist, so it’s been a really interesting journey for us; to marry another musician and then have her now in the band. I was definitely not going to be the one to say “Hey Chris, how about having Fiona in the band,” I just felt really weird about that. Of course I hoped for it, but it was Chris who came along and suggested it. There’s a lot of momentum in our family, both with Fiona and I towards what Aradhna is doing. Our hearts are in it. It’s the same with Chris and Miranda as well.

Marriage has definitely changed how we go about it. Before, Chris and I would get an invitation to South Africa and just ask how long they wanted us to stay and we’d go and do three concerts a day for a month and, we were tired but it was OK, we didn’t have to check with anybody and now of course that has changed. It makes it a bit tricky and as we move closer and closer to our families expanding, there’s always s sense of “OK, well I guess this is it,” but at the same time, I’m just trusting and if it is, that’s OK, and if not, that’s great.

• You’re in a position to have more of a global perspective on following Christ. Does the South Asian approach differ from the Western approach?

The music that we play is called bhajans and is from a tradition called bhakti, which means “devotion.” I can’t speak for all of India or even a tiny little piece of India because it varies so much. bhakti is probably one of the most popular forms of following your god in India and Hinduism. You choose one god and devote yourself to that god. Krishna is a very popular god. Within this approach there are people who call themselves followers of Christ. He is their only God and they devote themselves to Him in the same we would say we devote ourselves to Christ and yet they want to remain within their culture.

What a meeting of Yeshu bhaktas, or Christ Followers might look like is that if it were summer in India, they would sit on a roof just to try and get a bit of shade and be a bit cooler. They would put out mats and sit on the ground. There would be someone with a dholak which is a kind of village drum and they would be a call and response type of song. The focus would be on devotion. It’s a very Pentecostal feeling with a lot of intimacy. A lot of focus on being known and knowing. Another key thing is the communal aspect; there’s always lots of food and caring for their community.

It’s probably good to explain that when I talk about Hinduism, I’m talking about Hinduism as a civilization rather than as a religion. It’s really difficult to nail it down as a religion as we think about religion in the West because there are so many different belief structures that are piled into Hinduism. A key point is community. It’s almost like Hinduism exists so that people can be held together. So what you believe really doesn’t matter so much as long as you love your parents and respect them. So that all ties into community being a major focal point.

• Since the focus is not on the content of belief, do you find that to be an obstacle to presenting the exclusive claims of Jesus to Hindus?

We often hear “This is really great, but do you sing any songs to Ram or to Krishna?” Then we get to say that “Christ is our teacher, He has touched our lives, how could we sing to another?” That is a very understood thing in that context. What we’ve seen over the last 10 years is that Christ becomes one of many. He goes from being the god of America or Hollywood to people praying to Jesus and then to Ganesh or one of the other Hindu gods. For many it’s a journey of the Holy Spirit making Himself known. The nature of Christ and His teachings takes time to move in people’s hearts and even in mine. I’m constantly tearing down my idols and then setting them back up! So whenever I talk to people in the West, I always want to talk about my own “Hinduism,” my own journey of really taking Christ for who He is and not for who I want Him to be; letting Him be out of that box and He’s dangerous when He’s out of the box!

So is it an obstacle? It might almost be less of an obstacle. There are of course fundamentalists who hate you. It’s not just that they hate Christianity, they hate Jesus. But on the whole, most say “Hey, what’s one more?” There’s an automatic open door whereas in the West, there’s so many people who are Post-Christian. They’re so angry and hurt that they just can’t even listen to you. They won’t even give it a chance and they say there’s no God. I find that to be more of an obstacle.

• What type of music do you listen to?

I’m a huge fan of modern folk music. Paul Simon, Bruce Cockburn, M. Ward and Bruce Springsteen’s acoustic stuff. I listen to a lot of Indian classical music as well but I love lyrics. It’s kind of funny that I love words as much as I do and I’m in a group that sings in Hindi. It’s almost like the other side of my journey of worship. When a songwriter can just strip down a situation to show the need of God or the glory of God, my heart just explodes. I get a little obsessive. I get into an author and I just read all their books. It’s the same with music, I’ll just wear a CD out and I go around and tell everyone “You’ve got to listen to this song!” Fiona just kind of humors me in that and will say “Good for you, Pete, good for you.”

• Who are some of your favorite authors?

I’m a big fan of the classics like Dostoyevsky. I don’t think there’s anything about 19th century Russian culture that really attracts me but Tolstoy also. They can take a life and really make me identify with it. About six months ago I was introduced to Mark Helprin. I just finished another of his novels a couple of days ago and I’ve just taken to getting out a pen and paper and just writing notes as I read. I find that a lot of my thoughts about journeying with Christ come from novels. I was just reading about a guy who was in the first World War and how his love gets assailed. Everyone around him was bitter and they want him to become bitter and yet he managed to still believe in God, to love God and it’s just beautiful writing. C.S. Lewis is an absolute hero to me and also to Fiona.

