Zealand Worship, the new project headed up by veteran musician Phil Joel, has made waves with both their recording of "Good Good Father" and their surprising decision to build their platform entirely without social media. 

Longtime worship leader and songwriter Michael Farren recently sat down with Phil to talk about that decision, what fueled it and what we can all take away from Zealand's experience.

My name's Michael Farren, this is Phil Joel, and we are having coffee this morning. And I'm not checking my social media for the next few minutes; we're actually going to talk about social media. Because you're embarking on this crazy experiment. Y'all called it an experiment right?

It is an experiment. That's a good term to use. 
 
Why don't we enjoy a second cup of coffee here and you tell me why you have chosen to embark on this experiment of not being anti-social media, but choosing to walk a bit of a different path with all of this.

Yeah, not engaging. It started a while ago. Four years ago, I went out on Winter Jam, which is a big tour. You're in front of 600,000 people over the course of 3 months. And someone at that time said "hey, you know you need to be on Facebook to make sure you maximize this opportunity." I hadn't been on Facebook to that point. And it was a conscious choice, something in me just felt like I didn't want to do this. But I was sort of told that I needed to. 

So I did. I opened up a Facebook account, started taking photos and sending them out. People started following, friending, whatever we call it. And about two weeks or three weeks later, my family basically had to have an intervention. No joke! And they sat me down, and they're like "Dad, we don't like you on social media." And at that point I was like "I don't like me either. I know." 

Because you know, you're constantly checking stuff. Are they liking this? Are people paying attention? Because I've been out of the Newsboys for a while now. And I wonder if anyone remembers who I am. And you know, it just woke up something in me that I didn't like. And I realized no, this is not a healthy thing for me, I need to back away. So I did, and I began to breathe deep again.

It brings out some interesting things. I think a common one is that people's identity gets so consumed in their perception on social media. That's their whole thing. 

Makes me think of Lord of the Rings and Smeagol. At the start of the whole thing, he's just this happy little hobbit just fishing, right? And then he finds the ring. And he slowly becomes an absolute, classic picture of isolation. And he's twisted in the end. 

I think so much of the stuff comes in gradually. We have a weird generation; we know what it was like before this stuff came in. And we know where we are now. So I think we have a responsibility to wave a little bit of an orange flag and say hey, let's slow down a little bit on some of these things that are coming down the line that we're being told we have to engage in. Just slow down. We don't have to take it. We don't have to pick it up. Be careful, you could become this.

Again, like you said, I'm not anti-media. Media is my job! I make music. 

I think it's a great way to put it. Somebody's got to wave an orange flag, a caution flag. And your family, and this platform God's given you, you've chosen to do that. To be graceful flag wavers going hey, let's guard this.

Yeah, I'm a reluctant flag waver. I don't want to be that guy. And I'm not grumpy about it. 

Anybody who knows you knows that that's not you or your sweet family. That's not who y'all are. Yet at the same time, this is a pretty brave, bold choice, to be the guy waving a flag going hey, I really see some danger here that we need to be guarded against.

There is life outside of social media. We can thrive, we can live and have real relationships and real communication outside of it. That's what I'm knowing and experiencing, and I want to keep waving that flag I guess.

Well thanks for being a grace-filled flag waver. And you said this before, and this is a huge statement: you said it takes more than it gives. That's what you encountered in those early days when you first got Facebook up and running. And if you go back and really think about it, the fruit of it wasn't near what it cost you. 

It stole time from my family. It stole time from my wife. And that's one of the other things, we've only been given a certain amount of time. We waste our time, we waste our life, right? That's a big deal man.

Let me specifically ask this question: how do you see this affecting a youth culture? 

I think we're all seeing youth culture affected by this. It's their new normal, but they don't realize it's a new normal, it's just normal to them to be living virtually, a reality that's not real. They might have a hundred friends, but they have none really. 

Why are our depression rates going through the roof? Why are people on more anti-depressants than ever? Why are there more ADD drugs being pumped into our kids than ever? Why are we more depressed? It's fascinating, but it's not that complicated. It's kind of math. We're feeding on this, and it's paying out in certain ways, and now we're looking for pills to take care of it. But we need to back away. And again, someone needs to wave this orange flag and say hey, I think some of the things you're consuming are causing issues in your heart and in your head. So let's unravel those things a little bit. There's so much more that we can lead our kids into that is healthy and strong, to give them a zeal for real life.

I would say, obviously, that it looks vastly different now than when you first arrived with Newsboys, chasing something that was just in your heart to chase and what God had put in front of you. It looks totally different now in a lot of ways, the parameters, what's feeding what. 

Yeah, it is different. I came to town with Newsboys. And obviously Christian music had messed with my heart, the Lord had used it at a certain point. And it just inflamed my heart, and it soundtracked my faith. It still does. Music is a wonderful thing. And at a certain point, I felt the Lord saying "hey, I want you to serve with this. As you've been served by this, I want you to serve."

It's an easy track to fall into, to turn from the call of Jesus, which is "hey, we need to serve one another" to having it flip around and go "man, what can I get from all these people who are following me?" And referring back to my social media experiment four years ago, I felt that gravity on my heart, continually checking to see if more people are following me, more people are liking, more people are into me.

Dare we say the narcissism word here?

It pulled the narcissist out of me! We all have those seeds in us right? But this just like put the water on it, like a watering can, and here I am, Narcissist Man!

Social media could be described as Miracle-Gro for narcissism. In this experiment, what has it been like trying to launch a band when people have said it's going to be impossible to launch a band or a platform without social media?

I do like the fact that you see this as an experiment. Because it is a big, wacky experiment. But that's life, right? That's life in the Lord. This is an adventure. 

But the deal is we're thriving as a band. We're alive. Hey, I've still got a pulse. My wife still thinks I'm cool, my kids are growing up beautifully. And all without social media. So far so good. So we continue to walk this thing with the Lord.

We will call it an experiment, but it is more than that. And I think it's an incredible, beautiful challenge for a lot of people. And I like your call to extremism in it, because it's grace-filled extremism. 

"Grace-filled extremism"--I like that! I'm going to take that phrase.