GCN Radio - January 8, 2004
Transcribed by Vombatus

To listen to this episode, visit http://www.gaychristian.net/gcnradio

[Music]

JUSTIN: Well hello, and welcome to the first ever edition of GCN radio. I’m Justin, your friendly neighborhood GCN moderator and joining us today is Brian from Muncie, Indiana, known to most of the GCN members as MusicBri32. Isn’t that right? MusicBri32?

BRIAN: Yes, that is me, that is me. Now, you are the real Justin, the GCNJustin, our leader, our king.

JUSTIN: [laughs] Um… I think Jesus is your king, hopefully not me.

BRIAN: Yes, indeed, that goes without saying.

JUSTIN: Uh, well, um, I think everybody knows who I am, pretty much, but I don’t know how many people know who you are because you’re fairly new.

BRIAN: I think I got involved, I want to say, November. It was interesting how I found the site. I attend Dignity, which is a group for gay Catholics and sitting at the table by me was Tyler Connoley, who happens to be co-author of the book The Children Are Free, which is advertised on the site. And he said, “I have this book to read”, and he gave me his card and on the back it had a really nice recommendation and it said GayChristian.net. So I ordered the book, and in the meantime I went to GayChristian.net and that’s how I found all of you and it’s just exciting and a really, really wonderful place. I’m excited to be here. I’m a graduate of Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana and if you’ve heard of it, that’s great. Not a lot of people have heard of it. Our famous alum, of course, is David Letterman, who graduated from Ball State University.

JUSTIN: Oh really?

BRIAN: Yes! And I am a radio person here at the public radio station where I work and that’s my day job. Outside of that I do a lot of composition and piano playing and I’m really involved in my church. So, I’m just really tickled to death to be part of GCN, it’s really an honor.

JUSTIN: That’s great. And without you we wouldn’t have the radio show. Which, I’m very excited about this; this is a brand new thing for us. I was excited that you found GCN through Tyler Connoley and Tyler is a good friend of mine, though I rarely have a chance to talk to him, but we’ll have to see if we could get him on the show sometime.

BRIAN: That’d be great!

JUSTIN: Because he’s a very, very interesting person.

BRIAN: Well, how did this idea come into your head?

JUSTIN: I think this was sort of a joint thing between you and me. I guess we should explain to people… and you can tell that I’m not used to doing radio, at all. I am as unpolished as you get, so hopefully I’ll get more used to it…

BRIAN: We call that “being real” and it’s okay.

JUSTIN: I call it being ‘green’.

BRIAN: What’s actually happening is really cool. I am recording into a computer, actually, it’s Macintosh ProTools, is the program that I use. And Justin is recording his half of the conversation, which he’s going to send me via the Internet after we’re all done and then I’m going to do what used to be called in radio a ‘tape sync’ where I join the two conversations together and sync them up, and then I’ll do a little tightening and editing and that’s what you’re hearing right now. And that leads me to one of the goals of our show, which is to feature different people of different walks of life and certainly GCN people that we’d like to have on the show.

JUSTIN: Yeah, absolutely. We’ll see who we can coax…

BRIAN: con into being on with us.

JUSTIN: I’m going to try and find somebody who is even more not used to this than I am so that I don’t sound so bad.

BRIAN: You sound fine. You sound great, you sound great. And I think people are enjoying, having seen your posts all this time, now finally hearing your voice. Which is something that really this medium is going to afford, which is for us to communicate in a more direct way and a more personal way, which is very exciting.

JUSTIN: Right, when you’re online and you’re reading what people have to say, it can become very impersonal. You see, there’s just a lot that comes through with a voice or with a picture that you don’t get with words, just text on a screen. I think that’s one reason that message boards all over the Internet have been conducive to debate and intellectual argument, but not so much to friendships and communities. That’s one reason that I’ve been trying from day one to infuse a lot of personality into the site, to put pictures on the message boards and we can talk to people through the show, which I think will be interesting.

BRIAN: I think it’s an exciting time, and I’m really excited about GCN. Speaking of exciting, my goodness sakes, you know that God’s work is being done when you ask twelve days before Christmas for a fundraiser and you not only make the goal, but exceed the goal. That’s great!

JUSTIN: I know! That’s very exciting.

BRIAN: We need to give our selves a big hand, [canned applause] it’s really exciting.

JUSTIN: So now who were all those people?

BRIAN: Those were my… hired clapping people. They get union scale; I feed them and they clap. [canned applause] Great guys, thanks!

JUSTIN: I think I need that sound effect on tape, and I’ll just take that with me everywhere I go.

BRIAN: Were you surprised? How did you feel about that whole thing, that fundraiser?

JUSTIN: You know, I was really overwhelmed. Because my vision, not the positive vision, but the negative side, was that I was terrified that we were going to put this online and bring in about twenty bucks and it would be a dismal failure and I was just trying to trust God that that didn’t happen. And so I was really blown away that we exceeded the goal before Christmas.

BRIAN: So what’s the next step? Once we become incorporated and become a non-profit, then what’s possible?

