It hurts when you visit a church and for 30mins of praise-worship, you are yet to flow with the music team or the congregation. 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 being sung. 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, but their own 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 their congregations are compelled to sing them anyway. It has devolved 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 in-house artistes from their church(es) even when these artistes have nothing new and fresh to offer them. It should also be noted that these in-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 the subject of this article, 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 a subculture of music where the lyrics of any genre reflect the Gospel i.e. the love of God revealed in Jesus.
A gospel artiste is one who creates gospel music as an expression of his/her inner state per time.
Christian Music on the other hand refers to all songs and musical pieces composed in the light of the Christian faith. So, although all praise-worship songs are generally considered gospel music, they aren’t. They are however, Christian music or what you might call, “church music”.
Songs are Songs, not Doctrine
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 based on New Testament revelation, 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 to be played or sung in their events 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 eastern of the Nigeria. In fact this song is originally an Igbo song but the English version has gone worldwide. I have met people who say they don’t allow this song and songs like it to be sung 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 king’s 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 instructions and directions from them.
Stop Shaming Musicians
Another practice I have seen in the body of Christ, especially in Nigeria is the public criticism and shaming of Christian songs by preachers and teachers. They tend to make derogatory statements about musical pieces they do not like or that do not conform to their theological standpoint to their congregations or even when they are guests speakers and worst of all, these statements are posted on social media as well as viewing platforms. I’ve heard songs like “Days of Elijah” by Pastor Donnie McClurcin come under fire multiple times by public figures, mocking the lyrics of the songs in massive conferences. Its one thing to ask your music team to avoid certain songs due to their perceived theological inaccuracies – but to publicly shame an artiste and their songs from the pulpit, that’s very wrong and it has to stop.
If we cannot correct each other in private, then we must keep our opinions to ourselves. These songs were not written to satisfy your intellectual expectations on theology, neither were they written to teach the body of Christ doctrine. These songs are simply what they are; songs, pleasing to the ear and soothing to the soul, that’s all. What you do with them is your business, so let’s refrain from these slanderous and libelous acts before we begin to see musicians suing preachers into bankruptcy.
I do hope we eventually stop starving Christians in the church. I hope we learn to open our hearts and give the spirit of God limitless space to bless our soul with music; even the music we’ve heard over and over again through the years and have concluded to be inadequate. He has a way of pulling right out of wrong.
©Daniel McDon 2020
Singer/ Songer Writer and Team Lead; The Project Salt
bigdanmcdon@theprojectsalt.com
2 Responses
Thank you so much sir for taking time to dig into this subject matter BUT while I agree with you on the need to stop the public shaming of the Gospel artistes and song writers I also think it is wrong to leave the impression that, ‘anything goes’ as long as it is music in church because doing so will sincerely go flat against the biblical precepts which teaches us that, the word of God of which we supposedly draw from in our lyrical expressions is Spirit and Life -John 6:63. If gospel music should not be expected to ‘teach’ or enact the Christian Doctrines as arguable as that position really is, it surely MUST not be clearly seen to be going against the Christian Doctrines on the flip side.
Granted that, every ‘authentic’ song is an expression of the writers experience and culminated influences, It will be absolutely wrong to say we are ‘free’ to ‘drop’ every influence and mood as raw and unfiltered through the accuracy of the Christian tenets of Faith or else we can equally expect to accept the same when it is laced with lewd and sensuality if that happens to be the center of the artiste’s experience at the time a song drops in his heart.
I strongly believe that, there should be a standard we all should aspire to attain in our walk with God and in the delivery of our calling and crafts. The ability to crosscheck your lyrics with the fundamentals of the Christian faith should be extolled and encouraged as a deep and roundly matured expression of our callings in the music ministry.
I am very sure even you yourself may have had to ‘discard’ certain ‘songs’ because you know it surely does not reflect what you believe and how you would want to be perceived.
Music as an art form is surely meant to communicate especially when it is supposedly a gospel oriented music because I stand to be corrected about the existence of any sub-genre of the Gospel music that is now regarded as ‘Art for Art sake’ or ‘music for music sake’ that should be left open-ended as being an established ‘entertainment’ pieces to which anyone can accept and consume as they dimmed fit. Unlike in the secular setting, every music that is supposedly gospel is absolutely FUNCTIONAL as the word of God it draws from for… teaching, reproof, correction and training in righteousness.. 2 Timothy 3:16
Finally, in as much as growth and development is accepted as a process in our walk with the Lord, we should also invest the same energy and consciousness to ‘Study to show ourselves approved as workmen’… 2 Timothy 2:15 KJV and like Paul said, when I was a child, I spoke and acted as a child… -1 Corinthians 13:11 if we do not speak up, howbeit rightly so as well, to sharpen and horn our calling and crafts with one another in the music ministry, then we would be asserting the erroneous postulation that ‘anything goes’ as long as it is music in church which will surely be too far from the truth.
So, let’s keep the discussion going and challenging one another to work harder and better in love than be ‘excused’ to churn out what we feel in a lyrics without caring how they would be perceived when they fail against our basic Christian teaching.
Once again, I really appreciate and respect your views as we rub minds to keep doing the work aright!
I have gone through your article and I want to commend your effort. But note, if it’s not gospel, it is not. There is no way you can garnish the songs written out of share ignorance of the new life in christ Jesus and you call it a gospel just as you started defining what the gospel is.