The Effect of Singing
There is an old joke for those who cannot sing that I may not be making a joyful noise but at least I’m joyful when I make it. For those reasons, some people can find congregational singing to be intimidating, yet, hopefully, we would all acknowledge the importance of congregational singing as a part of corporate worship.
Paul instructs us that worship is vital to encouraging one another and building each other up....Keep reading
My Dad, Corporate Worship and Two Kinds of Bad Singers
When my dad married into my family when I was 12, he married into a family of musicians and singers. He was neither. Some might have described him as a bad singer, but he used to joke, more accurately, that he was a fine singer, he just had a very small range. In any case, his lack of vocal ability didn’t stop him from singing “Happy Birthday” in a non-timid way at my kids’ birthday parties. I really miss that, despite his inability to sing the song in tune. It added to the joy.
There are two kinds of bad singers: Those who know they sing poorly and those who don’t. This second kind are highlighted in comedy shows and the beginning of each season of American Idol. People chuckling knowingly as they watch: “He actually thinks he’s good!”
They are easily mockable, those ignorant of their out-of-tune-ness. But here’s the thing: I’ve worshiped at several churches, and I’ve never met one (a bad singer who didn’t know he was a bad singer) at any of them. The bad singers generally know they aren’t vocalists. Believe me, they know. Some of them would like to sing on the worship team or in the church choir, but they know that this isn’t their gift. God is not calling them to that ministry.
I further split this group of bad singers (those who know they are bad singers) into two more categories.... Keep reading
How Sufjan Stevens Subverts the Stigma of Christian Music
The genre has had a bad reputation since the 1960s, but the singer-songwriter succeeds by focusing on aesthetics over evangelism.
In a 2003 episode of South Park, Eric Cartman sets out on a quest to make a platinum record, and decides the easiest route will be to start a Christian band. It’s pretty simple, after all. Just take a bunch of popular songs and copy them, but don’t forget to mention God a few times. Cartman does exactly that: He becomes famous by singing a number of mainstream ballads, inserting “Jesus” in place of “you”—only to discover that with the Christian music industry you can’t actually “go platinum,” you can only “go myrrh.”
While clearly an exaggeration, like almost everything on South Park, the episode underscores a stigma still surrounding Christian music 12 years later. The general consensus is that, when it comes to music, Christians tend to make, “devotional artifice” and “didactic crap," at least in the words of the singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens, whose newest album Carrie & Lowell comes out March 31. Keep reading
I included the last article because it identifies a number of shortcomings of Contemporary Christian Music and discusses the emergence of the concept of CCM.
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