Voices In My Head (The Rick Lee James Podcast) Episode 416: Guest Dr. Brannon Hancock

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Give it a try today. Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer, a songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the The Voices in My Head podcast is where I discuss music, movies, books, pop culture, theology, and more with friends, colleagues, and sometimes just by myself. Make sure to let me know what you think of today's episode by leaving me a review on iTunes or by tweeting at me @RickLeeJames on Twitter. And please join my mailing list at RickLeeJames.com where you can receive an email every time a new episode is released. By the way, in case you're interested in a daily dose of kindness and encouragement beyond this podcast, I also run the Twitter account @MrRogersSay where I post daily quotes from Fred Rogers, one of the voices in my head. Well, I guess that's it for the intro, so sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of Voices in My Head.

Hey friends, welcome back to Voices in My Head. I am your host as always, Rick Lee James, and I'm so glad that you are here with us again this week. This is a flashback episode going back all the way to episode number 9 of Voices in My Head. And the reason I wanted to share this is because it's an episode that it was no longer available in the archives for whatever reason on Voices in My Head, and I wanted to share it with you again. It's with an old friend of mine, Dr. Brannon Hancock, and we have made a lot of music together over the years and have been friends, and he's just been a wonderful inspiration to me. A great guy. He's a professor at Indiana Wesleyan Wesley Seminary. And I just wanted to share this with you because for whatever reason, it's no longer in our archives on Voices in My Head. And I was able to finally find this conversation. And, and I just thought it was such a shame that no one was able to hear our conversation anymore. And he has a lot to share. And it was fun for me to be able to sit down with him at my home all those years ago when this podcast was just beginning. And, and boy, what a blast from the past, all the way back at episode 9. We are way over 400 episodes now into this podcast. And I thought it would be fun to kind of revisit the show way back when and kind of the way that the show has changed since then. And, and really just to— it's almost like catching up with an old friend too. He, he is in a different place in life now than he was then. He was actually living just down the road from me in Xenia, Ohio at that time, ministering at a church as a music pastor in those days. And we were playing a lot of music together in my band in those days. And man, this was just— it was fun to be able to have this conversation. And I was so glad to be able to find this file. And I just really wanted to share it with you. So happy Easter to you all. I hope that you are enjoying the season of Easter, and I hope that you will Enjoy this conversation with my friend Dr. Brandon Hancock.

One, two, one, two, three, four.

You will be a man. You will be the leader of a big old band. And the people will come from miles around to hear you play your guitar till the lights go down. Say, one of these days you'll see your name in lights, playing Johnny B. Go, go, go, Johnny, go! Go, Johnny, go! Go, Johnny, go! Go, Johnny, go! Go, Johnny, go! Johnny, go!

Go, Johnny, go!

Go, Johnny, go!

Well, that wasn't the best I've ever played, but anyway, voices in my head this week. I am pleased to introduce to you my good friend, the Dr. Reverend Brandon Hancock. I almost called you Brandon. I meant to say Brandon with an N, not a D, so don't make that confusion.

It's hard when you have an important Brandon in your life.

It is.

There are—

a couple weeks ago Brandon Sipes was on the program, and this week Brandon Hancock. And both of you guys play music with me quite often, so I'm very glad to have you here with me today. So I had Brandon on here today because he's a very interesting guy. He has a whole lot of—

Yeah, let's not overstate right from the beginning.

Well, he has a very interesting background and where he comes from. Recently received his doctorate, which we'll get into in a while. He's about to be a published author and has many things before that that we can talk about, but Anyway, I wanted to bring him on today. First of all, Brandon, tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from? Who's your family? All that good stuff.

Oh man. Well, if you're in the Nazarene world and you're listening in, if you know a Hancock, they're related to me. I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, and my dad is Reverend Mike Hancock, who pastors in Nashville. His dad was Reverend John Hancock, who was not one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. But was in fact a minister and a district superintendent at one point in the Illinois District in the Church of the Nazarene. So, I come from a long line of Nazarene pastors, and I kind of feel like Al Pacino in the third Godfather movie a lot of times, you know, when he's like, "Every time I think I'm out, they keep dragging me back in." So, ministry was sort of hard to get away from, and the Lord kept calling me back. Toward the church and toward the Church of the Nazarene in particular. My dad's brothers are both in ministry and his sisters are both in ministry, married to guys who are either pastors or just faithful churchmen, laymen in the denomination. My mom has a long heritage in Xenia where I serve in the Church of the Nazarene as well. So that's kind of my family and my church background, I suppose. I don't know what else you want to know.

Well, you're a crazy good musician, which everybody that just listened heard that. Hopefully the lack of my miking here in the studio doesn't cause them to hear less. But actually, I think we're going to have you help us do the segment Practically Useless Guitar Lesson this week on the show.

Oh, well.

Live, because let me tell everybody, Brandon plays like and you can, you can add more to this list, but he plays guitar phenomenally well. He plays piano phenomenally well. He plays saxophone amazingly well. Amazingly better than phenomenally in my chart. I haven't seen the chart of which is better, but yeah, to me that's even better because that's your main instrument, right?

I mean, I'm probably most trained on—

most trained on saxophone. And then you're also an incredibly good bass player.

You're—

that's what you let me play from time to time.

Yeah. Well, sometimes, if you haven't ever seen us play live together, Brandon usually is playing bass, but he also sometimes will play keyboard and sometimes electric guitar and various other things. But if we do I Lift Up My Eyes together, he's usually playing bass and keyboard and singing all at the same time. So he's kind of amazing in how he does that. But you also, I mean, what other instruments do you play?

Well, I mean, we could get into weird stuff. Like lately I've been really, I bought one of those little Jamar toy pianos on eBay. And I tore it apart and restored it because it wasn't working right. And, and so, you know, I like to play the toy piano, right? And I like to play the harpsichord. I got, I got a hold of a harpsichord— not harpsichord, that's the wrong word— autoharp, the one with the buttons that you— yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that you like, that you had in elementary music class. I got a hold of one of those recently, and Sean loaned me his hammered dulcimer, and I've been messing around with that a little bit. I'm not ready to play with Rich Mullins, even, even if I could.

Well, he's dead anyway.

