John Cooper

And today, we're sitting down with somebody who has been in the Christian heavy metal band world for a long time.

John Cooper, the lead singer, the founder of Skillet.

You may have heard of the band.

23 million albums sold, billions of streams.

Yeah.

And so take us down that.

Help everybody understand John Cooper.

Yeah.

Check out my sub stack tomorrow.

I've got a podcast dropping on Friday and I'm speeding off right now to go actually meet up with John Cooper.

So I from Skillet.

Yes, the band Skillet.

I'm going to go spend a little time with John Cooper.

So I'm looking forward to that.

I haven't actually met him in person.

You know, I listened to it all of the time.

And it's the last album, fun little fact of trivia here, it's the last album that John Cooper's wife, Corey, who plays the guitar in the band, it's the last album she ever sang on.

Um, fun little fact too, um, after, after she had kids, um, some, some kind of, some kind of hormone imbalance, or I don't really know the whole story, but, but from what I'd heard in, in an interview and everything was that, um, it affected her ability to sing, um, And so that's why Jen Ledger now does the secondary vocals for Skillet.

And she has since the Awake album.

You've got the Nair movement, the new apostolic reformation movement that's born out of the charismatic non-denominational group that's like ruining people's lives.

John Cooper and Skillet just did like this whole three-hour thing about this, this new apostolic reformation, where essentially these pastors believe that they can ascend to the status of apostle And God, it cannot be argued that all blessings in our lives come from the Holy Spirit and God.

Like God blesses us to have, I have nothing, there's nothing that I've done.

God has allowed it to be so.

I'm here for America.

My amazing tall, dark, and handsome friend, John Cooper-

[laughs]

... from the band Skillet is joining us today on the show.

So like I said, this is something available to everybody and it's free.

And I think the reason that we connected to have this conversation besides all of the similarities and all the parallels and all of the mutual people and, you know, you talking to, you know, other guys that inspire me like John, that, you know, he and I are always liking each other's stuff on YouTube.

social media.

I like all of his things when they're the introspective things, you know.

I don't get involved in politics and outside issues, and I don't judge people for what they're into or not.

I let everybody, you know, John's a guy who's always trying to do good, and that's why I always love John, you know.

You know, his veganism, his, you know, me and him, I had conversations about, you know, Buddhism and Krishna and, you know, we toured with them so much.

But what I love about John the most is that me and him are disciplined junkies.

In this program, we are joined with Caleb.

Many of you have seen the episode where John Cooper went on to Childers Podcast and talked about some of the abusive stuff that took place in their local church.

We actually have one of the former elders of that church that kind of protested that whole situation and hopefully a little bit of extra information about what is going on there.

We're going to kind of sift through it, talk about the theology, talk about the church structure, talk about some of the abuses that are taking place in that local assembly and It's going to be an interesting program.

Well, man, tell us.

Go ahead, Roundtree.

I'm curious, because us following up with you was part of the Alisa Childers podcast, and a lot of people saw John Cooper from Skillet and his wife being interviewed.

Talk to us.

Jesus says Skillet is weak shit.

Um, no, but d- that would be great, but it says here, Skillet's John Cooper is still, quote, "Proud to be a Jesus freak."

I'm sure.

Yeah.

I'm not kidding about that.

It's the same everywhere, guys.

[laughs] Uh, it says, "John Cooper, the frontman and bassist for the Grammy-nominated Christian rock group Skillet, spoke about how the band's music, which has a uniquely Christian message, was able to reach a plethora of people outside of the faith-based realm.

He said, 'Yeah, I think when somebody says, "What would you say is the reason you've been able to do it?" I usually just say, especially if I, who I'm talking to is not necessarily a person of faith and they don't understand providence, I just say, "Look, I do, I do think we were very authentic.