You listen to what is pawned off on us these days as "Christian" music and you have to wonder.
You wonder where the visionaries are. Not the vision of where "their" music is heading, but those who caught a vision of God Himself, and then translated it into an album. The voices of prophets. I was a sophomore in high school when I got a copy of Keith Green's "No Compromise" record and from the very first day I listened to it, I was changed forever. He wasn't the greatest vocalist and once in a while his songwriting skills were mediocre. But this was a guy who couldn't give two cents about "giving a performance" the way praise and worship singers do now. He would have sung from behind a curtain. It was about changing a life, not creating a mood. Mood making is what lounge singers do.
Where is the current Andrae Crouch, who could move you to repentance and then to joy in a two hour concert? Where are the Stonehill's and the Dallas Holm's? Who will be the next Mullins?
It has long been said that the hymnbook is a reflection of the pulpit. This is true. As pastors have moved away from speaking actively about sin and right and wrong and softened the message in an effort to draw bigger crowds, the music has reflected the move.
Where the original Jesus Movement was "Come as you are, but you will change" now it is "Come as you are and hey...God loves you as you are and there is no need to ever change..." And the music reflects this. The old songs sound old and dated to so many today because the theology behind them is gone from the hearts of so many. Why sing of "Amazing Grace" when nobody ever thinks they were "a wretch?" Why sing "Just as I Am" from a mindset of repentance when you're being told that "Just as you are" is all you'll ever need to be? Why sing of salvation when an idiot like Gungor denies Genesis being literal, and Vickie Beeching openly embraces heresy and is celebrated for it? "A literal Genesis? That's so "Fundie," I mean that's where sin entered the world, maybe that never actually happened, and since I don't believe in the book that first described sin, why write songs about the existence of sin or the damage it does? I'll write another song about the God who is only slightly less mild than Mr. Rogers."
Nobody will be saying what I'm saying in the churches where these artists attend this morning. And so they'll keep writing this pablum and another generation will go on without ever experiencing what it feels like to lay awake all night, listening to a REAL Christian album on your headphones and being changed forever.
Hearing about the murder of the unborn or the billion starving people or the need for righteous living. Instead they'll just hear yet another "Christian Hottie" groaning about how much she loves Jesus...almost like she loves her boyfriend. Or some barely- manly hipster worship writer talking about how he is God's best friend and how hard life gets whenever he spills his Starbucks on his scarf and it gets on his skinny jeans.
We'll know we have a revival starting when we start hearing it in the music.
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