GCN Radio - February 28, 2004
Transcribed by Vombatus

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

[music]

BRIAN: Hello, and welcome to another edition of GCN Radio. I’m Brian in Muncie, Indiana …

JUSITN: …and in Raleigh, North Carolina, I’m Justin.

BRIAN: So here we are, it’s our seventh program and today it’s just going to be Justin and myself. Lots to discuss. I guess we’ll just start talking about some of the really cool new updates that you’ve been working on on the board, Justin. Many new things coming up, starting with a couple of weeks ago when you had the boards down all day long and for quite a while. How did all that go?

JUSITN: Everything went well. We upgraded the software and lots of little things that nobody really cares about besides me but it’s going to help make my job easier. Basically I’m putting the structure in place to start adding some new features and additions down the road. So you’ll start seeing that stuff happen in the near future. We got the Prayer Team up running this week…

BRIAN: I saw that. How is that working? Because I was logging on and there’s a section down toward the bottom that’s Prayer Team only, yet you have people directed to post in the regular prayer section. How’s that working out?

JUSITN: Right, essentially what’s going on right now is we have a Prayer Team and it’s a team of volunteers who are committed to pray for the ministry and for individual prayer requests on an ongoing basis. They have a separate forum where they can go and they can keep track of prayer requests, follow up to prayer requests, make sure that there are people praying for every single request. Part of what’s going on with that as well is that I’ve set up an e-mail address at prayer@gaychristian.net so that if you have a private request that you don’t want to post publicly on the message boards but you want someone to be praying for you, you can it e-mail to that address and that’s going to get posted in the Prayer forum. And then nobody will have access to what gets posted there except the Prayer Team. And that way they continue to be praying for it even though everybody else doesn’t necessarily know what’s going on.

BRIAN: So if you have a prayer request that is maybe more private that you don’t want everyone in the community to know about but you still want to have someone pray for you, you can e-mail that address?

JUSITN: Right. And that’s going to be promoted more on the site over the next couple of weeks. And there are going to be more things coming up. You’ll see as it happens. But I’m staying incredibly, incredibly busy.

BRIAN: Not you! Can’t imagine that! [laughs]

JUSITN: So how are you doing, Brian?

BRIAN: I’m okay… I am good. I was mentioning before we went on the air today, it’s getting into my really, really busy time of the year as we start heading into, what my day job is, in public radio, fundraising. I come to expect it every year and that’s just the way it is. But in addition to all of that, I’ve written a new Mass that just debuted at my church Ash Wednesday. And that has been pretty well received and so it’s just a busy, busy time right now.

JUSITN: Absolutely.

BRIAN: But I know it’s a busy time for lots of people and there’s a lot going on right now in the news. We’ve seen several posts about world events right now, especially concerning gay and lesbian issues. And that’s definitely been on my mind a lot lately, especially in personal reflection.

JUSITN: Yeah, I think right now a lot of folks are really on edge with what’s going on with the Federal Marriage Amendment here in the United States. If anyone’s not up to speed on this, President Bush announced his support of a proposed constitutional amendment that would essentially prohibit any state, or the federal government, from recognizing same-sex marriages or issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. So there’s a lot of political discussion going on in that arena, there are a couple of threads going on on the message boards, and I think a lot of people are really stressed about it. One thing is, GCN, we’re not a political group so this is something that I think as we look at this issue, ultimately these are legal and political issues and I hope that we won’t lose our true focus, which is to serve Christ. Certainly the early Christians had a lot of political and legal oppression of them just for being Christians, for following Christ. And that’s not something that we are ever promised to be free of in this world. Certainly I think that everyone ought to vote according to their conscience, according to what they think is right, where issues come up for a vote. But I think we need to remember that this is not the most important issue. These are important issues but they are not the most importantly issues. So I encourage everybody to remember as we deal with some controversies that we are still the body of Christ, and even when we are divided on political issues, we are still one body, still serving the same God.

