5 Decades Apart: The Jesus Revolution and the Asbury Revival

I’m not a conspiracy kinda guy, so I don’t for a minute believe that the producers of The Jesus Revolution, releasing this weekend in theatres, were in any way involved in the revival which broke out on February 8th in Wilmore, Kentucky at Asbury University.

But it’s an interesting convergence; it’s excellent timing

The Jesus Revolution was the cover story in TIME Magazine in June, 1971. Explo ’72, the first major Christian festival, happened in the year it’s named after. But if we stretch a bit, we could say that by 1973, The Jesus People, Jesus Music and The Jesus Movement really started to intensify.

Which puts it 50 years prior to the events of this month.

Back to the present: On February 8th, a chapel service started at Asbury which didn’t end until it was suspended for 11 hours on February 16th in order to work out “sustainability” details. Those overnight breaks have continued. Wilmore, Kentucky has a population of only 6,000, and well over 20,000 people have been drawn to the campus to experience the event at its ground zero, with lines to get in the main building, or other facilities carrying the event on closed-circuit stretching half a mile. Town officials have had to close access to the town and post signs stating “Revival Over Capacity.”

Today it’s back on, and contrary to most of the early days of the event when they were trying to contain it somewhat, it is available to stream live.

The first two days — before the media heard about it — the chapel service was a mix of music and times of personal confession, prayer and testimony. The confession element is a recurring theme in recorded revivals throughout church history.

But much of the event since has been music-driven. Listening last night was basically hearing a worship music soundtrack of a generation. There have been no sermons. No special guests. No introductions. No extravagance. No unusual manifestations.

That last distinction is important. There has been nothing that would characterize this as a charismatic outpouring. Nothing of what John Wimber would have called “signs and wonders.”

Asbury is a non-denominational school, but identifies as part of the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition. By February 13th, the event had spread to other schools.

The Jesus Revolution of the 1970s was also largely music-driven, but Contemporary Christian Music (or simply CCM as it became known) wasn’t the industry it is today and didn’t have the same marketing machinery. Spinoff events — Jesus ’75, the Fishnet festivals, the Creation festivals, etc. — advertised guest speakers front and center. Today, you have to dig deep into the advertising to find the speakers or seminar-leaders list, the musicians totally dominate the event, and are the main attraction for attendees.

But the early days were very grassroots, homespun and organic; not dissimilar to what’s going on in Kentucky et al as I type this. I can tell you, with absolute assurance, that you would not be reading this article were it not for how the wake of the Jesus Movement impacted me and nurtured my growing (and sometimes shaky) faith.

In many ways, my own life has consisted entirely of wanting to share the water from the well I found, whether that be sharing the music as an itinerant youth minister with a traveling video show, a coffee-house performer wholly dependent on the condition of the pianos at the church or venue, a seller of Jesus Music record albums, and later, a champion of Christian books and authors through promoting sales and writing reviews for various publications.

“Part one of the gospel is ‘taste and see;'” I was taught, and “Part two of the gospel is go and tell.'” My sphere of influence never reached far beyond my small corner of the world, but occasionally, especially through my writing, and the early iterations of this blog and its two year spinoff with Christianity Today, I was able to tell the stories of Christian musicians making a difference and using their art to point people to Jesus.

Music is a powerful force. And Christianity is “a singing faith.” The two verses of scripture that speak of “psalms, hymns and spiritual songs” cause those to arise in one case out of the overflow of God’s word “dwelling in you richly” as the King James puts it, and in the other case out of being “filled with the Spirit.” Either way, it produces a song.

Of course, The Jesus Revolution is more than just a story of music. I haven’t seen the film as I write this, but it’s partly about a pastor who was willing to risk all to bring the love of Jesus to a new generation. It was in many ways radical for its time, until you think of all the social change that was taking place 1966-1969 in the wider world. The changes in fashion and hairstyles, the introduction of hallucinogenic drugs, the Vietnam war protests, the ‘Summer of love.’

All those things teed-up the conditions for Christian youth to find a voice; to find a response.

