My Thoughts on Contemporary Christian Music

First, let’s define terms.  By Contemporary Christian, I refer to songs that have been popularized on Christian radio.  They tend to be songs that have been written in a manner to be sung by soloists.  They are monophonic rather than blended, because they are designed to be sung after the style of the performer whose song has made it to the top of the charts.  They are not songs that have been preserved in hymnbooks.  Rather the lyrics are projected on a screen and singers are expected to already be familiar with the tunes.  Typically, the accompaniment is guitar, drums, keyboards, and synthesizer.  The music has an electronic sound.  Also, to participate in a contemporary worship, one has to be free to raise one’s hands and to dance to the music.  Being in a contemporary worship is not much different from being in a rock concert.  The center of attention is the performer or praise team.  Dress is informal and casual.

Now, before I offer my criticism and comment, I must tell something about my background.  First, I am a Baby-Boomer, the generation that started the Contemporary Christian Music movement and a more casual approach to worship.  I have in my past criticized the stained glass windows, the robes, the rituals, the ceremonies, and the pipe organ.  I have seen those adornments as ostentatious, which created distance between the worshiper and the object of our worship.  I have criticized the hymnbook because it seemed too rigid, lacking openness to new sounds and new ideas.  I’ve been a member of a praise team.  I was even a member of a church choir that made the modern equivalent of a CD of contemporary songs.

I remember attending my first contemporary Christian concert.  It was by the group Love Song, and I was convinced it was the way of the future for Christian music.  In short order, Christian singers such as Amy Grant, Evie Tournquist, Sandy Patti, and others began to become popular singers.  These new singers were being asked to be featured singers at Baseball games.  Debbie Boone was one of the first to sing a so called “Christian song” that also made the pop charts.  It was “You Light Up My Life,” making the “You” very ambiguous.  Did “you” refer to Christ or did it refer to the object of human love?  This was the key to what was known as “crossover” music.  The goal was to sell music to both camps.

I accepted other forms of Contemporary Christian music.  I attended a church in Bryan Texas that birthed the singing group, Sounds of Salvation, back in the 1970s.  It brought drums and guitar into the auditorium and sang its contemporary songs.  It attracted the youth to the church.  I was one of them.  One of the songs that I remember is Larry Norman’s “I wish we’d all been ready.”  Other songs were less focused on the end of the world and were more focused on a personal need for a relationship with someone who would always be there.  Many of the songs used allusions, but never pointed specifically to Christ.  For example, a song called “Come to the Water” invited the listener to come to the side of a person, sit by his side, and no longer thirst.  Obviously, the intent was to present the picture of Christ and the woman at the well, but nowhere in that song is Christ mentioned. Similarly, the song “Like the woman at the well I was searching for things that could not satisfy,” never mentioned the name of Christ.  It did say, “and then I heard my savior speaking, draw from the well that never shall run dry.”  Another song compared Christ to a lighthouse and told a story of a person who was like a storm tossed ship on the sea.  It asked the question, “if it wasn’t for that lighthouse, where would this ship be?”  The grammar was wrong, but that's okay in CCM.

These songs had deep emotional impact, but they taught very little truth or doctrine.  In fact, I would have to admit that there was a time in my life when I thought doctrine was divisive.  I thought that we really needed to unite around the fact that once we were lost and are now found in Christ.  The key was Christian unity and denominations didn’t matter.

I was raised in pop culture, though I was never as fully immersed in pop culture as other people my age might have been.  I listened to the music on the radio.  I didn't go to rock concerts.  Many of the singers and the tunes of that era are still familiar to me.  Some of the music was soft rock.  Some of it was more easy listening.  Other tunes had a faster dance beat and some of it was more of a hard rock nature.

I was raised in a traditional church, with stained glass windows, a pipe organ, a small choir and a pastor in a robe.  Truthfully, I found it boring.  The choir music was not meaningful and the hymnal seemed boring and stifling.  In fact, one of my first experiences in a college Sunday School class turned me off to church for a while.  The teacher was a charismatic and declared to us that he was able to read the original Greek language without having had a course in Greek.  I immediately turned him off because I rejected the idea that a person could hear the voice of God.  I quit because I thought the church was full of crazy people like him or people who otherwise didn’t think intelligently about God.  The whole thing seemed wasteful.

I was influenced, not only by the pop culture, but by the public school.  Unknown to me, Humanist ideas were infused throughout the curriculum.  Evolution was at the root of my view of who I was.  I did not see myself as a creation of God, as much as I saw myself as the accidental joining of a sperm and an egg in my mother’s womb.  I saw myself as a member of the most highly evolved group of mammals, and I assumed evolution would continue, guided only by chance, natural selection, and survival of the fittest.  I saw the entire world as an evolving experiment, not guided by any intelligent outside force.