He's in the great beyond. But, and the, the, the melodica. Do you know what the melodica is? Yeah, I got a hold of one of those recently too. It's like a keyboard instrument that you blow through and then you play the keys. Yeah. And it kind of sounds like an accordion.

I just thought of another one, mandolin.

Mandolin, yeah, I play a little bit of mandolin.

Do you play ukulele?

Well, you know, my 2-year-old got a ukulele for Christmas this year and And I have been known to play about 3 or 4 chords on the ukulele.

Nice.

I'm no Zooey Deschanel or whatever her name is on the uke.

Hers is Zooey.

Zooey.

I can't keep it straight.

Zooey.

Well, I'll fill in the sound bite later for Practically Useless. Actually, I could just play it live. Let's do that.

Play the Practically Useless.

The Practically Useless guitar theme song. So we're going to do it live in the show today. Cause Brandon had one that he wanted to show us today. So here we go. Well, it's the Practically Useless Guitar Lesson. Yeah. So, all right.

Nice, I like that. That's kind of like your Paul Shaffer bit.

Yeah, it's exactly it. That's my way lesser Paul Shaffer thing.

So the news and the dudes on Small town. Small town news thing. I like that.

So what Brandon is going to show us today on the Practically Useless Guitar Lesson is actually not so useless.

I really think this is pretty useful.

You could actually, this could be another Practically Useful Guitar Lesson. Sort of like when I taught you how to play Batman a couple weeks ago.

Did you do Batman?

Yeah, we did that. Yeah, one of the episodes recently. So show us what you have. I had a second part here.

Yeah, I asked Rick, you know, I said, have you shown your listeners listeners the Practically Useless Guitar Tip of the wah wah wah is what I call it. And it really is useful, especially like in live concerts if somebody like tells a bad joke or something. Like especially if I'm, you can do it on bass too because like if you ever tell a bad joke live and I'm playing bass, I will do this.

Which is always.

For you. And it sounds like this and then I'll explain to you how you do it. But it sounds like this.

So that's it.

It's kind of like wah wah wah wah. Which is kind of like like, you know, it's a fail. It's kind of a sound you play when you have a fail. Like if a good joke, you get a rim shot.

So tell the listeners how you play that.

Okay, so what I do, and you can do this really several different places on the neck, but the trick is you want to use, say, what I'm going to do right now is I'm going to put my first finger on the 9th fret of the A string and then my second finger, my middle finger, on the 10th fret of the D string. So your fingers are on adjacent strings and on adjacent frets. Does that make sense? Listeners out there in just audio world who can't see me. But if you have those two, so it sounds like this, the little, the two notes you're playing like that. And you're just playing those two notes, but you kind of want to bend them as you play them. And so you go, and then you just move down the neck.

So you just go Alright, let's do it together because I'm going to play some diminished chords along with you and you can get a sound of what it's like. Are we in sync? I think so. Maybe. Let's try it. We'll see. Live on the air, no overdubs. Here we go.

Yeah, but see what's cool about it is you can do it anywhere.

You can go—

that's like on the low E string and the A string, or you can move it up a string.

You can go—

like that. And you want to give it that little kind of last— kind of thing. And if you have a wah pedal, then it really— you can go over the top with it.

Or if you don't play guitar, you could just go— or something like that.

It's helpful if you have somebody to do it with you.

It does.

Just sing the chord.

Alright, well this is usually the outro for the Practically Useless Guitar Lessons, so— You've been listening to the Practically Useless Guitar Lesson. Good luck with that.

Yes, very nice.

All right, so it's always fun to throw a little stairway in there.

Oh yes. So you don't have a sign like in Wayne's World that says no stairway?

No, I don't have that sign, but this is, this is for, this is audio anyway, so they couldn't see it if I did have it.

Probably get sued if any of the Led Zeppelin guys that are still living and like, yeah, in their right minds ever listen to your podcast.

Yeah, but this is my personal invitation, Led Zeppelin guys. If you guys want to come on the show, you're more than welcome.

Yes.

And have you come and talk. You can even sue me if you want to, because I don't have anything you could take, because I don't have any money.

But that's a good claim to fame. You're the guy that got sued.

I'm the guy that got sued for using Stairway.

One of the many guys.

On a podcast that makes nothing. So, very good. Well, let's get back to you and your life. So, you were raised in Tennessee, and who taught you who do you think was mostly your teacher as far as music goes?

Oh man, I've had so many great music teachers. And just a week ago, actually, I went to a surprise 60th birthday for my first music teacher ever, and his name was— well, in a lot of ways, my first music teacher was my mom. My mom's a piano teacher, but my mom and I have very similar personalities, and she was wise enough a woman to not attempt to give me music lessons for fear that it would decimate our relationship, probably, to for her to try to be the disciplinarian of a piano teacher. So she actually traded off with a guy in our church named Mark Hutzko, Mark Hutzko, and he was my first piano teacher. And she taught his kids piano and he taught me piano when we lived in Brunswick, Ohio. And Mark is now the minister of music at Jersey Baptist Church near Columbus, so he's just down the road from here. It's a big church that has— they have 4 different worship styles at their church.

Wow.

In 6 different services, I think, on the weekend.

Wow.

And so it's really pretty—

Contemporary, traditional, reggae, and Taize?

I think it's pretty close to that. I think it's blended and then postmodern. They call it a postmodern service. It's called Emerge. And then they do a Southern gospel kind of style, Gaither Homecoming roaming style service and, uh, and blended service and traditional service. Yeah, so it's, um, yeah, so 4 different services. But Mark was a— Mark was an early mentor. And then once we got to Tennessee, my big musical influence was a guy named Ken Osmick, who was my saxophone teacher actually. And he was a multi-instrumentalist, and he sold me my first bass guitar and my first amp and the first— my first little PV 40-watt.

So you made money off this dude?

Yeah, he did. He sold me— he sold me gear, but he plays everything. Ken Osmek lives in Nashville and teaches a ton of students and plays a lot of sessions and stuff, and he's a woodwind guy, but he also played guitar and bass and harmonica. And there were just times when I would say, "Hey, next week instead of my sax lesson, can I bring in my guitar or my bass?" And he would show me stuff on that.