• For the person reading who has not heard your music, what would you say to them?

Give it a chance! I’d want them to know that this is one of many incredible expressions of hope and love and devotion to Christ. If they’ve never been introduced to anything like this before, this is a good starting place to be reintroduced to the vastness of God.

• Visit Aradhna’s official website
• Read the history of the group
• Purchase music directly from the band
• Purchase Aradhna’s music from Amazon
• Purchase Aradhna’s music from eMusic
• Purchase Aradhna from

One of the best resources that I’ve seen in a while is the Modern Parables DVD study series. Compass Cinema has recast six of Jesus’ Kingdom parables in modern settings to great effect. Each session is accompanied by a teaching video, study guide and teachers’ supplemental material. Thomas Purifoy is the creator and director of the series. I recently had the chance to ask Purifoy a few questions.

• Were you raised in a Christian home?

Both my parents were evangelical believers and blessed me with a wonderful Christian upbringing.

• Were you raised in an artistic home?

Not particularly, although my parents encouraged both my sister and I to pursue the arts.

• How did you first become interested in film?

My mother has always enjoyed movies, so she was the one who first sparked my interest in film. As I grew up, we would sit for hours watching American Movie Classics.

• Can you share a bit about your “salvation experience?”

My parents led me to faith at an early age, helping me to understand my sin and my need for a savior. I accepted Christ when I was 8 years old.

• How has your faith impacted your interest in film?

My faith has had a strong influence on the way I view film, primarily because I believe God created us to work, and that our individual jobs have a unique bearing on the way He is redeeming the world. I believe that work is one of the means through which God is advancing His Kindgom. In light of that, the way that I approach film will have either a positive or negative impact on the Kingdom. Just because I’m a Christian doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m pursuing my vocation well, or making the right decisions in it. It’s my responsibility to be self-consciously aware of the way this particular kind of work has an impact on the Kingdom, and how I need to think about the implications of what I do with film.

• Had you studied the parables much prior to tackling this project?

I had studied them some in regard to other areas of theology, but not in depth.

• What made you want to reset the Parables?

I have always been fascinated with Jesus’ parables, not only as stories, but also because Jesus chose this particular means of teaching as a vehicle for a third of His recorded ministry. That’s really amazing to me. I grew up learning the Bible through more rationalistic methods of theology, yet found myself always enjoying stories in my personal life. When I began to understand that these stories were explorations into theology, or a type of narrative theology that was intimately related to all the rest of His teaching, then I began to grasp the intrinsic power within them.

On a more practical level, however, the parables are perhaps the most filmable parts of the Bible. Films often work best with short stories, and parables have a solid narrative structure already developed. All that is required is to flesh it out in an accurate way. In other words, Jesus did all the hard work and I’m simply doing a little window dressing.

Finally, I’m a learner at heart, and there have always been a lot of the parables that I didn’t understand. For instance, The Shrewd Manager has been one of those parables that always made me scratch my head. If Jesus gave us these parables for a reason, then they should fit neatly in with the rest of His teaching. Instead, they at times seemed to be the victims of bad 20th-century literary criticism that let the reader interpret the parables however he or she chose, with little regard for the larger context of what Jesus was doing. By spending time on the parables, I wanted to understand them better myself, then begin to correct a lot of general misapprehension.

• How did you choose the initial parables? How many parables do you hope to film?

I choose the different parables in this first volume for a variety of reasons. First, I tried to choose parables that covered a broad range of theological areas without overlap, such as prayer, loving one’s neighbor, dealing with money, etc. Jesus often taught different parables on the same topics, so I tried to make sure each parable covered a unique area of Jesus’ teaching ministry.

Second, I tried to choose a few parables that were well known, such as the good Samaritan and prodigal son.

Third, I tried to choose some parables that were more difficult to understand, perhaps weren’t as obvious on the surface as to what they meant, and had therefore either been subject to consistent mis-interpretation or simple neglect. I think the shrewd manager, the persistent widow, and the treasure hidden in a field all applied here.

Finally, I felt I needed to include the parable of the sower because it’s the first and in some ways the meta-parable of all the parables. It introduces all the other parables and is the one all three synoptists start out with to introduce that part of Jesus’ ministry. I struggled with it the most, actually. The final result on film, which was a pure act of God’s providence, was not what I originally intended.

As far as your question as to how many, I think there might be 24 of the parables that would translate well to film. The key is having enough narrative structure to translate accurately without wandering off on a tangent.