Asbury University is very different. Although the event is far from organized the college is going to great lengths not to associate it in any way with anything business or politically oriented. Some people arrived with shofars (the ram horns used in Hebrew and Messianic praise) and they were asked to restrain the use of them because people would conflate the event with the January 6th riot at the Capitol building in Washington. Fox News was politely asked not to come, and complied. Their lead reporter said, “…They’re doing something so right, so beautiful, so true that media coverage can’t enhance it and can only detract from it…God bless them for turning us down.”

Early on Brent Williamson wrote:

Nobody was in charge. There was no known leader. There was no known worship team. There was several different people who spoke and you could tell they weren’t in charge.
They rotated the singers and musicians every two hours or so.
There was a guitar, piano, and beat box. That was it.
They asked if you need to talk to someone to please take it into the lobby or outside.
No fancy lighting. Wood seats without cushion. Stained glass windows. The floor was concrete. There was NO words on a screen to sing from. No offerings.

I saw puddles of tears on the concrete. It was a wave of the Spirit that hit certain people at different times.
The altar was full non stop with people weeping and also worshiping at it too.
The Spirit of God was making the altar call.

Mark Swayze wrote:

So who are these college worship leaders at the Asbury Outpouring? Who sits on the “Worship Steward” team?
You will never know.
They are a nameless and faceless generation.
They are rebelling against the celebrity culture infiltrating the church.

Sarah Thomas Baldwin wrote:

Most of the people coming have no idea that their usher navigating the wheelchair through the rain has a Ph.D. and their prayer minister is a retired seminary professor. Most of the people don’t know how huge numbers of you have set aside your jobs, your family time, and your sleep to show up and direct people, check bags, and sometimes set aside your preference in musical style to be up late into the night in prayer. Many of you could preach and teach as you have done around the world and on the Asbury campuses. Yet you are so humble to take out the trash and stand out in the cold to get people inside. You have offered to do what you can and it has been loaves and fishes. We will never be the same.

Humility is a value that resonates with me. The 1970s comparison would be early Jesus Music musicians selling homemade albums out of the back of cars or their VW Microbus. Again, this was long before the CCM marketing machines emerged. The musical epicenter of the movement in southern California was relocated to Nashville, the heart of the music business.

Perhaps this is a cautionary tale for the people in Wilmore.

The Asbury participants however, seem to have managed to produce something that cannot be capitalized on; cannot be easily exploited. I’m sure there will be books on top of countless articles online. Maybe 50 years from now people will buy theater tickets for ‘The Asbury Revolution.’

We’ll have to see what it becomes.

In the meantime, find out everything you can about what’s going on a Asbury and where it leads.

Then, this weekend, watch the film and experience a youth revival that is still making a difference.

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Some of the quotations were sourced from the Facebook feed of Regent University’s Dr. Ewen Butler who teaches on Revival and Church History. The picture is from a short article by Craig Keener which appeared on Julie Roys’ website, click here to read. Other information gleaned from the Twitter hashtag, #AsburyRevival and there are some excellent, detailed articles linked there. Thanks also to David Spencer.

For the trailer for The Jesus Revolution film, click here. Kelsey Grammer (Cheers, Frasier) plays Rev. Chuck Smith. That alone is worth the price of the ticket! For the sometimes parallel history of CCM and today’s modern worship, check out this article posted here in 2008. 

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Writing, borrowing or compiling a fresh devotional each and every day for 12 years means that our sister blog (and now primary project) Christianity 201 has a huge back-catalog of devotionals on many subjects. For our February 21st piece, I went though every single article that covered the idea of revival, and highlighted several of them in a single piece. Click this link to read “On the Subject of Revival”

 

Grammy Awards Meaningless to Christian Music Fans

Periodically this blog emerges from its cocoon when something happens that would have been relevant to readers during the twelve years when we posted fresh content every day.

This year’s Grammy Awards nominees in the Gospel category noted the artists Christian music fans know and love, but none of that was reflected in the list of winners.

In the past we tracked the results with great interest. But downloading, streaming services, and today’s emphasis on the “single” instead of albums, means that over the past months you’ve watched the music departments at any remaining Christian bookstores (and many Christian-owned online sites) greatly contract in size. But there’s another good reason for not running the complete listings here.

