Category Archives: Books

Feb 05 2010
45 Comments
Books, Random

Why Most Christian Bands Stink

Stryper

“Christian rock?” I asked my friend Adam as he proudly pointed toward the new Stryper poster adorning his bedroom wall. “They can’t be real Christians!” I exclaimed.

“Yes they can!” Adam protested back. “They’re Christian rockers!”

I remained deeply suspicious, secretly knowing these Maya-the-Bee-cartoon-character-knock-offs in multi-colored tights were undercover agents of the Devil.

It’s kind of funny looking back on it. An eight-year-old, conservatively raised, Church of Christ preacher’s kid growing up next door to a much more expressive, nine-year-old, Pentecostal preacher’s kid (okay, so they weren’t really Pentecostal – they were non-denominational, but definitely with charismatic leanings).

More than once I’d told Adam it was a safe bet both he and his family were on their way to the hot place (I mean, several of them had mullets and were fans of Benny Hinn for goodness sakes). This whole “Christian rocker” thing was simply another log on the fire.

Stryper wasn’t the only baptized devil music Adam was in to – Petra, Carman, D.C. Talk – all were introduced to me by him way back in the 80s, and so I listened.

At first, I had no real frame of reference to compare Christian bands to, but as I grew older and was introduced to other more well-known “secular” bands – Beck, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Sublime, Alice in Chains, 311, and more – I realized just how sub-par Christian bands tended to actually be. They were several steps below the mainstream showing no real signs of improvement.

And so, after being into DC Talk as an eleven-year-old (after getting their Free At Last album for Christmas), I eventually became disenfranchised with “Christian” music. Not coincidentally, this move away from Christian music coincided with my move away from all things Christian – for many years I lived as an unbeliever.

But when I came to Jesus in my early twenties, I never returned to Christian rock. My foray away from faith for a few years had led me into the mainstream music industry working at several radio stations as a modern rock DJ (not that a Christian can’t be a modern rock DJ, but I certainly wasn’t). An expert, if you will, on the then-current rock music scene.

My taste in music had been refined. I’d observed enough as a working professional to recognize talent and distinguish the difference between a good band and the unfortunate alternative. As skill went, most secular bands didn’t make the cut, and Christian bands barely had a chance since, in their musical culture, real talent had largely been a missing key ingredient for years (you can accuse me of over-generalizing, but deep down you know I’m telling the truth).

In my estimation, bands were signed to Christian labels, not because they had the right “stuff”, but because they had the right message – the right lyrics. In Christian rock, the message in the lyrics had always been more important than the technical skill involved in creating a great track. This always irked me, because I believe an artist’s display of technical skill is part of the message of their art.

If a song is technically sound, that says a lot. Whoever produced it is saying, “I’m passionate about this. I care about this a lot. I care about what I’m saying in this song so much, that I want to do everything right to make sure you listen, because what I’m saying is really, really important. What I’m saying is close to my heart, and I don’t want anything to get in the way of the message of this song or the experience I want you to have in listening.”

Conversely, if a song is technically unsound and put together in a shabby way, that communicates a lot too. It says, “I’m not very passionate about my music. What I’m saying in this song isn’t incredibly important because I’m going to let all these other things distract you. Off key? No problem. Cheesy chorus? Check. Lyrics that could have been written by a first grader at recess? You got it. But hey, I’m in a Christian band, so the Christian label signed me because of my professed faith – not because of I have high level skill. Now listen and enjoy!”

Okay, so maybe I’m being a little harsh, but this is seriously where my mind goes when not enough attention is paid to detail by a “professional.” What they’re saying without knowing it is, “This really isn’t the right profession for me” (to be clear, I don’t apply this type of thinking to amateur musicians – just professionals or wanna-be professionals).

This is on my mind today because I just finished reading Body Piercing Saved My Life: Inside the Phenomenon of Christian Rock by Andrew Beaujon for a class I’m taking at Fuller. To be honest, I wasn’t looking forward to reading this book, but after diving into the first chapter a couple of days ago I knew the rest was going to be good and it was.

Beaujon is an excellent writer and regular contributor to The Washington Times, Spin Magazine, and several other noted publications. In addition to that, he isn’t a Christian, so reading his book covering the Christian music scene gave me an outsider’s perspective – something I really appreciate when it comes to any aspect of faith.

Beaujon, like me, believes that most bands active in the Christian music scene aren’t worth listening to, and (also like me) believes the reason most of them get signed to a label is because of their squeaky-clean image and the content of their lyrics – not because their musical talents and skills are outstanding. There are exceptions, however, and many are noted in his book.

I know Christian rock music has come a long way since the 80s. You people who listen to Jeremy Camp, Hillsong, Kutless, or Casting Crowns can put down your sticks – there are some good bands involved in the Christian music scene today, BUT they are few and far between. I believe the industry will remain this way until Christian labels and bands alike resolve to place the same amount of value on technical skill and production quality as is placed on message and band image.

Until this happens, Christians bands will continue to stink. But times are a’changing.

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Dec 01 2009
2 Comments
Books, Devotional Thoughts

Tozer on The Burden of Pride

      The burden borne by mankind is heavy and a crushing thing. The word Jesus used means “a load carried or toil borne to the point of exhaustion.” Rest is simply release from that burden. It is not something we do; is is what comes to us when we cease to do. His own meekness, that is the rest.

      Let us examine our burden. It is altogether an interior one. It attacks the heart and the mind and reaches the body only from within. First, there is the burden of pride. The labor of self-love is a heavy one indeed. Think for yourself whether much of your sorrow has not arisen from someone speaking slightingly of you. As long as you set yourself up as a little god to which you must be loyal there will be those who will delight to offer affront to your idol. How then can you hope to have inward peace? The heart’s fierce effort to protect itself from every slight, to shield its touchy honor from the bad opinion of friend and enemy, will never let the mind have rest. Continue this fight through the years and the burden will become intolerable. Yet the sons of earth are carrying this burden continually, challenging every word spoken against them, cringing under every criticism, smarting under each fancied slight, tossing sleepless if another is preferred before them.

