Sometime, about a year and a half ago, I backed-up my entire music collection in mp3 format, and burned it onto CD-Rs. In deciding how to categorize my music, I first separated it into Christian and Heathen categories (with crossover bands like Sixpence or Amy Grant still falling into the Christian area of things - I like to give their salvation the benefit of the doubt), and then largely organized things alphabetically. Near the end of the alphabet, I lumped together a large quantity of songs that fell under the heading of “worship”.
I’ve never been one who has been heavily into worship bands. My brother listens to worship music almost exclusively, but he plays in the worship band at his church, and I haven’t been in that position for a while now, due to my keyboarding skills currently being categorized somewhere between “sucky” and “makes people want to renounce their faith”. However, I do enjoy a selection of modern worship music, and find myself edified by spinning it on my CD player from time to time.
As I was flipping through some of these worship songs today in my car, I started thinking about the modern “worship industry”, and just what it means to have an industry dedicated to the production of worship music.
I remember when Petra came out with a worship album in the late 80s, and how we were all a little shocked that you could praise God with songs that sounded so “heavy” (at the time). But through the 90s, there was a huge movement through the Christian music industry that saw almost every major artist producing a worship album, and new bands emerging that dedicated themselves to writing and performing worship music exclusively. Bands like Delirious blurred the line between worship and performance. And artists who seemed to be “past their prime” (like Michael W. Smith) were re-inventing their careers as worship leaders.
There are many issues that could be raised within this topic, and I don’t think I have the time or space to deal with them all here. So maybe I’ll ask some questions:
Is it right to be listening to worship music as entertainment? Is it possible to worship through music that was designed only to be entertainment, and not “worship music” at all?
Is it right to generate income from a song that was designed to be used in worship (from an artist’s standpoint, and that of the music publisher)?
Has the “worship industry” (and perhaps the Christian Music Industry in general) become a means for ushering-in a greater dose of artistic mediocrity into the Christian subculture, and North American culture as a whole?
Where do you draw the line between worship and performance? Is it a matter of artists’ intentions, or audience participation, or are such lines arbitrary conceptions in and of themselves?
To what extent should the Church hold artists accountable for producing works of high artistic quality? And how can modern North American Christians be educated in the appreciation of artistic quality and innovation?
There’s an excellent article at the Relevant Magazine website that deals with some of these issues. I encourage all of you to take 3 minutes to read it over, and then post your responses to some of these issues and questions in the comments area for this post.
Many of you who regularly read my blog may already know that, before Larissa and I got together, I spend a very large portion of my free time agonizing over being single, and trying to figure out the proper “formula” to find a good wife in as short a time as possible. While the journey in building my relationship with Larissa was long and complicated, it was well worth the wait.
