GLORIA TALK

I'm on the road at the moment, in Michigan this afternoon, on the Gloria Christmas tour, a tour my label, Rocketown Records created and put on for the first time last year. Me, Ginny Owens, Michael Olson, Watermark, Taylor Sorensen, and a killer band and veteran crew are crisscrossing the country right now spreading Christmas cheer and what not.

One of the best parts of this tour, last year and this, however, happens not on stage but around lunch tables and in bus lounges. The conversation on this tour is historically weighty and entertaining. I've never been around so many people who wind up talking about such deep and sometimes uncomfortable and controversial matters - and always do so productively and with gentleness and large amounts of humor. It's mostly me, Brian, Taylor and the band getting in on the conversation but others sometimes join the circle for a few minutes too. There's no TV watching, no small talk. We know each other well and speak freely, confident that we can't offend or disappoint, knowing we're cared about and released then to be honest and stupid and knowing and confused openly. Here's just some of what's been discussed so far:

FREE MASONS: This is a topic from last year. Are they a cult? Where and when did they start and why? Is it true that they secretly run the country? George Rowe, not on the tour this year, last year actually brought a folder full of research he'd done on them over a two day tour break and "taught" us about this odd group. Seemed uninteresting to me at first but turned out to be geekly fascinating. And George is a great teacher.

REFORMED THEOLOGY: Every Christian tour has it's reformed folks and reformed folks like to convert other Christians to their brand of theology. Interesting I think. Our resident reformed evangelist is Jeff Pardo, band leader/keyboardist, and he's just fun to mess with. We don't disagree with him but we enjoy getting him to talk in circles like a dog chasing his tail. But who wouldn't get turned around with a bunch of mean spirited fast talking friends like us ganging up on them? The tail chasing begins when he says God is sovereign and therefore can do anything. Then we ask him if God can limit Himself in any way, say, limit his knowing or his controlling or his omnipresence, if He can contradict His own nature, disobey His own commands, make a rock so big He can't lift it etc etc.. No, the answer comes back. Well, we turn the screw, if God CAN'T then we can't say He CAN do everything can we? This is meaningless of course but we don't tell Jeff this, we just enjoy the stream of smoke spewing from his ears as his brain sputters and spins. That's a good time. (Seriously, Michael Olson and Brian AND Jeff have great insights on this brand of theology. And we're slated to talk about it's opposite, Open Theology, sometime soon.)

PACIFISM: We haven't hit it this year but last year it was a good little discussion. I'm obviously a pacifist - obvious if you've read much on my blog and message board over the last two years. But few folks in CCM circles are I've found. There were some pretty hard core Republicans last year on this tour who were arguing heavily for war. But they couldn't make a very strong biblical case for it. Practicality and self-preservation were their guiding principles. This year when politics/war came up those folks were more reserved, even saying that maybe we shouldn't have gone to war at all, but we all agreed that now that we have gone to war it's more costly to human lives to pull out now without cleaning up some of the mess. Of course we're musicians and have no idea how that mess gets cleaned up and who who should do it.

CANONIZATION: We have a Greek Orthodox guy out here, Brian and I grew up Southern Baptists, Jeff is Presbyterian, and there are some undeclared folks in the circle as well. And, being Gen-Xers and younger, none of us give a rat's what denomination we belong to as much as we do about what is lived out and emphasized in our respective churches. The one thing we all have in common is a concern or curiosity over canonization. We've talked at length about Constantine and how he jacked up the Christian faith by marrying it to the government and how under this new theocracy of his canonization took place. So we have questions about things like the Gospel of Thomas and the differences between the Orthodox Bible, Catholic Bible and the Bible most Protestants use. Brian and the Orthodox guy are the resident experts on this.

BOOMER CHURCH/CHURCH MARKETING: There's one guy out here who'll say anything, calls it like he sees it and he started this discussion by asking why Baby Boomers have to name sermons after TV shows or movies. He went off in fact about how false and fraudulent it all seems to him to market Jesus and church as if that's going to make him show up. He said it all so well that I wished I could have recorded it all and sent it out in a mass e-mail to every megachurch in the US. Unanimously, none of us wanted our churches to "chase culture" as one person dubbed the tactic. It was obvious that if other folks our age think and feel this strongly and this way the Willow Creek Association is in big trouble. But, I'd argue, if marketing doesn't matter to us, if we just want the truth and depth and challenge and community and service, then we'll show up in spite of the slick marketing. And I do. So maybe the Association isn't doomed after all.

THEOCRACY: The role of religion in culture and politics. Last night this came up because of the war discussion. I wondered out loud if Falwell-esque conservatives who've been very much for this war in Iraq in part because it would establish democracy and physical freedom (two things presumed to be inherently good and godly) regret their support of the war now that it is resulting in the establishment of an Islam based theocracy. In other words, to Christian conservatives in America, does the good of physical freedom and democracy outweigh the evil of establishing a government around a false God, Allah? Because that's precisely what we've done. Good discussion, no conclusion.

MUSIC: Have you heard...? I think___________ is a better guitar player than ___________blah blah blah

CHRISTIAN MUSIC: ALl but one person on this tour does not listen to Christian music on a regular basis and all but that one don't buy it either. We talked about why that is. Why be in something you don't support? Do we think we're better or different from that which we don't like? Are we arrogant? What is it we don't like exactly? Is it musical, lyrical or philosophical? Can it be changed? Should it be? How did it get this way? What was it's purpose when it began? Do we want to stay in this industry? Is there an alternative? Good honest talk that made us all feel better but really solved nothing in the end. It did get us asking better questions though.

LEGALIZATION OF DRUGS AND PROSTITUTION: I wasn't in on this one and can't really believe there was so much support for every side of this debate. I can't believe there's a debate. But there was and it yielded lots of inside jokes and revelations about each other. You'd never guess in a million years who was for legalizing prostitution. Wow. Things CCM magazine should never know...like they'd even ask.

More topics as they come. Feel free to pick one of these and discuss amongst yourselves.