Roving reporter Mike Rimmer went to Germany to experience on-the-road ministry with Memphis rockers SKILLET

Photo by Chrissy Nix

The Owen-Teck rock festival takes place near Stuttgart and this year it featured a selection of heavy duty rock acts, mainly from Germany itself. Although I am flying to the festival to see Skillet, I am actually a guest of The Electrics who have kidnapped me and transported me to Germany for what turns out to be an eventful and humorous weekend! Thus I am uniquely placed backstage to witness the life of a Christian band in the full festival experience.

It was Charlie Watts who famously remarked that 25 years of playing with the Rolling Stones consisted of five years playing and 20 years hanging around. This is an accurate picture of life on the road. The festival acts hang around at the hotel, hang around backstage and eventually get to have a short time on stage!

Travelling from the hotel to the festival for sound checks we glimpse German countryside through a thin layer of fog. But the gloom is only restricted to the weather. Arriving at the venue I find technicians efficiently working to prepare for the evening's concert where two thousand youngsters are going to mill around enjoying the music. It is after the afternoon sound checks at the huge sports hall which houses the festival that I finally get the chance to chat with Skillet, and singer/bassist John Cooper confesses that he is nervous. Sheltered, even by American Christian standards, this is his first trip abroad and he's not sure, as front man, whether he will be able to carry the burden of the band's ministry as he is due to preach during the band's set.

The festival stage has one of the best lighting rigs I've ever seen in a Christian gig and a succession of pretty heavy German rock acts step its not inconsiderable light followed by a new American heavy metal band called Stir. However it's only when the Celtic dancing party better known as The Electrics hit the stage that the crowd has a chance to shine brighter than the lights. Much dancing, frolicking and general enjoyment follows.

Backstage Skillet are aware that their first European gig will be a test of their mettle. Before the gig John Cooper explains that the band are "a pretty lively type of group, really intense as far as our live performance goes and you can expect a bit of worship." Any sign of nerves disappears as soon as the band explode into their opening number, the apt greeting of their new album 'Hey You! I Love Your Soul'. Centre stage John Cooper attacks his bass with frantic moments and to his left, guitarist Ken Steorts cranks up the energy and throws various rock guitar shapes as he plays. Drummer Trey is enveloped in stage smoke whilst Cooper's wife Korey adds a splash of glamorous rock chic as she leaps up and down at her keyboards. In seconds Skillet have captivated the German crowd.

Later in the show, Cooper shares the Gospel with the help of a German translator and declares, "God is the same in Germany as he is in the United States," to the approving applause of the crowd. It might not be deeply theological but it's true and, filling with confidence, Cooper continues to preach. Evangelism is important to Skillet. Earlier he says, "We're a really evangelistic band and you can expect at every concert I'll present the Gospel and give a response time for people who want to give their life to Jesus for the first time. Really the whole thing is about sharing the Gospel, who Jesus was, the way that He loves sinners and the great news that he's saying to you, 'Guess what, 1 don't hold your sins against you.' If there's really anything that I think my life is called to, I'd say that that's really it, it's just winning the lost for the Lord."

True to his word, the Skillet set concludes with an appeal for those who want to be saved and the hall quietens as John prays. The band lead the crowd in worship and side stage I get lost in worship, lifting my hands to God. And that could be the close of the concert but the crowd want more and the band return to pump out "Gasoline".

Back at the hotel, the various bands mingle and chat, asking for feedback, eating and drinking. With The Electrics weaving their mischievous sense of fun into everything, I have to confess that I didn't leave the after gig party until 6am. Rock'n'roll eh? In the process, I learned quite a bit about John Cooper's tailoring skills (he has been known to make his own trousers!) and Skillet shared the fun of a number of Sammy Homer stories from behind the scenes in American CCM none of which I could repeat on these pages without incurring costly legal bills!

One rumour that has been circulating about Skillet is about a certain major label chasing after the band to sign them up. So what's going on there? John Cooper is disarmingly honest, "To tell you the truth, I don't even know." He laughs, "They take so long to do what they want to do, I never really know. By the time I find out what they want to do, they don't want to do it anymore!" He laughs again at the absurdity! "When the 'Hey You' record came out, there were supposedly several different mainstream labels interested in signing us and we went through a really long process and played for several people and we did a showcase in New York, just a club with probably 12 different labels there and things like that. In the end, nobody wanted to do anything."

