Redefining Success with John Mark McMillan & Thomas Torrey (#316)

Religion on the Mind

Religion, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.7 • 542 Ratings

🗓️ 24 March 2025

⏱️ 75 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode of You Have Permission, I speak with indie Christian recording artist John Mark McMillan and filmmaker Thomas Torrey about Thomas's film "Long December," which explores the story of a musician facing the painful question of when to let go of creative dreams. Thomas shares how the film emerged from his own career crisis when a major project collapsed during COVID, while John Mark reflects on his journey from simply wanting to "pay bills playing music" to desiring Grammy nominations. We explore the psychology behind creative ambition, discussing core beliefs about success, the importance of defining what "arrival" looks like rather than chasing moving targets, and the stoic philosophy that "the work has to be the reward." We wrestle with how identity becomes entangled with creative pursuits and the challenge of finding meaning and contentment whether or not our dreams materialize as we initially imagined. Long December Film | https://www.imdb.com/title/tt17633766/ John Mark McMillan's Music | https://open.spotify.com/artist/0T1KC0OHfbRO0O5bNH2tek?si=aj6GHoLIRxmLD0Un5XQf6w ___________________________________________ Follow Dan on IG: www.instagram.com/dancoke/ Or Twitter: twitter.com/DanKoch Faith deconstruction resources: www.soyouredeconstructing.com/ Edited by Josh Gilbert (joshgilbertmedia.com -- he is accepting more work!) Join the Patreon for exclusive episodes (and more) every month: patreon.com/dankoch Email about the "sliding scale" for the Patreon: youhavepermissionpodcast@gmail.com YHP Patron-only FB group: tinyurl.com/ycvbbf98 Website: www.dankochwords.com/yhp.html Join Dan's email list: www.dankochwords.com/ Artwork by sprungle.co/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:34.5	Welcome, everybody, to You Have Permission, the show that aims to take both Christianity and the modern world of science and culture very seriously.
0:42.4	My name's Dan Koch.
0:43.5	I'm a licensed therapist.
0:45.6	I'm a post-evangelical, liberal mainline heathen Christian, trying to make sense of things.
0:53.8	And I am joined by two guests today.
0:57.0	First, returning guest, indie Christian recording artist, John Mark McMillan.
1:03.8	John Mark, welcome back.
1:05.2	Yes, thank you.
1:06.5	It's good to be back.
1:07.9	And Thomas Torrey, indie film maker, writer, director, who made the film that we are going to be in part talking about today, but I'm guessing we will go wide from that starting place.
1:23.1	Thomas, welcome to the show.
1:25.2	Thanks so much for having me.
1:26.5	So happy to be here.
1:28.3	So you guys collaborated on a film called Long December, a film almost suspiciously designed in a lab to appeal to me.
	...

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