Missional storyteller Jelani Greenidge is a worship pastor with an extensive musical background, including a family heritage of singing gospel and praise-and-worship music. This is the first in a series of essays on the state of Christian music in general—what’s happening, how things are going, and what we can do about it.
“All the chord progressions sound the same.”
“No variety.”
“I have more critiques than I have patience to write.”
“Cookie-cutter, vanilla, and bland.”
“I can’t find a place to access it that won’t limit its diversity.”
“Way too much repetition in general.”
“It’s almost always derivative…a solid money-making scheme, but not art.”
“Overly simplistic theology.”
“Full of toxic positivity.”
“More performative than worship.”
“For me, it’s the whining.”
“Way too corny or cringe to take seriously.”
These are responses I received when I asked people online to tell me their concerns about Christian music. Over and over for years, if not decades, I’ve heard similar reactions. People say it’s not very good, or it’s not very musical, or even very Christian. To the extent that any of those things are true, people lament that it’s not as good as it used to be.
I submit that the situation is even more dire than many of us realize. Much of what we’ve come to know and appreciate about Christian music is outdated, irrelevant, and discontinued. After all, many of us grew up buying records, tapes, or CDs. Now, even the concept of purchasing music sounds quaint. Fewer and fewer churches use hymnals as part of their worship, let alone transparent lyric sheets on overhead projectors.
Simply put, I posit that Christian music as we know it is dead.
But as Jesus said in John 12:24, a seed cannot produce life until it dies.
I want to explore the idea that God is causing new life to sprout from what we have known Christian music to be until now. To nurture that new life, we must be willing to let go of many of our preconceived notions—including what defines Christian music, who makes it, and what its purposes are. We must let these incomplete, insufficient, or inaccurate ideas die.
Which is harder than it sounds. Our misunderstandings and misconceptions run deep; like zombies, they continue in their undead state, intruding into our creative processes, arresting our discipleship journeys, and scaring away first-time visitors in our churches. The goal of this series is to sort out how we’ve arrived at this current state of affairs, address some of these problematic misconceptions, and begin to chart the outline of a new way forward.
I want to be clear about a few things from the outset.
First, I will use the term “Christian music” a lot—even though I actually think that’s a problematic term. But it’s too popular to reject completely. (I’ll elaborate on this in a future essay.) For now, we’ll use the term out of convenience, even though I know it makes some of you cringe. Trust me, I get it.
Also, my understanding of Christian music is shaped not only by my theological teaching and training but also from a lifetime of participating in it. I’ve been a listener, consumer, performer, analyst, and most importantly, a worshiper. But I do not claim to be an expert on the entire genre. Music is personal to so many people, existing in so many forms, that there’s really no such thing as being an expert in music. Sure, there’s expertise to be gained in certain musical traditions, techniques in singing or playing, and understanding advanced elements of theory. But when it comes to art, I try not to endow people with titles like “expert,” because art is so subjective. If we start giving experts ultimate authority, we end up with cultural blind spots, particularly when it comes to defining music theory.
By the way, my rejection of expertise is a bit out of character. The American evangelical church tends to pride itself on its resistance to cultural elitism, yet that resistance can lead people to embrace disinformation and believe in unproven theories from discredited sources. I do value expertise in fields like science, technology, theology, and politics. But when it comes to music, it feels different.
If we’re going to find and nurture the new life springing up from the ashes of Christian music as many of us have known it, we cannot do so in the broken paradigms, false narratives, and inaccurate beliefs that we’ve uncritically accepted.
I genuinely want better experiences creating, sharing, consuming, and participating in Christian music. Many of us try to fix the problems we face by adopting solutions that are just different problems in disguise. It’s not that they aren’t real solutions, but many of the issues we think of as minor inconveniences or simply differences of opinion are rooted in unhealthy practices and beliefs that run contrary to the life and mission of Jesus, as rooted in the Scriptures. To paraphrase an old saying: you can’t defeat evil using the devil’s tools.
On a practical level, you won’t find me making many specific recommendations in this series. The Evangelical Covenant Church is full of diverse people with a wide variety of musical tastes, and this series isn’t about convincing any of you to like the kind of music I like. Also, Spotify averaged about 20,000 new song releases every day last year. I have enough trouble figuring out what I like, much less what others will like!
What I do hope readers find in these essays are two things. First, I hope you walk away with a greater sense of the scope of the issues we’re facing on this topic. It’s not just about better technology, better practice, or better song selection. Systemic issues contribute to all of these challenges, and they require dramatic, comprehensive, systemic solutions.
Second, I hope to leave you with hope. Amidst all the gritty details of how we got here, good music is still being created—music that promotes an ethic of hope, healing, and shalom; music that challenges the status quo and helps us take the next step toward whatever God has for us. Christian music, as we’ve known it, might be dead, but in the words of Billy Crystal’s character in The Princess Bride, it’s only “mostly dead.” There is still life.
Yet my experience tells me that, without the Spirit’s active guidance and occasional interruptions, we will miss out on it. If our established gatekeepers don’t know about it, we’ll miss it. If it doesn’t come in the format we prioritize, we’ll miss it. If it doesn’t sound like what we’re used to, we’ll miss it. And with it, we’ll miss the blessing God intends for us—all because we’re holding too tightly to what we think Christian music is supposed to be.
So join me in this exploration of Christian music. Like our Savior, who died and was raised to new life, we can’t participate in the resurrection of Christian music if we don’t first face the ugly truth of its death.