JUSTIN: I don’t know if there is a ‘next step’ because there are all sorts of steps going on at one time. If you’ve logged on to the message boards recently and looked at the “Message board likes and dislikes” thread over on the Site News & Announcements forum, people have created this huge list for me of all the things that need to be done. And that gets added to my own personal list which has all kinds of stuff on it. But the thing is, there are always things that can be done to make the site more user friendly and to prepare us for bringing more people in. And I have lots of little ideas up my sleeve, I just don’t like giving things away too fast.

BRIAN: Ahh, ahh, yes. I’d like to read a little bit from your profile: “On a personal level, I'm a fairly laid-back guy, but I have lofty goals (read: I want to change the world), so I tend to put more pressure on myself than I should. Oh, well!” [laughter] What do you mean by that: “I want to change the world”?

JUSTIN: I’m hoping to have every capitol of every state erect a statue in my honor…

BRIAN: Okay! [laughs] well, they won’t have to worry about the hair part… I mean, those are hard for sculptors, I think…

JUSTIN: No, actually, it’s funny that you brought that up. I received a gift for Christmas from an online buddy of mine named David who does sculptures, and he made a sculpture of me. I’ll have to take a picture of that and send it out to everybody at GCN. I was so impressed. It’s a little…it’s a small clay sculpture that sits on my desk. It’s just remarkable, I love it.

BRIAN: Oh man!

JUSTIN: It’s really fantastic. Everybody who comes over to my apartment and sees it is really overwhelmed.

BRIAN: Well, you do have a statue in your honor then! How about that?

JUSTIN: I know! Um… I believe that the time that God gives us here on earth is precious and I want to use that time to do things that matter. I would like that when I die, the world is better in some way than it was before I came into it, and I really believe that GCN is a big part of that for me because I believe that the church needs to be available to gay and lesbian folks and I think that the fact that right now a large part of the church isn’t available to us is really sad especially because it’s turning a lot of people away from God. I think if there’s anything worth doing in this world, it’s bringing people to God because you’re not going to be happy without God. So that’s a huge part of what I’m trying to do… I don’t even I know what I’m trying to do half the time.

BRIAN: I think that’s honorable. I know that my faith teaches me that all are welcome. The Jesus that I worship does not turn anyone away, and I think that the more we can put that message out there and celebrate and believe and live that message, the better we are and the more that we’re telling the truth.

JUSTIN: Absolutely.

BRIAN: Yay, GCN. We’re coming shortly to the end of our show, but before we go, we want you to know that our music is not the cheesy music you heard at the beginning.

JUSTIN: That was some cheesy music.

BRIAN: Yes, it was, so what we’re going to do, and this is going to be really fun. Contest time, guys, contest time! We are going to announce a music contest where you, yes, you in GCN land, can create our theme. Now we know we have lots of musical people out there. I really don’t have the time to do any other music projects right now, so I want to throw this out to anyone who has the musical gene… the musical bug, to create a theme song. Obviously it doesn’t have to be too long; we’re looking at a minute or two of music that we can use for the show. And you know, if we get two or three really good themes, then we’ve got two or three really good themes for the show that we can rotate in and out. But just think, get busy, get to your keyboards or your music software and see what you can create. And then anything you create you can e-mail to gcnradio@gaychristian.net.

JUSTIN: And maybe we can get some better applause sound effects as well.

BRIAN: Awww… what? What? [canned applause]

JUSTIN: No, no, it was good.

BRIAN: Let just say a deadline of a month from today and see where we are. Just get your music submissions in, that’s gcnradio@gaychristian.net. Justin, as we go, I actually have a couple of little surprises here. You know, on the message board, we’ve been talking about music from our childhood, from Bible school and Sunday school that we like, and I thought that for the kid in all of us, we’d take a little trip down memory lane here.

[“Rise and Shine”]

BRIAN: I got these off the internet. So they’re not complete songs, just little clips that I was able to find online. So we all remember “Arky Arky”… so let’s see what else do I have. See if you remember this one…

[“Deep and Wide”]

JUSTIN: I know when we sang that song it always ended up as “Mmmm and Mmmm…”

BRIAN: Oh yes! I’d forgotten about that, “Mmm and mmm… There’s a river flowing mmmm and mmm…”

BRIAN: Now, did you ever sing ‘Zaccheus’?

JUSTIN: Oh yeah, Zaccheus in the tree.

[“Zaccheus was a Wee Little Man”]

BRIAN: These are recordings by The Wonder Kids from the Super Song Collection. But, I thought we’d close with that for the kid in all of us. One of my favorite sayings is “Though I may grow old, I will never grow up.”

JUSTIN: Well, that’s a good one. As we close then, Brian, I thank you so much for making this possible and we look forward to talking to you again some more next week.

BRIAN: It’s fun… this is fun, this is one of life’s fun things.

JUSTIN: Yeah, this’ll be… and once I get used to talking on the radio maybe I’ll be a little less ‘green’.

BRIAN: We can train you… we can show you the ropes.

JUSTIN: I need some training. We can play the Rocky theme song as I punch the punching bag and talk into the microphone. I want to thank everybody for listening today, and thanks to everyone who participates on GCN as well, because we wouldn’t have a community without all of the folks in the community. And from this point forward you can hear us every week by going to www.gaychristian.net/gcnradio or just head over to GCN and click the GCN Radio link at the top of the page.

BRIAN: I’m Brian…

JUSTIN: …and I’m Justin.

BRIAN: Have a great day.

[music]