To me, God at most was an outside observer.  I thought he might exist, but he wasn’t a personal being with whom I desired to have a relationship.  Rather, church was something people did to be part of civilization.  I didn’t see Church membership as being essential to my existence.  I was, for all intents and purposes, a secularist.  Contemporary Christian music, by mocking some of the sounds of the secular culture, helped move me toward Christianity.

The messages of the songs were vague, such that I was unable to discern that George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” was not a Christian song.  Nor was I able to discern that John Lennon’s “Imagine” was a song calling for atheism.  I thought that the entire world of popular music was moving toward a perfect state in which we would one day see all people worshipping together in a multicultural worship service.  I thought one day we would be singing each other’s songs and enjoying being with each other in unity.

I was an infant spiritually.  Yes, I had prayed to receive Christ.  Yes, I had joined a small church with a more informal worship style.  Yes, I joined a church without stained glass windows or a pipe organ, and with a pastor who didn’t wear a robe.  I didn’t own a suit at the time and did not feel out of place attending worship without one.  The pastor wore a suit and the women wore dresses.  People weren’t dressed as if they were going to play golf after church, but neither were they dressed as if they were going to a symphony or formal occasion.

My love of music began to grow in that small church.  I joined a choir with a part time choir director who was pursuing a graduate degree in agriculture.  He wasn’t perfect, but it was my first introduction to four part singing.  As well as I recall, he chose more contemporary anthems.  We did wear choir robes and we did sit in a choir loft.  We had choir practice every Wednesday night.

After that experience, I joined a Bible Church with a part time music director.  He, too, chose contemporary music themes.  Our most difficult work was a piece by Bill and Gloria Gaither, entitled “His Love Reaching.”  I sang beside a man who tried his best to sing tenor.  His heart was in it, but he really had a difficult time singing the right notes.  It wasn’t easy.  We had a Body Life Sunday Evening Service.  My discernment then was so poor that I thought “Thank God I’m A Country Boy” was appropriate for evening worship.

Then, I was exposed to some truly excellent music.  It was the men’s chorus at Bethel Independent Presbyterian Church in Houston.  I don’t remember which songs those men sang, but they were significant pieces of church music from a long line of deeply meaningful Christian songs.  Also, the musicians there were great.  There was a world class pianist,   an excellent organist, and a beautiful violist.  My taste in music began to change at Bethel.

For the first time, I joined a group of singles where the singing of hymns was cherished.  I remember walking into that group for the first time when they were singing “Jesus What a Friend for Sinners” from the hymnbook.  They were singing enthusiastically.  I learned that these singles had college degrees and many were pursuing graduate level degrees.  A Rice University math professor was teaching Bible lessons and was a member of the men’s chorus.  A partner in a top Houston law firm was a member of the men’s chorus.  A top burn surgeon was a soloist.  Further, many of the intelligent young people could defend their Christian faith.  They had been exposed to Darwin and Humanism, but they could intelligently defend their faith focused on a Creator God who was still active in the lives of believers.

I began to enjoy singing traditional hymns from the hymnbook again, but I sang them more intelligently.  I didn’t merely sing them.  I concentrated on their words, and I began to see how the hymns taught doctrine.  I also remember singing the baritone part of “All Hail the Power of Jesus Name.”  It was positively wonderful to sing a part and listen to it blend with the other parts.  Blended, harmonious sound became a part of music and worship.  The hymnal helped me find my place in the harmony structure.

I would have to admit that I had a special relationship with that violist.  I grew up with sisters who played the classical piano.  Quite frankly, I found the repetitive nature of piano practice irritating, and I turned away from the piano and classical music in general.  Then, I met the violist.  I didn’t pursue her.  I saw her as an icon.  She was on a pedestal and she represented perfection.  She was beyond me.  She was a symbol of excellence.  She was untouchable and unreachable.  I could admire her, but I could not desire her.  I could only appreciate her.

It was a smile and a wave from her that turned me toward her.  I still kept my distance for a while, but she intrigued me.  Everything about her intrigued me, and I began to wonder why she would pursue a career in music.  I attended a concert where she played the viola as a member of the orchestra.  I began to develop a love for her kind of music.

I saw a sign for a performance of Bach’s Magnificat at the St Paul United Methodist Church.  I attended it alone because I did not yet feel comfortable asking the violist to attend a concert like that with me.  It moved me.  I met a member of the choir afterwards and told her how moving the music was.

Before I left Houston, I shared the performance of Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis” at Jones Hall, performed by the Houston Symphony Orchestra and chorus with the violist.  It was moving.  Knowing the violist, and the excellent music she appreciated, transformed my taste in music.  I had heard truly excellent music.  I would no longer be content with contemporary Christian music.

The violist’s influence wasn’t the only influence I had.  I would also listen to “The Lutheran Hour” on Sunday nights.  There, I heard the beautiful blended a capella voices of the Concordia College Choir.

In the space of two and half years, my taste in music dramatically changed.  The Bethel Men’s chorus, the excellent musicians, my relationship with the violist, the concert at St. Paul United Methodist Church, and the choral music on “The Lutheran Hour” changed me forever.

