As she pulled into traffic, Elaine Benes turned on her boyfriend\u2019s car radio and began bouncing along to the music.<\/p>\n\n
Then the lyrics sank in: \u201cJesus is one, Jesus is all. Jesus pick me up when I fall.\u201d In horror, she punched another button, then another. \u201cJesus,\u201d she muttered, discovering they all were set to Christian stations. Then the scene jumped to typical \u201cSeinfeld\u201d restaurant chat.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cI like Christian rock,\u201d said the ultra-cynical George Costanza. \u201cIt\u2019s very positive. It\u2019s not like those real musicians who think they\u2019re so cool and hip.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Notice how the lords of Must See TV stuck in the knife and gave it a sneaky little twist, noted rocker Charlie Peacock, who has two decades of experience in both the secular and sacred markets. Contemporary Christian music \u2014 or CCM \u2014 is \u201cpositive,\u201d not \u201ccool\u201d or \u201chip.\u201d It\u2019s nice, meek and safe. After all, these aren\u2019t \u201creal\u201d musicians.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cPositive and nice. Helpful and friendly,\u201d writes Peacock, in his upcoming book \u201cAt the Crossroads,\u201d about the identity crisis in the thriving CCM industry. \u201cSounds more like a description of the Ace Hardware man than music informed by a story so \u2026 real that it involves every action, emotion and thought under the sun \u2013 a complex, bloody, beautiful, redemptive, truthful story.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Since Christendom is built on a story that is literally larger than life, Peacock\u2019s wonders why CCM is smaller than life. The Bible is full of sin, death, doubt, love, hate, anger, war, lust and other messy subjects. The faith of the ages wrestles with the bad news before reaching the Good News. Yet many Nashville executives would agree with the \u201cSeinfeld\u201d gang that CCM products must be tamer than the \u201creal\u201d pop, country and rock albums they mimic. Truth is, no one expects CCM to appeal to many listeners who aren\u2019t already true believers.<\/p>\n\n
This is, noted Peacock, a mighty strange strategy coming from people who say one of their main goals is evangelism. He also wonders if it does believers much good to consume only \u201cpositive\u201d messages that please them, comfort them and appeal to what marketers call their \u201cfelt needs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Some critics go even further. Writing in the New York Times, critic Nicholas Dawidoff said CCM is simply \u201cmediocre stuff, diluted by hesitation and dogmatic formula, inferior to the mainstream popular music it emulates.\u201d But he added: \u201cThere\u2019s no reason why contemporary Christian performers, if they allow themselves to explore their talent and emotion more completely, can\u2019t successfully combine virtuosity and moral virtue.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Mark Joseph of the MJM Entertainment Group in Southern California, has dug into sports history and found an even more provocative judgment. \u201cAs with baseball, strange bedfellows have colluded to keep musicians with Christian beliefs in the modern-day equivalent of the Negro Leagues,\u201d he wrote, in Billboard. This arrangement allows Christian companies to lock up their artists, while the biases of the secular marketplace remain unchallenged.<\/p>\n\n
On the other side, some purists say CCM is soul sick because its artists crave mainstream success and respect. This camp claims that it\u2019s time to return to a strict \u201cministry\u201d model in which performers stick to the biblical basics \u2013 recording only explicitly Christian songs \u2014 and stop seeking to \u201ccrossover\u201d into secular charts.<\/p>\n\n
The bottom line, said Peacock, is that gifted Christians make all kinds of music \u2014 from classical to jazz, from pop to edgy rock \u2014 and it doesn\u2019t help anyone to enforce one narrow definition of \u201cChristian music.\u201d People who run CCM companies must learn to reach the ears of unbelievers as well as believers, he said. This will, at the very least, require radically different marketing techniques and a more real-life-oriented approach to lyrics.<\/p>\n\n
This would even allow some Christians to successfully write songs that appeal to non-Christians, even if that breaks the CCM rules and might, in the short run, seem unprofitable.<\/p>\n\n
After all, noted Peacock, \u201can audience of 100 Satan punks and 10 Christians does not constitute a CCM consumer base. An audience of 95 Christians and five Satan punks does. If you\u2019re thinking something doesn\u2019t add up, you\u2019re right. Whether it adds up or not depends on whose math you\u2019re using.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As she pulled into traffic, Elaine Benes turned on her boyfriend\u2019s car radio and began bouncing along to the music. Then the lyrics sank in: \u201cJesus is one, Jesus is all. Jesus pick me up when I fall.\u201d In horror, she punched another button, then another. \u201cJesus,\u201d she muttered, discovering they all were set to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n