God, Mammon, and the “Worship Wars”

COMMENTARY--If you’ve been to a church at any time in the past 30 years, you have no doubt been subjected to the “worship wars.” Contemporary vs. Traditional. Modern vs. Postmodern. The worship wars have been fought in virtually every evangelical church at some time during the past generation. Those on the traditional side say the conflict is ultimately a matter of theology. Those on the contemporary side say it is ultimately a matter of relevance.

I’ve got my own opinions about this question, and – just for the record – let me say that I’m a traditionalist when it comes to matters of worship. When I hear people talk about relevance, I want to ask: “Relevant to whom?” Any attempt at relevance is by definition an exclusionary activity. Attempts to be culturally relevant to a teenager are exclusionary for an elderly widow. The Body of Christ should be about bringing the teenager and the grandmother together, not driving them apart. The purpose of true biblical worship is not to change it to suit us or an arbitrarily defined target market. The purpose of biblical worship is to transform us. It should proclaim the glory of God, and be a means of grace by which we are transformed. Worship is a sacrifice, not an entertainment.

But that is not really the point I want to make here. The real point I want to make that in this arena – as in many others of evangelical worship and culture today – money is the real driving force, and most evangelicals don’t even know it.

To understand this, consider that when a congregation sings Martin Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” no money changes hands. But when that same congregation sings “God of Wonders,” written by Steve Hindalong and Marc Byrd, both men – and their music publishing company, get a small payday. Why is that? Because “A Mighty Fortress” is in the public domain, but “God of Wonders” is owned by Hindalong and Burd and both they and their publishers have an economic self interest in seeing that these songs are sung and played in churches around the country.

This phenomenon of Sunday morning worship becoming not a day of praise, but a day of pay, is a recent one. It can be traced to the birth of an organization called Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI). CCLI collects fees from churches and then pays the copyright holders – keeping a percentage for itself, of course. The size of the copyright fee depends on the size of the church, but a 500-member church would pay about $300 per year. Currently, approximately 140,000 churches are CCLI license holders. That means that $40- to $50-million per year is collected and re-distributed to copyright owners.

And this large and growing number is just one part of the CCLI empire. CCLI also allows churches to pay additional fees to use movie clips as sermon illustrations.

It’s probably no coincidence that the CCLI’s founding in 1984 corresponds more or less with the beginning of explosive growth in the contemporary Christian music industry, and with the growth of worship music in particular. Now, a kind of unholy trinity exists that has turned the ministry of Christian music into the industry of Christian music. Christian radio promotes the songs, the churches use them in worship, and CCLI collects fees for the copyright holders. The big winners are the Christian record companies, many of them now owned by secular corporations, who sell records into the millions. The big loser is the church itself, which now pays to have itself marketed to every Sunday morning at 11 am.

Contrast this with the “old” method. Hymn books contain songs that are mostly in the public domain and have little or no licensing fees. They have historically been published by denominational publishers who make them available to congregations more or less at cost. They were not aggressively marketed or promoted because they are typically denominationally specific, reflecting the doctrine and liturgy of a particular church. But that is a key point: the hymnals are informed by and reinforce the theology of the church. Said plainly, hymnals are discipleship tools.

Contemporary worship songs, on the other hand, are a revenue stream for copyright holders and music publishers. They are aggressively promoted and now make up a significant share of the $4.5-billion Christian retail market.

Indeed, no matter which side you are on in these “worship wars,” both sides can agree on this simple observation: for the most part, the traditionalists have lost this fight, at least in the evangelical church. Virtually every one of the 100 largest and 100 fastest growing churches on “Outreach” magazine’s annual list of the largest and fastest growing churches in America is a church that has one or more so-called “contemporary” services. Indeed, most of these churches have no traditional services at all.

And that, my friends, is a tragedy – another triumph of Mammon in the modern evangelical church.

Warren Smith is the publisher of The Charlotte World. This article is excerpted from his upcoming book “A Lover’s Quarrel With The Evangelical Church,” due out later this year by Spence Publishing. You can email your reactions to this article at warren.smith@thecharlotteworld.com

I would add one more point. The commercialization includes a reinforced dumbing down of of worship. The great traditions are either ignored or rejected outright. The use of the term "relevance" is a red flag. It's easier to lower the congregation's expectations and sell them tripe than to instruct them in the classics and then strive to attain the same standards of beauty and reference. Beyond mixed theological messages, liturgical music can be marred by a poor choice of material or poor execution. What is particularly troubling is that while the latter is the result of our own limitations, the former is completely avoidable

You want relevance?

One day, we will all die.

One day we will stand before a Holy God.

Are you going to stand naked or clothed in the righteousness of Christ?

The pure crap I see on the Church Channel is nor “relevant” to that fact.

Here is relevance:

(from the Heidelberg Catechism)
Question 1. What is thy only comfort in life and death?

Answer: That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ; who, with his precious blood, has fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him.

On the other hand, for the scriptural view:

"Anyone who receives instruction in the word must share all good things with his instructor." Galatians 6:6

And although Paul eschewed the right, he still recognized it:

7Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat of its grapes? Who tends a flock and does not drink of the milk? 8Do I say this merely from a human point of view? Doesn't the Law say the same thing? 9For it is written in the Law of Moses: "Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain."[b] Is it about oxen that God is concerned? 10Surely he says this for us, doesn't he? Yes, this was written for us, because when the plowman plows and the thresher threshes, they ought to do so in the hope of sharing in the harvest. 11If we have sown spiritual seed among you, is it too much if we reap a material harvest from you? 12If others have this right of support from you, shouldn't we have it all the more?
--I Corinthians 9:7-12

Of course, people should be careful about what they're sharing their substance for. Are they really being edified?