Despite nominations in the five gospel categories by people such as Phil Wickham, King and Country, Chris Tomlin, Elevation Worship, Anne Wilson, Tobymac, Gaither Vocal Band and Keith and Kristyn Getty; the Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences presented FOUR of the awards to a collaboration project by Maverick City Music with Kirk Franklin. To add insult to injury, the other award went to the Tennessee State University Marching Band. (Yes, really!)

So really, the awards this year were completely meaningless. People in the Academy vote for names they recognize; not on the basis of the artists’ connections to the constituency for whom they record. Better to wait for the Dove Awards or the K•LOVE Fan Awards. The Gospel category Grammy awards are a complete waste of time.

The Jesus Music: A Look at The Way We Were

Watching a movie about an aspect of 20th Century Christian history with which you were intimately involved is a daunting task. You never know how it’s going to impact you.

As I sat watching The Jesus Music (opening in theaters Friday) my first concern was that they would get the history right. Being involved in the early days of what is now called Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) often means hearing people getting the details wrong.

But such was not the case, in fact, they did their homework well, as they also did when it came to finding film clips, stills, and archived interviews. This is, overall, a high quality documentary.

My next takeaway was seeing people who were friends back in the day, people who, even now, might recognize me by name if I walked into a room. People with whom I corresponded.

To that end, I wasn’t prepared for the lump in my throat and the tears starting to form, especially during the first half hour of the film. Those early Jesus Music days were telling my story, and opening up associations from deep in the recesses of my memory.

Because of that, I wished they had spent more time on the period starting in the late ’60s and most of the 1970s. That was the true Jesus Music era and the rest of the film was more focused on the earlier days of CCM as it came to be.

It also helps if you know who is speaking onscreen. There were names in the bottom corner — often for too short a time — but no voice-over announcer to describe their relationship to the story. This is a nostalgia documentary for people like me. It’s also a story of the growth of Jesus Music in America; references to what was taking place in the UK — which were significant — were quite sparse.

While other reviewers will focus on the artists, for me it was the narratives from some of the behind-the-scenes people, such as John Styll from CCM Magazine, author John Thompson, or pastor Greg Laurie who had front row seats on the birth of Jesus Music. Those people, along with pioneers Tommy Coomes, Chuck Girard, and Glenn Kaiser made the movie for me, as did the very candid revelations from Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, and the guys from DC Talk.

The filmmakers also highlighted the influence that Explo ’72 in Dallas had on the explosive proliferation of the music, and in particular, the wholehearted endorsement of Rev. Billy Graham; an endorsement given even as other evangelists, such as Jimmy Swaggart, were condemning the very notion of Christian rock.

In addition to following the trail from Jesus Music to CCM, the movie touched briefly on the path from CCM to Modern Worship.

There’s no denying that the Christian music industry is huge. The film suggested that the commercial influences that plagued CCM at its peak weren’t present so much in modern worship. Not sure I agree with that one; it’s just that today the dark side of the industry has less to do with unit sales of product and more with who holds copyrights.

In one scene concerning the profit-driven nature of the industry, it seemed that as the genre being profiled got more commercial, the movie itself got more commercial. In one 15-second moment, a series of album covers and audio bites of songs played in succession, and all that was missing was the 800-number to call and order the album from Time-Life.

The producers were not afraid to delve into controversy, but chose to leave on a high note, suggesting that the conditions are presently ideal for another Jesus People revolution. In many respects, I hope that is true, especially if it gets back to the basics outlined in the film’s first 30 minutes or so.

There was also an acknowledgement of the fact that, Andrae Crouch notwithstanding, the history of CCM up to the present moment is still somewhat racially segregated.

Co-produced by K-LOVE, there is an underlying radio focus. Speculation as to whether Larry Norman’s often gritty lyrics could get played on today’s family-friendly Christian stations becomes moot when you consider that in a world of indie-artists, Christian radio is no longer the primary means by which many Christian musicians reach an audience.

Again, this movie was well done. I am thankful for the opportunity to preview it, and they were indeed telling my story and telling it well.

