Gungor says 'journey is over' for band, announces farewell tour: 'It's time for something new'
Michael Gungor, one of the lead singers and songwriters of the Christian alternative rock group Gungor, has announced that the "journey is over" for the band — and the upcoming “End of the World” tour is now also the Gungor farewell tour.
In a blog post, Gungor, who leads the musical collective with his wife Lisa Gungor, wrote: “We love where we’ve come from. We’ve loved the journey … But strangely enough, we feel like that journey is over. Gungor feels to us like it’s done what it needed to do. Said what it needed to say. And now it’s time for something new."
Gungor clarified that the end of the band “doesn’t mean that we are going to stop making music.”
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“Music is a part of who we are, and, like I mentioned, we already have a bunch of stuff recorded that we are trying to figure out what to do with brand and marketing wise,” he said. “But as for Gungor, we simply don’t feel the need to keep trying to write new stories on the same old paper.”
The singer explained that when the band started in 2006, they had “no idea” who they would be over a decade later.
“We sang songs to God about hope, faith, doubt, and love. We had some success. I lost my faith for a little while and wrote music about that. Then I began to see the unity of all things, and we began to write music about that,” he said.
He admitted the band’s polarizing lyrical themes have left fans confused and frustrated at times: “‘What are they singing about now?’ ‘Do they even believe in Jesus anymore?’…etc. But we’ve always tried to stay true to what’s happening in our hearts at the time of recording a record.”
Gungor concluded by announcing that the band’s upcoming “End of the World” tour is now also the Gungor farewell tour.
“We are going to sing a bunch of Gungor songs together (even some of the old ones),” he said. “We’ll laugh. We’ll cry. We’ll send this wonderful adventure that has been Gungor into the night as the end of an old world and the beginnings of a new one. We hope you’ll join us for one last time. All of the love for all of you.”
Michael and Lisa Gungor, who founded Bloom Church in Denver, Colorado, in 2006, are behind several popular worship anthems including “Dry Bones” and “Beautiful Things.”
In 2014, the Grammy-nominated group stunned the Christian community when Michael Gungor revealed that he and his wife don't literally believe in stories from the Bible on topics such as creation (including Adam and Eve) and the flood, challenging orthodox Christian doctrine.
Last year, Lisa Gungor told The Christian Post that her husband fully embraced atheism in 2012 but he has since found his way back to God.
"Our ideas of God are still deconstructing. What is it that we still believe? Michael looks at me and says 'I don't believe in God anymore.' Like I can't believe any of it and he ends up talking more and I remember just like freezing in my whole body 'cause I was OK with the questions but I wasn't OK with that," Lisa recounted.
Still, she further told BuzzFeed that she and her husband want to free themselves from conservative Christian labels and expectations
"I don't want what we used to have,” she stated. “We live in a different headspace now. It's a completely different perspective and the connection I feel with my daughters there is no us versus them. There's no you and I, there's no winners and losers. Part of my dream is that people wouldn't be so scared and afraid. I know a lot of people are still in this very conservative fundamental bubble and they can be so afraid to break out of that fear of what will happen to their lives. And this happens in any religion.”
