Sacred vs. Secular, pt. 2
So, yeah, it’s been more than a few days.
Okay; more like a month.
No excuses. So here goes.
**DISCLAIMER**
I used a little language in this post. If you don’t like it, that’s okay. I’m sure you’ll get over it.
First, thanks to everyone who posted a reply to the original Sacred vs. Secular post. I had some great discussions with people because of their comments, and even a few who didn’t comment, but read the post and comments.
As for my beliefs (again, MINE, doesn’t mean you have to agree), while the Bible tells us to use our talents for God’s glory, it doesn’t tell us how. I love that, at the end of Rob Bell’s Everything Is Spiritual DVD he points out that for the Jews in the first century A.D., there was no disctinction between the spiritual and non-spiritual. He goes on to say, “If you could travel back in time and ask Jesus how his spirit-man is, he would look at you as if you were crazy.”. And he’s right! To the ancient Jews and early Christians, everything was spiritual; they sought to glorify God in everything. Does that mean that every stanza of poetry, every verse of song, every chapter in a book that an early Christian was about Jesus? NO! What it meant was that in all you do, do it for God.
So, the first topic I addressed was that of Christian artists who branch out into the mainstream. I’ve heard the opinions of several artists and even managed to talk to a few and there are two things they all share in common: first, the desire to get outside the Christian subculture and reach an audience that, had they stayed in “the church”, would never have heard them. Second, they all get labeled by Christians as everything from “not Christian enough”, to sell-outs, to heretical. All because they wrote a song or two dedicated to their wives and performed on the Warped Tour instead of CreationFest.
There’s a reason I still listen to secular music – it’s real. Not to make a generalization about Christian artists, but too many of them seem fake. Maybe their albums are overproduced, maybe the songs are written for them, but I’ve heard too many contemporary Christian songs that are just, well, full of shit. As in the same way that pop music is (by pop, I mean Britney Spears, etc.). There’s no emotion. It’s just some American Idol wannabe with a decent producer and lyrics that mean nothing to them. When I listen to Metallica, I can hear the emotion in James’ voice. He knows what he is singing about because he lived it. But this is also why I like Christian artists like Anberlin. And that is why I get angry when someone attacks Anberlin (or another Christian group that crosses over to mainstream) simply because of the venues they play, or the bands they share billing with, or because they don’t have the word “God” in every song.
How does all that affect music in church? The first issue is the music used in church worship services. I and a friend used to have a joke between us at our old church that went something like this: “Why should I watch American Idol when I get to see it in church every Sunday morning?”. All too often we saw people who would sing songs that they really didn’t understand. The songs themselves weren’t bad; the lyrics were powerful and true, but for whatever reasons, the person/people singing didn’t comprehend the weight of those lyrics and just went through the motions. Most often, it happened with the hymns. The elderly in that church were feeling disconnected from worship because it seemed as if we were doing new songs every week and they couldn’t keep up. So the pastor and worship leader decided to begin services each week with a hymn so that the elderly would have at least one song to sing that they knew. Do you see the problem? It became a chore, not only to the music department, but to the congregation – even the group of people it was supposed to reach. Why? Because they weren’t singing the hymn to glorify God, they were singing it to appease a group of people. And don’t even get me started on the people who got up to perform, I mean sing a solo. Some understood what they were doing; it isn’t about them, it’s about God. Others looked like they were auditioning for American Idol.
The second issue of music in church is the use of secular music. I’m going to keep it simple: there are songs that are appropriate for church and there are songs that are not. The key word is redeem. A perfect example is the song “Free Fallin’” by Tom Petty. It’s a great song, a classic. But is it appropriate for church? Probably not. The lyrics have no relevance to God, Jesus, worship, etc. And the week we did it, no relevance to the message. Like I said, great song, but the only way to redeem this song is to rewrite the lyrics or play an instrumental version. An example of a redeemable song is “Gravity”, by John Mayer. At Four Points, we replaced the word “gravity” with “depravity”. Nothing else needed to change (except for the line “Depravity, stay the hell away from me”; only because our audience is a mix of traditional, contemporary, modern and post-modern, so some would be offended). And it was one of the first songs our congregation really connected with. When I look out across an audience and they’re just standing there, staring at the band, it’s not good. But when I’m mixing the band and start wondering, “Where are those extra voices coming from?” and then realize that’s our audience – they’re actually singing OVER the band! – that’s a good feeling. They get it. It’s not about them, it’s not about the band; it’s about Jesus. So, the question isn’t “Can secular music be played in church?”, the question is “Can this song be redeemed so that the lyrics speak to people?”.
J