I am also very grateful for the role that Jesus Music played in my life and where I am today is a direct product of the seeds planted by those artists all those years ago. 

Watch the trailer for The Jesus Music

In The Days Before Contemporary Christian Music (CCM)

Today on Christianity 201, I used a very, very old song as a springboard for the discussion which followed. I’ve left some of the introduction intact below, but this won’t be a mirror of what appears there later today. [Ed. note: He changed his mind on that!]

The song was written by Ralph Carmichael. It’s called “A Quiet Place” Below is the original, though I used a different group at C201 today because the volume seemed low on this one.

Musically it’s almost elevator music by today’s standards. But then, it was the beginning of something new. Released through Light Records there was a small advertisement on the back if you wanted to buy the music book. No, not that kind of music book with the melody line and guitar chords. This was the music book for your choir, with the pieces charted in SATB 4-part choral notation.

CCM was still a long way off.

Larry Norman may have been asking ‘Why should Satan have all the great tunes’ — that’s exactly how he said it, right? — and Andrae Crouch and the Disciples may have been jamming in his dad’s church auditorium, but when it came to mainstream, Ralph Carmichael officially gave the church permission to take a big tiny step towards the Top 40.

I’m fairly certain you could get the album free with a 2-year subscription to Campus Life magazine.

If you want to experience the whole album, here’s the link:

…At C201 today, the reason I chose the song “A Quiet Place” is because I think most Evangelicals think of their daily Bible reading as devotions and not so much quiet time. Perhaps I’m wrong vis-a-vis the local church community where you find yourself right now. But you can read all that in the intro below, and catch the remainder of the reading at 5:30 PM EST at C201…

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On second thought, once I started posting this, I decided to just share the whole thing after all. There are a couple of really good links I didn’t want Thinking Out Loud readers to miss.

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For most readers here, the content would be described as devotionals or devotional readings. I have always taken the meaning to refer to this practice or spiritual discipline that we do out of devotion to God.

Working in the world of Christian publishing however, I frequently encounter people — a large number from a Catholic background or people who have had exposure to recovery programs — who refer to devotional books as meditations or meditational readings. I do like the idea that one doesn’t just read the words and close the book and walk away. Rather one ruminates or chews the text in their mind.

There is however a third term which, although I am very familiar with it, isn’t something we’ve used here: quiet time.

This song, written by Ralph Carmichael, was part of a collection that for many people mark the beginning of what we call Contemporary Christian Music. But we’re here to look at the lyrics.

There is a quiet place
Far from the rapid pace
Where God can soothe my troubled mind

Sheltered by tree and flower
There in that quiet hour
With him my cares are left behind

Whether a garden small
Or on a mountain tall
New strength and courage there I find

Then from this quiet place
I go prepared to face
A new day with love for all mankind

A search for scripture verses about having a quiet time takes us to these:

…he delights in the teachings of the LORD and reflects on his teachings day and night. – Psalm 1:2 GW

But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. – Matthew 6:6 NIV

…Jesus insisted that his disciples get back into the boat and cross to the other side of the lake, while he sent the people home. After sending them home, he went up into the hills by himself to pray. Night fell while he was there alone. – Mathew 14:22-23 NLT

Early in the morning, well before sunrise, Jesus rose and went to a deserted place where he could be alone in prayer. – Mark 1:35 CEB

Study this Book of Instruction continually. Meditate on it day and night so you will be sure to obey everything written in it. – Joshua 1:8a NLT

and finally

But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. – Luke 5:16 NIV

UK writer Daisy Logan has offered sixteen different ways we can improve our quiet time. Not all of these may work for you, but I encourage you to click here to read her suggestions.

The website for CRU (formerly Campus Crusade) looks at several different elements your quiet time can contain, including opening your Bible and methodically studying a section of text, followed by four types of prayer. Click here to read their template for quiet times.

The website GotQuestions.org reminds us that,

Every believer needs a quiet time with the Lord. If Jesus Himself needed it, how much more do we? Jesus frequently moved away from the others in order to commune with His Father regularly…

The length of the quiet time does not matter, but it should be enough time to meditate on what was read and then pray about it or anything else that comes to mind. Drawing near to God is a rewarding experience, and once a regular habit of quiet time is created, a specific time for study and prayer is eagerly looked forward to. If our schedules are so full and pressing that we feel we cannot carve out some time daily to meet with our heavenly Father, then a revision of our schedules to weed out the “busyness” is in order.

