{"id":66276,"date":"2023-04-20T06:00:12","date_gmt":"2023-04-20T10:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=66276"},"modified":"2023-04-17T12:25:32","modified_gmt":"2023-04-17T16:25:32","slug":"where-praise-music-comes-from","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2023\/04\/where-praise-music-comes-from\/","title":{"rendered":"Where Praise Music Comes From"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t mean to stir up the worship wars again.\u00a0 I\u2019m just reporting.<\/p>\n

Of the 38 most popular praise songs\u2013those that made the Top 25 charts for that category (yes, there is such a thing) between 2010 and 2020\u201336 came from only four megachurches.\u00a0 Those are:<\/p>\n

(1)\u00a0 Bethel Community Church (Redding, CA)<\/p>\n

(2) Hillsong\u00a0 (Australia, with campuses throughout the world, including the U.S.)<\/p>\n

(3) Passion City Church (Atlanta, GA)<\/p>\n

(4) Elevation (Charlotte, North Carolina, with campuses in other states)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The study was sponsored by WorshipLeaderResearch.com<\/a>, a site devoted to contemporary Christian worship.\u00a0 The findings were reported and discussed by Bob Smietana, writing for the Religious News Service.\u00a0 His article is entitled \u201cThere\u2019s a reason every hit worship song sounds the same<\/a>,\u201d with the deck, \u201cA new study found that the most popular worship songs come from a handful of megachurches with a knack for writing pop songs about what God will do for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

The title comes from a quotation from the study\u2019s authors:<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you have ever felt like most worship music sounds the same,\u201d the study\u2019s authors wrote, \u201cit may be because the worship music you are most likely to hear in many churches is written by just a handful of songwriters from a handful of churches.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These four churches are all Pentecostal<\/a>, except for Elevation, which is Southern Baptist.\u00a0 And in their theology music plays a central role.<\/p>\n

Adam Perez, assistant professor of worship studies at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, said the four most influential megachurches all come from the charismatic tradition of Protestant churches. All of them, he said, have a spirituality that believes God becomes present in a \u201cmeaningful and powerful way\u201d when the congregation sings a particular style of worship song.<\/p>\n

Those songs become one of the primary ways of connecting with God \u2014 rather than prayer or sacraments or other rituals. Because of their market success, these churches have changed the spiritual practices and sometimes even the theology of congregations from many traditions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe industry itself becomes this invisible hand,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t name the theology of praise and worship \u2014 we just assume it. And we use this kind of song repertoire to reinforce it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the earlier days of the contemporary worship movement, before 2010, says Smietana, praise songs came from a variety of sources, and the emphasis was on the songwriter rather than the worship leaders of particular churches.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s practice reflects the homogenization of contemporary worship, as not only megachurches but smaller congregations from a wide range of Christian traditions all use the same basic worship and musical templates, despite their specific theological origin.<\/p>\n

As for their theological content, Baylor postdoctoral fellow Shannan Baker, who participated in the study,\u00a0 observes that,<\/p>\n

The study did not look specifically at the lyrics of the most popular songs. Baker did say she\u2019s looking at those lyrics for a different project and found a few trends. For example, she said, few of the most popular songs talk about the cross or salvation.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of it is, what is God doing for me now? And what has God promised to do for me in the future?\u201d she said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Certainly, charismatic congregations have the right to worship, sing, and believe any way they please, though I would question their theology.\u00a0 But congregations that are not<\/em> pentecostalist, do not<\/em> believe in the prosperity gospel,\u00a0 do not<\/em> believe that singing as opposed to Word and Sacrament is how we connect with God\u2019s true presence, and do<\/em> believe in emphasizing the Gospel and the Theology of the Cross should attend to what they are singing and how they are worshipping.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Photo:\u00a0 Hillsong London by Sidebart, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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