Geof Morris: Derek, it’s been interesting of late to see people on our forum and I guess on yours as well from (the level that I’ve?) looked into it——obviously you come from a theological tradition over the last couple of years that’s fairly conservative, and people are seeing you appear at a conference [with] Jim Wallis, who’s sort of a hot button with people that are pretty conservative—and I think—and this is my own thinking here—some of it , I just wonder how much they’ve really ever listened to or tried to read of him, and they’ve just sort of prejudged—

Derek Webb: Sure.

GM: Which is fine…because people are going to do that. everybody’s got a limited amount of time, so you’re going to go off of what other people say about somebody.

So—are you kinda worried about that controversy, or are you just letting it roll off your back, and going on and doing what you think is important?

DW: Well—yeah. I don’t have—Here’s the deal. It’s interesting how quickly people who will applaud your singing a song like “Nobody Loves Me” like, “I don’t give a damn what anybody is saying, it’s about what I do, and as far as I feel like what I’m doing is the Lord’s business—” they’ll applaud you at one moment—and then at another moment, when whatever you are doing doesn’t happen to line up with what they would like for you to be doing, suddenly they are real bent out of shape about it. Because sometimes the “Nobody” that I’m referring to are different people than other times.

GM: Right

Howdy, all. I’m reticent to plug myself on here, but there’s a DW tie-in, so … here goes.

Thanks to Derek’s generosity, I’ll be giving away five free, signed copies of How to Kill and Be Killed, Derek’s live concert DVD, at random to all people who sponsor my Blogathon 2005 campaign in support of Blood:Water Mission:

What’s Blood:Water Mission?

If you’ve been to any of Derek’s recent shows, you know that he’s been out campaigning for Blood:Water Mission and the 1000 Wells project. Simply put, our neighbors in Africa, some of whom are Christian brothers and sisters, are dying because they don’t have basic things that we take for granted, like clean, HIV-free blood and readily-available, clean drinking water. The folks at Blood:Water have worked the numbers: if we pool our dollars together, we can provide one African with clean drinking water for one year with just $1. One dollar!

What’s the Blogathon?

The concept behind the Blogathon is pretty simple: people sign up to post every half-hour for an entire 24-hour period on their Weblogs. People sponsor them, like you do for 10K charity runs, 5K walks, or any other event. I’m going to give this a whirl with my own personal Weblog, The Indiana Jones School of Management, and I’m asking for your support.

How can I sponsor and pledge support to Blood:Water?

It’s pretty simple: register with Blogathon, read the how-to on sponsoring a campaign, and pledge your support to Blood:Water. When the Blogathon’s over, you’ll get an email from Blogathon.org with instructions on how to send in your donations.

It’s just that easy.

What if I’m broke and can’t sponsor?

You could always point people at the campaign from your Weblog, on a forum you frequent, or whatever. You’d have my gratitude.

Thanks in advance for your consideration and support!

If you’re an iTunes user, you should be able to find Derek’s podcast in the Podcast Directory. To save you some time, though, we’ve dug up the direct link to the Derek Webb podcast feed. If you use iTunes, go to Podcasts, select “Advanced” in the menu, and then select “Subscribe to Podcast”. Paste the URL — http://podcasts.buzzplant.com/derekwebb/DW-podcast.xml — into the box, click OK, and iTunes will start chugging away.

Hope everyone enjoys hearing about “the magic songwriter theory”. Derek and I were laughing so hard that I thought we’d have to stop recording, leave the room, and come back. As noted previously, this is just the first of many podcasts, and they should be coming out monthly or so.

[Thanks to Mark Smiley for digging up the Podcast URL.]