That would not be the end of the development of my musical tastes, though.  I joined a choir in my hometown.  Carey Ford was my first choir director.  He was attending seminary at the time while serving as choir director.  He stretched the choir by having us sing “The Last Words of David.”  He would continue to introduce what I would call “high church” music.  Following him was Keith Finch as an interim choir director.  Keith Finch began to teach us warm up techniques and he began to teach us fundamentals of good singing.  I recall how he emphasized that the vowels are the most important part of singing and the consonants should be crisp and precise.  Then, Larry Caudle followed, and continued to train us in proper warm up and vowel placement.  I began to see that truly excellent music requires training and discipline.  It doesn’t just happen.  I began to appreciate what it took to create good music.  I learned that we Southerners had a tendency to make dipthongs out of pure vowel sounds.  There was more to good music than just singing what comes naturally.

I realized that my knowledge of music was deficient.  So, I ordered a set of CDS entitled “How to Listen to and understand Great Music.”  I learned how musically illiterate I was.  It became clear to me that to presume contemporary Christian music was good music was cultural snobbery.  Music has a rich history and we are impoverished intellectually if we don’t know the history of music.

Larry Caudle stretched me with pieces from Handel’s Messiah, and pieces by Bach and Vivaldi.  Even though I lived a suburb, I felt like Larry Caudle was stretching us to be able to sing the very best music.  This is not to say that we don’t have some good music writers today.  One such writer is Tom Fettke, who wrote an excellent piece called “The Majesty and Glory of Your name.”  I also remember singing “My Eternal King,” some ancient lyrics put to an excellent modern piece of music.

I pulled out my cornet  after more than 20 years of non use and joined a church orchestra.  I had to refresh my ability to read music, to observe dynamics and to play with other musicians.  It was different from singing, but it reinforced in my thinking that truly excellent music is a product of hard work, discipline, practiced skill, and concentration.  Good music doesn’t just magically happen.

I’ve continued to learn more about music.  I am learning more about chord structure.  I’m learning to see chord structure in the music I play on my classical guitar.  I haven’t learned it all.  There’s much more to learn.  I pull out my cornet and play. I've learn to transpose on sight.  I have a greater grasp of the scales than I had when I played in high school.  I'm a better musician than I was then, and I'm still learning.

I think there is a certain arrogance in those who advance Contemporary Christian Music.  They begin with the assumption that what is new is necessarily better.  They do that in ignorance.  There are fundamentals of good music that go far beyond what we hear in Contemporary Music.  With that background, I’m going to outline some very specific deficiencies in Contemporary Music.

My first criticism is the emphasis on style and its outright rejection of traditional music.  Truly good music has elements of earlier styles.  It respects earlier music and does not outright reject it.

Lyrics broadcast on a screen do not lend themselves to blended sound.  Not only that, there are no cues in the music about where the tune is going.  Unless a person is familiar with a tune, there is no way that person has any clue as to what the tune is.  There is no indication of which key the song is in.

I have often found that many contemporary songs are written for singers with high voices.  I’ve heard some of those singers strain to hit the high notes.  Quite frankly, the notes are out of their range and they don’t sound good.

I have heard popular female vocalists.  They sing songs with a lot of air in their breath.  They don’t make pure sounds.  It seems that other popular singers want to mimic that breathy sound.  It isn’t good music and it isn’t good singing technique.

The lyrics are poor.  Because the songs are written to appeal to audiences rather than express truth, they tend to be generic.  Sometimes, they are little more than expressions of feelings.  They don’t teach doctrine or truth.

I find that Contemporary Christian Music also goes along with superficial Christianity.  It is an approach to Christianity that focuses on the social gospel more than it focuses on Christ as the author and finisher of our faith.  I don’t know what it does in the mind of the typical believer, but I do know it can be deceptive.  It is one thing merely to acknowledge God.  It is another to know God for who he really is.  Songs that don’t teach doctrine do not teach us who God really is.  They might evoke emotion and good feelings, but unless they teach us deep truths about God, they hardly qualify as worship music.

An example will suffice.  A few years ago, a singer sang the song Susan Ashton song “May Your Innocent Eyes Find Love In Your Lifetime.”  It was sung during a Christian worship service in the same service where we sang the lyrics to a hymn “and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.”  I asked, “who is innocent and to whom is this song being sung?”  It was sung around high school graduation, which made me wonder if she was singing to young high school graduates.  I wondered if she was singing to a baby.  I was so confused about the song that I called a radio station to find out if it was really a Christian song.  The radio station affirmed that it was in fact a Christian song.

I think the trend toward Contemporary Christian Worship is going to lead to increased superficiality in the church.  I reject Contemporary Christian Worship in its entirety.  I’ve seen it. I’ve participated in it.  I see its errors.  I reject it entirely.