So when you started learning an instrument pretty well, did you basically teach yourself a lot of the other ones once you started learning your way around on one or two?

Yeah, I mean, because I had a piano background, and so I think, you know, piano forces you to kind of learn everything in a very, very linear way, and you kind of see the keys laid out in front of you, and you kind of learn the— you know, it's easier to learn the concepts of harmonic theory and things on a piano or keyboard instrument. And then to pick up guitar for me was just kind of like applying what I already knew to the guitar. And so just figuring out kind of the geometry of the guitar, it's like the guitar is not as linear, it's more, you know, you're on this grid and yeah, you play shapes and patterns and, uh, and it's just a very different thing than the keyboard.

Which is actually the opposite for me because I picked up keyboard after I started playing guitar because I knew theory on guitar and stuff and I thought keyboard just have this easy for theory. This is, yeah, it's a lot easier on that, but Anyway, so that's very interesting because I started out playing, I think, trombone and I didn't want to really. It was because that was the instrument we had. I hated it. I tried to play violin. I hated it. I think we did the recorder flutophone thing that everybody had to do. Hated it. Just did not like music until I was 15 and I started playing guitar. From there, I wanted to learn all the other ones. So it's kind of interesting. Somehow something.

Yeah, and I got into it all backwards too because, you know, I had the piano background and then I really for some reason wanted to play bass. And so I got a bass about a year before I ever picked up a guitar. And so, and a lot of guitar players try to play bass but they kind of play bass like a guitar player. And so I always figured that like any success I have as a bass player is because I started there before I picked up the guitar. And so I have kind of a feel for that. But I know what you mean.

Well, let's Let's go on to that because one of my earliest memories of you in Tennessee was, I'm a little bit older than Brandon, but we went to camps together and stuff too at Camp Garner Creek there in Tennessee, in Dixon, Tennessee. But one of the earliest memories I have was called TNT, which would be Top Nazarene Talent. Every district has one of those. And I remember you played a U2 song with your band. And it was in the McClurkin Chapel there, and I can't remember what the song was right now.

Yeah, it was—

If you start playing, I know I'll remember because that's— I remember what key it was in.

<LYRICS>Waiting patiently for the Lord, turning her mind—</LYRICS> It was 40, right?

Yeah, I think it was.

<LYRICS>—out of the miry clay. I will sing.</LYRICS> Sing a new song. I can sing, sing a new song.

Yeah, and if I can interrupt you, that sounds good, but I remember you were on bass and you were singing and playing bass, and I thought that was really cool and enjoyed it. And then I remember other people thinking, why are they playing a secular song at TNT? Oh, I'll tell you, because U2 is secular as can be, and you know, back then we were not all into the into the U2 thing like we are now, as far as, you know, every worship song that comes out has a U2 influence on it. I almost want to call them U-Tube because I'm so used to saying YouTube. But anyway, that's one of my earliest memories. And I think some of the guys in that band, you guys kind of formed a band and got to be that big. I think it seems like—

well, I wouldn't say big.

Well, bigger than a lot of people.

Not as big as Rick Lee James.

Oh, bigger, much bigger. I don't know.

Yeah, I think we did that year as a 3-piece, and if I remember right, it was me on bass and Jason Payton on drums. And then a guy that we quizzed with, because we had team quizzing. If you guys don't know what team quizzing is out there, I just don't think I can help you. But we, in our district team quizzing, there was a guy named Abram Jones who played played a little bit of guitar and bass. And it seems like for that song, it was the three of us. And Jason and I went on to form a band with two guys that I went to high school with who are— who were both Baptist, uh, pastor's kids, ministers. Both of their dads were like in music ministry, and they were in the band with me. Alan Solomon, who still works in Nashville as a producer, engineer, and a studio guy. And then Andrew Adams, who's, uh, in Nashville too, has a worship leader and an artist, recording artist. But those two guys couldn't compete in TNT because they weren't Nazarenes.

Ah, I see.

And so we had to put together a band of Nazarenes for that talent competition. But our band—

We're good at building walls. Yeah, right?

So, I'm sorry, you're a Baptist, you can't be in our team talent competition. Because those guys weren't members of a Nazarene youth group. But they were involved at their their respective Baptist churches, and we went on to form a little band that we called Plaid. There were just the 4 of us: Jason and Alan and Andrew and Brandon. Jason was my church friend and the other 2 guys were my school friends.

And Plaid was actually— you guys actually got on a record label for a while, didn't you?

Yeah, we got together, I guess, around my sophomore year of high school, maybe summer before my sophomore year, something something like that. And then around my freshman year at college, when all of us but one— because Alan, our guitar player, was still a senior in high school— but the other three of us were at Trebekka. And it was during that year that we partnered with a small independent Christian label called Rustproof Records. Rustproof. Rustproof. And we had distribution through Pamplin music.

And at your— probably your pinnacle is Plaid. You guys played at the Nazarene Youth Conference, and was it in Canada? Yeah, in Toronto.

We played the Air Canada Centre. Yeah, really cool.

How many people were there?

Oh man, I think it was like 8 or 9,000 people. It was— I mean, that's a big margin for error, I suppose, but I think, you know, as far as like total teens at the event, there were, you know, somewhere around 9,000, and we opened for Audio Adrenaline. Yeah, that was really cool. That was actually the second time we'd opened for Audio Adrenaline. We'd done like a kind of one-off show with them one time before that, and, uh, our bass player had a kind of friend of a friend connection with Will McGinnis, who was the bass player in Audio Adrenaline. And so we had done a— we had done a demo with Will actually at his house, and so we already kind of knew him before we got to play with them at Toronto. But that was pretty cool because then U2 played at the Air Canada Center like 3 or 4 months after the big Nazarene event that we were there. So it was like, we were playing the same venue as Bono!

Well, and it's not all about hey, you know, but it sure doesn't hurt. No doubt.

Yeah, well, and you know, a lot of that had to do with our manager. We, there was a guy in my dad's church named John Sparks who was still working in management in Nashville and works with a lot of artists in Studio Cats. And John, you know, was— John was like selling copy machines or something like that. And the pastor's kid, me, had a band. And John was like, hey, you know, would you guys be interested in me helping you get like get some merch or get some shows? And he just started kind of into the booking and management end of things, helping us out. And he was responsible for, you know, in a major way for the record deal deal and for, you know, getting us on the bill for NYC and for a lot of those gigs.

