Report: METALLICA Are Messengers For God, Calgary Pastor Preaches

September 11, 2010

The Canadian Press recently conducted an interview with John Van Sloten, the 49-year-old pop-culture pastor of the Christian Reformed congregation at New Hope Church in Calgary, Alberta, Canada and author of the book "The Day Metallica Came To Church: Searching For The Everywhere God In Everything".

On preaching about METALLICA in his sermon:

"Some kid asked me at church to preach METALLICA. I sort of said, 'Yeah, sure,' and told him I'd pray about it, which is how we slough people off, and then the next day someone from our church called me with METALLICA tickets.

"So my wife and I went to METALLICA and had an experience there, in a very deep communal sense that these people are all sharing a lament and a feeling of injustice about how screwed up the world is.

"That got my heart into it so I went back and read all the lyrics and as I was reading their lyrics I would have a biblical truth or a scriptural passage come at the same time."

On METALLICA's song "Creeping Death":

"METALLICA wrote that song based on the 10 plagues and the Exodus. Basically you are quoting the same episode. I saw these connections between biblical truth and Metallica as heavy metal truth. When you put them side by side it, convinced me that Metallica had to be preached."

On how METALLICA sent a camera crew to the church to film his sermon after they got word that he was preaching about the band:

"It was huge that METALLICA would be intrigued and actually want to film the service so that they could see a church preach about them. Not just in the way they thought people would preach about them but seeing them as Old Testament prophets in terms of some of the things they get angry about."

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