I realize that for some people, the thought of pausing at a certain time each day, or even the use of the word meditation triggers thoughts of Eastern religions. Got Questions addresses this:

A note of caution: some Eastern religions that teach the principles of meditation include instructions on “emptying the mind” by concentrating on repeating a sound or a particular word over and over. Doing so leaves room for Satan to enter and to wreak havoc in our minds. Instead, Christians should follow the advice of the apostle Paul in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” Filling one’s mind with these beautiful thoughts cannot help but bring peace and please God. Our quiet time should be a time of transformation through the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2), not through the emptying of them.

I want to invite you to listen to the short song one more time. This time think about what ought to be the result of our quiet time with God:

Then from this quiet place
I go prepared to face
A new day with love for all mankind

The fruit or benefit of time spent in study and prayer will come out in our lives in ways that will affect others as well as ourselves.

Do Christian Musicians Carry the Same Influence As They Once Did?

Tonight is a pretty big deal. Compassion, World Vision and Food for the Hungry are combining to present “Unite to Fight Poverty,” a two-hour music saturated fundraiser streaming live on YouTube, Facebook, PureFlix, and Daystar, with the audio portion also heard on The Message channel on Sirius Radio. It starts at 8:30 PM Eastern, 7:30 Central.

I love that these organizations are joining forces for the event, and that so many musicians are cooperating. I hope they do well financially. And I hope that Contemporary Christian Music fans are excited to see their favorite artists, especially in light of the lack of concert activity over the past six months.

But I’m wondering if those same artists carry the same weight, or influence as they did in days of yore? The barometer of Christian music’s popularity was always sales charts based on the number of physical product units sold. With the single now replacing the album as the quantifier of popularity — as things were in the early 1960s — and downloading available from multiple platforms, it’s really hard to tell if the impact of a given artist or group is the same. People may be downloading millions of copies of a single, but with a much higher financial outlay, one’s commitment to an artist when measured in sales of the full album was perhaps more meaningful.

Anecdotally, I spend two days a week working at a Christian bookstore. And Compact Disc sales right now are dead. Really dead. I don’t see us ordering new releases beyond September 1st. Even the elderly “Gaither” customers have abandoned the CD. They all spent their retirement money on new cars, and those vehicles didn’t come CD-player equipped.

So I hope the concert does well tonight, but I think that, moving forward, those Christian relief and development agencies might have to tweak the model and develop a new paradigm beyond reliance on CCM artists.

Worship Composers Who Piggyback on Classic Hymns Create Copyright Confusion

My wife uploaded a church service video which included her congregation singing, “It Is Well with My Soul.” Although the song wasn’t annotated, the YouTube bots scanned the video and recognize the lyrics and tune and immediately informed her that the entire video would be banned in one European country, which raises the specter of more blocking to follow.

While she was staring at her screen in disbelief, I went to Wikipedia on my screen; a source I find offering increased reliability at a time when general search results can be misleading.

True enough, the song pretty much has to be in public domain, considering it is listed as first published in 1876.

But the page also noted a 2011 edition “with a new added bridge composed by Reuben Morgan and Ben Fielding.” I am willing to bet that is part of the problem. The new bridge would qualify them to claim a copyright, even though my wife has never heard it and didn’t use it at all.

You and I and she understand that. YouTube does not. When she went to file a ‘dispute’ on the blocking, the dispute itself was blocked by YouTube. The company acts as sheriff, judge and jury…

…Piggybacking on existing hymns is nothing new. I wrote about this in April, 2017:

The first time I heard a bridge added to a traditional hymn was the addition of Wonderful Cross to When I Survey. I don’t know if I took to it the very first day, but I certainly grew to like it quickly, and as a worship leader, I’ve since used the Wonderful Cross section with the hymn Lead Me To Calvary, where it also works well.