So we owe a lot to John. Awesome. Now you guys played together for how many years as Plaid? As Plaid, I guess— For the name.

If we got together like around '95 and we signed in '97 and the Plaid album came out in '98 and it was shortly after the album came out that our label informed us that they had been cordially contacted by lawyers from Sony Entertainment Group or something about the fact that there was some techno DJ duo in the UK, in the UK, in the United Kingdom, that went by the name Plaid. And, and so we had to change our name.

So Sony people, if you're listening to this and you want to come on and defend your side of the story, you know, you're more than welcome to. We're open to everybody. But then your group became known as— we changed our name to Downpour.

Downpour. And I still to this day, I feel like if we had— if we'd stuck it out like another year or two, like, we would have been like the worship band, you know, the trend-setting worship band, because Downpour is like a great name for a worship band, you know. And we weren't even really— that wasn't our main gig even. We— I mean, we led worship for camps and youth events. But, you know, we really were trying to kind of write our own songs and release albums. And this was like around 1999, 2000.

And you had Steve Bush in the band at this time. Yeah, we had Steve Bush, piano player, singer.

Yeah, and Steve's a worship leader at Harvest Bible Chapel up in Michigan near Grand Rapids. And, you know, all these guys are still doing music and involved in worship stuff in a lot of ways. But yeah, we added Steve.

Steve played and sang on my first CD back, the one that I hardly even want people to listen to anymore. But yeah, that was— man, he's such a talented guy.

Yes, he played keys and sang and wrote and played trumpet. Like, that's actually how it started, is that Steve— we had one track on our first album that was like a funk tune. It was like And it had this horn part, and we asked Steve to come in and cut the trumpet part. And Andrew and I both played saxophone, so we cut all the sax parts, and Steve came in to play trumpet. And that was our first collaboration with him. And then we ended up inviting him to join the band to play keys and stuff.

He's a great songwriter too. Well, I remember seeing— by that time I was youth pastoring, I think, in North Carolina when you guys were traveling as Downport. And I remember remember seeing a, I think it was in Youth Worker Magazine actually, there was a full-page ad for your new album and it had sinks on it. Wasn't the album cover like sinks in a bathroom or something?

Yeah, the Downpour album was titled The Real Me and we did like the concept, the COVID art concept and everything was like kind of what you see when you're looking at yourself in the bathroom mirror. And so it was, we actually did the photo shoot shoot for that in the bathrooms at Christchurch in Nashville. Seems kind of like a weird place to do that now when I look back on it. I wonder if they even knew that we did that or if we just kind of snuck in.

Maybe Christchurch had the finest bathroom facilities that you could find. They had really slick modern bathrooms.

I mean, there's a lot of chrome and carbon black.

Probably the whole time you were in there, the automatic toilets were flushing. Yeah, probably. That's what I used to hate. Side note, there was these toilets at Trevecca that every time you used them, whether you were done or not, they would go flush and you'd feel like you'd get sucked in the toilet.

My 4-year-old is terrified of automatic flush toilets because of one of those at a gas station. Oh man, that he was not big enough to like keep the sensor, you know, from flushing. And so he— it scared the stuff out of him.

Well, they've scared me before. I, you know, when you're sitting there and it starts flushing on you, you think you're gonna get pulled in. So it's really, you know, I've got to find a towel.

He's also really scared of those really hardcore hand dryers that accelerate. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You see all the flab on your skin?

Yeah, you know, like a hurricane strength hand dryer. He's— those scare him to death too.

Um, well, moving on from that, because you played with Downpour for a while, tell me how you got from there to Scotland, because you, you eventually— okay, on an airplane. Very good. But you eventually graduated from Trevecca Nazarene University and you wanted to further your studies. Now, somewhere along the way, Gloria comes into the picture.

Well, actually, Gloria came into the picture, you know, right off the bat with, you know, even early in the band days because we met at freshman orientation. Gloria is my wife and she's a singer and an artist as well. And she's actually, I always say that she's like the real musician because she did a music degree at Trevecca, whereas I did not.

She has a beautiful voice.

Yeah, she's a fantastic singer and she's kind of my muse. And we met at freshman orientation summer of '97, and it wasn't long after that that the band got signed and went into the studio. But that year, our freshman year, we were both in recording classes together. I started out at Trevecca as a music business major, and that's what she, she did as well. So we became friends, and, but I had a girlfriend from high school that I hung on to, you know, for a couple years into college. And, and, and so Gloria was just a good friend until that relationship ended, and then, and that was around the time that I went back to school. So after the band kind of did its thing for a few years, I left college for for about 2 years, and then, uh, in the meantime she kind of finished up, and then I had to go back and finish up. But we got married in 2001, and I finished up my degree at Trevecca, which ended up being an English degree. So I, I always tell people that I went from like the second most useless degree that Trevecca offers, which is a music business degree, to the most useless degree that Trevecca offers, which is an English degree, um, because there's not much you can do with a BA in English. Except go on to grad school. So that's what I did. And we married in December of '01, and I graduated finally in December of '02. And then in the fall of 2003, I had explored a couple options. I applied to Duke and to Fuller Seminary, looking into programs that would let me kind of bring together my interests in worship and the arts with theology and religious studies.. But I also looked into this program in Scotland at the University of Glasgow called the Center for the Study of Literature, Theology, and the Arts. That seemed really interesting to me, and it seemed like a very self-directed type program where I could sort of carve out my own areas of interest and dig into the things that I wanted to dig into. So, they accepted me, and we kind of decided, well, let's just, you know, let's just kind of put the fleece out that if we're accepted, that we'll go. And it was like a 12-month intensive master's program that you'd kind of— you do all your studies and then write a dissertation, and it would take about 12 months. And so we moved there in September of 2003, and then during that master's year, I got funding to stay and do a PhD. And so that kind of changed our plans and extended extended our stay a bit longer.

Cool. So you actually, somewhere in the process of living there and coming back home, you got a job working at Xenia Church of the Nazarene in Ohio, where you finished up your PhD, but then you had to go back to Scotland again, right?

