As Charlie Peacock has said:

"Then another brother or sister can say... 'What I'm going to do is to write the most inventive and compelling music that I can that is just filled with the Christian world view about any subject under the sun and I'm going to go out there and be on Warner Brothers Records and I'm going to move and shake amongst those people and I'm going to have my testimony prepared to give them should I be asked for the hope that is in me."

In order to do this the Christian music industry has hamstrung itself with a rather weak marketing strategy. Guess, if you will, the percentage of listeners to Christian radio that are already Christians. I don't think it would surprise anybody that the overwhelming majority of listeners are already Christians.

One marketing premise of Christian music is to put the music in the hands of as many Christians as possible, and hope they have non-Christian friends that they will bring to the concerts and introduce them to the music, and some will get saved. No problem here in principle. There is nothing wrong with singing music to the Lord and sharing it with the church, and giving Christians tools for evangelism.

Again, Charlie Peacock:

"Maybe it is a good tool, but are we loving our neighbors? We think we can take our friend to a Christian concert and maybe that will be why they accept Christ. It's really a lack of belief in the gospel. It's... a way of saying 'The Gospel isn't good enough. It has to be attached to something that people are interested in.'"

Do you believe Christian music in general to be of the same quality, musically, as the non-Christian? Do you believe that the singers and musicians are just as talented as the non-Christians? You probably answered yes. Industry folks will tell you pretty much the same thing. That Christian music has come a long way, and is a lot better, and is more comparable to the good "secular" stuff out there. Then why are they content with this third-party marketing and dissemination ploy? Wouldn't a much more savvy and creative marketing strategy be to market the music to non-Christians directly?

But how do we expect that lost person, who knows nothing of being a Christian, to latch on to Christian music when it's mainly written for Christians? Once again, Charlie Peacock says,

"A Christian subculture... becomes a circluar audience. If you circle the wagons so no one else can get in, or wants in, then the gospel doesn't go out. Most Christian music is geared toward the church, so very few Christian musicians go into the community and interface with people who don't know Christ."

Do we just hope that the lost person who has no interest in Jesus, and if they don't happen to have Christian friends to introduce them, will happen to hear the Christian station one day, turn around and say, "okay God, I give up?"

A marketing strategy based on happenstance and coincidence is no strategy at all if we are going to reach the lost. And evangelism based on preaching to the choir will accomplish a fraction of what direct marketing would.

Our Origin as an Alternative
Contemporary Christian music started when three Southern Baptist gentleman, who were involved with the Baptist Sunday School board, wanted to make "something for the kids." What they came up with in 1967 was the first youth musical, the name of which escapes me. They wanted to bring more young people into the church, but they had to be sure the music was still tamer than Rock 'n' Roll. Not just in the lyrical message, but in the music as well, so as not to offend the older Christians. What kind of Christians would they be if they had given place to dissention in the homes? They had to be sure that Christian parents would accept it.

The short of the story is that Contemporary Christian music got started as an alternative to worldly music, not as its own spontaneous burst of artful activity as the Renaissance was. But what happened to the music that the Church decided it needed an alternative to worldly music? Much of music was sacred all the way through to the days of Bach and Beethoven. They were just as accepted as popular stars of their day as Liszt and Chopin were.

For thousands of years, Satan has been copying God. First in heaven, then on earth through idols, then through misunderstood Judaism (which provided for Jesus' death), then through Christian cults and now through false, lukewarm Christianity. Even in Revelation, the Antichrist is a counterfeit of the real thing. And all through the Old Testament, the idol worshippers created a false music that was not directed toward God.

As time went on into the twenties, the popular music was still mainly instrumental. Swing music and jazz became the prevalent styles. At this point the Church fell into a pattern of singing nothing but hymns in worship (which, incidentally, many at this point were already about forty years old), and Christians were nowhere to be found in popular music. Thus, gradually, Satan has almost completely claimed the popular music scene.

Do you see the problem? Satan tried to copy God for so many years, and it started rather innocently through instrumental music, and now his hand controls the pop music scene. What have we done in response? We've copied the Grammies with the Doves, copied Rolling Stone with CCM, copied the world as we put our artists in great clothes, and hire image consultants, and worry and fret about sales and profits instead of ministry. Satan copied God, and we in turn copied him. Christian music was never original, it was just Pat Boone does Elvis all over again... a tamer substitute.

This is What Watered Down Is
For years I've heard from many different mouths that Contemporary Christian music is watered down, and I've struggled with what that meant. But I think I have an idea. Why don't we market music directly to the lost? Oh, we try, but we know it doesn't work. We know 98% of our demographic are already Christians. We market it to Christians, and that's okay, because we still make our money, don't we? And if these Christians get their friends interested, then we've done our job, right?

If we want to get into Christian music to sing about God and bring people to Jesus, we have a funny way of trying. After all, as Peacock notes:

"An audience of 100 Satan punks and 10 Christians does not constitute a CCM consumer base. And audience of 95 Christians and five Satan punks does. If you're thinking something doesn't add up, you're right. Whether it adds up or not depends on whose math you're using."

Read "What we Need is a Revolution" for more on this subject.

� 2001 Jim Perry