Modern worship music has been greatly influenced by popular songs. Whereas a hymn generally just has either stanzas, or follows a verse-and-chorus format; modern worship will use introductions, bridges, codas, etc., and is often more prone to key changes.

Amazing Grace is another example. My Chains are Gone is certainly a suitable addition, I don’t challenge the musical or lyrical integrity of it by itself, or its fit with the time-honored verses that precede it.

To make the bridge stand out — or I prefer to say break out — musically, some of the chord changes in When I Survey or Amazing Grace are made more minimalist so that the declaration in the bridge introduces a powerful, triumphant transition. “Oh, the Wonderful Cross!” “My chains are gone, I’ve been set free!”

If I had a similar idea a few years ago, I would have positioned my finished work as a medley, not a new arrangement, but the chord changes necessitate the piece to be considered a re-write. And the original composers aren’t around to protest.

So it was only a couple years back when someone more cynical than me — yes, it’s possible — suggested that perhaps the motivation for doing this was financial. Then it was more than one person. Freshly re-minted songs that were formerly public domain can be performed with mechanical royalties (album and print music sales) and performance royalties (concerts, radio, television and even CCLI playlists your church submits) flowing to the composer. Nice work if you can get it…

…But I was reminded of this in a new way on the weekend, when I encountered a song with a very unique title — No One Every Cared for Me Like Jesus — a title I would have considered hands-off, since the original is so iconic, but had none the less been assumed by former Bethel Worship leader Steffany Gretzinger. I can’t be convinced that this title similarity is a coincidence.

You’re allowed to be skeptical of my conclusion, but truly the title is somewhat unique. Clearly, the composers had this in the back of their minds. It’s the question of how much of this was intentional where we’re allowed to disagree.

I found myself experiencing an emotional response to this title borrowing that I was not expecting. These guys are creative types; couldn’t they have found something else to act as their motif? No, I think they wanted to catch a ride with the original hymn.

For that reason I hesitated to include it here, but for those of you who want to do an After-and-Before comparison here it is. The similarity of the mood and tone of this and the original.

For those with a sacred music memory longer than the last 12 months, I want to leave you with the original, in a tasteful arrangement by Sandy Patti. In my view, this version will always have the last word.

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Postscript: In searching for a hymnbook image of “No One Ever Cared…” I found one which indicated the song as public domain, and one that indicated it as ©1932 by The Rodeheaver Company; the same company that filed a copyright claim against another song my wife uploaded, In The Garden. That hymn was well past its sell-by date in terms of legalities, but Rodeheaver apparently renewed the copyright. Why not? There’s gold in them there hills.

 

New Music

It’s been many months since we did Wednesday Connect, and I would like to think that a few of you miss the ♫ New Music ♫ featured links.  Since we don’t have a column of news we can embed the videos today. (Let me know how this works on various devices, and if any songs are blocked in your region.)

This is primarily contemporary and or modern worship. Suggestions from Spiritual Sounding Board Sunday Gathering, Life 100.3 in Canada, Praise Charts, CCLI UK, New Release Today. Songs available wherever you buy music.

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Still here at the bottom of the list? Looking for more new tunes? Check out the Fresh channel at 96Five in Australia.

♫ New Christmas Music ♫

I had so many of these on file I decided to make a special extension of Wednesday Connect. We could call it Thursday Tunes. But we won’t.

I decided to embed the videos instead of just linking them. Not sure how this works out on your various mobile devices, but let me know. Also, there are a couple of names here you might not have heard in a long time.

Rachel Lampa is back:

J. J. Heller:

How could it be that a stable so small
Could somehow contain enough room for us all?
It’s a story that turned the whole world upside-down.
Giving birth to a kingdom where lost hopes are found.

Hollyn:

Plumb:

I mentioned the next ones in previous editions of Wednesday Connect, but wanted to include them here…

Amanda Opelt (read the story why the sister of Rachel Held Evans chose this song):

Switch (that’s the name of the band) with the same song, entirely different tempo

Nicole Nordeman: The one that’s been on repeat most at my house.

Hope that didn’t tax your bandwidth! Enjoy!

