Mommy, Where is God?
I have an easy answer, mothers. God is in all and through all, as made evident in Creation. And, as Christians, we should be the same no matter where we go. God is the same in a storm as he is in a sunset. He's the same when we suffer as he is when everything is going smoothly. And no one, I think, will argue that as Christians we should be taking God's influence on our lives to all the nations, worlds, groups, and peoples we can. God is not just in the Church, friends.
Do we have "Christian" plumbers, doctors, lawyers, etc.? Only recently have people begun prefacing themselves with "Christian owned and operated" to sell ads on Christian Radio. As Christians, they should already be different in that they pursue excellence in their jobs and do business in honesty and integrity. So I ask this: Did Paul market himself as a "Christian" tentmaker? Did he have a sign that said "Christian owned and operated?" No, he just built good tents.
Compartmentalized Music
By the same token, why can't we just make good music? Why does it have to be "Christian?" Can't we sing songs that make a difference in a person's life so they ask questions? Beethoven and Bach were right there in the thick of it with Chopin, Liszt, and Mozart. Today, Steven Curtis Chapman is not right there in the thick of it with (insert popular artist here). He's in the "Christian" section of stores, sold by the "Christian" distributors. Which is okay, because there are a lot of Christians who are going to buy his music. But Mr. Chapman can't lie to himself and believe that he's putting forth his best effort to reached the lost.
The following is an excerpt from a ChristRock interview with Charlie Peacock:
Q: The CCM market has been critical of other artists who push boundaries. Bill Mallonee from the Vigilantes of Love was criticized for his song "Lady Luck" which talked about sexual desires. Julie Miller has been blasted for dealing with the same issues. What do you think of these criticisms?
A: The criticisms are indicative of the health of the body of Christ, at least the body that comes in contact with this music. It reveals how deeply we compartmentalize our understanding of faith and the gospel. It shows that in practice, we really do live a spiritual life and then an everyday life, and that we do our best to keep the two from meeting.
So Where are the Lost, Anyway?
To reach the lost, we need to use lyrics and musical styles that the world can readily accept. Now, I understand of course, that we will be hated because Jesus was hated. But, as things stand now because of free speech, the world may hate what we say but they will still let us say it. For a while, anyway. Examples here are artists like Jennifer Knapp, who played on the Lilith Fair tour. Or Sixpence None the Richer, who are writing songs that are just plain good, and still get mainstream airplay. Or Jars of Clay, who through insightful and creative songwriting, reach out to people who are looking for a little deep thought about the struggles of life from a fresh perspective. All of these are receiving greater amounts of mainstream airplay.
Thank God there are artists with some sort of concern over being among those who need Jesus most. For artists like Jennifer Knapp, who was interviewed by Air 1's Deanna Broxton, the desire is for their music to reach people who might not otherwise hear it. She says,
"It's trying to live in both worlds. It's where I can still be myself, and still believe in the faith that I have. And still talk freely about it in the same way I can talk openly and freely about the musicianship that I care about, and the excellence in music that is important to me in the Christian world. If people are willing--in an environment like The House of Blues, the "Lilith Fair" [tour] or general market radio--to give me the opportunity to just speak my heart, I'm grateful for it. I'm willing to take it."
These days it seems no one is immune to the concept of there being two different worlds. Yes, there is the world and the Church, but it is prevalent in every Christian circle, and easy to conform to, delineating between "secular" and "sacred." The Bible itself makes no distinctions between the two. Throughout the history of the Jewish people and the early church, God was in everything and through everything. God's law applied painstakingly to the minutae of everyday life. Jesus' words were directed at every facet of our lives. There is not to be a "secular" person and a "sacred" person. We are to be the same person in church as we are at work or in school.
In an earlier writing I mentioned that the outset of Contemporary Christian music was not a spontaneous outpouring of original art, but rather it was invented as an alternative. The one place this does not hold true is in Christian rock. Guys who were in rock bands got saved and wanted to sing about Jesus in the language they already knew and could be understood in.