Yeah, I made a few return trips, but nothing like more than a couple of weeks, really. So, so basically I finished my Finished my master's, Master's of Theology. I think your laundry's done.

You can hear that buzzer?

It's halftime. No, the laundry's done. By the way, we record in my basement, and just outside the wall is the washing machine where I was doing some laundry. So, all right. Nothing but professional in here. Awesome.

Where were we? Yeah, I finished my master's in 2004 and graduated with it in 2005. And like I said, in the meantime got funding to do a PhD project exploring the relationship between the Eucharist and contemporary literature and the idea of the church as the Eucharistic community and how that might be reimagined in light of some contemporary fictional texts and how authors and artists have kind of played on the theme of the Eucharist in ways that kind of challenged traditional theological understandings of the Eucharist. So, that was my proposed PhD project, and they gave me a bunch of money to stay and do it. I mean, not a bunch of money in my pocket, but to write my school bill. Which didn't save me from student loans, by the way. That's why I'm doing your podcast, actually, is to try to pay off my student loans. Like Tripp. You can send money to— I didn't want to make a pact with the devil like Tripp did. That's right. To get my student loans paid off. But I thought maybe if I did your podcast that like somehow the money would pour in. That's right.

Well, because I'm putting you on the week after Michael Card, so you know, that's gonna have all these extra listeners from him, right?

So, uh, yeah, the— so we moved— we— well, let's see, I— long story short, I should have kind of finished my PhD around late 2007, early 2008. That would have been like on schedule. But we had our first child in Scotland in March of '07, and at the same time, like, our— the people that owned our apartment wanted to sell it, and so they were kind of kicking us out and not letting us renew our lease. And we were like, man, we really don't want to move and sign another year lease on an apartment. So we just decided we'd go ahead and move back to the States. So we did. We moved back to the States in July of '07, and then around that time I got I got the call to come and be the worship pastor at Xenia, and that was kind of interesting how that happened too, but because I followed somebody who was one of my early musical mentors, Jim Puckett, who's the worship pastor at Mount Vernon First Church of the Nazarene, about an hour and 2 hours from here, something like that. And Jim was my impact director when I was a teenager, and then later on he went to be the worship pastor at Xenia Nazarene and was there for about 10 years. And so I got to follow him, which was great. And he had resigned like right around the same time that we were moving back home with no idea what we were gonna do. And so I heard that that church was looking for a worship guy and got in touch with them and, you know, just initiated the conversation. And we moved there in December of '07, but then I didn't finish my PhD until 2010, so I was on the I don't know if that makes me like a, you know, like a 6th year senior type of a thing or something. But it was, it took me a while to finally crank that dissertation out.

Yeah, but still, that's still amazing. So, you've been back in the States. You actually now have 3 children. Yeah. And you've finished your dissertation. You have your doctorate. And recently you just got some good news because you're about to have a book published.

Yeah, so the dissertation, I figured, you know, well, it got me the PhD. A PhD, and so it accomplished its purpose. But a lot of people try to kind of turn their PhD into their first book, and that, you know, from an academic standpoint is certainly not a bad thing. I mean, it's kind of a feather in your cap to have the book out. So I decided to submit it to a publisher, and they liked the idea. So right now I'm kind of doing all of the copy edits to try to get it ready for the typesetter, and then eventually later this year it will will be in print. You'll be able to download it as an ebook or buy it in print from Amazon.

Although, I think I've heard that the author actually makes more money if you do the ebook. That may be. I think so. Whichever way, we'll find out.

I don't really think that I'm going to make any money off of it because there's a very small market for academic books.

Until you get the podcast bump. That's true. And then it's going to go.

The title, you want to know the title?

Title, we'd like to know it.

It's hard to buy a book Yeah, if you don't know the title, look for it. The title is The Scandal of Sacramentality. The Scandal of Sacramentality. The subtitle is The Eucharist in Literary and Theological Perspectives.

All right. By Brandon—

Look for it on Pickwick Publications. Pickwick. Yeah, which is an imprint of Wipf and Stock, which is who publishes Tripp's books. Yeah, okay. Which I didn't know when I— it wasn't like I pulled any deals with Tripp to kind of get in. There.

Tripp made a deal with the devil, you made a deal with Tripp. Yeah.

Oh, man, I'm in trouble, aren't I? But, yeah, it's the scandal of sacramentality. In the book, what I play on is the idea of that what's symbolized in the Eucharist, in the bread representing Christ's body and the cup representing his blood, the body and blood of Christ is the scandal of the Word made flesh. So, I play on the two themes of the word and the scandal of language, kind of the imperfection of language and the way that language always kind of falls short of conveying unmediated meaning. And then the scandal of the flesh, the word and then the flesh, the body, the scandal of the body and the problem of the idea of God incarnate. The kind of inherent messiness, I guess, of dealing with a God who enters human flesh and takes on a body and dies a real death like we experience. So that's the scandal that I'm playing through in the book.

Well, let's talk about something that we actually talked about. I got to just briefly discuss this with Trip. In his book, in case you didn't hear the podcast, Trip York was a guest a few weeks ago, and he has a really great book called The Devil Wears Nada: Satan Exposed. And it's a fun book, but it's also got some very good, clear things that the church needs to focus on. Well, you just talked about God becoming flesh, and we've talked about recently too about how there's, in the church today, there is an ancient heresy that that has been going on called Gnosticism. Gnosticism. Gnosticism. Starts with a G. So, if you want to call it Gnosticism, you can. But Gnosticism is often, at its root, comes from a misunderstanding of even things that we talk about in the Eucharist. Christ taking on flesh. It really comes from before Christ, from the time of Plato and the whole idea of a person having a soul that's separate from their flesh. And so a lot of people have taken that and actually applied it to Christianity because it was such an influence on early Christianity, you know, Greek thought and stuff like that. And unfortunately there's been this almost disconnect that like, if everything's okay in my soul, then it doesn't matter what the rest of my life— almost as if to say, if I come to Jesus and get saved, well, my soul is taken care of, and then the rest of my life is, you know, I'm protected because of that. And so what I'm saying, I guess, is, do you see in your context Gnosticism as big of a problem as I see in my context.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's a huge problem in American Christianity. It's funny, because I think I was reading Žižek a while back, and we won't get sidetracked with Žižek, but he has a great name, Slavoj Žižek. Slavoj Žižek. He's a— oh man, I'm blanking on where he's actually from. Like, Lithuanian or something. He's some Eastern European philosophy. I've never read him, so I don't know. Žižek talks about how pop Christianity in the West, especially, in many ways looks more like some sort of new agey or old agey sort of Buddhist type of religion where we sort of transcend the body and materiality. That's seeped in, that's kind of crept into Christianity. Christianity in strange ways that in the West embody themselves, I think, in like our— especially like our consumer practices. Like the idea that how we spend our money and where we shop doesn't really matter, you know. Or the idea that, you know, lives lost, you know, as collateral damage in war don't really matter, you know. I mean, that's just sort of, you know, that's life. But we transcend that in our spiritual, you know, our sort of spiritual lives and state, to where those things are sort of of this earth and they're passing away. It doesn't really matter as long as things are right in my heart. You know, the pain and suffering that may afflict me or that I may inflict on others is sort of inconsequential because it's just— it's passing, it's fleeting, it's transitory. That is deeply heretical and deeply Gnostic in terms of Christian theology.

