Guest Writer Big Dan shares thoughts on what he believes is gradually becoming a challenge in the body of christ and causing a set back on the gospel music.
Below are his thoughts on “The Theology of Gospel Music”
It hurts when you enter a church for the first time and for 30mins of praise worship, you are yet to flow. Not because you are in no mood to worship or because you are not in the spirit but because you are familiar with absolutely none of the songs raised. Its not as if the gospel community has run out of solid, deep and soul lifting praise worship songs, its just that these churches and people have so many biblical, theological, pneumatological and christological reasons why these songs (popular and common songs) are unfit for a christian and their songs are highly appropriate.
I have also noticed that most times, these songs are composed by in-house amateur writers. They are lengthy, verbose, unreal and unnatural but members sing them anyway.
It has evolved to the point where a denomination or even a church network refuses to invite gospel artistes that are not members of their denomination or church network. They would rather continually invite artistes from their church even when these artistes have nothing new and fresh to offer them. It should also be noted that these artistes are called for ministrations to other churches outside their denomination (an action that they refuse to reciprocate). But that is an issue for another time.
To deal with this issue: Firstly, some concepts need to be well understood;
Music: This is the combination of sounds, whether vocals or instrumentals, that give pleasure to the ears. Gospel music is music done within the confines of christian beliefs. Therefore praise and worship songs are considered gospel music. A gospel artiste is one who creates gospel music as an expression of his heart.
Due to our general expectation for songs to educate us and give direction, we tend to put pressure on songs and song writers to tell us what to do and how to do it. And when these songs don’t align with our christian theology or philosophy, we lash back with criticisms and condemnation. In turn, we are then compelled to write our own “model” songs (a task that requires grace and anointing).
But what we need to understand is that music is an expression. A musician expresses himself or herself via music. Most songs you hear are done based on the songwriter’s mind, mood and message. But instead of listening with empathy, we try to force instruction from these songs. I’ll give examples:
Femi okunuga’s “emi orun” . This song when critically analyzed using pneumatology, is flawed. But if you listen with empathy, you’ll notice his mood. To him the manifestation of the holy spirit is as a descending atmosphere that changes the ambiance. Some christians and churches won’t permit this song because in theory, a christian carries with him the spirit of God and therefore does not require the holy spirit to descend from above.
I give you another song which I personally have heard being criticized for reasons I refused to wait and consider:
“I have confidence in you…” I know the song writer is a lady from the east of the niger. In fact this song is originally an igbo song but the english version has gone world wide. I have met pple who said they don’t allow this song and songs like it to be sang in their churches due to technical flaws in the lyrics based on their theology of man’s faith in God and God’s confidence in man….bla bla bla.
This is the truth. Whoever wrote this song, was probably in a battle for her faith. This song is a declaration of faith. It reflects the declaration of the three hebrew young men who were asked to bow before the kings idol. We may have no exact idea of what the songwriter was going through but at some point in our christian race, we tend to make this same statement.
There are many other examples of musical expressions….
Kenny Kore’s classic, “your peace”
David’s “teach me to be strong”
….And we find faults with them because instead of being blessed, we always try to pull out instruction and direction from them.
Please let us stop starving christians in the church. Open up your hearts and give the spirit of God limitless space to bless your soul with music, even the music you’ve heard over and over again over the years and have concluded to be inadequate. He has a way of pulling right out of wrong.
Big Dan is a prolific writer, singer and performer resident in the West Side of Nigeria- Lagos. He is the convener of #thePROJECTSALT.
His new single Unworthy God is set to be released on the 14th of December 2014.