Virtually every one of the 100 largest and 100 fastest growing churches on “Outreach” magazine’s annual list of the largest and fastest growing churches in America is a church that has one or more so-called “contemporary” services. Indeed, most of these churches have no traditional services at all.

Within the last couple years I switched from the "contemporary" service to the "traditional" service at our church. Scheduling reasons. Turns out that there's very little difference between them. The contemporary service sings new stuff. The traditional service sings stuff that's really not that much older.

[sigh}

From Wiki:

CCLI was founded in the US in 1988 by Howard Rachinski, who is President/CEO of the company. CCLI was launched after being developed by Howard for 3 1/2 years while he was a Music Minister at a large church in Portland, Oregon. This prototype was called Starpraise Ministries, which began in May 1985. CCLI offers copyright licensing of songs and other resource materials for use in Christian worship. The aim of CCLI has always been to provide services to facilitate worship (see the Vision and Mission below), benefiting the churches, while at the same time also benefiting the copyright owners.

Also Wiki:

OCP (formerly known as Oregon Catholic Press) is a Portland, Oregon based, not-for-profit company that publishes liturgical music, books, choral collections, hymnals, missals, and support materials for the Catholic Church as well as the Catholic Sentinel, the diocesan newspaper for the State of Oregon. OCP represents such musical composers as Dan Schutte and the St. Louis Jesuits, and offers worship programs that are used in two thirds of all Catholic churches in the U.S., and in communities and ministries throughout the world.

OCP is less than affectionately tagged “The Hidden Hand Behind Bad Catholic Music”.

CCLI. OCP. Portland, Oregon. Who would have figured? Maybe it’s the climate.

Maybe I am slow, it appears to me that this article and many of the comments are about what style of music is played. I don’t understand why the style of music makes a bit of difference about relevance (I like both styles).

When people refer to “relevance” I beleive they are referring to how God’s word is presented to the congregation. Relevance is defined by Webster “bearing upon or relating to the matter at hand”. This is exactly what Paul did when trying to reach the people of Athens. He looked around and noticed many idols and gods were being worshipped. There is even one named the “unknown god”. When he spoke God’s truth, he gave relevance to it, by telling them I want to tell you about the “unknown god”. Acts 17:23. He used the relevance of the day to reach the people of the day. That is exactly what many of the contemporary churches do.

The trouble begins when you get a church that thinks it needs to change the truth, to soften the message. That is a false teacher. They exist throughout Traditional and Contemporary style churches. They have existed for centuries and will be on the rise until Christ returns.

So your argument is futile if you want to banter back and forth between what type of music is more appropriate for a church setting. I say, mix them both, sing some contemporary and sing some traditional. I love both. But preach the TRUTH OF THE BIBLE. That is what will change the hearts of everyone.

I totally disagree about the songs being sung because of money. That argument is so stupid. If that were the case you should apply this to everything in the church...... Who gets the profit from the clothes you wear to church, or the chairs you sit in, or the cleaning supplies used in the bathrooms, what about the water used to baptize. You can’t apply this to just music. Give me break. I know I would much rather pay someone who is a beleiver (Christian song writer) than a pagan. Because if a true beleiver they will tithe back to their church, therefore continuing Gods’ blessings. A pagan may put the money into satan’s pocketbook.

Our church leaders are lead by the Holy Spirit. What they say can be confirmed in the scriptures and they always teach directly from the bible. They may use “props” to help us remember a truth, but the content never changes, only the method in which it is delivered! That is relevance and I love it!

When a pastor just reads the word, but doesn’t teach the congregation how to apply Gods word to their lives, what difference does it make? That is why you have churches who read from the bible but the people remained unchanged by it. I say give them relevance!

I think if I hear the word “EXCITING” parroted by another “get rich quick with Jesus” prosperity preacher, I shall have a case of the vapors. What people are needing more now than another round of “activities” under the umbrella of religion is a little peace and quiet. We are sick from an overstimulating, always having to be entertained or we’ll go somewhere else society. The truth of the matter is that the bottom line for some churches is that they are run by “power couples” using the building and the church (which is the people) for a big old cash cow. So, it’s let’s make a deal time - the words written in red in the NT are avoided outright, any passage with meat in it is disregarded so no one gets their feelings hurt, sermons harp on attendance (translates into $$$) legalism and little else. Worship is EXCITING, with lots of loud music that excites virtually the same lusts of the flesh as “Louie Louie” did way back when. We “attend”, but what are we attending? - I came out of a very bad experience where it seemed to me that the preacher and his wife were latched onto a little country church for many years that was little more than a cash cow that belonged to THEM. For one day’s work per week, they were paid almost 2/3 of the total budget with allowances for music purchases and books, bonus at Christmas and regular raises. In exchange, strongarm tactics from the pulpit were used (unless my lying ears deceived me - possible I suppose, but, man it sure was unpleasant to be raked over the coals because the preacher decided we all needed to be taking reams of “notes” on his sermons each Sunday, and heaven help us if we chose to take a hiatus from his Sunday night information class on Islam so we would “understand” them). It’s taking me round the bush to say that he was mesmerized and enthralled by Rick Warren’s megachurch miracle even though he made noises like he didn’t care for megachurches. - When she started teaching out of Warren’s driven book which the church bought for “us”, I quit her class. - I wish there were good small home churches these days that weren’t seeking to morph into rockin’ and rollin’ megachurch country and sports clubs. I’m getting where I don’t have any desire to listen to the same man preaching from the same pulpit every Sunday for years and years because he simply doesn’t think anyone else can do it like he does. I also wonder if there IS any denomination with sound Christian doctrine and practice that does not even use preachers and just lets the congregation read in turn and pray in turn, sing, etc.?

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