16 January 2009

. . . and the decline of western civilization2

An area of decline in our own culture which must be ignored is the movement surrounding worship music.  More broadly, this finds its place in the larger realm of Contemporary Christian Music - both of which have been quickly and painfully dismantling our culture from the church pews outward.

The biggest problem, in my opinion, regarding the worship music movement is that everyone decided to cover the same library of songs with little or no creative input.  This has made the overall CCM scene to be quite shallow, repetitive and boring.  Because there is no need for genuine creativity it has become quite easy for anyone to think that they are a great 'artist' since they can get their songs to play on a whole lot of radio stations.  Further, this has made an impact within local congregations who now have their own praise and worship teams and leaders who weekly think they are headlining their own arena shows.  I am beyond annoyed at finding myself in situations where this is the case, especially in very small churches.

So this is more of a decline of western church civilization, but it is nevertheless a big problem.  At the end of the day it seems to expose our own motives more than anything else.  There are many who clearly see this as their performance rather than a time of God-centered activity.  And we seem to think that polish will take the place of genuine love.  Certainly, all is not lost in this area . . . however, there is much cause for concern.

2 comments:

Sam said...

I think you've hit on the problem with attractional churches versus missional churches. Attractional churches want people to come to them because they have God. Missional churches take Jesus to people wherever they are, not in a package, but through service and being the church, the embodiment of Christ. It's not about good vs. bad music, it's about who's getting the attention.

Michael Thompson said...

Interesting direction.

I certainly agree with the attractionalism, and see it as a big problem. Another piece which I think deserves merit is one of being content with the work of God given to you (or, humility).