Gungor

Why do you think your live shows resonate with people so well?

LISA: It’s an opportunity to take worship, more or less, outside of the walls of the church and kind of put it in a different environment, different atmosphere. It’s definitely been that, too. For these events, we played in theaters and clubs. It’s just cool to experience good music, good songwriting, just very redemptive stuff outside of where you’d normally experience it.

MICHAEL: For me, it’s been an interesting shift over the last couple years, even theologically. Growing up, I thought the message had to be more important than the actual music and the actual art, and I think this often happens in Christian music. We try to make the message so prevalent that we can forget that the music actually is the message, the art is the message, and that there is something really sacred. The Protestant church, in particular, has lost in our reformation; we’ve forgotten how important beauty is, how important aesthetics are. Art is sacred within itself because it’s beauty coming into the world, it’s part of the kingdom of God. So for this record and these events, we’ve just really taken art more seriously as sacred within itself, and it’s not just a means to deliver a message, but it’s actually within itself a message. So with these events and stuff, we’re not afraid to just let art be art for a while, and not sing for a while if we need to go into some instrumental transcendent moment. We have this video and visual things happening, and we use poetry. Just kind of letting people get caught up into something, hopefully, transcendent is the idea. We just take that side of it very seriously.

Can you talk about how you marry worship and justice? Where has that come from in your own life?

MICHAEL: Growing up, sometimes worship was just about Jesus and me, and singing songs to get my goosebumps raised and my heart beating fast, which I still love those intimate kind of moments with God like that. But I was just so focused on this little element of what it means to worship God, that we kind of forgot, why are we here in the first place? Why are we gathered? We’re a people that are gathered for a reason, and we’re supposed to be the hands and feet of Jesus in the world. We’re supposed to be kind of this incarnation of a new humanity in the world, a kind of people that do love each other, and do show love for the world and their neighbors, and do give thirsty people clean water, and clothe those that need it and take care of the widows and the orphans. Those are the kind of people that got us creating. So sitting there and singing “I Surrender All”, and then leaving and living the same just doesn’t make any sense.