The management of Thinking Out Loud wishes to acknowledge the help received from the website NewReleaseToday.com

 

The K•LOVE We Never Knew

If this graphic image doesn’t look familiar, click the links at the bottom of this piece for two recent rants about Christian music on radio, and modern worship in churches.

All this weekend, K-LOVE has been offering an online feed called “K-LOVE Classis: 80s, 90s and Early 2000s.” You can catch it at this link.

It’s in some respects, the K-LOVE that never was, though the station’s beginnings trace back to 1980.

There were a lot of people doing a lot of creative things in the earlier days of what we call CCM, but like K-LOVE itself, this is a rather safe, sanitized version of another generation’s Christian music. Perhaps what I’m longing to hear would be more of an Air1 classics station (Air1 is a sister station network to K-LOVE.) The first hour was interesting, but then everything started sounding the same.

Some of the trip down memory lane contained a few familiar songs — we played “Guess the Artist” while waiting for the ten second delay of the song ID onscreen — there were only a couple that really resonated where I turned the volume up high, and remember I was making my living full time from sales of this music in the 80s. (My wife handily won the artist guessing contest, however.)

We’ve discussed Christian music a few times here, so I don’t want to belabor this, you can read those articles at the following links.

• March 20, 2018 — What’s Wrong with Christian Radio is Purely Intentional
• June 11, 2018 — Becky Goes to Church (Modern Worship)

Also, if you missed this 14-minute video,

• July 8, 2018 — The Problem with Christian Music (video)

 

What’s Wrong With Christian Radio is Purely Intentional

For those of you who don’t know her, meet Becky. Becky is the fictional target audience for Christian radio stations. Christianity Today helped define her back in 2007:

Her name is Becky.

You probably know her. She’s recently turned 40, but is not quick to admit it. She’s a Christian and a devoted wife and mother. She drives a mini-van. Half-melted crayons roll around on the floor as she stops at a light en route to her daughter’s Tuesday night soccer practice. She laughs sometimes, chagrined that she is the very “Soccer Mom” they talk about come election time. Becky lives in the suburbs, likes to read, enjoys the women’s retreats at church, is struggling to remember algebra so she can help her son with his homework, and is a regular volunteer at the food pantry.

One more thing about Becky, a very important fact for this discussion: she listens to the local Christian music station almost exclusively…

We’ll get back to her in a moment.

On the weekend my wife pointed out something that the more I thought about it, the more profound it seems. She said something like, “There’s more variety on any given contemporary Christian music album than what is played on Christian radio.” In other words, the songs chosen to be the single off the albums tend to get chosen because they all match the station sound and therefore they all sound alike.

In my mind, I envisioned the following diagram where each line represents the range of the songs on any given artist’s album — some exploring a greater number of musical genres — and the dots representing the songs selected to be featured on the radio.

Wouldn’t you like to hear some of the songs from the edge of each artist’s collection?

I owe a lot of my spiritual nurture to Contemporary Christian Music, but I’m not a fan of what it has become. A year ago 20 The Countdown Magazine did a special show on the Best of Christian Worship. It could have been called Chris Tomlin’s Greatest Hits. There was a song which we knew by Robin Mark where they chose to play a Chris Tomlin version, again either because it matched the sound of that show, or because… well we won’t go there. Any possibility for musical diversity was eliminated. (Listening to how many times the host said “Chris Tomlin” during that two hour show became a bit of a drinking game.)

Not everybody likes Becky. In a January, 2012 article in CCM Magazine, Matt Papa, not sparing the use of Caps Lock, wrote:

I love Becky. I really do. That’s part of the reason I’m writing this. Becky needs to be ministered to just like I do and just like everyone else does. But Christian radio/industry people: please MINISTER TO HER!! Stop giving her what she WANTS….GIVE HER WHAT SHE NEEDS and that is the GOSPEL….or stop calling yourself “christian”. There is NOTHING “christian” about telling someone who has cancer that they are OK. Stop tickling her ears. Becky is a human being who needs to hear the truth of Christ, not an object to use for your financial gain. Woe to you. And here’s a novel idea: Why not target other people besides Becky?!?! The gospel has no demographics! Christ shed His blood for all people everywhere and you have misrepresented Him. I pray with all my heart that the money tables in your temple would soon be overturned.