And what did the church do with this spontaneous outpouring? They rejected it because it sounded like "the Devil's" music. They were not responsible consumers. They did not analyze exactly what these people were doing, and testing the spirit to see if it was from God. And who said Satan owned it? When did the Devil receive title and deed to all of popular music? It was when the Church fell asleep and let him have it with nothing but opposing, accusing, finger-pointing rhetoric from pulpits.
Are We Good Enough to Compete?
As I've said before, many people would agree that Christian music has come a long way, and is a lot better, and is more comparable to the good "secular" stuff out there. We Christians also believe our lyrical content is superior to that of the world's. After all, we have the truth, right? Well how does it stack up next to the hit songs of the day?
The truth is, we still really don't believe our music is good enough to compete on the general market. Why is the Christian industry still content marketing to people who are already sold on the message? Why are they still content with this third-party marketing and dissemination ploy of selling the stuff to Christians, and then hoping we share it with unsaved friends?
Taking it to the Lost
We need to understand that music is a creation of God, and ministry should not be the only justification for Christian artists. For, as Peacock states, "while worship to God is the best use of music, communication between humans about important emotions is vital to a comprehensive kingdom perspective."
This "kingdom perspective" Peacock talks about goes back to the idea of God being in all and through all. What is God's perspective about sex? About Murder? About incest? About flowers and grasshoppers and kissing your girl "under the milky twilight." What is God's perspective about every subject under the sun? These are things artists should feel completely comfortable singing about. God hardly wants us shying away from any subject. We ought to make our thoughts on all these things known, so the world doesn't see there are things that Christians won't talk about, and conversely, assume they are things God doesn't care about.
Shouldn't we want God's musical people to be everywhere and in everything? To be salt and light "in every sphere of existence," to transform the culture, and be ready to "give the reason for the hope that [we] have." (1 Peter 3:15)
Repression Revisited
Mark Joseph, of the MJM Entertainment Group, and author of The Rock and Roll Rebellion, is cited as refering to Contemporary Christian music in this manner in Billboard Magazine:
"As with baseball, strange bedfellows have colluded to keep musicians with Christian beliefs in the modern-day equivalent of the Negro leagues... contemporary Christian music has served to profit a select few who stand to gain from the success of teh industry, while robbing the wider world of the music of talented Christian artists. Unable to be heard apart from the trappings of the Christian subculture, artists like [Phil] Keaggy remain largely undiscovered."
Let's be Lambs Among Wolves
When Jesus preached to crowds, how many of them were Christians who believed that Jesus was the Christ? How many were spirit-filled believers? None, until the disciples believed. The majority of Christ's sermons were preached to people who as yet did not believe in him. They were Jews who believed Messiah would come as a military leader, not some carpenter with a lot of rhetoric.
For an industry who's main goal among the artists is supposedly evangelism, how come so much of it focuses on singing songs that speak to a "churched" person? We sing songs about reading the word, and prayer�things that the world is completely strange to�and we expect the world to understand? We use terms in our songs that we interchange without thought in our churches, and then we wonder why the world doesn't understand us? Even calling them "the world" is a biblical term, and persons who are not biblically oriented wouldn't have the slightest clue what I mean. They'd assume I meant everybody, when of course, to the "churched" person I mean the non-Christian population.
In yet again an earlier writing, I quoted Charlie Peacock as saying, "An audience of 100 Satan punks and 10 Christians does not constitue a CCM consumer base." But you know what? It would have been for Jesus! Jesus wasn't about preaching to the choir, but the lost.
We also need to realize that if we're going to reach the lost, we need to get music and artists out among the lost people, to love them and to relate to them where they are, and to speak their language in the music. By that I don't mean talk about sex and use profanities and the like. What I am talking about is music that reaches them on their level, not ours.
� 2001 Jim Perry