• Can you share a bit about the “Cinematic Theology” section?

The term “cinematic theology” came from Ian Kern, my Assistant Producer on the project. The idea behind it, that somehow you can do theology with cinema, was with me from very first film. I am a great admirer of the work of Jonathan Edwards. In one of his posthumous works entitled The Image of Divine Things, he explores the world of natural typology, that is, the way God embedded certain theological concepts in nature. I have been strongly influenced in my view of creation by both his thinking as well as the theological genius of Geerhardos Vos and his contributions to Biblical theology. Vos does an excellent job showing how God structured history and even particular people to encapsulate the redemptive work with which He was changing the world. He shows the marriage between form and content in redemptive history, and I think that recognizing that this is the way creation works is vital to any narrative artist. The fact is, many non-Christians implicitly understand this better than many Christians, and the superiority of their art demonstrates it. I believe that theology is embedded within good art, and hence cinema can certainly be embedded with theology.

As far as the Cinematic Theology section in Modern Parables, the idea behind it is to begin to explore how the medium of film is intrinsically related to the way God has created the world and is redeeming the world. Doug Powell, an apologetics expert and friend, told me that “film is the most Christian of artistic mediums” and I think he may be right. It has the ability to reflect creation in a way that few other mediums do. Moreover, it gives the filmmaker the ability to create new worlds in a way that is respectfully God-like. Being a creator with a small “c” is exactly what God wanted all of us to do, and I think if we see how theology and cinema relate, we are better equipped both to engage that all-pervasive medium as well as to reflect on what God is doing in our own lives.

• Why did you choose a different cinematic style for each parable? How did you pair the style to the parable?

The simple answer is that I thought it would be a fun way to learn more about each of these filmmakers that I like. These six film are my first filmmaking efforts; they’re really student work. I have not been to film school, so in a way, these short subjects are school for me. As far as pairing the parable to a style, I felt that some stories just fit better than others. For instance, The Shrewd Manager is inherently a comical story, but with a great deal of irony. Woody Allen immediately came to mind. Prodigal Sons, however, is a more complex and interrelated story, and the character of the older son has often been misunderstood. Welles’ ability to look at old things in a new light, as well as his use of non-linear form, seemed to be a good fit. The fact is, you could probably have filmed all these parables in a variety of ways – there is no one right way – but this just seemed right to me. Someone else would have done it differently, and the choice would have been no better or worse. Rather, it’s the execution that matters.

• What separates this study from other group studies?

The unique aspect of this study is that it seeks to bring narrative films, pastoral exposition, and in-depth Bible teaching all together in one place. You can find all those things in other places, but not together. Furthermore, it’s an experiment that I wanted to try to compress complex Biblical teaching into a small, efficient place. It is hard being a modern teacher and trying to communicate a large amount of information to a large group of people quickly without confusing them. A hundred years ago, this method of teaching would have been completely ineffective. But today, our minds are very, very sophisticated when it comes to visual media – much more so than we realize. If you understand how visual media works, as well as how your learner engages it, then you have a possibility of capitalizing on its strengths to overcome other weaknesses. It’s certainly not good for everything (which is often the mistake people make with film, tv, or video – the medium has many limitations that are ignored).

My goal with this study was to try to take the best of all these worlds and uniquely combine them to create a new learning experience that would take people very deep, very quickly, without them ever realizing it.

• Anything else?

In closing, I’d say that one of my favorite things about creating the study was just seeing how brilliant Jesus was in teaching these parables, as well as how expansive creation is in terms of its artistic potential. There is great excitement about the way the Kingdom of God is advancing, and it is a great privilege simply to be a very small part of it, while at the same time using a medium that is peculiarly new in the history of the world.

• Visit the Modern Parables official website

Daniel Renstrom leads music for the college ministry at Providence Baptist Church in Raleigh, North Carolina. Hr recently sent me a copy of his new album Produced by Nathan Nockels, Adore and Tremble combines traditional hymns by Isaac Watts, John Newton with original material for a modern worship experience combining elements from rock and folk, highly reminiscent of many of the Passion releases..

I recently caught up with Daniel to talk about his new album, his music and its influences. Here’s what he had to say:

• When/how did you first begin writing your own songs?

I’m probably not like most songwriters, in that i didn’t really play guitar that much or write music until later in life….after college. Soon after college, i started helping lead musical worship for the college ministry at my church, Providence Baptist, in Raleigh, North Carolina. That’s about the time I started having a huge desire to write music. As we would learn and process things, I would find myself wanting to put these ideas into music…. that all started about five years ago. The songs off of this CD are almost all songs that we use for corporate worship in the Providence college ministry or ones that reflect what we have been learning during teaching times.