BRIAN: I think that that’s a very important thing to remember. I want to switch to another issue: the Mel Gibson movie.

JUSITN: Right!

BRIAN: Lots of controversy surrounding that, certainly, in the media right now. How’s this all going to shake out, do you think?

JUSITN: You know, I don’t know? I haven’t seen it, so I’m reserving judgment until I do. Have you had a chance to see it yet?

BRIAN: I have not, but I do want to see it.

JUSITN: This is certainly not the first time when someone has done a film or a book or a play or anything else dealing with the life of Christ. It’s something that we all, as Christians, are very interested in, but the gospel accounts don’t give us all the information, so there are going to be differences of opinion about things. I think that that’s reasonable. Now, I can tell you that this week I just saw The Lion King 1 ½.

BRIAN: Oh, yeah, I saw some advertisement for that. Did you like it?

JUSITN: I wasn’t going to see it, my sister rented it and she tied me down and made me watch it while…

BRIAN: Uh oh! Hope she didn’t hurt you! [laughs]

JUSITN: …while I was working setting all the Prayer Team stuff up, so. It was actually cute. It wasn’t as good as the first one but I thought that, as direct-to-video sequels go, it was pretty funny. It has a lot of the original voice talent from the first film. A little strange that it’s coming out ten years or so after the first movie, but it gives a different perspective.

BRIAN: Sometimes it takes people a while to make sequels, I guess.

JUSITN: I have to say, for anybody interested in seeing this movie, my favorite thing in this film is there’s this great scene where Rafiki, the monkey, meets Timon and teaches Timon the words ‘hakuna matata’, and then Timon meets Poomba and Timon is trying to remember the words ‘hakuna matata’ and he can’t remember it. Meanwhile, Poomba is doing some cooking and fixes a ‘hot tuna frittata’ as well as other things.

BRIAN: Oh, that sounds so cute!

JUSITN: It’s totally mindless! This is mindless kids’ humor, but it’s funny.

BRIAN: That’s cool. So what happens here in the next couple weeks, couple months? What should we be watching for on GCN?

JUSITN: Oh goodness! Who knows?

BRIAN: Oh, listen to you! We just can’t draw anything out of you, can we?

JUSITN: Well, you know, I’m always working on something.

BRIAN: You’re just a schemer.

JUSITN: Well, here’s something, Brian. Part of the discussion, we’ve been talking about doing sort of an official GCN get together once a year.

BRIAN: Yes!

JUSITN: People could still have their own local gatherings which has been going on, but we thought about—you actually suggested this to me—having one event that is sort of The Central GCN Get Together event once a year.

BRIAN: The grand extravaganza of them all.

JUSITN: Yeah, and so I think tentative plans are at the end of this year or early 2005…

BRIAN: Oh, that sounds so cool… so, so neat.

JUSITN: And we’re talking about Florida as a gathering place, maybe Orlando. So we’ll see.

BRIAN: That’s great. And I was going to quickly mention that we haven’t forgotten about the music contest. There is an idea taking shape about how to wrap this up, but in the meantime I have gotten some more submissions of music, and I’m proud to say they’re all quite different from one another. And that’s actually going to turn out to be a good thing, as you’ll see in the next few weeks. So if you have the aspiration to work on a music project, the deadline is now open ended and will continue to be, but we will be recognizing everybody’s work that they’re contributing to this. So that’s something else to look forward to down the road in the not too distant future.

JUSITN: Well Brian, this show always seems to go by so fast. I don’t know why!

BRIAN: I know, I know! I can’t believe we’re out of time already. We need to have an hour long show and then it’ll take two hours for people to download it.

