Christian Contemporary Music

      With some reservations I set forth my opinion concerning most of the Christian Contemporary Music (CCM) that I have listened to.  I have reservations because I believe that this music appeals to a broad range of people within the “gamut of Christianity”; to people I really love.   Many of them have been affected deeply and encouraged by the songs’ messages.  I don’t want to rashly throw words and crush a foundation or a precious moment for anyone.  I also realize the fact that I have listened to only the CCM songs that I’ve listened to; so that excludes all those that I have not heard besides all those I don’t know about.  Hah, hah.  On the other hand, I have a really hard time identifying Christianity with most CCM music that I have listened to.   It is not really the rock, rock and roll, or pop style that I have a problem with.  Music is sound (I know that is an oversimplification to some degree)  and there is nothing inherently wrong with sound.  (some are more beautiful than others)  I think however that the style of performances connected with many CCM performers/ artists/ worship leaders is more about being popular and appealing to an audience than meeting the audience’s heart cry, whatever that really is.   We will worship someone or something and I think that instead of being instruments of God’s message to others many of these performers seem interested in a stardom of sorts.  I think that is only natural although not justified.  However, it is our problem if we become part of the target audience who sit under the sound of their music and just allow ourselves to absorb them, their style, their persona, and their song’s messages without first thinking about how it is affecting us.   We will simply be pawns in the hands of Christian performers; groupies of the mass bonanza.  I think that it would be a real error to say that I should not listen to CCM for the solely mutinous desire of being counter cultural.  I think that it is much deeper than that.  Jesus talked the the Samaritan woman at the well about the day that will come when there will no longer be a sacred “place of worship” but that instead this new mode of worship will “be in the Spirit and in the truth.”  Finding truth (if you are so inclined; I am) and following the leading of the Spirit are goals.  I think that if I am settling for worship that is less than in Spirit and in truth, I am not doing well.  So, I say this because my feeling is that the worship/ attention that was meant for God and is alluded to in many CCM songs is really channeled to the wrong place/ wrong persons.  The repetition of key words about 50 to 100 times can possibly be really powerful if they are contemplated in their true meaning.  That is why some kinds of French musical chants were developed in the atmosphere of silence and contemplation. They were for the sole purpose of contemplation.  If I have a throbbing atmosphere around me I truly distrust my faculties to focus for any length of time on meaning of any kind.   It is on these grounds that I raise questions.

With Polski Rolski, this is Robin signing off.