Why It's Different...

I've mentioned before that one of the things that I find most startling about today's culture is the disappearance (or depreciation, at least) of boundaries. I think you can see this in almost every aspect of society, and lately, I've noticed that this lack of "lines" is the culprit behind some of the more passionate worship discussions I've had of late.

Years ago (let's say 10-15 years,) there were two types of Christian music. The first type of Christian music was that which was being played on Christian radio, performed at concerts and recorded on an abundance of CDs. The second type of Christian music was that which was being sung congregationally in churches. Regarldess of your personal taste in "Christian" music, I think you'll agree that it used to fall into one of these categories.

Then, slowly, "worship" started making its way onto more CDs, and naturally, onto radio. Personally, I like this, because, for me - I just don't enjoy story songs all that much. I'm not saying they're not good, I'm just saying that, for me, I'd rather sing along with songs to God than songs about life. (Just me, okay? My personal preference, alright? Please, don't be jerks about it, okay, guys?)

Even though the two "types" were now beginning to coexist in relative equality, they were pretty different. For instance, typically the performance type, the story-song/produced tracks were of a higher quality (though not as high as pop music, yet!) The worship side was still pretty lo-fi. (Think early Vineyard records. If you never heard any early Vineyard records, you probably should. They're simultaneously weird and great.)

As the quality level increased, worship music began holding its own in Christian radio, and therefore, in the Christian sub-culture, as well. But there were still differences. Worship music was still pretty easy to define - the songs were simpler, easy to sing and easy to understand whereas peformance music was growing more creative, with lyrics that were harder to understand and imagery that, in an effort to be more imaginative, was becoming quite varied. Suddenly, the "introspective" artist concept emerged in Christian music. Suddenly, our magazines were doing interviews with the somber, squinting Christian musicians as they labored to explain what their songs were about.

Once we reached a sort of open community with regard to Christian music songwriting, more and more artists/writers were feeling free to write what was in them - to be as creative as they wanted to be. This growing appreciation for artistry was a good thing for artists, and soon, those that had primarily been "performance" artists began to entertain the idea of adding some "worship" to their "performance" work.

There was definite good in this, as so many of this very creative individuals took the concept of worship-singing to new heights. But it wasn't all good, and what emerged was this idea of the "worship-artist," the guy or girl writing songs of praise, but still operating in the mode of the introspective writer/singer. And here's what happened - suddenly, we had people writing worship songs the way they write other songs, where creativity and novelty and newness was valued and needed. While it made for cool music, it's my belief that it hurt the role of worship music.

Then, we needed to have these artists help us to understand the worship songs. That's not always a bad thing, because we need to be taught things, but for me personally, the accessibility of these new, awesome worship songs wasn't that great. I couldn't use that Delirious song because, as cool as it was, I didn't have time to regurgitate Martin Smith's four-minute introduction while leading worship for the high school youth group.

I think we've got to get some boundaries back. I think we've got to honest and fair and be unafraid to label music. I think we need to kill that thing is us that tells us it's not cool or fair or open-minded to call a style of music what it really is. I think we've got to use our heads and our Bibles to discern what is best and most right for our musical need.

I'm not saying either musical form is bad - they're both awesome testaments to our Creator and His power to move His people to write beautiful things! But I am saying that we have to think about what we're listening to and to always be aware of the historical background, current day application and future ramifications of any thing we're listening to or playing.