• For those who haven’t had a chance to hear your music yet, how would
  you describe it?

I write almost everything from the acoustic guitar, so I think the final shape of the songs probably reflect that… Acoustic guitar driven pop/rock, to give it a title. I had the huge privilege of working with a guy named Nathan Nockels on this CD. He’s a killer producer. Nominated for all kinds of awards. He definitely gave the whole project a much more polished sound.

• 
  What role does music play in your own life?

I think my above answer about writing music probably wasn’t completely honest about my involvement with music. I grew up in a very musical family. All of us kids took piano lessons, sang at church, etc. All of those things contributed to music being very influential in my life. It’s interesting too… i really feel like art/music has helped me express so many things inside my brain in the last few years. The title song from my cd, “adore and tremble”, is a good example of this.

“Adore and tremble” is a hymn written by Isaac Watts, that I redid. It’s like a poetic retelling of Psalm 2. Psalm 2 talks about how the wrath of God will be poured out on those who see God as inconsequential. But the beauty of the rest of the psalm is that God invites sinners to repent….to “kiss the Son” and turn away from sin, towards God in Christ. I wanted to communicate that message with the words and the music. So, in the part that talks about God’s wrath, I tried to make it very minorish sounding, with chord voicings that sounded like they were coming after you. But then I made the chorus, which is a hope-filled invitation for us to turn to God, open in to major voicings. So I guess the point is that art has allowed me the opportunity to talk about things that are pretty weighty and has given me multiple ways to express it.

• Who are some artists who have influenced you?

Man this is a hard one….so many. David Wilcox, Counting Crows, Keith Green, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin, U2 definitely, Radiohead, Makoto Fujimura, Dave Eggers….there are so many others. This list might lead you to think that I have always had my finger on great art…which is far from the truth. I too went through an 8th grade C&C music factory phase…just like you did. Haha.

• How does your faith influence your music?

The majority of the things I write are for corporate worship so faith has so, so much to do with what I write. It’s an interesting thing to try and express faith in music. I feel like we succeed when we put a lot of thought and effort into phrasing things well. I think that a lot of typical Christian phrasings get old after a while. So, it’s important for me to work hard at phrasing these songs about our faith. Honestly, that’s one of the reasons I love working with old hymns….their wordsmithing is incredible.

• What is your view of “Christian” music?

I see no division between the sacred and the secular-as Christians we are to glorify Christ in all that we do. Regardless of what arena artists are working within, we’re all called to same standard of excellence and holiness.

• Are there any artists you think are getting this mix of Christian faith and music right?

Well, I think Sufjan Stevens is doing an incredible job of fusing these two together. Songs like “For The Widows In Paradise For The Fatherless In Ypsilanti” do such a great job of this. It seems like Derek Webb is really conscious of this as well. Another person who is really great is Brooke Fraser. Her CD Albertine is amazing. One other guy that I’ve always looked up to with this sort of thing is Robbie Seay. He’s writing some really great music and he’s never cliché lyrically…which I’ve always liked.

• What’s next?

I hope to keep writing music. I’d like to have the chance to do a full-length version of this CD sometime soon. Baby #2 due in June. So yeah, that’s it…come visit us in Raleigh sometime.

• Visit Daniel Renstrom’s official website
• Visit Daniel Renstrom’s Myspace page

I’m both excited and a bit nervous. I’m very excited to continue with the Habañero Hour podcast but nervous because it still seems to be a bit of a “work in progress.” We thought we had some of the voice issues resolved, but we were wrong. (I think) We know what’s wrong but our solution didn’t seem to solve what it was supposed to solve, so we humbly ask that you would, as much as possible, ignore us and enjoy the rest of the content! It won’t change the world, but it might change the way you think about “Christian” music. The Habañero Hour is a music/interview podcast dedicated to exploring and challenging the idea of “Christian” music.

We’d like to once again ask you to help us promote the podcast. We would love to get the music out to as many people as possible. If you have a website or blog, please consider featuring us and sending people our way. You can find some images to use here. Any and all help is sincerely appreciated.

Here is the setlist for episode 02 of the Habañero Hour:

1. Swing Down, Sweet Chariot by Jon Shirley
2. The Surface by This Beautiful Republic
3. The Robots Among Us by Synthar
4. Forgiving Monarch by Foxhole
5. Bury The Hatchet by Joe Garner
6. Tomorrow On The Runway by The Innocence Mission
7. Thank You by Glen Phillips
8. Silence and Photographs by Ely Falls
9. Bhajo Re by Aradhna
10. I’m Free by Psalters
11. Blame by Five O’Clock People
12. Not Alone by Seabird

Please bear with us as we continue to work out the kinks and learn what exactly we’re doing. Until then, please focus on the music and not us!

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