      Such a burden as this is not necessary to bear. Jesus calls us to His rest, and meekness is His method. The meek man cares not at all who is greater than he, for he has long ago decided that the esteem of the world is not worth the effort. He develops toward himself a kindly sense of humor and learns to say, “Oh, so you have been overlooked? They have placed someone else before you? They have whispered that you are pretty small stuff after all? And now you feel hurt because the world is saying about you the very things you have been saying about yourself? Only yesterday you were telling God that you were nothing, a mere worm of dust. Where is your consistency? Come on, humble yourself and cease to care what men think.”

      The meek man is not a human mouse afflicted with a sense of his own inferiority. Rather, he may be in his moral life as bold as a lion and as strong as Samson; but he has stopped being fooled about himself. He has accepted God’s estimate of his own life. He knows he is as weak and helpless as God declared him to be, but paradoxically, he knows at the same time that he is, in the sight of God, more important than angels. In himself, nothing; in God, everything. That is his motto. He knows well that the world will never see him as God sees him and he has stopped caring. He rests perfectly content to allow God to place His own values. He will be patient to wait for the day when everything will get its own price tag and real worth will come into its own. Then the righteous shall shine forth in the kingdom of their Father. He is willing to wait for that day.

A.W. Tozer
The Pursuit of God: The Human Thirst for the Divine, pgs. 105-107

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Nov 29 2009
4 Comments
Books, Campus Ministry, Leadership, Resources, Teaching, Theology

Teaching Toward a Biblical Worldview

The words on page 74-75 of Kinnaman & Lyon’s book, UnChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity … and Why It Matters, jump off the page at me every time I read them:

      The opportunities that outsiders have to hear about Christ and know Christians are nothing short of astounding [in the United States]. For nearly two decades, the Barna team has been exploring church participation among American teenagers. We consistently find that the vast majority of teenagers nationwide will spend a significant amount of their teen years participating in a Christian congregation. Most teenagers in America enter adulthood considering themselves to be Christians and saying they have made a personal committment to Christ. But with a decade, most of these young people will have left the church and will have placed emotional connection to Christianity on the shelf. For most of them, their faith was merely skin deep. This leads to the sobering finding that the vast majority of outsiders in this country, particularly among young generations, are actually de-churched individuals.

      In spite of the fact that many of them are currently disconnected from a church, most Americans, including two-thirds of all adult Mosaics and Busters (65 percent), tell us that they have made a commitment to Jesus Christ at some point in their life. This is slightly lower than the percent of older adults who have made such a commitment (73 percent). This is an amazing fact about our culture. The vast majority of Americans, regardless of age, assert they have already made a significant decision to follow Christ!

      Of course, this raises the question of the depth of their faith. If that many Americans have made a decision to follow Jesus, our culture and our world would be revolutionized if they simply lived that faith. It is easy to embrace a costless form of Christianity in America today, and we have probably contributed to that by giving people a superficial understanding of the gospel and focusing only on their decision to convert.

      At Barna, we employ dozens of tools to assess the depth of a person’s faith. Let me suggest one for our discussion: a biblical worldview. A person with a biblical worldview experiences, interprets, and responds to reality in light of the Bible’s principles. What Scripture teaches is the primary grid for making decisions and interacting with the world. For the purposes of our research, we investigate a biblical worldview based on eight elements.

      A person with a biblical worldview believes that …

  1. Jesus Christ lived a sinless life.
  2. God is the all-powerful and all-knowing Creator of the universe and He still rules today.
  3. Salvation is a gift from God and cannot be earned.
  4. Satan is real.
  5. A Christian has a responsiblity to share his or her faith in Christ with other people.
  6. The Bible is accurate in all of the principles it teaches.
  7. Unchanging moral truth exists.
  8. Such moral truth is defined by the Bible.

      In our research, we have found that people who embrace these eight components live a substantially different faith from other Americans – indeed, from other believers. What we believe influences our choices.

      Getting back to the issue of spiritual depth, if two-thirds of young adults have made a commitment to Jesus before, how many do you think possess a biblical worldview? Our research shows only 3 percent of Busters and Mosaics embrace these eight elements. That is just one out of every twenty-two young adults who have made a committment to Christ. (Although older adults are more likely to have such a perspective, it is also a small slice – only 9 percent – who do).

      This means that out of ninety-five million Americans who are ages eighteen to forty-one, about sixty million say they have already made a commitment to Jesus that is still important; however, only about three million of them have a biblical worldview.

Wow – those numbers are shocking!

Quantifiable research done over the course of many years including hundreds of thousands of interviews has enlightened us to this: the vast majority of young adults living in America today who claim to be following Jesus don’t have a grasp of the most basic Christian doctrines.

The eight elements listed do not comprehensively paint a picture of a disciple of Christ, but they do represent many of the basics.

After reading UnChristian for the first time a couple of years ago, I set a goal to do my best to make sure those learning from me adopt a biblical worldview. Meeting this goal takes intentionality. Before I simply assumed most people who’d been part of my church for a while (barring brand new Christians) understood the basics. I’ve since learned it’s a mistake to assume too much – one I doubt I’ll make again anytime soon.

I’m interested in hearing from others …

Do these numbers shock you? Are any of these eight topics ever tackled at your church? Have any of you come up with a teaching strategy to instill a biblical worldview in others? What’s missing from this list that needs to be added?

Love to hear your thoughts.

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