Pastor Gabe Hughes, who apparently has some insider knowledge wrote this in the summer of 2016:

Like most radio and television programming, Christian radio caters to a specific demographic, and that demographic is women between the ages of 20 and 50 (give or take). Whether or not Christian radio is doing it on purpose, that demographic is also mostly white.

It gets way more specific than that: this target woman lives in suburbia in a house with a mortgage, drives a mini-van, has three kids, a dog and a cat, a husband who works full-time, she also works but it’s probably part-time, has a household income between $55 and $70K, vacations in July, doesn’t have enough time to read her Bible but she has enough time to journal, loves Beth Moore and Joyce Meyer, and goes to church about 3 times a month. This woman even has a name — Becky.

Some radio stations will put up a mock picture of this woman in the studio, and the DJs are told to look at it and know that’s who they’re talking to. I’ve attended seminars where this was the whole focus of each session: Becky, Becky, Becky. The entire radio station is programmed for her — not her husband and not her kids. Giving glory to God is incidental, or it’s presented like this: “By reaching Becky, you’re giving glory to God.” Becky’s name is mentioned more often at these conferences than God’s name is.

This is unofficially referred to as Becky Programming or the Becky Mentality. The gospel-minded might recognize this as exactly how not to evangelize. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for we are all one in Christ, right (Galatians 3:28)? But rather than giving an audience what they need to hear, Christian radio sections out a particular audience and gives her what the research says she wants to hear…

Why do so many of the songs sound alike?
Because radio is about producing the least number of negatives. Technically a radio station is not actually trying to give you something that you like. They’re trying to give you something you don’t dislike. As long as they can remain as even as possible without too much variation or fluctuation, they’re more likely to keep you on their radio station and not flipping to something else.

When the radio station maintains a continuous blend of sound, it just kind of melts into the background and you become oblivious that you’re still listening to it. You know how when you drive the same route to work every day, sometimes entire stretches of the trip will go by, and you’ll wonder where those miles went? Listening to the radio is kind of like that…

Even when it comes to production quality, songs have been equalized to be at the exact same volume level. Put on your headphones, find a song from the late 80s or early 90s, and give it a listen. Then pick a song from within the past decade and listen at the same volume. Notice the difference? The older song has more dynamics, highs and lows, crescendo and decrescendo, and the more current song is a lot louder and dynamically consistent throughout.

The reason why every single Christian recording artist sounds like they’re recording the exact same song is because they know K-Love won’t play it unless it sounds like every other song. Yes, Christian radio is the very reason every Christian artist sounds the same. It’s not necessarily the artist’s fault. They just have to play along (pun implied).

(There’s a lot more; I’ll be honest, I just wanted to copy and paste Gabe’s entire article, so click here to read more.) 

The early Christian music radio hosts were typical of FM radio guys in the late 1960s and early 1970s. There was no single off the album, they just picked a song they liked. They exposed and celebrated the things creative Christian songwriters and performers were doing across North America, and if you got lucky, some of the things from the UK (which even today we rarely get to hear, everything being so Nashville-centric.)

There are still some great songs being written and great albums being recorded, but I must say I feel sorry for the kids today who only know Christian music’s after and missed out on Christian music’s before. Fortunately for them, broadcasting is not the primary means of transmission in their generation. Indie artists survive and even flourish on alternative media, such as Fresh Life Radio which itself provides balance by playing some of the CCM fare, or the notable broadcast exception, Project 88.7 in Boise and Twin Falls, Idaho. 

Full disclosure: The business I own also sells Christian music. Sales are down. I am increasingly convinced that downloading or online sales of physical product are not blame. Many in the next generation are not hearing anything that captivates them. Groups are recognizable, but it’s increasingly difficult to differentiate one male solo artist from another.

The push for homogeneity is killing Christian radio.

Blogger and Pastor Gabriel Hughes posted this Becky collage in the article linked above. Maybe you know her.

 

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Related? This was posted yesterday in conjunction with a new book release. The headline says it all: The founder of Christian rock music would’ve hated what it’s become.