JUSITN: Oh oh! I want to mention this, before we go, because this is an idea that I’ve been talking to a couple of people about and I want to kind of throw this out there for people. One thing that’s important to us as gay and lesbian folks is to talk to the straight Christians in our lives about what we experience, just because there are a lot of people that have never understood “Why does somebody come out? Why does somebody call themselves gay? Why does somebody get involved in this community or that community?” So, one of the ideas that I have is that I would really like to get folks to videotape themselves giving their testimonies talking about coming out. Just telling the whole story: how did they become a Christian? What was it like struggling with figuring out they were gay? Why did they decide they were gay? Why did they come out, if they did? What was the reaction they had? What kinds of things happened since, discrimination they face, all kinds of issues like that. Anybody who’s interested, if they want more information, I would love for them to contact me at Justin@gaychristian.net, because I’m ultimately planning to pull some of these videotaped testimonies together into a project. I will say more about it later. And all this is going to be edited, it’s going to be pieces of testimonies. So yeah, so that’s a project!

BRIAN: Wow! That’s wild, that’s really cool. So Justin@gaychristian.net is your e-mail for people to find out more information about that. Are you looking for submissions on VHS?

JUSITN: You know, I can take them any way, whether VHS, 8 millimeter, High-8, DVD, mini-DVD… I’m pretty much equipped to do what I need to do. I have some experience video editing, so whatever you can get it to me in, I can work with. Digital format is okay as well, but I would need reasonably good quality. But people can always get with me on that and figure out what’s best. And I just think it’s really exciting, anything we can do to be able to get to know the hearts of people more, I think is so helpful to us as a community.

BRIAN: And along those lines, we’ll be having many, many more big guests on this program…

JUSITN: Yes. Oh! Brian, I know something else I forgot to tell you!

BRIAN: Okay?

JUSITN: This is funny to me because we were talking about how people come across and I actually made a comment to Wes on the message boards the other day that—because I called him ‘dude’. People don’t know this about me, but I say ‘dude’ and I say ‘y’all’ all the time. Like, everybody’s ‘dude’… I call my boss ‘dude’. I’m like, “Dude! What’s up with that?” I wanted to say, I’m not a California surfer-boy, it’s not like “du-u-u-ude, gnarly man! Cha! No way!”

BRIAN: You had us all fooled, Justin, we had you totally pegged at that point.

JUSITN: But, yeah. And I’m not all [twang] “Hi, y’all what’s goin’ on?” [/twang], but I do use those words. But anyways, my sister heard your voice, Brian, and she thinks that you sound like David Sedaris.

BRIAN: Oh, I will go ahead and take that as a compliment, because I’m a huge David Sedaris fan.

JUSITN: Are you?

BRIAN: And he’s from Raleigh!

JUSITN: He is from Raleigh, and my sister is a big fan of his as well. And she has audio books that are read by the author of his, so she thinks you sound just like David Sedaris.

BRIAN: Awww, well, thank you! Tell your sister that I said thanks.

JUSITN: I’ll do that.

BRIAN: I appreciate that. And you can look David Sedaris up on the Internet, he’s got lots of material out there. And he’s hilarious! He is so, so funny!

JUSITN: And it’s his sister who’s on Strangers with Candy, I don’t know if that show’s still on the air. Do you remember that show? It was on Comedy Central?

BRIAN: Hmm… I’m not as familiar with that one.

JUSITN: She’s a… oh, well, it doesn’t really matter.

BRIAN: Well, I think that about wraps up this edition of GCN Radio. You can always listen to us online at www.gaychristian.net/gcnradio/ and we’ll look forward to seeing you again next time. So from Muncie…

JUSITN: E-mail your…

BRIAN: Go ahead…

JUSITN: I was going to say, you can e-mail your… [giggles] I’m losing it! … I was going to say, you can e-mail your suggestions and comments at gcnradio@gaychristian.net.

BRIAN: Right, exactly. And I might read them.

JUSITN: Maybe!

BRIAN: Maybe, maybe. No, I will. I love e-mail. I always log into my e-mail and I get all excited whenever a new message comes up.

JUSITN: Absolutely. And send your prayer requests in to prayer@gaychristian.net.

BRIAN: Awesome. Well everybody, have a great week, and we’ll see you next time on GCN Radio.

JUSITN: Bye-bye.

[music]