I don't think most people see it. Most Christians would reject the idea that the way I explained it was, "As long as things are okay in my soul, the rest doesn't matter." Most Christians would reject that too because they'd say, "No, no, I do want to live a holy life." The disconnect there is what you were describing we often, we don't take a look at what our actions really do and the way that sometimes that we live, the things we invest in, the things we buy, the things we spend our time on, the way that they actually bring harm to other people, which is exactly opposite of, you know, of Christ. So when we think about that, we have to begin thinking in new ways about what it means means to serve Christ. And, you know, if you study church history at all, you'll see this as a big problem throughout. A lot of people, to the point of, you know, where Jesus was even said, okay, he was just a body, you know, he was just like an earth suit, and inside was his soul, which was God, but on the outside it was flesh, which is not Gnosticism, that's—

Well, it's either Apollinarianism, or it's one of those other heresies. Yeah. Pelagianism? No, Pelagius was the one that— that's the one that Wesleyans get accused of, where we don't believe in predestination. Oh, right, right, right.

Well, I can't think. Original sin.

Pelagius doesn't believe in original sin. That's the problem.

But there's a lot of them in there. Oh, those darn Christians.

It's a Christological heresy, and it's the idea Well, yeah, it was the idea that the church really struggled with the idea that how Jesus could be fully God and fully man. Every heresy in the first 4 centuries of the church basically comes down to erring on one side or the other. Jesus either becomes too human, or he becomes too God. So, some of the heresies said, "Well, Jesus had a human body, but he had a divine mind. So, he knew everything that God knew. Or they said, like you said, his spirit or his soul was divine, but his body was just kind of like an earth suit. He just appeared to be man, but he was really God. What's interesting is that the church affirmed over and over to the point of ultimately producing a paradox. The dual nature of Christ, that he was fully God and fully human at the same time. There wasn't part of him that was God and part of him that was man. He was fully God and fully man.

Now express to me real quick, because I want to get into just a little bit of how this affects your worship leading life, how he selects the songs. Because as someone who does a lot of worship leading myself, I try to look try to look at more than style. I try to look at actual content that we're singing. And, you know, there's various songs. Most songs that come out and are popular are not necessarily popular because they have the best and most sound theology that has been affirmed by the church. It's usually because somebody with a big name does it and it sounds good and it has a good beat, which is kind of interesting because you have you'll have songs like Chris Tomlin's song, "Where you go, I'll go. Where you stay, I'll stay. Where you move, I'll move. I will follow you." And his lyrics actually get into like, "Even losing my life, even if it costs me myself." But I don't think we consider the lyrics oftentimes because it's driven by this, "Pum, pachipum, pum, pachipum," kind of a backbeat that goes on. It's a catchy beat.

The kids can dance to it.

Yeah, exactly. So you can dance to it. Crucified for Christ, yeah, so it's good. So where I was going with that, in selecting music and selecting songs, I have a real problem. I know people are going to think it's a style issue for me, but I have a real problem with hymns, like things that we call hymns that we think are sacred and have been around for ages and ages. Ages, but really have only been around for like 100 years. But like a song like, um, When We All Get to Heaven, you know, and something like that. Um, because, because for one thing it talks about, you know, this Americanized idea of we're going to be in mansions bright and blessed. Never mentions that in scripture anywhere, that we'll ever have mansions. It says he's preparing a place for us. But the idea of, of heaven in scripture is so different than what our modern or postmodern whatever mindset for what heaven is. Do you want to talk about that at all? Anything as far as where that would differ and what we sing about? Because we've almost turned heaven into Disney World. It's anything you want it to be. After you die, you get to go there. It's really taken it out of the hands of God almost.

It's about you. Right. So, well, you know, I pick songs just if they're cool or not. Yeah, it has to be after some— sometimes copyrighted after 2010, you know, it has to be the newest thing, and it has to have cool guitar licks. Those are my only criteria for choosing worship songs.

And that's why he got his doctorate, folks. No, not at all.

Yeah, there's a— man, that, you know, we could do a whole show on like just on the worship theme. The first book that really got me thinking more deeply about heaven, and I know this is the case for a lot of people, was N.T. Wright's book Surprised by Hope, which really kind of takes us to task on some of our popular misconceptions of heaven. I remember N.T. Wright in that book says, you know, the thing we have to admit is that we get a lot of different portraits in Scripture of heaven and of hell, not just one single unitary vision or portrait. Ultimately, he says, the best we have to know about heaven or about the resurrection of the body that we can all look forward to and place our hope in is kind of signposts pointing into a fog. He uses that phrase. I think that's a great phrase. Scripture gives us some glimpse, but they're kind of signposts pointing into a fog. We can't really see clearly what's there. But the big mistake, I think, is to treat it as, you know, treat this world as kind of like, you know, all this old sinful earth that's just passing away, and we've got something totally new and different to look forward to. I do think it's going to be new and different, but it's going to be the same too. It's going to be a restored creation. God's not going just wipe it out and start over. God's going to restore what he created. I mean, just like after the flood, you know, God didn't just kind of make a new earth. The, you know, the earth was reborn in a lot of ways after the flood. And, uh, and so when we sing these songs that are like we're leaving the earth and we're abandoning it, uh, and we're going away, we're being whisked away somewhere else where we won't have all these problems. I mean, there's, there's there's a kind of a morsel of truth there, but it also has a lot of really profoundly dangerous implications too. And, you know, this became very real to me once when I was teaching an ethics class, and a young woman— you know, we were talking about environmental ethics, and it was at a Christian college— and, but I remember the student saying, you know, why should we care about the planet it if God's just gonna wipe it all out, you know, if it's all gonna burn, you know? Right.

