I know you have more posts before this one thomas1168, but I hear what you are saying and I often feel the same way as you do.
It's difficult to take God's music out of the Church and to minister in a format that keeps its integrity and can be interpreted without conflict because it will always be criticised. I lived with that challenge for over 5yrs when I was a recording and performing Christian rock musician whilst signed to a mainstream secular record company…one of the biggest in the business. Now, our music wasn’t exactly light! It was pretty hardcore stuff. A lot (oh…a heck of a lot!) of people from the Church and many other Christian associations often kept their knives sharpened and were very quick to criticise what we were doing. I use to get emails and anonymous posts on our message board telling me that I was an anti-christ because of the style of the music that we played and that we were signed to a secular label. Our singer wrote very clever lyrics which consisted of his life experiences before he came to the Lord and how the Devil haunts him with his past so that he can come in-between his relationship with God. Believe me, he was no angel in his former life…there are two books published about his life and how he got saved! He has a past that would turn you green, but because of that God has used him as a great witness of his power and glory. We saw a lot of kids relate to him and we helped a lot more come to the Lord. The vehicle that we used was deemed ‘unconventional’ and ‘confrontational’. When we first started the band we tried to get signed by a Christian label. This is not an exaggeration; every company in the UK weren’t interested. We were approached by Universal during the time where bands like Limp Bizkit and Korn exploded onto the scene. A year later several UK Christian record companies started to follow suit, but even if we waited to get signed by one of those companies they wouldn’t have the financial muscle or even know what the heck to do with us or where to place us. It sucked being signed to a major, but they did put us into places where a Christian label wouldn’t dare to put us. That was the advantage that we had and we made more of an impact on peoples lives because we met them on their ground…not ours. Even I very frequently failed to understand how God was using us effectively in some pretty challenging environments. So, was what we did ‘Gospel’? Does God’s message stop being ‘Gospel’ once it has left the Church? That’s really open to your own interpretation, but I believe God’s message and how it travels is more malleable than what most of us will ever understand.
I left that band almost 3yrs ago because of a major disagreement I had with our management and since then I have been working with the Youth Ministry at my Church and I get frequent session work on a part-time basis. My day job pays pretty badly and I have a house that needs a lot of renovation, so I need the extra income. I have a few agents that get me the session work and there have been many instances where my participation on an official recording has been out of my control or I have been misled to what the music is being used for. A lot of the time I enter the studio and all I have to play with is a click track, maybe drums and some keyboards. I do my couple of hours of studio time, pack up and go home and a cheque for my fee arrives in the post two weeks later. I sometimes get a brief overview of what the project is for, but it doesn’t always turn out to what I have initially been informed. I always ask for a master copy when the final release has been cut for my portfolio. What I perform on can end up being used anywhere in-between a professional artist and a TV commercial for cattle feed in Romania…I never know until I get the master copy. Back in October 2005 I was asked to take my upright to a session to lay down some grooves for a hip-hop recording. That’s all I was told. At the time I thought it was the easiest jobs I have ever done as the engineers sat there and listened to me free style over very basic drum loops. They took little snips of what they liked the most and that was my job done. My agent sent me the master copy in the mail back in February this year and I was shocked. My work ended up on a debut hip-hop album for a well-known underground artist in the UK. ‘Great!’ I thought, until I listened to it. The lyrics are incredibly vulgar and offensive…there is no other way to describe it. There is one track on the album that uses one of my lines that is spoken in Spanish. My girlfriend speaks fluent Spanish and she translated it for me. She said that there is not one line in that song that doesn’t use a profanity or a disgusting sexual reference. I felt so embarrassed. I immediately picked up the phone and went crazy with agent that gave me that job. He excuse (which is a common one with every agent I have used) is that he tells me what he has been told about what ‘may’ happen to my work. Sometimes my name will get credited if my work ends up on an artist release, but on this occasion, thankfully it didn’t. That was probably the worst moment of my professional experience. Great thing about session work is that you are not contracted unless you officially perform with the artist; therefore you are not credited for royalties and appearances. I very rarely work on a project that will eventually be officially released for a secular artist. A lot of the work I do is what is called ‘Library’ recordings. It will be on file for a media publishing company and if they use it then it will be used for whatever. You have no control over what it will be used for at that point and more than often you will never find out either.
As a Christian and being musically active in and out of the Church in various duties I have always been challenged to keep my integrity. Yes, sometimes I have failed to do that and couldn’t find that ‘performance’ on/off button on the back of my head…it happens to the best of us from time to time. When I originally posted this topic I merely stated from an unbiased discussion that I had from a long-standing member of my Church and whom I hold a lot of respect for and I wanted to challenge both experienced and new musicians being used in the Church. I just wanted to see the opinions from a musician stand point to the Gospel v R&B dilemma. I didn’t want to make my opinion clear to keep the topic unbiased, so I will have my say now:
It’s not really a dilemma as far as I am concerned in the context of genres being used in and out of the Church. It doesn’t matter what ‘style’ of music you prefer to praise & worship to or to minister with. Music ministry comes in all kinds of designs and packages and will be identified as such… Contemporary, Hymn etc… IMHO, I have treated every style used in the Church, no matter of its origin, as ‘Gospel’ in its true meaning. What does that word mean? ‘Good word’. That can carry itself in any music form. We mostly use that word to identify a style of music that originated from African-American churches back in the 1930’s. Is Gospel now R&B? No…R&B is just another style of music. I think of Gospel as a culture which is centred around a core of music and has many shades and colours and not necessarily as any specific style of music. To debate if R&B originated from Gospel or even if it has replaced it is a topic I have no interest about because I really don't care in all honesty. That's open to your own interpretation and you are entitled to it and I respect it. It's music that can enjoyed and be used for God's glory and that's all I am concerned about. I am from a Jazz background and I hear these types of debates about styles all the time and it really bores me. If it's good music that people enjoy and use...let it be. I am not the 'music style' police and I don't determine right or wrong in music trends.
Okay, now onto the performance issue! I believe if the focus is God then you will be used for his glory and he will be mighty. Take your eyes of him and start thinking more about your ego then he will not move. That's not my opinion, that's just a fact of life as a Christian. There is nothing wrong with using performance in ministry as a medium because it has been a proven method of bringing people to God for many years, but when it takes over and spills into praise & worship then the congregation become spectators…not participants. Yes, use your giftings, be passionate about your giftings, always seek to improve yourself, give thanks for what God has given you and celebrate it, but understanding your role and applying yourself the needs of your Church is so important. Every Church worships differently and if you want to party like it’s 1999 or choose to worship with to the sound of bagpipes then that’s great…may God bless you, but understanding the needs and vision of your Church and keeping God in the fold is paramount.
