Kim - You did an interview with HM Magazine shortly before Collide came out and you commented in that interview you had the feeling that "we're going to see a load of bands start off wanting to share the Gospel and end up not doing that because they're having a chance to go mainstream". Do you feel like that was prophetic for Skillet or do you feel like you're not going to fall into that category?
John - No.

I'm certainly not planning on doing that. It's certainly not been the case so far. What I was getting at, in that statement to HM, is that I think that a lot of times we kind of start out as radical or passionate and all those kinds of things and then we end up deciding to kind of give all of that up for what the world has to offer. I think definitely that has happened and is going to happen for a lot of Christian bands. I think one of the really strange things at the moment is that there are some things that God has been speaking to me that have been maybe changing from the way I have been in the past. Naturally, people think that it's to do with a mainstream deal, when really it's nothing to do with the mainstream deal. It's just been what God has been speaking to me since before this whole Lava thing started. Some of that has to do with my faith or something like that. People will take what I say literally like meaning sharing the gospel preaching on-stage and doing an altar call. You know what I mean?

As opposed to just spreading the Good news of the message of Christ. I think that sometimes you get into a little bit of semantics with these issues and then it can be taken that way. Anyway, that is what I was getting at. I'm certainly not planning on that being the case with us. If that was going to be the case with us, I would not want ... I guess what I'm saying is that the idea of going mainstream or selling 2 million records or all these things doesn't mean anything to me compared to the testimony of Christ in our lives or in our ministry. Those things aren't really the goal of Skillet. You know what I mean?

Kim - I know that you touched on it in a press release when you said that you "have given a lot of thought to how success will affect the band's spiritual center" and that the one thing you don't want is to "look back in a few years and decide, 'I really don't like who I've become and I've really lost the mission aspect of what I've done just so I could sell records'." That was quite a statement and a stance.

John - Yeah, it is. The thing is, it's hard. The concern for me has always been, and still is, sometimes it's hard to be ... What I think that we're supposed to be in the world is the light and the darkness. Jesus is the light of the world and He's living inside of us while we're living in darkness, so everywhere we go, we're spreading the light of the gospel. I think that sometimes when you're in a position where a lot of people are looking at you, you know, you're in the public eye or whatever you want to call it, I think that sometimes it gets confusing about what does it mean to be that light. You know? To a lot of Christians it means, even within Christianity, it can mean several different things. That's what I'm trying to get at. One kind of thought is "yeah, I'm living my life like Christ and I'm affecting the people I know". The other side of it, especially with what Skillet has been doing for so long, is like TV evangelist preaching. You know what I mean? I think that's where some of the criticism is coming from the Christian music fans standpoint with Skillet is "well, are you still going to be doing the hell-fire and brimstone preaching?". I think that the thing that a lot of people really aren't understanding is even within, forgetting music, just in ministry, is that I think that you would speak and minister to different kinds of people on different levels. Like, for instance, say you go to a Wednesday night youth group meeting at a church. The way they do their program is going to be much different than the way they do their Sunday morning program, or the way they would do their program if it were all non-Christian youth coming. It's kind of a different way. It's the same way that I see Jesus teaching people in different ways. We're kind of getting into some of that and I think that a lot of people aren't really... they're just kind of confused as to what that's going to look like.