I was like, oh my goodness, very popular. We need to talk, you know?

Yeah. Um, because, you know, the idea really, uh, is, is that what we're doing now has eternal consequences if we're living out the kingdom in our lives now, if we're sort of bodying forth the kingdom through our lives, that, you know, the, the music that write and the worship that we lead and the relationships that we form and the seeds that we sow into people's lives are going to survive in the kingdom that is coming. That, you know, we're building for the kingdom now and the things that will be part of God's new heaven and new earth and his restored and redeemed creation. We get to start working on those things now. And how we live our lives, how we live out the kingdom right now. It's not all going to burn. Just the things that can't survive in the kingdom that is coming are going to pass away. But the things that we've done, you know, as the church and as individual Christians and as Christian families, that, you know, there are eternal consequences that we're already building that kingdom, so to speak, now.

Well, I always want to refer to Jesus' own words about when he's asked what it's going to be like, and Jesus says, "It's here. It's around you. It's in your midst." Depending on which translation you use, it always comes out to being something that's here and in the now. I think a problem with oftentimes— this isn't just like old hymns from the early holiness movement or whatever— which there's a lot of bad ones that we need to reconsider and talk about some, you know, that's another podcast. But even some of the newer stuff, there's almost this, there's a real danger to me of what you said, let's burn the earth because what's it matter? There's a real danger of forgetting that even from the very beginning in Genesis, we were called to be caretakers, that we were called to actually share in the creativity God. We're actually called to, in the moment now where we are, find God and find his kingdom and his people and the kingdom of heaven here as a very present reality. Because, you know, we just don't know what's beyond. And I think a lot of this misconception— I mean, there's popular books out right now, and I don't want to like dog these books and things. Maybe I do to a certain extent, but like, you know, the people that die and then go to heaven and come back, and then they want to tell you all this stuff. And it's bestsellers right now, you know, stuff. Of course. And, and it always is bestsellers, but it's almost always different, and it's always fanciful, and it's always based on the Platonic soul rather than the scriptural idea of soul, is that we are whole people that are going to all one day be remade together, you know, and be renewed. So it's, it's interesting because when we talk about eternity, again, we don't know what you said about about signposts pointing into the fog. I just think as worship leaders and even as pastors who are preaching, we need to be people who are responsible in our theology too, that we look at what Scripture actually says about things. And that a lot of what we need to begin to sing about and talk about actually has to do with the Kingdom of Heaven as a real reality that extends into eternity but is actually present now., you know, in where we are.

So, yeah, I have a good pastor buddy who refuses, and I haven't followed him quite as probably hardcore as I should in terms of my own convictions, but who will not sing that verse of the new rewrite of Amazing Grace. My chains are gone, about the earth will soon dissolve like snow, the sun forbear to shine. And my friend Paul just is like, we're not singing that verse. I mean, it's just bad theology. Chris Dahmer didn't write that verse. I mean, the original hymn writer wrote that verse.

Well, the original hymn writer, that thing was like 18 verses or something. It's crazy. It was a poem. Amazing Grace is another one of my pet peeves in the church because we don't— I mean, we do realize that the person who wrote it was a slave trader, and yes, he did renounce slave trading, but only after it became politically correct. And he was starting to get some flak from his church friends that he was still making his fortune off of slavery. So then he stopped and wrote Amazing Grace, and then it became the best song ever. Yeah. So it just shows you that we're all humans, that even things that we have considered to be the most sacred, things you can't touch, that the only one who is perfect is God. And it's okay for us to look deeper into our theology It's okay for us to— I think we have everything to gain and nothing to lose by going deeper in search of things, even things that are going to rock our world, even things that are going to completely take away from things maybe we believed our whole life, right? Because to find the truth is always good.

So, well, it also means that it's not like just a recent phenomenon that people, you know, wrote songs to kind of for their commercial value or their marketing potential.

I'd be willing to say a lot of the hymns that we have are actually because they were commercial in the first place.

That's not something that just started with CCLI.

People had to latch on to them somewhere along the way or they wouldn't have lasted. That was the thing. It's all marketing. Well, we've been talking for nearly an hour, I guess, and we've gone here, there, and Everywhere, I guess. Do you want to play a song to close us out, and do you have anything else to say?

Well, I appreciate you having me on. This is fun to get together and chat and get to, get to play music and show you my stupid guitar lessons.

Sure. By the way, Brandon is playing an Epiphone guitar from his days in Plaid. They used to actually have something I've never been able to get, is an endorsement from Epiphone Guitars, so I'm pretty impressed. Yeah, I'm playing this old—

this is a late '90s little slope shoulder Epiphone. I mean, we should just have a session one time, like once you run out of people to ask onto your podcast, you should have me back and we should just have like a music geek episode or something where we just talk about guitars. And we did the comic geek episode already.

Yeah, but this is—

yeah, this is a groovy little guitar and I just got it back from my guitar repair guy. He put a new bridge and nut on it, and that are made out of bone, and they're supposed to sound better and be more resonant and stuff. But yeah, I'm enjoying playing this guitar. It's been a while since I've had it in my lineup, as it were. I don't know, I've been— what about, should we talk about my little Holiness Under the Lord bit?

Yeah, yeah, Call unto Holiness.

Yeah, well, there's this old Nazarene hymn that's kind of our theme song, you know, if the Nazarenes have a theme song, you know, it's "Holiness unto the Lord." I can't remember off the top of my head who wrote it now.

It's public domain, it doesn't matter.

Exactly, public domain, so there's more money to be made off it, right?

