Adam Hicks | Dreamstime.com
Guitar Hero
Guitars, that mainstay of "Contemporary Christian Music," can have their place in church events, but too much faith education is being lost in the shallowness of the lyrics, says youth minister Kevin Alton.
You may very well be a dyed-in-the-wool Wesleyan. But it doesn’t matter. It’s possible that you’re well read on Buechner and Bonhoeffer and Barth and Brueggemann. Nobody cares. We have new theologians now; they’re marketed as “Christian,” and they’re teaching your kids their theology.
Their credentials are guitars and microphones; all you need, really. Oh, and YouTube hits. And tribute YouTube videos from well-meaning fans that illegally repost the song overlaid with the lyrics in Papyrus font with while a montage of crappy Christian art in various pixel quality rolls in the background. Or it’s on GodTube, which… hold on, I need a timeout.
OK, I’m back. The fact is that Methodist youth ministry is too often where watered-down CCM theology meets the slippery slope of Open Hearts, Open Minds, & Open Doors. I’ve taken a lot of grief from a lot of people for a lot of different reasons about being a youth minister and worship leader that doesn’t listen to what we’ve come to call “Christian music.” I’ve gotten quieter about it, but I still don’t. I generally avoid the conversation, unless someone gets pointed about it.
I used to listen to Christian music when I was a youth. Tons. I even subscribed to something called CCM Magazine for a while, which may or may not still exist (Christian Contemporary Music, if you’re wondering). That magazine was actually part of my exit from my all-Christian music library. Over several months of reading the magazine, I began to realize that the lowest rating in the new album reviews was a B+ (about 3.5 stars out of 5). Few dipped below A-. “What are the odds?” I wondered. “Every Christian album this magazine gets its hands on is good?” I was too young to understand advertiser-driven content (and reviews), but I was headed for the door. It didn’t smell genuine.
There were bright spots early on–the Cornerstone Music Festival was doing good work; there were a couple of alternative Christian music newspapers (yes, on actual paper) that were providing decent reviews and availability to some artists not available at local Christian outlets. I was put off by the growing industry labeled “Christian.” It was too controlled, too clean, too worried about appearance and too troubled by the bottom dollar of Christian consumers. If church was a place for the squeaky clean, the Christian bookstore had to be squeaky-cleaner. So that the squeaky-clean would feel good about spending their non-tithe dollars there. On crap home decor, mostly; but they’d feel good about it. If we carry the new 77s album, somebody’s not buying an embossed “Footprints In The Sand” table runner. No can do.
Then a weird thing happened. Worship music became popular.
If I could go back in time with what I know now, I would probably stand shoulder to shoulder with my dad and my girlfriend’s crazy grandfather Jim and argue against guitars entering the sanctuary. Not because I’m against the instrument; I’m an avid guitarist and singer/songwriter. But when we let U2 fans start leading worship, we lost something critically important: content. Our Methodist heritage in hymnody served not only as an opportunity for community to raise its voice collectively but also as an educational tool. Consider the 4th stanza from Love Divine, All Loves Excelling:
Finish, then, thy new creation;
pure and spotless let us be.
Let us see thy great salvation
perfectly restored in thee;
changed from glory into glory,
till in heaven we take our place,
till we cast our crowns before thee,
lost in wonder, love, and praise.
In a verse, Charles takes us from justification to Christian perfection. Let’s give contemporary worship a shot:
I was thinking the other day
What if cartoons got saved?
They’d start singing praise
In a whole new way
Yeah, I was thinking the other day
What if cartoons got saved?
They’d start singing praise
In a whole new way
I’m hand-picking to make a point, obviously. And you can argue that The Cartoon Song is too old to enter this conversation, but the Wesley hymn I chose is 266 years old. And really. Are we getting better depth from Happy Day? The pep rally-worthy Our God? Or any and all of what gets sold as “crossover-friendly” inoffensive ambiguous might-be-about-God-might-be-about-your-crush crooning? Here:
Take me there to the place where you are
Take me there, take me there
I just wanna be where you are
Hide me in your shelter
Hide me here, hide me here
I’d just love to be where you are
Comma “baby” or comma “God” at the end of that?
I don’t care that they’re making that music. If you want to sing vaguely about where your heart is, terrific. Make a buck while you can. But on the consumer end (that’s what worshiping contemporary congregations and youth groups have become, essentially), we’re passing out 3 to 5 song weekly doses of cotton candy to people in desperate need of actual food.
Again, I’m not arguing that we need to return to hymns-only worship. But we need to be careful what we’re passing on to our kids. You may have to seek out songs that aren’t on the radio or top 20 lists. You may have to seek out local creative people to create content-driven worship pieces specifically for your worshiping body. You might need to get a group together from within your congregation to work toward that goal.
You, dear youthworker, are ultimately responsible for what you pass on to your kids. It’s not just the music you borrow from the radio or the curriculum from Group or Doug Fields that you pass on unfiltered. It’s everything you do and say to them.
To make it harder, YOU are the only one who really cares if you’re a Methodist. Your UM conference isn’t insisting (or even suggesting, in most cases) that you be trained in anything Wesleyan. Your college degree probably didn’t have to be ministry related to get the job. Your “heart for kids” and your clean background check may have been enough. But the truth is that you may be the last person to care about your kids growing in a Wesleyan understanding of grace.
Chris Tomlin doesn’t care about that, but it’s not his job to. Do you care?
Peace,
K