So what's a band to do? Cooper responds, "It's started to happen again! I kind of find it humorous because I feel like we were really trying so hard to make it happen last time and always saying if God isn't in this then it's fine with us, just close the doors. Now that nobody's tried to do anything, out of the blue a guy is really interested. I just think it's kind of humorous the way the Lord works. When something does happen, God says, 'Guess what, I'm in control of this'."

Like many American bands, Skillet spend a large amount of time on the road. Though this is their first trip to Europe, the band play fairly constantly around the USA. Ken explains, "It's been almost non-stop for two and a half years and we've really never gone out with another band and joined their tour but we've done our own shows and played to as many people as we could get. We've done any show we could get and played real hard and seen a lot of fruit from that. People want us to come back and we're a little bit different from most bands since we also do worship music and we preach."

Since their formation in Memphis and their eruption onto the wider Christian music scene, Skillet have stood out from the crowd of American alternative acts. Perhaps it's the fact that the band's pastor Rick Miller has become their manager. Perhaps it's the fact that they have emerged from what we Brits would call a New Church that makes them stand out. Whatever reason, the band has worked hard at the grass roots, learning to minister from an unashamedly charismatic perspective.

The band also have a strong sense of calling and a heart to minister and push back the boundaries. Cooper shares a little, "I remember God speaking to me when I was first filled with the Spirit and saying, 'You're going to sing non-compromised, radical Christian music in a secular world.' This was quite a long time ago. Sometimes I think there's no way because nobody does that so that must not be God telling me that. But then a couple of years after God spoke, a few other Christian bands somehow kind of made it over. But I still feel like there's something unique that God's called me to as far as that goes and to tell you the truth, I really don't know what it is yet but I do feel like God's called me to be an evangelistic hand in the non-Christian world."

Maybe it's the right time for Skillet and maybe it isn't but the release of the band's second album, the wonderfully titled 'Hey You! I Love Your Soul', has strengthened the band's reputation. The band's debut album was very grunge-influenced but times are a changing and so is Skillet's sound. The band have embraced electronica and with the addition of Corey Cooper on keyboards, guitarist Ken Steorts explains some of the musical developments, "Before we went in the studio we liked the bands that sound like that and we've always liked danceable music and something that we decided up front was to go towards that. I think we went more there than we thought we were going to", Ken laughs, "but you know it kind of happens in the studio!"

The fresh musical approach has paid off as the band combines their rock muscle with some strong energetic keyboard lines and drum loops. One song that has received a lot of attention on UCB/Cross Rhythms is "Deeper". Ken remembers, "That song came really late in the record. I just had this guitar riff at the studio and we started talking about it and John and I wrote that one together at my house. I just had some poems that I had written about going deeper with God and it's about no matter what it is, good or bad stuff, you cannot bury your experience and your pain or anything like that and expect God not to bring it back up and have you deal with it or let him deal with it. So at that point of going deeper with God, he's going to go deeper in you and pull stuff out and so there's a dual meaning of 'Deeper'."

In the light of "Deeper", I wondered whether the experience of working with Skillet has been an opportunity for God to deal with Ken? He's quick to admit that it has! "Any time you're with somebody inside a van for the better part of a year and a half you're gonna grow in a lot of ways, hopefully! You're forced to deal with some pride issues and your agenda and selfishness and work things out. That can be very painful. A lot of ideas you had about yourself aren't quite as true as you thought. You're not quite as dead to yourself as you thought you were
."
One of my favourite songs on the latest album is "Whirlwind". It turns out that it's Ken's favourite too. "We do it live maybe once a month. It's kind of like if the audiences deserve it! If you know what I'm saying!" He laughs and continues, "We love it, we love what it's about. It's just the biggest song on the record lyrically and it's talking about the Kingdom of God as the ideal whirlwind. The Kingdom of God is going to happen, God's purpose is going to be accomplished in the Earth, racism is not going to be any more, the Church is going to be united in one body and it's going to happen. It's just kind of a visionary prophetic song. To see it happen, the Church has to go to the well and draw from Jesus and be in a place of worship and be refined. It's a big powerful song without ever getting really loud.

On the plane home from Stuttgart, good feelings about the Owen-Teck festival mingle with thoughts of Skillet's April tour of the UK. The British scene could learn a lot from a band like Skillet who make music that goes beyond simply expressing nice ideas of faith but encompasses something of the bigger prophetic picture of the church, reaching out, going deeper, making an impact.