That's right, more money to be made in public domain.

So the original version, should we play them a little bit of the original version? Yeah, go ahead. It's kind of like, "Called unto holiness, Church of our God." Purchased for Jesus, redeemed by his blood.

Called from the world and its idols to prove.

Called from the bondage of sin to be free. And then the problem was always the chorus because it went into this kind of like, it sounded like it almost sounded like a drinking song or something. It was like, holiness unto the Lord. And you can just see everybody sort of swinging their, you know, swinging their glasses. Swinging their pints. Yeah. So it's kind of got this like swingy, marchy, piratey feel to it, right? And very non-translatable to 2012 music, church music. Holiness unto the Lord. Not to knock churches that still do it that way. In any way, I mean stylistically, but I can't play that way on my guitar. I mean, you can do it kind of maybe on the organ or the accordion or something, maybe, or something like that. But so my pastor challenged me, which I I've just gone through pastoral transition in the last year at our church, and it's been really interesting. God's been really good through the whole thing, through the whole process. But our new pastor, Mark Atherton, challenged me to write an updated version of it. It was one of those things that just popped out and felt like it dropped in my lap, almost already done. Then I bounced it off you, and you made a few tweaks and suggestions that helped me, I think, perfect it. It. But I started thinking about it and realizing if I just kind of flip-flopped the lines of the chorus and kind of put a new melody to it, a little bit new feel to it, that we could do it as a modern guitar-driven kind of worship song and save it a bit. Yeah. And Sunday we did it for the first time at my church with the full band, and it went over pretty well. And I tried your tweak, and I think it kind of threw people, a couple people off with the one line. In the original song it says says, and it kind of relates to what we've been talking about, the original line says, "Called from the world and its idols to flee," and it's kind of this idea that we're withdrawing from the world, that we're running away from the world, like, "Run away, run away, run away, I'm scared of the world," and don't want to get our hands dirty with the world. Rick texted me kind of thinking about the song and said, "Hey, I wonder if it would serve the church better if we sang, 'Calling the world from its idols to flee.'" rather than called from the world and its idols to flee. And, you know, I think there's different ways to spin the original lyric that kind of redeem it a little bit.

But, well, the idea then I think was we want to be a people set apart, right? So the idea is to be a people of holiness. But I think the context today, it feels like we're running away from the world. Let's get behind walls where they can't touch us. Exactly.

Let's run. Let's all run into the church and wall ourselves off.

So maybe the thought of calling the world from its idols instead of called from the world and its idols, because I actually feel like we need to run headlong into the world because that's where Christians are called to be.

Exactly. So it's a minor tweak to the lyric, but I tried it that way Sunday and nobody said anything about it at least. And so for better or worse, nobody called me on it. But I like the idea too. And it reminds me of sort of how Hawarawasi and Stanley Hawarawasi Hauerwas was one of Tripp's teachers, actually. We keep taking Tripp's name in vain, like you guys did that with me, too, when you had him on. But Stanley Hauerwas is a theologian and ethics professor at Duke, and he talks about how the church's job is to make the world the world, not to make the world the church, but to show the world that it's the world, that it's not the church. To live out, kind of prophetically, the distinction between the church that's living as citizens of the kingdom and the world that's living as citizens of the reign of the powers that be. So, I like the idea that what we're doing is calling the world to recognize its idolatry and to recognize its unfaithfulness. So, yeah, let's just kind of play through this. I'm doing it in English.

Okay, I'm going to try to play along. If I get lost.

This is totally unrehearsed, um, and I might even forget some of the words and stuff like that. But anyway, it kind of goes like this.

Called unto holiness, Church of our God, purchase of Jesus, redeemed by his blood, calling the world from its idols to flee, called from the bondage of sin to be free, called unto holiness, praise his dear name. This blessed secret to faith now made plain. Not our own righteousness, but Christ within, living and reigning and saving from sin. Our watchword is Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts. As we're marching along, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts. We will sing it, shout it loud and low. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts, now and forever. Evermore. Called unto holiness, Bride of the Lamb, greeting the Bridegroom's returning again. Lift up your head for the day draweth near. When in his beauty the King shall appear, our watchword and song is, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts." As we're marching along, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts. We will sing it, shout it loud and Holyness unto the Lord, now and forevermore. God's Holy Spirit abiding within, living and reigning. Living and saving from sin. God's Holy Spirit abiding within, living and reigning and saving from sin. Our watchword and song, tolling a summons to the call, as we mourn Marching along, glory to the Lord. We will sing it, shout it loud and long. Glory to the Son, to the Lord. Glory to the Son, to the Lord. Or something like that.

Hey, that was good except where I played. That was nice. Yes, uh, very good. Well, Brandon, thank you for being here with us today. I really appreciate it. If people want to get in contact with you, want to know more about your book and just your life, maybe even want to get schedule it for some music sometime. Uh, what—

how could they contact you? Uh, brandonhankoff.com. Brandonhankoff. Everything's on there. It's B-R-A-N-N-O-N. So we should have probably talked about my name right off the top. Yeah, it's not Brandon. It's like— I used to tell people it's like Brandon but with no D, but then when I lived in Scotland, Brandon is just as uncommon a name as Brannon. Oh. And so I had to start telling people it's like Shannon, but with a B-R instead of an S-H. So it's B-R-A-N-N-O-N Hancock.

You could have made a notbrandon.com, you know. Notbrandon.com. Yeah, but it's actually branonhancock.com. Yeah, and that has email and like my Twitter link and Facebook and all that stuff.

So, and I blog a little bit there and have some music stuff. So it's just sort of a little catch-all spot.

Excellent. Well, thank you for joining us on Voices in My Head today. Thank you. Episode number something, I forgot which one. I think it's 9. Yeah, that's right, episode number 9. So God bless, Brandon. Thanks.

Thank you for joining me here this week on Voices in My Head. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com where you can find out more about me, get my music on vinyl and CD, follow my blog blog, and even schedule me for a concert or speaking engagement. Better yet, even a book signing in your neighborhood. You can find all that and more at rickleejames.com. Also, it would mean a great deal to me if you could write a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast will be online. And now for the benediction. May the God May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. God bless you, and thank you for listening to Voices in My Head.