Welcome to the Jesus Calling Podcast. Today we speak with John Cooper, who is the lead singer of the band Skillet, one of the 21st century's most successful rock bands, having received two Grammy nominations and 11 million records

sold.

John talks about some of the joys and struggles of his early years and how Jesus became a friend

to him through it all. My name is John Cooper.

I play, well I sing and play bass for skillet.

I was raising a Christian family.

I gave my life to Christ when I was a kid.

I was five. And my story is a little unique in terms that I was raised in a very kind of

strict Memphis, I'm from Memphis Tennessee, so kind of a very strict Bible belt, no rock and roll, no

black, no drums kind of environment, which I think is maybe a little ironic for doing what I do now,

playing hard rock music. I grew up in the 80s so there

was a lot of strange mixture of cultural things happening at the time. It was kind of a time

of you were just really hearing for the first time like you

know you can be anything you want to be you know that was a big you know motto really if I think

my parents generation do anything be you want to be don't let anybody

tell you who you have to be but at the same time there was a very strict kind of

you know legalist legalist approach to living life and doing what the Bible says and

things like that. I think that some of the rub came in to where when those kind of

of things collided that kind of you know be who you are be

yourself but at the same time I feel like I'm kind of being told who I have to be for

my parents music was always a really big fight. My mom was a piano teacher and a voice teacher and so I grew up playing classical music and church music and and when I first discovered, you know, hard rock music, you know, there was this big, big backlash,

especially in the 80s, there was a massive backlash against rock and roll.

...